Hyperborea — Thoughts?


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It’s the main OSR system I play. It stops at AC 9 which for me means not AD&D, but is pretty much captures much of the flavour of early Gygax D&D. The Clark Ashton Smith inspired world is well done and the races are all humans and the details for them are completely fluff (there are no mechanical advantages for the various cultures of humanity in the game).

I agree that the illustrations are a little uneven in places but most are good. The layout and rules are well done and it is an obvious labour of love. I certainly recommend it.

I like all the sub-classes and the main parent classes are always better at their specific specialty than the subclasses are which is really hard to do well and Hyperborea succeeds well there.
 

It takes all the best parts of AD&D 1e and marries them to a very specific setting (the titular Hyperborea, which is absolutely more Lankhmar than Tolkien, with a heavy helping of Lovecraft and Thundarr).

Absolutely more Clark Ashton Smith than Lankhmar and Tolkien. (CAS needs to receive kudos whenever possible, he is one of the "Big Three" of Weird Tales, but significantly lesser known than HPL and REH.)
 



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