Looking for inspirational material for a viking campaing

[Guilberwood]

Wow,

Thanks so much for all these great tips.

I had no idea there was a 2e sourcebook on vikings. Now I must have it!

You guys also mentioned a bunch of novels that I had never heard of. I can see a huge Amazon bill coming my way...

I read Eaters of the Dead and saw the 13th Warrior, they were the reason I got interested in the viking culture and began ploting this new camaping in the first place. Bewulf is very good too. There’s another movie called “The Legend of Grendel” or something which is also quite nice, though a bit old. The Saxon Chronicles are great: I root for the Danish, not for Alfred!

I also read “A history of the vikings”, by Gwyn Jones and “The vikings”, by Holger Arbman, both very good. For visual aid I got “The Penguim Atlas of the Vikings” and “Mongols, Huns & Vikings”, by Hugh Kennedy.

I’m going to use a house-ruled version of Pathfinder and hope to keep it a low magic/low fantasy game. I think it’s important to keep magical/divine effects and creatures something mysterius and unkown (and quite dangerous too!). I also plan on cutting back on spells and healing to make it a little more deadly than usual to get that grim and gritty feel.

My goal is to start the campaign at 1st or 2nd level and take the PCs to 6th or 7th level through a series or 4 or 5 small story arcs. The game will probably start in June or July, so I still have plenty of time to prepare.

Any other tips?

Thanks again

Guilberwood

 

[nedjer]

Guess you'll have come across the charming description of a Blood Eagle in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle then

 

[Connorsrpg]

Another for the 2E Vikings supplement and Bernard Cromwell's novels.

Most mythology books have heaps of background on the Norse.

Also, if looking for more of a fantasy/rping take, Triple Ace - Hellfrost, for Savage Worlds, I believe was inspired a lot by The Vikings. I haven't used it (yet), but it looks good. If you weren't playing on historical Earth, you could do worse than using Hellfrost as your setting.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Keith Taylor wrote five books about an Irish bard, titled Bard, Bard 2, Bard 3, etc. [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Bard-2-Keith-Taylor/dp/0441049109/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297735641&sr=1-12"]Bard 2[/ame] & 3 have the main character on board a viking ship or in their camp most of the time. I own the first 4 of the series and love them. They are long out of print, though.

Primarily, I recommend some of the original sagas. Parts of the Heimskringla are awesome. You can probably find those parts online after a bit of searching. Wikipedia is a good place to start. Full translations are there, too.

Or you can buy the sagas in print from Penguin Books.

 

[Mercurius]

For a super-atmospheric (and quite weird) movie, check out Valhalla Rising.

For something RPG-related, check out Ivinia, the Viking analog for the Harn setting. Quality stuff.

I'll second Guy Gavriel Kay's Last Light of the Sun - it isn't one of Kay's very best but is still very good.

 

[pemerton]

My goal is to start the campaign at 1st or 2nd level and take the PCs to 6th or 7th level through a series or 4 or 5 small story arcs. The game will probably start in June or July, so I still have plenty of time to prepare.

Any other tips?

You might want to check out E6 which is a low-level d20 variant.

Guess you'll have come across the charming description of a Blood Eagle in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle then

Ferguson says this about the blood eagle (The Hammer and the Cross, pp 143-44):

It is possible that these late literary descriptions of 'the blood eagle' [in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok and his Sons] derive form a verse that survives only in fragmentary form, composed in about 1030 by the Icelandic poet Sigvat . . . [P]recisely what Sigvat meant by saying that Ivar 'carved the eagle on Aella's back' has been much discussed. Snorri and the author of the Orkneyinga Saga took it literally and presumed it to be a form of execution by torture . . . Conceivably, however, Sigvat intended to convey only that Ivar had killed Aella, and to do so poetically by conjuring the image of an eagle, perched on the back of the dead king and working into his flesh with talons and beak, no doubt a common sight in the aftermath of any battle.​

If I was running a viking game I'd probably go with the poetic interpretation.

 

[David Howery]

I remember running a one-shot Viking adventure back in 2E days... had them chase down a Norwegian traitor who ran all the way to Vinland and beyond... the party ended up on pre-Columbian Long Island, battled Skraelings (including a giant war chief), found the traitor and his henchmen, killed them, everyone (else) lived happily ever after. I remember that I designed this adventure mainly because I had a big pile of Iroquois and Viking gaming miniatures, and nothing to do with them....

 

[Aus_Snow]

I’m going to use a house-ruled version of Pathfinder and hope to keep it a low magic/low fantasy game. I think it’s important to keep magical/divine effects and creatures something mysterius and unkown (and quite dangerous too!). I also plan on cutting back on spells and healing to make it a little more deadly than usual to get that grim and gritty feel.

I suggest checking out Legends of Sorcery from RPGObjects - PDF only, I think. It has an alternative magic system for d20, plus a bunch of classes, in categories of "low magic campaigns", "medium magic campaigns", and "high magic campaigns". Naturally, classes like Wizard and Cleric are considered "high magic". But yeah, it adds some really neat, flavourful, and in some cases "pseudo-historical" classes, so you needn't even use any of the core spellcasters. I wouldn't, gotta say.

The other supplement I'm quite fond of for these purposes is Miracles & Wonders (from Adamant Entertainment) - also PDF only, IIRC. It only covers divine magic, but does so in a really interesting way. You'd have to use it selectively, but then I'd say that's always the case, even with "core" rules . However, the way it deals with powers, and how gods (or whatever) grant them, is excellent, and might appeal if you're not keen on the stock standard semi-Vancian approach to the divine.

My goal is to start the campaign at 1st or 2nd level and take the PCs to 6th or 7th level through a series or 4 or 5 small story arcs. The game will probably start in June or July, so I still have plenty of time to prepare.

e6 can be used with just about any other house rules or variants, and should be perfect. Unless you're simply stopping the campaign at 6th-7th level, and that'll be that forever. In which case, no need for e6 at all!

 

[Bluenose]

I'd highly recommend both Runequest: Vikings and the newer Mongoose RQ Vikings book. Kay's Last Light of the Sun has been recommended by others, and I'll support that. Poul Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga is also very good, though harder to get hold of. The original sagas are worth a look, though you should be aware that some are much more 'fantasy' than others; Egil's Saga is rather grim and realistic, some of the others are less so.

 

[Keith Robinson]

There's always the Vikings RPG from The Le Games. It's 3.5, but there's a lot of excellent fluff there and you could always strip out the mechanics.

There's also Vikings - Midgard from Secular Games, also for 3.5.

From what I remember of the two (and it's been a while since I looked!) the Vikings RPG was the superior product, though I can't remember the details of why!