Northern Crown - Did it go anywhere
- Thread starter Psion
- Start date
I can't get my players to try it, but I wasn't dissapointed. Its well done.
It also ties in to Nyambe, BTW.
It also ties in to Nyambe, BTW.
dougmander
Explorer
If anyone knows the whereabouts of this game, please contact the author. 
I can't speak to who's playing it, although I do get emails from time to time from Northern Crown players. It's an odd sensation seeing your work go out and not being able to track it.
There is ongoing PDF support for the game via Adamant Entertainment. The second issue of Franklyn's Almanack, the official PDF magazine for the game, is coming out this month, with a full-length adventure inside.
I can't speak to who's playing it, although I do get emails from time to time from Northern Crown players. It's an odd sensation seeing your work go out and not being able to track it.
There is ongoing PDF support for the game via Adamant Entertainment. The second issue of Franklyn's Almanack, the official PDF magazine for the game, is coming out this month, with a full-length adventure inside.
Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
I bought both books, and thought they were pretty neat. I lent them to eris404, who is running a Victorian England D&D game and who I thought could probably make use of the material.
ColonelHardisson
What? Me Worry?
I've seen the books in a couple of game shops, and I've skimmed through them a number of times. I have to admit that the basic concept interests me, but I just can't seem to get motivated to buy the books. I'm sure they're well-done, and I liked Nyambe, but what I've seen on my skim-throughs hasn't really grabbed me, yet.
2WS-Steve
First Post
Today I found the Gazetteer at Half-Price Books for... er, half-price.
Nice for me -- the maps of the Northeast will work well for my, ah, home campaign. It's good to have North America as wilderness, with lots of terrain. The maps also include notes for navigable rivers, which could be handy for more campaign settings.
There's small sections on the various nations and organizations in the region, Spanish, French, and Albion, then a handy bit on different terrain types -- including wandering damage charts for each.
The terrain types are convenient since they're linked to the gazetteer (each location has a terrain type). I'm a tad concerned about the makeup of the tables -- encounter levels are all over the board and I tend to think that would be both dangerous for players, and a little unstable as an ecosystem.
The gazetteer section includes a long list of points of interest all over the frontier. These include a little boxed-text style description, plus some GM info, and often a little feature or hook -- that last part I like since it helps make the place distinctive and can help inspire an encounter.
There's some notes on using monsters from other sources in the setting, then a list of creatures specific to the colonies -- headless horsemen, killer scarecrows, and so on. Actually these give a nice feel for a Johnny Tremesne (sp?) era setting -- but the Wendigo should have gotten a drawing! Wendigos are famous!
Then some magic items and a number of types specific to the First Ones, which is the analog for Native Amercians. The charms, like memorized scrolls, are interesting.
There's also a section on inventions -- which are made somewhat like magic items, but don't have an xp cost and aren't magical. You need a special feat but I'm not sure what else since the rules for creation are in the other book. Many of these seemed fun but GM's can't just let the whole book in -- the arcanostatic rod is way too cheap for something that can block magic the way it does.
The book closes out with statblocks and descriptions for some famous characters -- again, you'll need the other book to get full use since they use some of the new classes.
It's definitely useful for me since I already run a game in north America.
Probably my strongest disappointment -- and perhaps not a wholly fair one -- is that it doesn't include rules for colonization. Back when, one of my friends wanted to run a colonization campaign, where the player group loaded up with a small band of settlers and established a foothold of civilization in some untracked wilderness. Given that these were books about the colonies, I hoped that there'd be some attention given to that sort of campaign.
I figured some sort of loose rules for feeding a small village, setting up water, finding various mineral resources, surviving the first few Winters, and so on. Plus some encounter ideas or how to handle meeting new civilizations.
There's no treatment of that (in the gazetteer at least), but since I take it that wasn't a design goal I'm not sure how much of a legitimate gripe this is.
Nice for me -- the maps of the Northeast will work well for my, ah, home campaign. It's good to have North America as wilderness, with lots of terrain. The maps also include notes for navigable rivers, which could be handy for more campaign settings.
There's small sections on the various nations and organizations in the region, Spanish, French, and Albion, then a handy bit on different terrain types -- including wandering damage charts for each.
The terrain types are convenient since they're linked to the gazetteer (each location has a terrain type). I'm a tad concerned about the makeup of the tables -- encounter levels are all over the board and I tend to think that would be both dangerous for players, and a little unstable as an ecosystem.
The gazetteer section includes a long list of points of interest all over the frontier. These include a little boxed-text style description, plus some GM info, and often a little feature or hook -- that last part I like since it helps make the place distinctive and can help inspire an encounter.
There's some notes on using monsters from other sources in the setting, then a list of creatures specific to the colonies -- headless horsemen, killer scarecrows, and so on. Actually these give a nice feel for a Johnny Tremesne (sp?) era setting -- but the Wendigo should have gotten a drawing! Wendigos are famous!
Then some magic items and a number of types specific to the First Ones, which is the analog for Native Amercians. The charms, like memorized scrolls, are interesting.
There's also a section on inventions -- which are made somewhat like magic items, but don't have an xp cost and aren't magical. You need a special feat but I'm not sure what else since the rules for creation are in the other book. Many of these seemed fun but GM's can't just let the whole book in -- the arcanostatic rod is way too cheap for something that can block magic the way it does.
The book closes out with statblocks and descriptions for some famous characters -- again, you'll need the other book to get full use since they use some of the new classes.
It's definitely useful for me since I already run a game in north America.
Probably my strongest disappointment -- and perhaps not a wholly fair one -- is that it doesn't include rules for colonization. Back when, one of my friends wanted to run a colonization campaign, where the player group loaded up with a small band of settlers and established a foothold of civilization in some untracked wilderness. Given that these were books about the colonies, I hoped that there'd be some attention given to that sort of campaign.
I figured some sort of loose rules for feeding a small village, setting up water, finding various mineral resources, surviving the first few Winters, and so on. Plus some encounter ideas or how to handle meeting new civilizations.
There's no treatment of that (in the gazetteer at least), but since I take it that wasn't a design goal I'm not sure how much of a legitimate gripe this is.
Stormborn
Explorer
Has nothing to do with anything except for the fact that I think reading this thread triggered a dream last night. I can only remember the phrase: "The PCs could join Jefferson's Pirate City or risk the wilds with Washington's outlaw Army af the Republic." Which got me imagining a American Revolution (maybe one that was more of a Civil War between Masonic/Occult/Secret Socieites that used powerful but subtle magics) where the British achieved a victory early, but one that allowed most of the Founding Fathers and much of their resources to escape. Some to the Carribean to set up a pirate state to prey on English ships, some to the Appalachians where a gurillea army harassess the English and defends small towns like "Ft. Liberty", and meanwhile in Europe Franklin runs an occult espionage movement while trying to garner support for his compatriots in the new world from the great powers. Where is Ken Hite when you need him?
No idea about what events of history could make that so, but there you have it.
ON TOPIC: I have Northern Crown. Looks facinating. Never got on the play schedule becuase honestly so much looks facinating, not to mention my homebrew stuff, that we would rather play. I think I'd like to try a one shot in it sometime. It suprises me that no one seems to be playing it though.
No idea about what events of history could make that so, but there you have it.
ON TOPIC: I have Northern Crown. Looks facinating. Never got on the play schedule becuase honestly so much looks facinating, not to mention my homebrew stuff, that we would rather play. I think I'd like to try a one shot in it sometime. It suprises me that no one seems to be playing it though.
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