Crothian said:
Both of those products sound very good. I'm a history nut and few attempts at real world history have been produced.
I like the idea of the Advance series. Technological advances seem to be larger ignored in many fantasy world. Have you taken into account magic and how that would effect some of the advances?
The other product, Nine Worlds, I have a similar question for. THe vikings are a great race to to set a world developed around. Have you placed in the magic of D&D and altered them abit bercasue of it? What about the use of clerics specifically with the Norse gods?
Yes, of course I will take magic into account, not to mention possible Elven, Dwarven and Gnomish influences on a fantasy renaissance. In fact, the problems with Da Vinci's machines could easily be remedied with a bit of magic. It could dramatically alter the outcome of the enlightenment and victorian products though. I'll have to think about that.
About Nine Worlds. With the magic system, I'm playing around with it a bit, but I'm not going to change the actual system.
It's a difficult call to make, as I'm not only a keen historian of the norse, not to mention having the prementioned advantage of now living in sweden, however, I'm also an occultist, so it is a touchy subject just how real to make the magic system.
The rough draft is already eighty pages, but it will have to be revised. Essentially, magic in the norse occult circles comes in four different forms. Runes of course are the most widely known form of magic, however, they are actually an intregal part of several other disciplines, including stav (a norse martial art, yes there is such a thing, so there will be viking monks), galdor (which means 'to crow' and is incantation of spells through the voice), and nidstang (a particularly nasty system of cursing), as well as with the enchanting of magic.
Being such an intregal subject, I could make a completely new system, but I'd be more inclined to go with integrating them into the existing system. Galdor becomes the verbal component, stav-like movements (which mimic the movements of the runes) will be somatic. Material and focus components will require stained (bloodied) runes.
Wizards will become galdor, and sorcerers stay the same (the finns were the only men the norse feared, because of their alleged sorcery, in fact, the very blonde stereotype in scandinavia is actually a finnish trait, not a norwegian or swedish one).
All the other classes are altered mildly.
The spells themselves will have to be customised, however, aside from the addition of some new material derived from stanzas in the eddas, spells will remain essentially the same. The roots of modern fantasy actually have a surprising amount in common.
As for nordic priests. They are called Godi or Gydia. They are actually more like nobles that oversee sacrifices and the sort on behalf of the gods. Clerics and divine magic are a grey area for now. Traditionally, godi did not actually use magic, as I mentioned, they oversaw sacrifices, called blots. However, the importance of magical healing in a combat-oriented campaign setting is important, and there are some incidences of healing in the sagas. They need to fit in there somewhere. That remains to be seen though.
There will also be a new kind of magic. Seidr. It will be controlled through a prestige class, the Seidr Witch, of which Freja is the greatest. It's a partly mature theme, since traditionally, seidr requires sexual intercourse. How to handle that remains to be seen also.
