Deep in an ancient forest, a trembling young woman enters the clearing where a ramshackle hut crouches on birds’ legs.
Far below the earth, a caravan of kobold merchants passes through a stone archway carved with the faces of leering ghouls.
High atop a northern mountain, a dwarf grips his battle-axe and gazes over the rim of the world toward whatever fate the gods have in store for him.
This is Midgard, and its gates are now open.
The Midgard Campaign Setting brings to life a dark world of deep magic, with seven regions flavored by the folklore of Central and Eastern Europe plus a heady dose of weird fantasy. Lead designers Wolfgang Baur, Jeff Grubb, and Brandon Hodge led the Open Design community in a two-year project to build a sprawling setting supported by adventures and sourcebooks compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Dungeons & Dragons, AGE System, and more.
Midgard is ley line magic and warped alchemical experiments; the Western Waste’s giant, shambling horrors and magic-blasted landscapes; diabolical gnomes and the schemes of immortal Baba Yaga; wild, wind-riding elves and swashbuckling minotaur corsairs; the Mharoti Empire’s lethal assassins and exotic splendors; and the dragon-haunted crags of the icy Northlands.
The Midgard Campaign Setting 296-page book includes:
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and AGE System rules for gearforged, kobold, and minotaur PCs
26 new backgrounds, 3 new schools of magic, and new specialties for AGE System
New clerical domains including clockwork, moon, hunger, and beer
More than 50 kingdom write-ups, with new feats and traits for each region of Midgard
New spells, magical items, and incantations
New gear and weapons unique to the setting
Ley line magic and the secrets of the shadow roads!
From the Northern fjords to the hidden tombs of the gnolls, from the raven-headed reavers to the ruins of the great mage-kingdoms: all of Midgard is yours!
"A wonderfully rich and beautiful sourcebook chronicling the world of Midgard. Think of how many game masters have fancied their campaign worlds awesome enough to publish in the book. So few actually have the writing and publishing chops to accomplish this, and to do so with such style is pretty much unheard of." —WIRED GeekDad Holiday Gift Guide 2012
"What I look for in a setting book, particularly a fantasy setting book, is something that inspires me to run a game there—a book that draws me into the world, presents setting material in a way that’s both useful and entertaining, and looks like it will shows its best qualities at the table. The Midgard Campaign Setting is all of those things, in spades, with extra magic gravy on top. This is a superb book that I can recommend without qualification to any GM who likes well-realized, gazetteer-style fantasy settings." —Martin Ralya, Gnome Stew
"If you’re looking for a campaign setting that is familiar with a twist, and a book that is the spiritual successor to the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book, the Midgard Campaign Setting is for you. ...There is stuff here you can steal for your own setting, and it’s 'generic' but different. This goes double if you loved the 3e Forgotten Realms campaign or Mystara." —Critical Hits
Lead Designers: Wolfgang Baur, Jeff Grubb, and Brandon Hodge
Cartographers: Jonathan Roberts, official cartographer of George R.R. Martin's Westeros, with Lucas Haley and Sean Macdonald
Artists: Aaron Miller, Blanca Martinez de Rituerto, Christophe Swal, Hugo Solis, Jason Rainville, Rick Hershey, Marc Radle, Malcolm McClinton, Pat Loboyko, Steve Wood, and Darren Calvert
Editor: Michele Carter
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Full disclosure: I proofread a large portion of this book. That being said, I found it difficult and time-consuming to proof because I kept getting distracted by how much fun it was to read!
The second best thing about this book is that the material almost never goes where I think it's going to go. Taking the road less traveled in world settings can go either way, but that's the other best part: the kobolds consistently demonstrate that there is plenty of Grade A folklore and fantasy to be mined and inspired by. It's just a little further to the east.
I currently play Pathfinder Society, and then I'm also a player in a Golarion-based game once a week as well, and love both. Soon I'm starting up my own campaign, though, and it will be Midgard to the hilt!
The first thing to notice about this book is its beautiful cover art. The next thing to notice is it size - it is just shy of three hundred pages. Even though I received a reviewer’s copy a few days ago, it is so massive that I’m still just scratching the surface. It is also staggeringly imaginative - not surprising, as there were a hundred or more people contributing ideas for Midgard’s editors to pick through and use.
This book has all the things you expect and need from a campaign setting: Regions, races, geography, culture, gods and pantheons, customs, trade, technology, maps, new feats and regional traits, new magic items, new spells, political intrigue, wars… The list of things that need to be discussed to do justice to Midgard seems endless. However, the time and space to discuss them aren’t. So, to keep this review manageable, here are my three favorite discoveries so far:
Ley Lines: Mythology and literature often describe certain “places of power”, where magic is stronger or stranger then elsewhere. While there has never been anything stopping DM’s from creating such locations, early FRPG’s offered little to no support for this idea. Current editions do noticeably better, but still leave most of the details up to individual GM’s, offering encouragement but scant guidance. The Midgard Campaign Setting has richly developed the idea of ley lines. Descriptions, tables, and imagination positively drip from the pages. Want to surprise your players with some locations where magic takes on a life of its own? Here it is, all laid out and ready for you to use.
Divine Masks: Sometimes, the gods are not who they seem to be. I’m particularly happy with this idea for three reasons: First, it’s historically accurate. The Romans used a concept very similar to this when they wanted to reconcile their ideas of how the gods worked with their neighbors’ ideas of how the gods worked. (“Minerva? Sure the Egyptians worship her just like we do, but they call her Isis.”) Second, I’ve never seen it used, mentioned, or even hinted at in any FRPG until now. In other words, from a gaming perspective, this idea is 100% novel and new! Third, masks help restore a sense of mystery, power, and grandeur to the gods; something they’ve struggled to maintain ever since the first printing of “Deities Demigods and Heroes” rolled off the presses almost forty years ago. I think this idea is going to help GM’s make the religions of their world more vibrant, interesting, and meaningful.
Portability: Since Midgard is an integrated, self-contained campaign setting, I wasn’t really sure at first how much of it could be harvested for use in my own world. To my great delight I have found that most, maybe all, of the basic ideas in this book are portable. As I already mentioned, Ley Lines and Divine Masks can easily be used in anyone’s current game world. Even entire regions can be transplanted if you so desire. Portability is important to me because that’s how I use almost all gaming supplements: I extract the ideas and fit them into my already-existing campaign. Portability means the Midgard Campaign Setting is valuable to me even though I’m not planning to give up my own homebrew world. I can use the vast amount of information and ideas in this book to make my own world better.
I leave you with three conclusions I’ve come to regarding Midgard.
Conclusion #1: Everything I’ve read adheres to the exceptional quality I’ve come to expect from Kobold Quarterly’s Open Design process.
Conclusion #2: This book will provide many weeks of enjoyment simply from reading it to discover all its secrets.
Conclusion #3: Once you begin actually using its secrets in your game, it will provide many years of additional enjoyment.
Well, in times when there were elves, they worshipped the Green Gods, of course. And likely the Black Goat of the Woods, occasionally, when the urge struck them. And offerings to the Fey Lords and Ladies, akin to the Roman Emperor cults.
Probably also Khors and Hecate, on a more everyday level. That's a pretty good pantheon for elves.
One of my players is playing a CG Drow Paladin. The player is unfamiliar with the setting (although he's having a blast) and the PC is unfamiliar with surface world and its gods. So, someone is giving him his powers, but he doesn't know who. What would be appropriate deity for him?
I have a question concerning Status in Midgard. Are there any rules or guidelines regulating how the Status interacts with Prestige from PF rules? Any suggestions about that?
I have a question concerning Status in Midgard. Are there any rules or guidelines regulating how the Status interacts with Prestige from PF rules? Any suggestions about that?
No rules on that exist. IIRC, Status predates the Prestige rules.
Where can I find the stats for Guildmaster Orlando? One adventure states that he has pretty high Sense Motive, but other than that I can't find him anywhere.
Kobold Press
