Frontier Scum - Starter guide
What is Frontier Scum?
Frontier Scum is a rules-light tabletop roleplaying game set on the Lost Frontier - an acid western take on the classic spaghetti western, fever-bright and mean. You play wanted outlaws trying to leave a mark on a world of bottomless greed: mutants, strange relics, a prison train powered by a giant heart. Think El Topo and Dead Man rather than John Wayne. You will probably get shot before you clear leather. Then you roll a new outlaw and ride on.
The game was written and designed by Karl Druid (Den of Druids), with setting text by Brian Yaksha and co-development by Games Omnivorous. It first appeared in 2022 and won an ENNIE award. In 2026, Free League Publishing released a new edition - the version on our shelves - adding 19 new backgrounds, new name tables, and optional gun hand rules. Frontier Scum grew out of the Mörk Borg third-party scene, but it is a fully standalone game. No other book required.
How does the system work?
The core is a player-facing d20 system in the Mörk Borg tradition: players roll to act and players roll to avoid harm, while the GM narrates and never touches the dice for enemies. Group initiative is rolled fresh every round, which keeps fights unpredictable. Four stats cover everything: Grit for muscle and toughness, Slick for speed and aim, Wits for cleverness and talk, and Luck for gambling and cheating fate. Skills are freeform - you start with three, and whether one applies to a roll is simple: either it makes sense or it does not.
The most distinctive rule is that guns hit automatically. Unless the GM calls it a tough shot, you skip the attack roll and go straight to damage. Shootouts are fast, loud, and over before you know it - two groups of glass cannons emptying their chambers at each other. Ammunition is scarce, and it is entirely normal for outlaws to face the final showdown of an adventure with a knife or a wrench because the bullets ran out.
Two smaller rules give the game its flavor. Your hat works as armor: take a hit that would drop you, and you can sacrifice your hat instead - the bullet ruins your headwear rather than your head. And when death does come, it rarely comes instantly. Roll badly enough and you are fatally wounded, with a die deciding whether you have minutes, hours, days, or weeks left. In true western fashion, you play out your last rides as a dead man walking.
Character creation is quick and table-driven. A handful of d6, d20, and d66 rolls hands you a background, a name, a gun, and a stolen horse. You can pick deliberately, but rolling is half the fun - and with lives this short, you will get plenty of chances.
What do you need to start?
The book is everything you need. Inside are all the rules, character creation, an introduction to the Lost Frontier - from the corrupt streets of Covett City to the fetid swamp of Sunken Hill - the complete adventure Escape the Organ Rail, and stacks of tables for NPCs, hunting, carousing, bounties, odd jobs, loot, and strange relics. Add a d20 and a handful of d6s and you are ready.
The physical book is an A5 hardback styled like an old almanac, laid out like a frontier newspaper full of bizarre advertisements. Ugly, dirty, and exactly as intended.
Who is this game for?
Frontier Scum is for groups who want fast, lethal, vibes-first sessions. If your table enjoys OSR-style play - player agency, lateral thinking, real danger, and stories that emerge from the dice - this will feel like home. It shines as a one-shot game, since characters take minutes to make and rarely last long, but the bounty and odd job tables support longer campaigns of drifting from town to town.
The tone is dark and absurd in equal measure, and worth noting: the book explicitly refuses the ugly stereotypes of its source genre. This is a western about greed and bad luck, not about punching down. It is not the right game for groups who want character optimization, steady power growth, or heroes who reliably win. On the Lost Frontier, everyone lives one slug from the grave.
How does it compare to other systems?
Against Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Frontier Scum sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. D&D rewards long-term character investment; Frontier Scum hands you an expendable outlaw and a world of tables that surprise the GM as much as the players.
Against Mörk Borg, the family resemblance is clear - Frontier Scum literally began as "Mörk Borg with guns" before growing into its own game. Where Mörk Borg is doom metal in a dying fantasy world, Frontier Scum is sunburnt, dusty, and hallucinating. Same brutality, different poison.
Against Pirate Borg, they are siblings: both took the Mörk Borg engine to a new genre. Pirate Borg adds ships and naval combat; Frontier Scum adds gunfights, bounties, and the acid western tone. If you know one, you will learn the other in minutes.
Where do you start?
The rules fit in an evening of reading. Then roll characters at the table, randomly - the dice will hand your group a stranger cast than you would ever choose yourselves. Run Escape the Organ Rail as your first session: a prison break from a train powered by a giant heart is exactly the introduction this game deserves.
One tip for the GM: make ammunition count. The auto-hit rule makes guns terrifying, and the slow click of an emptying chamber is where the real tension of Frontier Scum lives.
Recommended products at Netherbook
Start with the Frontier Scum rulebook - it is the complete game in one grimy almanac, in the expanded Free League edition. If the tone clicks, its relatives are worth a look: Mörk Borg for the same brutality in a dying fantasy world, and Pirate Borg for the version with ships and skeletons. Same family, different hells.