Thoughts on Starting a Nordlond Campaign

[DAT]

I have been collecting the Nordlond Saga materials (Hall of Judgement (HoJ), Citadel at Nordvorn (CaN), Crypt of Krysuvik (CoK), Forest Ends (FE), Dragons of Rosgarth (DoR), Hand of Asgard (HoA), Nordlondr Folk (NF), and most recently the Bestiary (NB)) for a while, in anticipation of starting a Nordlond Saga campaign, and now I am finally starting to prepare the campaign. I’ve been reading over the materials and taking notes. But I wanted to reach out and ask about a few items and options I’m considering, and get any insights from folks who have had more experience/play time with the Nordlond setting.

The first items I want to get other's insights into is a combination of:
1. What point total to start with (250, 187, 125, or 62)?
2. Where to start (Konunasborg, Akkerisborg, Nordvorn, other)?
3. What backgrounds to allow encourage (Northern Nordlond, Southern Nordlond, Far Traveller, Combinations)?
4. What races to allow (human; human plus NF; human, NF, and standard)?
5. What languages and cultural familiarizes (CFs) to add (everyone has Nordlond language, only natives have the CF; add additional languages and CFs based on backgrounds and races)?

If I start with 62 point DtG characters, then a more local start (Nordvorn or maybe Akkerisborg), Northern Nordlond background, mostly human (but some NF races), and Nordlond language and CF makes sense. I see this as a zero-to-hero journey.

As point totals grow, I see opening up other backgrounds, races, etc.

At 250 points I’d start the party meeting in a tavern in Konunasborg (or sailing into Konunasborg if all are Far Travelers), open up all backgrounds and races, and expand the language and CF list.

If I open up Far Traveler backgrounds (because of course as soon as I give players a rich extensive setting, they immediately ask about playing analogs to Ninja, Samurai, Arabians, Roman Legionaries, escaped slaves from Roman, etc. who aren’t from the setting) I sort of want the Nordlond setting name and general direction (East across the Reidur Sea, South, Southeast, Southwest, West). Are there any canon simple descriptions floating around of what other lands and peoples are in the wider Nordlond world? Yes I can always make them up, but I dislike having to retro fit something if I don’t have to.

Also on the topic of Backgrounds, is there any generally recognized landmark distinguishing the divide between Northern and Southern Nordlond? The Freysain or the Sispnisain and Wodenain?

Is there also a Central and or Western Nordlond? If so, what landmark distinguish their divides?

-Dan

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by DAT

The first items I want to get other's insights into is a combination of:
1. What point total to start with (250, 187, 125, or 62)?

Personally, I'd lean hard towards 125 points, so that you can be capable (and the various Meatgrinder tests showed these characters to be remarkably robust) and grow into higher point, higher reputation characters over time. The campaign supports all play levels, though.

2. Where to start (Konunasborg, Akkerisborg, Nordvorn, other)?

If you start anywhere but Nordvorn you'll need to do some worldbuilding. Akkerisborg is probably the next region that needs/wants a large worldbook in my mind, since that will take the various large settlements on the Jotunnain and complete the set, so to speak, of borderland towns.

3. What backgrounds to allow encourage (Northern Nordlond, Southern Nordlond, Far Traveller, Combinations)?

Southern Nordlond is imperiled by the long war with the Neveri nomads (totally not Mongol hordes/Dothraki who read ACOUP) so there's lots of experience to be had there. It's got some ugly terrain, and it's mildly warmer than the north...but not a ton. The "breadbasket" in the middle is pretty civilized, so to speak. I won't say that the folks there don't believe the stories of wild faerie and trolls, but they're a more-distant threat. Characters from this region are likely to want to head north or south to find adventure, because that's what the town criers say is to be found, but are likely to be a wee bit surprised when they find it. How far you push the "genteel city folks vs barbarian country dwellers" is a bit up to you.

4. What races to allow (human; human plus NF; human, NF, and standard)?

Choices here will impact the rest of your world. If you allow some of the more unusual races as "normal," then that informs pretty much everywhere. "I've never seen a dragonborn before" is unlikely, etc. Nordlondr Folk does give a proper nod to the races in Adventurers, so there's that.

5. What languages and cultural familiarizes (CFs) to add (everyone has Nordlond language, only natives have the CF; add additional languages and CFs based on backgrounds and races)?

This seems good; the DFRPG assumptions are a bit like Star Wars: everyone speaks English unless the plot calls for them to not.

Even if the CHARACTERS have Cultural Familiarity, the players probably don't, and this can lead to expectations mismatch or a requirement for the GM to be constantly doing exposition on the culture.

If I start with 62 point DtG characters, then a more local start (Nordvorn or maybe Akkerisborg), Northern Nordlond background, mostly human (but some NF races), and Nordlond language and CF makes sense. I see this as a zero-to-hero journey.

Then 62 or even 75-point characters will serve you well. Doing something unusual and allowing 87-point characters (start with an extra upgrade module) would give that "better than most" feel without negating nigh-on 200 points of awesome coming in the future if you're planning a long campaign. Starting with two upgrades rather than one also allows more variability in starting character capabilities.

At 250 points I’d start the party meeting in a tavern in Konunasborg (or sailing into Konunasborg if all are Far Travelers), open up all backgrounds and races, and expand the language and CF list.

Konungsborg (King's Fort) will require some real worldbuilding on your part...that's not a BAD thing, but it's work. It will need a massive, impressive dwarf-built fortress, and population is going to be in the 20,000 to 25,000 range at least in my mind. It's the most populous city in Nordlond, and the seat of the royal house of the king - House Torengar. The queen is of house Iyiling.

If I open up Far Traveler backgrounds (because of course as soon as I give players a rich extensive setting, they immediately ask about playing analogs to Ninja, Samurai, Arabians, Roman Legionaries, escaped slaves from Roman, etc. who aren’t from the setting) I sort of want the Nordlond setting name and general direction (East across the Reidur Sea, South, Southeast, Southwest, West). Are there any canon simple descriptions floating around of what other lands and peoples are in the wider Nordlond world? Yes I can always make them up, but I dislike having to retro fit something if I don’t have to.

There are some. You might want to pop into my Discord and I can share maps and stuff there. There's also a lot of related material in my Dragon Heresy RPG (derived from D&D 5e), including full color maps and some culture stuff.

Arnulf - totally not Carolingian France. Frankish influence on Viking culture is reversed here a bit, since Nordlond is the large, dominant culture. But these independent counties are "ruled" by an itinerant royal court that moves from place to place as a sort of ruling council. there is a king, but that's something that lasts only as long as the ruling coalition can be held together. Again, this nation mostly exists because my original designs didn't have anywhere for the Vikings to go viking.

Brionnu - totally not Celtic England, south of Arnulf. Government is mostly local, led by "Shepherds" who are basically high-ranking clerics. But it's not a theocracy per se...more like "each parish/region looks to the elder religious figure." Norlondrs like to raid here in the summer. In fact, from a worldbuilding standpoint, Brionnu and Arnulf and, to some extent, Brousha, exist as raiding targets. Names will be Irish, English, Scottish, etc...basically Anglo.

Barakthel - Island kingdom due east of sourthern Nordlond or northern Brousha. 250 miles over the ocean. Strangers not really welcome other than the capital city. Culturally the most similar to Nordlond. Dwarf homeland. I have some cosmology stuff about dwarves in my head (their task is keeping things calm below the earth's surface; humanity is charged with above, though there is cross-over). Names are as in Nordlond: Norse.

Storean - kingdom of the Elfard, a nomistic demarchy (government by random selection to posts). Common saying "only an elf could think of that, and only a kingdom of elves could make it work." It's just enough organization to deal with threats to borders, incursions, and to have vaguely organized relations with other nations as needed. Mostly the elfard don't care much, and the half-elfard run th eplace. Their capital city Svetiliste probably has a name like "the humans kept wanting to go to our capital city, and they kept coming here, so we declared it the capital and well, that's that." Names are Gaelic and Welsh and other elfy-sounding things.

Morevel - totally not Macedonian Greece, really. Due West from Brionnu, Arnulf, and Brousha, and south of western Storean, across the Neveri Steppes. It's not shown on my map, but since you can't really do Greece without boats and Odysseys and the like, the southern border of Morevel is the ocean. Names here should probably be Greco-Roman.

Inthriki - Totally not the history of Kamakura-era Japan, with a bit of Korea blended in. I have notes on this culture, but I don't care for them in retrospect. But there's samurai/hwarang analogs as nobility, rice farms, and current rule is, I believe, a military shogunate analog. The druidic-style Imperial Family is kept at a distance, etc. The history of the Kamakura era in the real world is nuts and cool, in a way that "reality doesn't have to be believable." Famines, storms, political fortunes changing because volcanoes blew up...at least that's what I remember from my notes. Names are China, Japan, Korean in flavor.

Neveri - totally not stereotypical horse nomads...but I've started reading A Collection of Unmitigated Pretentiousness (ACOUP) about horse nomad cultures and have started tweaking it away from "Algars" and "Dothraki" and more towards something that feels as tangible as Nordlond does. The Neveri horse archer gets an entry in the Bestiary, but no character profession templates ... yet.

Brousha - "The Thief-Kingdom of Brousha" was originally the halfling kingdom, run by five oligarchs (and if you're thinking The Five Families from the Godfather...yeah, that) who are basically each in charge of a giant clan. The country has five capitals - the "seat" of each clan/family. Names were taken from Zulu language.

Also on the topic of Backgrounds, is there any generally recognized landmark distinguishing the divide between Northern and Southern Nordlond? The Freysain or the Sispnisain and Wodenain?

Is there also a Central and or Western Nordlond? If so, what landmark distinguish their divides?

-Dan

Vaguely speaking, the Wodenain is the boundary beyond which you're dealing with "the northern wild border" that extends to the Jotunnain.

Between Freyain and Wodenain are mostly great grassy plains, sparsely populated (you can see there aren't a lot of towns there.

Central, "urban" Nordlond is the "breadbasket" between the Freayain and Isa and Vidira rivers (you'll note that "wild border stuff" has -áin for river endings, while -á is used in the "civilized central regions." That was deliberate. Both endings mean river, but -áin is older, from what I could gather at the time.

Further south is a lot of timberland, which is its own source of wealth.

There's not really an east-west. There's "coastal" east, and some surprisingly wealthy settlements on the forest-hill-mountain region that ends at the Vesturham mountain range.

[Dalin]

I've run and played in a number of Nordlond games. It's a great setting. My first thought when I read your post was to suggest beginning with The Crypt of Krysuvik. That's a great "low level" scenario for 125-point characters. It provides the flavor of the setting without requiring lots of world-building decisions.

From there, I would head south to the Citadel at Nordvorn for more of a sandbox. If you want to run all of the published adventures, you can jump to any of them from there. In order of difficulty (by recommended character points), you'd probably want to do Hall of Judgment followed by Forest's End and Rosgarth. The latter two can fit together nicely with a bit of work, and they're on the same side of the map.

I usually let player choices define the scope of my setting in terms of character races and backgrounds, but a good default is to allow anything in Nordlondr Folk.

Hand of Asgard is a fabulous book. I've used it with clerics and holy warriors, of course, but I've also used it for inspiration for evil cult abilities and special powers for PCs who are especially devoted to one of the local deities.

Be sure to report back on how it goes!

[Kalzazz]

1. I'd start at 62 or 250 (or more) as I generally don't enjoy how GURPS plays around 150, unless I was going to lead with Crypt of Krysuvik in which case 125

2. Why not Istfjall?

3. Why not all?

4. I'd definitely allow core DFRPG Adventurers races, and probably races from Nordlond Folk and Companion 2, and I'd be at least flexible on others

5. I'm not sure I'd bother with C.F., but why not give everyone a bonus language or two?

[sir_pudding]

1. Ask your players. Some people really don't like zero-to-hero, and some people like only that. I'll note that while people like to draw comparisons to D&D levels, zero-to-hero is a much steeper climb in the DFRPG. If you average three points per session it will take more than a year of weekly games to raise a 62 point character to 250.

2. Nordvorn is the most detailed, obviously but really you probably should figure out what kind of adventures you are going to start with and have your starting town near the appropriate dungeon. As is traditional.

3. All the backgrounds, diversity is fun.

4. Personally I'd have the Nordlondr Folk be the well-known peoples of Nordlond, and other races be more foreign, but potentially available.

5. I don't think CF penalties add much to dungeon delving games, so I wouldn't import them. You'd also need to redo at least the Bard template and Delvers modules to include them. As for languages, you could have the Common language be a creole that defaults to some or all civilized languages at Accented, and not have to change anything else.

[jcpatten]

I've been GMing a game with a friend for a few years now, since Hall of Judgement and Citadel were the only ones out. My friend's character was the recommended 250 points, with NPCs that were over 300 points to represent a delver party that had been around a while. It actually started with the Rat-Men adventure, then segued into the Hall.

In retrospect the higher point NPCs might have made it a bit easy. The party easily freed up Logiheimli and then the Hall itself, plus cleaning out the faerie warrens (although they never encountered Elunad).

The party has moved on to investigating Elskadr and trying to figure out a way to get Orm Karrisson out from under the faerie thumb.

[binn05]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

There are some. You might want to pop into my Discord and I can share maps and stuff there. There's also a lot of related material in my Dragon Heresy RPG (derived from D&D 5e), including full-color maps and some cultural stuff.

Can anyone that has read Dragon Heresy tell me if it is a good lore source for a Nordlond setting?

[sjmdw45]

I don't have any insight into Norðlond in particular (I can't even tell what letter that theta-looking thing is supposed to represent!) but one of your questions is generic enough that I'll answer it:

Originally Posted by DAT

The first items I want to get other's insights into is a combination of:
1. What point total to start with (250, 187, 125, or 62)?

This is really a function of what style of game you're trying to run, and what you want the pacing to be.

If you want a campaign modeled after, for example, the pacing of the Dresden Files, you're going to be running adventures that showcase the worst day of any given PC's year. There may be days when Argua fights bandits, or when Francesco "Zamboni" Zombani nurses plague victims back to health, or Sister Miriam Suntemple tracks down a vampire... but you only call players to the table for the days when vampire bandits are attacking caravans and infecting those who survive with a plague that turns them into vampires too.

If you do this, the cast of characters will be large-ish and the mortality rate may well be high, and players may grow attached to PCs but not exclusively to one PC. I find that this style works quite well with the default 250-point DFRPG characters, especially since in DFRPG (unlike AD&D) there's no implication that the characters are necessarily anything except talented youngsters--a DFRPG 250 point martial artist can canonically be a well-trained but inexperienced warrior, someone who has spent "[y]ears as a monastic ascetic... Now you’ve left the monastery for the dungeon to perfect your art against even the strangest of foes." It's not like AD&D where the only way to become a mid-level warrior is to have already slain thousands of orcs and several dragons. (I exaggerate only slightly.) Instead of mid-career Conan, you're slightly-older Karate Kid, if you want to be.

If you want a campaign geared more towards the slog of daily life and playing through normal plagues that Zamboni deals with and all the normal bandits that Argua hunts down and all the vampires that Miriam slays in their crypts, then 250-point delvers might be overtuned for your purpose and you might get more enjoyment out of 62- or 125-point characters who are more equal to the individual bandits.

P.S. One thing worth bearing in mind: 250-point starting delvers are less powerful than 125 point delvers who gain 125 more points in play, because the 250-point starting delvers are required by DFRPG rules to spend their points inefficiently. This is one of the things that makes 250-point delvers work well IMO.

Originally Posted by Dalin

I've run and played in a number of Nordlond games. It's a great setting. My first thought when I read your post was to suggest beginning with The Crypt of Krysuvik. That's a great "low level" scenario for 125-point characters. It provides the flavor of the setting without requiring lots of world-building decisions.

When I ran the Crypt of Krysuvik, the adventure itself was short and fun, but I struggled initially with the hooks. Since I prefer Dresden Files-style pacing per above, I didn't want the PCs to have to spend lots of time wandering around meeting NPCs and looking for adventure before finally stumbling over the key info in the library. My eventual solution was to roll the key info into the hook for the adventure: "[bard character] has stumbled over an exciting lead to artifacts from the past, seeks companions on the hunt." Bard character is actually a PC but I used him as an NPC for this initial intro, and kept him "in town" while the two 250-point delvers did the actual adventuring. (I actually ran it as a solo adventure with just me and my best friend, and she ran both delvers, a scout and a druid.)

Anyway, I just wanted to call out that Crypt of Krysuvik may need some work to get the ball rolling initially--depending of course on your campaign style and how eager you are to "skip to the interesting decision."

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I don't have any insight into Norðlond in particular (I can't even tell what letter that theta-looking thing is supposed to represent!)

It's an "eth," which is pronounced as an aspirated th sound, so in phonetic it might be -dth-

Nordth-lond

I mean, if I'm not trying to be pedantic about it, I say NORD-land myself, so there's that.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Anyway, I just wanted to call out that Crypt of Krysuvik may need some work to get the ball rolling initially--depending of course on your campaign style and how eager you are to "skip to the interesting decision."

I have, in fact, been called out for both decisions:

1) This adventure has no context, and therefore sucks. If I wanted to make [censored] up, I would have and saved myself money. You [censored].
2) This adventure has too much context, you [censored] failed novelist, how dare you make me read anything or expect that we interact with the background, which forces me to read things. You [censored].

I have received variants of this on the same adventure (in this case, Hall of Judgment, but in general it applies on any published adventure).