Take up your axe and raise the dragon's head upon the longship's prow!
The time has come to brave the frozen empires of the savage north. Here honor is more common than steel, trolls and giants battle the gods, and a hero lives by strength of arm and reckless courage. Northlands is a 114-page sourcebook detailing the icy northern realms: their geography, culture and magic.
12 Original Monsters based on Finnish, Inuit, Viking, and other legends of the north.
Rune and Grudge Magic offer all-new magic, plus new spells, magic items and incantations.
New Haunts and Hazards: the spirits of the land, the dangers of the trail! Tools to make any adventure exciting, and turn every encounter into a nail-biter.
New Equipment: From skis to Northern alchemy, lots of new toys and tools for PCs or villains.
Feats, Traits, and Class Features for any cleric, barbarian, oracles, sorcerer, and more, both regional traits, teamwork feats, and metamagic. Rich roleplaying elements and exciting new twists to make the Northerner come alive!
Northlands covers campaign sites for adventurers to pillage or save:
Trollheim is ideal for low magic or pseudo-historical campaigns focusing on human opponents; feuding clans, wars and viking raids.
Thule is a classic land of monsters, focusing on giants and environmental hazards caused by the elemental clash of fire and ice.
Hyperborea is a tropical lost world at the northern pole, based on Greek myth.
This official Midgard setting sourcebook is easily portable to any setting. Written by Dan Voyce with project patrons for the Pathfinder RPG.
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... but I'll do my best regardless. This is the kind of product that makes a creator's reputation a legend! There isn't a single wasted WORD in this thing... everything contributes to a picture of the Great White North in a way worthy of the greatest of Viking sagas. New domains, new magical concepts, some AWESOME achievement feats, brilliant new races, great historical weaponry, and a brilliant usage of the Nordic gods prepared for Pathfinder. Tons of new monsters, some new races, and a brilliant use of the setting makes this one a can't miss. If you ever want to include a viking culture in your game, you NEED this product. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. My highest possible rating. If the rest of Midgard is this lovingly handled, it can count on my support 100%.
With gorgeous cover art by Aaron Miller and 114 pages of frosty goodness, The Northlands is Open Design's response to a fan call for a Sunken Empires sequel. Written by Dan Voyce (Tales of Zobeck, Halls of the Mountain King, Tales of the Old Margreve) and the project patrons, this is a book for slinging dice in the bleak frozen wastes. The focus is heavily Viking, with aspects of Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea and good dose of Norse Jotunheim. The art reflects the grim mood, relying heavily on Rackham's woodcut themes of the Viking age, but Rick Hershey's monster illustrations are as richly detailed as any greedy dwarven treasure vault and Jonathan Roberts' maps are a pair of bright gems in an otherwise black and white book.
This is everything you need to run a game in the icy tundra and the map for good measure—if you don't mind borrowing Midgard's. Traditional Viking concepts of honor, feasting, government, storytelling, drinking games of chance and even wergild, or blood-price, are all discussed. This last one is useful for a GM because it offers a way to pursue vendettas or demand revenge without necessarily resorting to further bloodshed and putting consequences to characters' usual habits of violence. There are excuses, I mean story seeds, for launching raids, and a full pantheon of grim deities certain to ignore the infrequent prayers of your reavers—detailed with domains, chosen weapons, and a very interesting section on "What (Deity) Demands," which is a great way for keeping in the mood. And that's just Chapter One.
The next chapter details the setting of Midgard, reviewing the geography, the factions and racial relations, a bit of history, and the notable locations. There are quite a few of these, each offered up with a suggested story seed. The area here is big, and the details are enough to inspire adventures without constraining a GM to the locations. This section left me thirsting for more. After fifteen pages covering the region, I wanted in-depth and focused treatments of places like "the Bleak Expanse," or "Amaroth, the Sleeping Kingdom," and I call that a good thing.
Chapter Three is for the players, giving fantastic race options for some human tribes, Hyperboreans, reaver Dwarves, and Trollkin. These last three come with traits for specializing the characters a little further, with names invoking the region's reputation like "Fey Vendetta," "Fireheart," or "Rune Mastery." Classes get an environmental spin, as well, with alternate variants for nine of the core and expanded options from the APG. Bards get a lot of love here, and sorcerers get two new bloodlines—giant and hyperborean (which I particularly liked). While Northlands also has the usual bevy of combat feats, it offers up a very novel option of "Acclaim Feats," based on a character's renown in the community. The "Huginn's Horde" feat is particularly cool for casters, giving them a murder of crows--an image I find really caster-appropriate to work into play. The options for alternate barter/currency are perfect, too, because you can see adventurers and players really getting into the setting when their hordes include picture shields, bundles of otterskins, and a pair of adamantine torcs forged by reaver dwarves, not to mention just a few of the wondrous items or spells. This is a setting with personality, and it's as bright and entertaining as the Northern Lights.
The text continues on, just as dense as its Sunken cousin, with chase options, hazards, hero point variants, environmental rules and haunts. The bestiary is loaded with foes—while there are valkyries to collect the slain, there are jotuns and nightgarms, really a whole host of bad guys you can throw at your players for any level. Northlands continues the tradition set by Sunken Empires and Tales of the Old Margreve; this book is going to leave you itching to use the material, no matter what campaign world you use. There's something on nearly every page that inspires a story or suggests an adventure. You're going to hope your characters have got plenty of thread left on the skein of the Norns once you dig into this, because there's just too much glorious fun to be had. Definitely worth the gold rings to pick up, I give it 5 stars!
EDIT: I was not a patron for this project, but did receive a review copy.
"The Vikings stabbed themselves like a dagger into the heart of every culture they met." (1) They were feared by every nation that knew them, and they were known by every nation that lived near water, be it sea or river. Have you ever wanted to put a set of people like that in your campaign? I have, and now with the publication of this supplement, I can.
This is not an adventure module - it is a campaign setting. You can drop Northlands into your existing campaign world as a new place for your players to discover, or you can start a whole new campaign here. Northlands is large enough, and imaginative enough, that your players could spend years exploring this wintery world. Like any well-written supplement, you can also lift out parts and ideas for use in your own campaign.
Northlands is well over a hundred pages of inspiration for adventuring under the scintillating aurora-filled skies of the frozen north. Of course, the lands it describes aren't quite the real Scandinavia, and the tribes who dwell there aren't quite the real Norse peoples, but they are close enough for gaming purposes. Actually, they're far better for gaming purposes than the real thing would be - genuine history doesn't easily fit a d20 mold.
Northlands presents it's material in six well-organized chapters:
Chapter 1 starts out with a wonderful description of life and death in the Far North. The very first sub-heading sets the tone: "Hard People, Hard Land". It goes on to discuss the way things work in this land of the midnight sun, and how life there is different from life in the cultured (some might say "soft") cities of the civilized world. Also the Vanir and Aesir are described in this chapter, because no Norse fantasy world would be complete without them.
Chapter 2 describes the land itself. Dozens and dozens of locations are detailed, enough that I lost count, and all of them are overflowing with inspiration for adventure. There may be some dull places in the world, but they are not found here!
In Chapter 3 we learn about the special Northland races and classes. It is in this chapter that we meet the Reaver Dwarves and the Trollkin. This chapter also presents new material for Barbarians, Skalds (Northlands Bards), Clerics, Monks, Oracles, Paladins, Sorcerers, Witches, and Wizards. All these classes get a frosty Northern makeover. Oh, and there is new equipment too; if you want to travel cross-country in the snow, you'll want a set of skis, and maybe a sleigh.
Chapter 4 is all about magic. Grudge magic, Rune magic, incantations and spells, and of course new magic items. The powers and attributes of the Futhark are described here, as are four special Northlands incantations. There are more than three dozen spells, almost five dozen magic items, and some special Northlands attributes for magic weapons. This is Northland's longest chapter, and every page is bursting with useful information.
Chapter 5 covers special rules needed for adventuring in the frozen places. There are new options for dogsled chases, longboat chases, and ski or snowshoe chases. There are new environmental rules for arctic cold (thin ice, anyone?). My favorites are the special fantasy encounters - just what do you do if Jormungandr the World Serpent breeches the surface of the sea while your longboat is nearby?
Chapter 6 is the Bestiary. It presents a dozen new living (or almost living) perils for your players to encounter. If werewolves have worn out their welcome in your world, give the nightgarm a try. Each creature is illustrated, of course, and designed to give the Northlands its own special flavor.
Throughout the chapters are many sidebars, covering everything from behind-the-scenes design decisions to Northlands nicknames.
I did spot one editing mistake: In the table of contents, the section on "Arctic Chases" is attributed to the tail end of Chapter Four even though it is actually in the beginning of Chapter Five. However, the page number is correct even if the attribution isn't, so this is a very minor annoyance.
In summary: Northlands is an excellent example of Open Design at is finest. Weather you like to personally craft your campaign world, or use completely pre-packaged settings, you will find plenty of value in this publication.
--- Footnotes ---
(1) I read this wonderful sentence in National Geographic many years ago. Memory is a fallible thing, so I probably didn't get it quite right, but I'm not really in a position to search thirty years worth of Nat Geo's to find it again.
I love this book! I keep looking for a page that has what is Open Content and what is Product Identity but I can't seem to find it. Am I missing it or is it not there?
Don't get your hopes up for a lot of it being OGC. For a company named "Open Design", one that apparently gets a large portion (or even majority) of its sales by releasing products for a game that owes its entire existence to the OGL, the amount of actual open content in Open Design releases is very, very small.
Well, I disagree of course. This is a Midgard setting book, and just like Golarion setting books, the campaign material is all product identity.
The place where OGL material comes from Kobold Press is in rules supplements, like Divine Favor series (largely Open), the Advanced Feats(all Open), and the New Paths series (all Open).
I wouldn't look to see Midgard campaign material made open any more than I would expect to see the Golarion campaign made open.
I have a question here. I saw that the goedendag (I think I'm spelling it right) was listed as a weapon in this book. Without going into anything copyright-violating, just what sort of a weapon is it?
I'm mostly wondering just how closely it relates to the very bizarre spike-topped greatclub I saw once described by that name.
The goedendag is indeed a particular kind of spiked great club or spiked staff that can meet a charge and can smash heads in. Popular in the 14th century.
Well, I disagree of course. This is a Midgard setting book, and just like Golarion setting books, the campaign material is all product identity.
The place where OGL material comes from Kobold Press is in rules supplements, like Divine Favor series (largely Open), the Advanced Feats(all Open), and the New Paths series (all Open).
I wouldn't look to see Midgard campaign material made open any more than I would expect to see the Golarion campaign made open.
The setting fluff is of course product identity. But the rules crunch presented as support for that setting not being Open Content, though, that's my big issue with Open Design/Kobold Press products. Paizo's own Inner Sea World Guide, for example, is a massive setting book with massive amounts of fluff, all of it rightfully Product Identity. But it's also got quite a good bit of rules crunch to it as well, and that rules content is Open. Looking over the various Open Design books I've bought either in print or PDF, such as this product or Sunken Empires, very little of the rules crunch is open, and the counter-intuitive or even hypocritical nature of that is what really irritates me here.
You release some of the absolute best 3rd party crunch content out there, including the content in setting books for Midgard, and yet no other publisher can ever use it or support it? That's what a lot of people kind of griped at WotC for during the days of 3e D&D. "Here's hundreds of pages of great new rules content to use, but we'll never really support it again or allow anyone else to by making it Open Content, either."
Thanks for answering Wolfgang! So you said earlier in the thread that the feats, spells, and monsters are open, but not necessarily the names? For instance, the name Kazzakh Leap is Product Identity but the crunch of the feat is Open? Is that right, or is none of it Open? What about the class variants like the Skald or the new cleric domains?
But to my original question, I didn't see any reference to Product Identity or Open Content in the book. Isn't it required to be there by the OGL?
Thanks for answering Wolfgang! So you said earlier in the thread that the feats, spells, and monsters are open, but not necessarily the names? For instance, the name Kazzakh Leap is Product Identity but the crunch of the feat is Open? Is that right, or is none of it Open? What about the class variants like the Skald or the new cleric domains?
But to my original question, I didn't see any reference to Product Identity or Open Content in the book. Isn't it required to be there by the OGL?
Product Identity is defined in the OGL that's in the back of the book, and doesn't need to be called out.
The unfortunate thing is part 8 of the OGL:
OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a wrote:
8. Identification: If you distribute Open Game Content You must clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are Open Game Content.
Nothing says anyone has to distribute Open Game Content, and Open Design has chosen not to distribute any Open Game Content with Northlands. Thus, there's no need for any indication of what's Open Game Content, since none of it is.
This is indeed different than Paizo's books, which make game mechanics open but keep product identity closed. (Looks at something else.) Well, hey, at least Dark Roads and Golden Hells made the monsters open :)
Sigh, sometimes people are so quick to jump to conclusions when simple human error is to blame.
This seems to have been an unfortunate error in the first printing. I'll be sure we make the fix in the next version, but that likely will not be until after the Midgard core book ships.
And yes, like Wizards of the Coast, the company that invented the OGL, it is entirely possible to declare nothing open. However, that was not the intention here. As with all other Kobold Press titles, the setting material is protected, and the mechanics are meant to be largely open.
Wolfgang, when you have a corrected copy of the PDF (or if you currently have one), can you find a way to get it to patrons?
Yep, it will be updated here at the Paizo site, in the Kobold Press store, on DriveThru, and directly to patrons. Might take a little while, people are still recovering from PAX.
Kobold Press
