OSR Does anybody know anything about this OSR adventure: Gods of the Forbidden North?

This does beg the question of what criteria were the Ennie judges basing their elevation of this product as a "winner" on?

Seems like or impression wise, it was the art and presentation vs content?

Do we think any of them ran it or read it?

Worth mentioning the trailer for the new book is AI. It doesn't matter as much as the other stuff, but it's more for the pile.

That's an awful lot of religious gooblygook for an RPG book that doesn't seem to have any impact on play.

Secondly it sounds fundamentally uninteresting - afraid to be interesting even. Sure there's Crystal Dragon Jesus and HIS followers fight with demon god of the abortion ladies ... but do we have to make it so boring? Super Good v. Pervert Evil. Yawn. I'd say it's morality for slow 8-year olds, but then the text gets too pervy for 8-year olds. Why do people with the political stance of this author always jump to pervy stuff in their RPG books? I don't want to sit around the table and talk about that kinda thing with my players - who does?

I'm all for sacking temples in my RPGs but giving moral certainty to players hacking up priests on the altar and stealing the candlesticks for XP is some 1920's blather. Plus it's poor game design for an RPG. Heck it's not even very medieval - there's so many interesting, gameable things about medieval Christianity ... this ain't it.

Leave these things open, let in ambiguity because, all politics aside (and there's absolutely a ton of politics in this argel-bargel, which is unavoidable) ambiguity provides options and player choice. Don't tell me about the spiritual meaning of every Crystal Dragon Jesus hat, give me new spells, or stat up those hats for when my PCs steal them. Don't just say "evil abortion witches are bad." I want a demon witch baby class and spell lists because as bad as they might or might not be the option should be there.

Having evil is fine, but make it seductive evil. This is especially true if one is a Christian or wants Christian themes ... The Temptation of Christ is pretty much core Christian myth. From a designer standpoint evil is seductive because what RPGs still do better then video games is respond to player choice and allow the unexpected. 9 out of 10 players might not want to sell their souls to a devil for actual in game benefit, but give them the choice and make it tempting (in my experience it's been more like 1 in 5 refuse and usually then only to try to cheat on the deal).

So while I don't like the politics here (but mostly based on this dude's social media), what I'm seeing makes me very doubtful of the design. This all sounds very 90's RPG and old VtM books are easy to find if I want to read edge-lord fluff about religion. One can be interesting with religion and Christian themes even. 1984's Dragonraid always sounded fascinating with its scriptural spell casting, and Dogs in the Vineyard actually manages supernatural good and evil battling over souls in a compelling way. Pendragon has also always handled these themes well.

agrayday said:

This does beg the question of what criteria were the Ennie judges basing their elevation of this product as a "winner" on?

Seems like or impression wise, it was the art and presentation vs content?

Do we think any of them ran it or read it?

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I seriously doubt they ran it but it's important to clarify that this is just a slice of the content and, as I've admitted before, once I finished the chapter on religion I knew this wasn't for me so I didn't read further.

Presentation is top notch and I've seen it get a lot of praise.

I'm not qualified to make a review of the overall product and maybe there's a ton of great content to grok for your own campaign.

But man, when your campaign is called "Gods of the Forbidden North", and these are your takes on your setting religion... I don't know what to tell you...

Gus L said:

Having evil is fine, but make it seductive evil. This is especially true if one is a Christian or wants Christian themes ... The Temptation of Christ is pretty much core Christian myth. From a designer standpoint evil is seductive because what RPGs still do better then video games is respond to player choice and allow the unexpected. 9 out of 10 players might not want to sell their souls to a devil for actual in game benefit, but give them the choice and make it tempting (in my experience it's been more like 1 in 5 refuse and usually then only to try to cheat on the deal).

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Afroconan said:

Oh wait! He's way ahead of you! XD

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Right. In addition to straightforward Catholic doctrine with the names changed, his guy seems to be transposing modern fantasies about satanic cults straight out of the 80s satanic panic into his game, plus a simplistic Conservative Catholic vs. Evil Abortionist Satanists conflict directly out of present day QAnon-style reactionary fantasies.

I bought all 3 volumes, and by all accounts the Kickstarter for Volume 3 is still doing gangbusters (over 200% funded). I had a good laugh at all you guys winging about the tweets and details on the setting's religion though. Thanks for that!

Libertad said:

The problem is that the author has chosen to signal-boost hateful reactionaries on social media. The portrayal of a Fantasy Counterpart Catholicism is definitely a concern. But I'm much more concerned about a guy who seems to think that Elon Musk, who spreads conspiracy theories about Jews promoting white genocide and fired the Twitter moderation staff responsible for monitoring against child abuse content on Twitter (and even reinstated one account that posted such stuff), should buy WotC.

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I think Elon Musk is a morally bankrupt little twat and the sort of guy who publicly challenges somebody to a fight and then weasels out of following through.

That said, he tweets about a lot of things, and while the majority of them are moronic, only some of them are hateful. I'm not going to cancel somebody for liking him unless they are actively promoting the hateful parts.

Superchunk77 said:

I bought all 3 volumes, and by all accounts the Kickstarter for Volume 3 is still doing gangbusters (over 200% funded). I had a good laugh at all you guys winging about the tweets and details on the setting's religion though. Thanks for that!

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Yeah, I did, too. As I said in another thread, I've been 100% supportive of most of the controversial "woke" changes in D&D and other RPGs, but complaining that an in-game religion that shares some characteristics of Catholicism without incorporating the negative parts is taking things too far, in my opinion.

Afroconan said:

People are usually nice in person regardless of politics. And specially so when they are trying to sell you a product.

And he may not have pushed "the agenda", but it's blatant on the text.

And just to clarify. I don't really mind authors having "agendas" or pushing their ideas in their art.

But I prefer when they are upfront about it rather than hiding behind a "No Politics" label.

Like, for real... This is not subtle at all...

Edit: rereading this I just notice the blatantly in the nose parallelism between "Hadea" and "Judea".

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Afroconan said:

And here's how the evil chaos cults is described... Your usual sexual deviants bringers of "degeneracy", basically.

These wouldn't bother me at all if not for the broader context of other religions and the "sanctimonious" tone of the author.

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Thanks for focusing in on the actual text.

I got volume I a while ago but have not delved into it yet. I normally enjoy a bit of decently fleshed out fun in-game religion and cosmology and was thinking the Old Gods from the title would be very Hyborian in feel and tone, which I was looking forward to.

From the excerpts here I much prefer the Eberron and Ptolus takes on fantasy medieval church style religions for my games.

Bill Zebub said:

I think Elon Musk is a morally bankrupt little twat and the sort of guy who publicly challenges somebody to a fight and then weasels out of following through.

That said, he tweets about a lot of things, and while the majority of them are moronic, only some of them are hateful. I'm not going to cancel somebody for liking him unless they are actively promoting the hateful parts.

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More like the guy who publicly does a fascist salute in front of a crowd and is actively financing bigotry around the world.

I'd personally avoid associating my brand with him and his supporters if that didn't align with my values.

But hey that's just me. What do I know about business?

In any case, I don't see anyone here or out there going out of their way to "cancel the guy". It all seems just fair criticism to me.

Bill Zebub said:

Yeah, I did, too. As I said in another thread, I've been 100% supportive of most of the controversial "woke" changes in D&D and other RPGs, but complaining that an in-game religion that shares some characteristics of Catholicism without incorporating the negative parts is taking things too far, in my opinion.

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That's a very reductionist take on what's being discussed.

Either way, hope you have fun with it.