I trust you have all recovered from your Black Friday / Cyber Monday purchases? There did seem to be some real bargains for RPG PDFs and books, and I picked up a few. Although I have plans for both Symbaroum’s ‘Throne of Thorns’ and Warhammer Fantasy 4th Ed’s ‘Enemy Within’ campaign, I failed to resist picking up volumes 1 & 2 of Gods of the Forbidden North at a knock down price. This is a sprawling campaign, designed with Old School Essentials in mind, but easily playable with your fantasy game of choice.
On the arctic frontier, at the border between the mountains and the wastes beyond, looms Castle Thar-Gannon. For centuries, the Skull God ruled his domain from his blackened throne. But twenty years have passed since the routing of his armies, and the castle lies abandoned with riches unclaimed. Yet, death still lurks in the shadows of the ruins. An ancient doom arises from the depths of this place…
A frigid sandbox, with broad enough shoulders to also provide an adventure path journey through its 480 pages (Book1). Book 2 heads into subteranean realms, with a final book 3 due to arrive in 2025. It’s a vast yet accessible campaign landscape, full of bite sized adventures. The player characters have travelled to the Forbidden North, and not without purpose. They have seized a valuable Inilgaan artifact, the Eye of J’karaa, from distant ruins. Pursued by their rival, Zarcand the Black Magician, the heroes race to elude their enemy and profit from the heirloom’s secret.
It’s really tempting to get this to the virtual table straight away. Although Dragonbane is an obvious system choice, I thought I’d branch out and use something else.
Recent play of both Warhammer Fantasy and the slightly more accessible Zweihander, based on an earlier edition of Warhammer with some design changes, have got me tingling. A grim and perilous set of rules cast out into the Forbidden North seems like an excellent ice frozen combination. I’d be playing it on Foundry VTT, my online gaming home. Zweihander is due a new ‘Reforged’ edition in about a month’s time, with some Kickstarter promises for a Foundry module in 2025.
This will either prompt me to be patient and wait for the Foundry module to arrive, or forge on with another game engine. My thoughts turned to my own Heroic Fantasy, a simple Black Hack based game that could quickly be brought into this campaign. An advantage to this game system is its light and flexible approach to describing things, which would make any conversion work a chilly breeze.
Heroic Fantasy emulates early D&D, very much the base for Old School Essentials. Although the two differ mechanically, they occupy similar traditional game space. This prompted me to pick up the Heroic Fantasy book and remind myself of it! I still like its unpretentious and simple mechanics, shallow power curve, and largely player facing rules. It feels a bit ridiculous to waver on offering Heroic Fantasy to possible players due to it being my own game (albeit based on David Black’s solid framework). I think it is a confidence thing.
As I looked through the game I had an idea for a rules variant on difficulty modifiers, so have written it down here to remind me!
Using the Dice Ladder For Level Difference Modifiers
If you wish to make facing higher level difficulties slightly more challenging and random, then use the dice ladder.
In Heroic Fantasy if the Difficulty Level is higher than the character’s level then the player must add a number to the d20 result equal to the difference. Instead, every level of difference is plus one step on the dice ladder. Roll the modifier die and add to the d20 roll.
For example
Osgar is a 1st level warrior and is facing an Orc Champion with a threat level of 3. The level difference is 2. Looking at the dice ladder, two steps is 1d6. Osgar must now roll 1d20+1d6 when attacking or defending against the Orc Champion.