D&D 5E What does Midgard do that Forgotten Realms and Wildemount don't?

Scrivener of Doom

Adventurer
Kobold Press published this article on their website to help DMs get into Midgard: So You Want to Play in Midgard? (But You Don’t Know Where to Start)

I've been running the Realms since 1989 or so but have been looking at Midgard for a possible future 13th Age campaign. They've been updating the icons for the World Book on the Kobold Press site (previously they were in the Midgard Bestiary for 13th Age); I think 3/13 have been completed.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

So how long have I been called @Zardnaar ?



Me? Are you still asserting that I'm @Zardnaar because buddy me and that dude have some pretty serious differences.

The FRCS is extremely relevant because it's how you do a worldbook. What's the title on the current Golarion equivalent? Midgard's worldbook is also extremely impressive.
oops, sorry. Mixed you up. But I didn't quote Zaardnar. I quoted Tyler Do'urden.

But, the argument for the greatness of Midgard that I qouted and you then responded to, was that the sheer amount of material in itself. And that only FR and perhaps Mystara could compete on that level. It was to this that I nitpicked that Golarion has huge amounts of material as well.

You then started bringing in the requirement for a world book of 3e FRCS, accusations of Golarion hyping and Golarion lore-bashing for no apparent reason, which was I responed to. Makes no difference whether or not you were the original poster of the quoted part, really. Though I do apologize fo that and will edit my post to not implicate Tyler.

Edited to reflect I quoted Tyler Do'urden and not Zaardnar. Why did you even bring Zaardnar into my quote of another person??
 
Last edited:


gyor

Legend
Oh one thing it has going for it.

A campaign setting book. FR hasn't had a consolidated one since 2001.

4e had the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, which was 288 pages, published in 2008 smaller then the previous Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book or even the recent Eberron: Rising From the Last War both which was 320.

It's 5e that has gotten ripped off for a book like that, I'm still hoping that changes.
 

gyor

Legend

This what I found for Golarion, although I know they also did a similar book for their Asia.

Golarion is basically Pathfinders Forgotten Realms, even to the point where Ed Greenwood helped create it!

Midgard is simular.

Mystara I have one novel for, but I'm not as familiar with the setting, it's been decades since it got any real support.
 

I dunno man, I just don't see any "Grimm's fairy tales" stuff there. It's not cautionary morality tales, it's weird scary far-out, and extremely dangerous fey-realm stuff which is more in line with particularly creepy unseelie stuff which isn't conventionally regarded as "fairy tales" (despite being stories that refer to what are, technically, fairies). The gnomes are a whole Faustian deal and I never regarded that as a "fairy story" but I guess it relates to folk tales of people selling their souls and so on.

Baby Yaga is more like it, though I'd personally put her down as "folk tale" than "fairy story", but perhaps that's semantics? Also I am so scared of Baby Yaga I can't think straight about the issue. Thanks, Call of Cthulhu!

A lot of Grimm's Fairy Tales have the moral, "lmao scaring kids is fun."
 


This what I found for Golarion, although I know they also did a similar book for their Asia.

Golarion is basically Pathfinders Forgotten Realms, even to the point where Ed Greenwood helped create it!

Midgard is simular.

Mystara I have one novel for, but I'm not as familiar with the setting, it's been decades since it got any real support.

I don't really agree that Golarion/FR/Midgard are "similar" per se. They represent three pretty different approaches to the same general idea, for my money, and Mystara represents a 4th.

The FR is very distinctive in it's own weird way, a messy, mystical, kind of cobweb-y setting full of unlikely well-meaning people, with a distinct lack of international conflict and war, and a lot of slightly LARP-y/ren-faire places in it, as well as a gigantic, endless pantheon which is weirdly the most real-seeming thing about the setting. There's stuff derived from real-world cultures, but it tends to be extremely superficial, like what hats they wear, rather than how they behave. It has a depth of content that certainly none of the others is close to, going back into the 1980s. There are multiple entire other settings inside it.

Midgard is a 1990s setting which resembles a specific type of '80s and '90s setting, which is to say the ones where most of the places are lightly based on Europe, Africa, the Near East and so on, with some fantasy nations scattered in-between. It has quite a lot more attitude than the FR, and a very distinct cosmology and being a two-sided "flat world" is kind of a big deal, too. It's generally a lot grimmer and darker than the FR, like it slid towards Warhammer, almost.

Golarion is a deeply 2000s setting, which is built pretty much entirely for and around adventuring, full of over-the-top, ultra-stereotyped places for adventurers to come from, and extremely dangerous places for them to go. It's extremely functional, top to bottom. There's little sense of it being "lived in" unlike the FR or Midgard, and geopolitics make no sense, but that's something they do all share (unlike Eberron). If you want a setting that feels real, it's not the way to go, but if you want one that's easy to understand and where everything is pretty clear, and there's room for gunslingers next to medieval knights, it's a good one.

Mystara is a peculiar setting. It's incredibly diverse. Really everything is somewhere in Mystara, in a neat little nation/kingdom situation right next to a totally different and unrelated nation/kingdom. It's like it was created by laying down hex tiles. You got irradiated elves, you got noble lion-men, you got native americans, you got germanic knights, and so on, all just sort of jammed together. Then you've got a whole region which is basically "the 1700s" for you to and mess around in (including guns). And you've got the whole hollow earth deal to boot. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's not quite as designed for practicality as Golarion, but it has a certain naive charm.
 

Tyler Do'Urden

Soap Maker
I don't really agree that Golarion/FR/Midgard are "similar" per se. They represent three pretty different approaches to the same general idea, for my money, and Mystara represents a 4th.

The FR...

Midgard...

Golarion...

Mystara...

Good analysis, I largely agree. What appeals to me about Midgard is that it has the lived-inness, lore quality and magic levels of the Realms, the "adventurability" of Golarion, the real-world cultural borrowings and weirdness of Mystara (though much more coherent!), and the conflict/lack of clear "heroes" of Greyhawk.

Plus... unlike Golarion, it's a 5E setting. Unlike Mystara and Greyhawk, it's still heavily supported by a company run by it's creator (sadly not an option for Greyhawk. Though WotC should really hand over the reins of Mystara to Bruce Heard and let him run a DMs Guild based revival. He's expressed interest in doing so in the last few years, but they haven't moved on it.) Already this year a 1-13 level adventure path, an anthology of adventures, several "Warlock Lairs" issues (think Dungeon Magazine style modules) and an Underdark player's guide were released for Midgard... and several more issues of Warlock and Warlock Lairs, a third massive Monster book and the huge 5E "Deep Magic" supplement are all due to drop later this year.
 

Oh one thing it has going for it.

A campaign setting book. FR hasn't had a consolidated one since 2001.

This is a big draw for me. To this day, whenever I'm starting a new campaign in the Realms and players ask me when we'll start, I'm always answering "1372 DR" because I just can't resist having the 3e FRCS as one of my main resources.
 


Remove ads

Top