I know you run campaigns like "Not Egypt", and you mean "Not Norse".
Heh, not that you are planning to do so. Still, please dont make all "Norse" people stupid, dirty, winter-tough, "berserkers". It isnt what Norse cultures are like, and the misrepresentation can drift into offensive.
Anyway.
Players picked a Norse theme and I've picked Forge of Fury as the starting adventure. I want to add a starting location to the game basically a town. The adventure does suggest one and I can rename it.
I havent played Forge of Fury, but I have the book open in front of me. For the Forgotten Realms setting, it recommends placing the Dwarf stronghold in the Spine mountain range, northwest of Mirabar, in the vicinity of the Orc Kingdom of Many Arrows.
If going for a Norsesque flavor, Orcs are Non-Norse.
Keep in mind, it is impossible to have a Norway without coastal mountains and hills, and impossible to have a Sweden without vast forests.
The Dwarves (during the Viking Period) are typical human heights, and are extremely powerful mages. Bard (everything but without any musical instruments), Druid (with Wildshape and elementalism), Artificer, maybe Sorcerer seem ok.
The giants divide into extremely beautiful cliff giants (risar) and grotesque ogres (thursar) and mixes between them. All of them are extremely powerful mages. Indeed, the word "troll" means "magic" and "mage".
Actually, most "giants" are humansize. A family of giants might have one sibling who is 6 feet tall and an other sibling who is 30 feet tall. The giants are the mountains themselves. A specific mountain and the features of the mountain and nearby it are conscious and alive. Namely, animism. Each member of the giant family is a nature feature on the mountain or somewhere nearby relating to it. A mountain that is magically powerful can project outward, ghostlike, and materialize into a human form or sometimes an animal form. Hence, a "giant". The shamanic humans do this kind of thing as well. Translating into D&D, I have the "soul" of the mountain normally at the mountain itself, but the mountain can go into a trance to project its mindforce outward to roam the "Border Ethereal" in a giant form, where it can observe the Material Plane, and sometimes manifest into the Material Plane as if a "giant" of flesh and blood. After the trance the mind returns back to the mountain that it came from. All nature beings operate this way and can visit each other ethereally. Shamanic humans can see these ethereal giants and interact with them, for various relationships, including friendships. Likewise these shamanic humans can also enter trances to project their mindforces ethereally.
I am saying the "Border Ethereal", but my campaign emphasizes a Border Feywild that likewise overlaps the Material world. In this way, the nature beings are "Border Fey" who can roam the Material world ethereally, and coexist alongside the humans of the Material world. The nature beings are neighbors, everywhere.
Because the nature beings are actual nature, all of the elemental magic is appropriate to them. The Elves are the sunlight of the sky, whence Fire (Radiant) and Air elemental magic. Dwarves are rocks and mud, whence Earth and Water elemental. The frost ogres (hrím-thursar) are powerful glacial elementalists. All forms of nature are their appropriate elemental influences, like dangerous mountain waterfalls, and so on. The D&D Druid class with its elemental magic helps here, and an elemental focused Sorcerer can work here too. Indeed, the nature beings can and do manifest into animal forms as well as human forms, so Druid Wildshape is reminiscent. Bards too can use spells for animal forms. Because the giants are known for their giant rage (jǫtun-móðr), the D&D Barbarian can be fine for some of them, and the shamanic humans who are Barbarians learn it from the giants. The Norse cultures view these berserkar as mentally-unstable and dangerous, yet extraordinary warriors, and strong mages. A group of berserkar are kinda sorta like a witch coven, who use magic for melee combat.
Nature beings can and do use any form of magic.
Warrior magic involves honorable Paladin-like stuff, healing, abjuration, and so on, that is effective in combat but without attacking magically from a distance. Being upclose and personal is fine, and honorable enough. Resurrection is rare but can happen. Shamanic magic involves engaging the nature beings, shapeshifting, being psychic, doing mind magic of every form including phantasms and sensory manipulative illusions. Actually, the 5e Bard is pretty good at all of these magical themes. Just lose the lute! Let the Norse Bards cast spells innately, psionically. If helpful, it is ok to do all magic by means of a Verbal component in order to help focus the mind on the magical intention.
All Norse magic is improvisational. No two spells are ever cast the same way. In runic magic, there is no such thing as a "magical rune". These arent sigils. When a mage does do runic magic, they are verbally chanting for meditational purposes and sometimes a specific sentence that describes their magical mental intention might happen during the mental focus. Carving the intention into runes imbues this intention into the object itself. For example, while singing (warrior) or commanding (shamanic) a verbal intention, they might carve the rune of the first letter of each word in the sentence, into the object. The object is then a magic item. The object then carries the mindforce of the mage and its magical influence. Again, each person has their own way of doing things, and magical traditions tend to run in families.
In Norse cultures, nature is utterly holy and sacred. The ethical goal is to coexist. Being "good neighbors" is sometimes a helpful way to look at it. Some neighbors are helpful, some are dangerous, and communities try figure out how to best get along.
Basic idea so far.
Start at level 3
Norse themed Midgard setting. Adds Rune magic and leylines.
Any "leylines" are Non-Norse. However, places in nature that are prominent and impressive, will be mindfully aware, and be powerful mages.
"Runes" are a normal alphabet. Think of it as if using a normal English alphabet for a meditation to focus on a specific magical intention. The intention can be anything. One needs to be in the state of mind to exert the influence of the intention.
The "map" of Midgard changes with a better understanding of the known world. Scandinavians explored toward half of the planet, with traderoutes via rivers and across ocean. In this context, "Midgard" is Continental Europe, while the Nordic Countries are Jotunheim itself. The Nordic peoples live side by side with the giants as their fellow neighbors. Hot sunny Muspelheim is the Sahara Desert of Africa.
Major themes. Giants, Ragnarok, divine strife, winter.
There are no "divine". Think of Thor, Odin, Freyja, and so on as Archfey who are animistic beings of the sky. Thor is fertile summer thunderstorms and most important in Norway. Odin is the astronomical calendar and the cycle of the seasons and patterns of the sky, and is most important in Denmark. Odin is more like a Greek muse. Frey is warm breezes, good for "fertility", including sexuality, farming, and peaceful wellbeing and prosperity, and most important in Sweden. Freyja is likewise fertility, and leans into fate and magic. But they are all powerful mages. These Archfey are looking down from the sky at the humans below them.
Spotlighted (major races)Races Dwarves, Humans, Trollkin, bearfolk, Shadow Elves, Winterfolk Halflings, Goliaths, Firbolgs, Ravenfolk.
The "families" of the Norse nature beings are:
• humans (humans too are one of the beings of nature)
• elves (are sunlight, "home" is the sky above the clouds, with dome of sun and stars as the roof)
• dwarves (are patterns of rock and mud, and their manifestations petrify in place in sunlight)
• giants (are complex and subdivide, are usually humansize, and each is a specific natural feature)
• aesir (sky nature beings, among clouds)
• vanir (seem to be giants, relating to wind, who became aesir and associate with elves)
• corpses (are aspects of nature: a dead human shapeshifts into breath in sky and dust in earth)
It helps to understand all of these nature beings as being features of the natural world that a human can see. These normal natural features are conscious, and their minds can project into the Feywild. However, this is strictly a "Border Feywild", where the minds can move ethereally thru the natural world. Humans too can project their minds in this way.
Elves and Dwarves determine the "fates" of individual humans. The elves have a "cupid"-like aspect, causing persons to fall in love, have children, and die heroically in battle, other important life-cycle events. Typically, "nornir" and a "valkyrjar" are one of these fate-altering female elves.
Elves tend to be good luck, success, and blessings, and Dwarves bad luck, failure, and curses. But when a Dwarf helps a human by cursing an enemy of the human, that can be an ironic form of good luck. This is why Dwarves can make the best weapons. But again, any nature being might do any kind of magic.
In Sámi culture, the corpses and other nature beings inhabit the same space. In D&D terms, it is something like a "Border Fey" area, that is underground, where corpses and land beings − and others − can interact with each other ethereally. There are sacred wellsprings understood to connect the locations. For example, one goes into a lake, finds an underwater cave, enters it an emerges from it on the other side, in a similar upsidedown lake within the Feywild. There, ancestors and nature beings are neighbors. A sign of these portals is the Fey fish that are unusually healthy and abundant, and sometimes magically marvelous.
Again. These are Archfey, inhabiting the clouds and sky that humans can see, and able to be active in the Fey aspect of the Border Ethereal. When a nature being manifests in a human form, they are pretty much normal humans, albeit a magically powerful human.
These are features of nature. The Ragnarǫk is something like cataclysmic disasters from climate change.
The Norse term "god" literally means "evoker" or "evokee". These are the Archfey who are helpful to humans by making nature hospitable to human communities. Humans call on them to thank them for their nature. But they are still dangerous to humans. For a human to meet a "god" in person often goes wrong for the human somehow. Still, nature appreciates being appreciated.
The ideal relationship between a human and a nature being is a "friend" (vinr).
