Some of my favorite gaming memories are of trudging to a friend’s house on school snow days and putting my group through wintery adventures. It set the tone well, having to slog through the snow to get there, listening to the wind howl outside. We’d drink hot chocolate and cider and do battle with white dragons and polar bears and wizards casting ice-based magic. After dark, we’d go outside on the porch and comment on how everything looked magical, covered in white and reflecting the moonlight, snowflakes falling steadily and removing all traces of the mundane world.
Of course, Pennsylvania winters are one of the reasons I moved to the Southwest, but the memories remain warm.
After city-based adventures, I think northern settings are my favorites. It’s not just tales of Vikings and such that intrigue me, it’s the idea of man versus environment as well. It takes guts to survive a brutal winter, and a special type of character to go adventuring in it. That’s why the first thing I turned to when I opened up Northlands: Roleplaying in Winter’s Chill (for the Pathfinder RPG) was Chapter 5: The Frozen Land. In the table of contents, that’s where the environmental rules were listed. Yeah, I expected to find Viking-like rune lore and climate-appropriate beasties, and they’re in the book. What I wanted to know was, how can I make characters freeze to death when they screw up. How can I make this really different from adventures set in any other climate. Chapter 5 is the stuff, baby. Chapter 5 delivers.
Dog sled chases. Ski chases. Snow blindness and whiteouts. Dealing with high altitudes and, yes, frostbite and hypothermia. That’s what I’m looking for. Then we get setting-specific, on top of climate specific. Seeing a coil of the World Serpent breach the surface and going mad. Using the Hero Point mechanics in the Pathfinder Advanced Players Guide to inflict the Fate of the Norns on characters. If you want your money’s worth, this chapter alone earns its keep. The whole rest of the book is almost just a bonus.
Going back, the book starts with an essay titled “Hard People, Hard Land” and covers the sort of man-versus-nature stuff I was just squealing about, and the type of culture that arises from it. It moves into the setting, and how all of the Norse stuff gets adapted into the Open Design world of Midgard. There are new races, variations on human and dwarven cultures. There are trollkin, the offspring of ogres, trolls, and fey creatures and their human spouses. There are explanations on how various classes, including the Oracle and the Witch from the Advanced Players Guide, fit into the setting. There are a ton of setting-specific feats that add a lot of flavor.
The book ends with a bestiary, which includes gods. A note explains that there aren’t currently any Pathfinder rules for creating Avatars, so the author just made them monsters. Works for me! It avoids statting out gods like Thor, Loki, Odin and such and concentrates on people and things that player characters will more realistically be likely to encounter (and fight!).
The setting and rules integrate well and compliment each other. If you’re a player and aren’t using the setting, but want to create a northern character, you can build someone who’s different from characters orginating in other places. If I wanted to create a Fafhrd-like character to roam the streets of Zobeck, I’d use the rules herein. Overall, really well done and very satisfying.
Buy Northlands: Roleplaying in Winter’s Chill at Kobold Quarterly
I really liked it too (my review is here) for fully committing to the milieu– it makes no bones about its sources, muddling them just enough to make them flexible for any setting.
Posted by mordicai | July 9, 2011, 7:02 am