Mythic Iceland

[Aycorn]

Originally Posted by Enpeze

I too. (only the hobbit kitsch at the end of the 3rd part was really bad)

That was a little weak. I liked the scene of them sitting alone at the pub, though. It said everything about how they'd changed.

I was already a big fan of Peter Jackson long before these ("Heavenly Creatures" baby!!)

[Rurik]

Logolas 'shieldboarding' down stairs while firing off two arrows at a time was a low point for me.

[Sorloc]

How pathetic is Gimli?
I actually started to feel sorry for him.
He got upstaged by Legolas at every turn...

[Triff]

To revert the thread back to its original topic again, Gimli, Gandalf and lots of the LOTR names are taken directly from the old viking sagas. Gandalf was a dwarf actually.

Sverre.

[WayneLigon]

Really looking forward to this; I've just about worn out the Ivinia and RQ Vikings books

[tzunder]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Logolas 'shieldboarding' down stairs while firing off two arrows at a time was a low point for me.

I quite enjoyed it. Every gamers wet dream (and I include *all* gamers).. IMHO

I am not a big Tolkien fan but I respect his work and the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin are full of Germanic (Anglo-saxon and Norse and German) and Finnish inspired tales and names. His world outlook is also quite doomed and fated, also very Germanic. I have run many short Middle Earth BRP games, slotted around the main LOTR stories, using the Pinnacles source books, I wish they had published the final one.

Now, there is a standing joke between me and my mate that NEXT year I will run a BRP Vikings game, but I never have, despite having all the sagas, and history books, and novels and most rpg books.

I welcome a tight very NORSE setting book with a series of adventures. I also think the generational approach works, so that you play the summer Viking season and then summarise harvest and winter in a few rolls (but not always of course, the draugr and wyrms come out in winter some years) and then off again next year.

If this was supported by fan or web based supplements for Britain and Russia and Byzantium it would be fun. the danger is that it becomes the RQ Alternate Earth which was quite dry. So some depth and/or optional twists need to be in there.


Maybe NEXT year, after all, Ragnarok is always an option.

[Agentorange]

I think the RQ alternative earth was always destined to be a bit dry, in the sense that as a back drop for the rules books you really couldn't squeeze that much local detail and colour into it. I've said several times on the forum here that Alternative earth etc has a lot of unexplored possibilities. When you consider the huge range of gods, monsters, magic and generally strange stuff that happens in earth mythology there's a gold mine of material there.

[PedroZiv]

It's great to see the interest in this forum for a Saga Age Iceland setting for BRP! For a long time I wished someone would write a fantasy setting based in Iceland of the Viking period, and I'm very excited to be now writing that setting myself. I have been working on the project for several months now, spending a lot of time in the National Library of Iceland, here in Reykjavik, researching the history and myths of the period, and the writing of the book is coming along nicely.

The main idea is to use the historical sources, such as the Icelandic Sagas and the Eddas, and to blend those with the rich tradition of fairy-tales of Iceland. The setting will be based on Iceland between the years of 930 and 1220, from the establishing of the Alþing and the Icelandic Commonwealth to the beginning of the Age of the Sturlungs which leads to the civil war. The Nordic settlements in Greenland and Vinland will also be part of the setting and will be detailed in the book.

The main aspects of the mythical side of the setting are the Elves (The Hidden Folk) and their Hidden Kingdom. In Icelandic legends the elves look very similar to humans, but are invisible to humans unless they want themselves to be seen, and they live in a kingdom somewhere in the Highlands. There are also trolls, giants, sea-monsters, magical beasts (Icelandic tales have many intelligent animals), land spirits, and more. Different mythical creatures exist in Greenland and Vinland, and those will be discussed in the book as well. And there is runic magic, which uses a new system which expands on the magic system from the BRP core rulebook.

Mythic Iceland will be primarily a fantasy setting but will also contain advice in every chapter about how to adapt the information presented in the book to use in a purely historical game.

There is no release date for Mythic Iceland yet, as it's still being written, and the name of the book may change as well.

[drohem]

Avalanche Press has created a line of historical RPGs and supplements using the OGL d20 system. A couple of interest to this thread are the Celtic Age and Viking Age RPGs and their associated supplements. This could easily be converted to the BRP system.

[Trifletraxor]

Hi Pedro!

Great to see you onboard!

Can you tell us some about what the book will contain? And even if there's no release date yet, can you give us any rough estimate?

Cheers,
Sverre.