Ran Rotblack Sludge for a small group of a couple of friends. Everyone had a great time but not a single one of the player characters died horribly or anything like that. Now they're on an extended version of it where they have to return the Shadow King's little bastard all the way back to the Castle in Sarkash, amid an endless twilight where half of the people of the land cannot wake and half cannot sleep. The lack of brutal player death scenes makes me feel like a doomed failure, and not in the right doom kinda way. How can I be more BRUTAL without it seeming like I'm intentionally out to kill player characters just so I can use one of any number of awesome death scenes I thought up?
Just trust the dice to Mork your Borg. Someone will get it eventually.
Mörk borg is often misunderstood concerning it's deadliness. It is fine not to kill the PCs and it gets harder to do so once they level up at least once. Do not force player death - show danger and make it clear, let them chose their challenge and approach problems theirs own way. Let the dice fall where they may and don't overthink it. Sometimes it just works out
That's funny, because my players had to re-roll characters in Rotblack, to the point that it didn't even matter!
That said, maybe surviving in a dying world was the real doom all along?