Nordlond Sagas: Three new books for the DFRPG

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Personally, though, I like the generic nature of DFRPG material. It's easy enough to swap the names back. I often change many of the names in published material anyway to fit my own game worlds.

Good names are so hard to come up with, I have not found a generator I really like.

[Anders]

Have you looked at Kate Monk's Onomastikon?

https://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

[b-dog]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Good names are so hard to come up with, I have not found a generator I really like.

Why would anyone want their PC in a Viking inspired game world to be a cleric of Thor when they can be a cleric of the god of thunder? God of thunder sounds more generic which is always better. And if Thor was named out right then there is no possible way to rename him to fit into another campaign world. A god of thunder is easily able to be renamed though. If you want all the gods in your Nordland game world to be Balinese instead of Norse you can do that if the gods are generic.

[b-dog]

I have a question as to why the book is called Hand of Asgard. Wouldn’t that evoke the impression that Thor and Odin might be the gods in there? Wouldn’t it be better to have the book named Hand of a Generic Realm of the gods that may or may not loosely resemble the Norse deities?

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by Dalin

Tyr's lawyers are, indeed, hard to beat!

Personally, though, I like the generic nature of DFRPG material. It's easy enough to swap the names back. I often change many of the names in published material anyway to fit my own game worlds.

It's even possible to search-and-replace the text in a PDF so that you can have the names reflect whatever you want.

Adding to the use of generic names here: as we were in the writing process, the question came up (in a couple of places) about how the Gods of the Nine Realms are handled outside of Nordlond. As we developed things, we decided that the Aesir are the gods everywhere for this setting. In Nordlond, the Lawgiver might be known as 'Tyr' and seen as a one-handed warrior. If you go far enough south and east, that god might be called 'Maat' and seen as a winged woman who is consort to the God of Wisdom* - but it's the same deific entity, just wearing a different face.

That's not to say that it has to be that way for any given campaign; we've deliberately avoided being overly prescriptive so that the book remains useful to a broad range of campaigns both in and out of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. This is just 'how it is in our lore' for tracking internal consistency with later supplements.

*"Isn't the Allfather married to the Queen of the World? Well, yes - but none of the Aesir are particularly good at fidelity, and Tyr and Odin were vacationing somewhere sunny, and they needed an explanation to give to that priest who walked in on them, and -- look, mortal understanding of the affairs (ha) of the gods is sometimes just a little off, okay?

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Harald387

*"Isn't the Allfather married to the Queen of the World? Well, yes - but none of the Aesir are particularly good at fidelity, and Tyr and Odin were vacationing somewhere sunny, and they needed an explanation to give to that priest who walked in on them, and -- look, mortal understanding of the affairs (ha) of the gods is sometimes just a little off, okay?

The line between theology and slash fic is a narrow one indeed sometimes...

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by martinl

The line between theology and slash fic is a narrow one indeed sometimes...

Still one of my favorite "this line is for adults" moments in the Wonder Woman animated feature voiced by Keri Russel.

"“You think that’s bad ? Zeus used to seduce mom’s friends by turning into a swan. A swan. True story.”

[martinl]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Still one of my favorite "this line is for adults" moments in the Wonder Woman animated feature voiced by Keri Russel.

"“You think that’s bad ? Zeus used to seduce mom’s friends by turning into a swan. A swan. True story.”

Oh yeah, Zeus was way over on the slash fic side of the line a lot of the time.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Anders

Have you looked at Kate Monk's Onomastikon?

https://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

If I have its changed alot, so thank you. But I was thinking of random word generators for settings where I dont want real world names but do want a pattern.

[b-dog]

So all the different gods around the world just have different avatars in this world? Zeus is just another aspect of Odin? If this true do the people of the world know this and are they tolerant? Like a world of hippie dungeon delvers? If they don’t know this won’t there be sectarian warfare, ethnic cleansing and genocides by people who worship the same god through different avatars?