Grant has turned in another excellent piece of work detailing villages and randomly creating them. Using this article and connecting it with the previous Adventures in the North articles, a GM can create a interesting and fast paced campaign for their players.
Villages of the North
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Monday, May 8, 2017
Fjosnir Gothmund's Rebellion
Our friend Grant has turned in another fine entry for his Adventures in the North column. Check it out and learn all about Fjosnir Gothmund and his rebellion.
Friday, March 31, 2017
The Ice Kingdoms Blog
It is with great pleasure that I announce that this blog is now active and live.
What is it?
Well we have been told several times that we need a more active presence on the internet and this blog will allow us to do periodic updates and keep in contact with the fans and supporters of the Ice Kingdoms.
This site has several entries in it already to make it worth scrolling through as soon as it goes live (which it should be by the time you are reading this). We plan to have several regular articles (probably monthly or so for each) and a fairly regular update on the main blog (weekly if we can lol).
We will cover news, interesting stories and tid bits about the Ice Kingdoms.
Our feature articles will be written by myself (CS Barnhart), Grant Hoeflinger, Caleb Congrove, and RW Stenberg and we may get a guest writer here and there.
Grant will be writing Adventures of the North! A series of articles that take you deeper into the Ice Kingdoms, covering locations, people, events and cultural phenomena. He begins us this month with a look at Thanelaw and how you can use it in your games.
Caleb will be writing Ungainly Swordsman, discussing his interests in Old School Gaming, his experiences and random thoughts about the Ice Kingdoms and games in general.
RW will stop by now and then to profile a piece of art or one of our artists.
I will delve deeper into the Ice Kingdoms ranging from stats of new monsters to entries for new playable races (the Eski/Gnomes are currently available in my area). This will include previews of upcoming material and general discussion of the state of the Ice Kingdoms.
Overall we hope to provide you a peak at our setting and make you feel welcome in the Frozen North.
What is it?
Well we have been told several times that we need a more active presence on the internet and this blog will allow us to do periodic updates and keep in contact with the fans and supporters of the Ice Kingdoms.
This site has several entries in it already to make it worth scrolling through as soon as it goes live (which it should be by the time you are reading this). We plan to have several regular articles (probably monthly or so for each) and a fairly regular update on the main blog (weekly if we can lol).
We will cover news, interesting stories and tid bits about the Ice Kingdoms.
Our feature articles will be written by myself (CS Barnhart), Grant Hoeflinger, Caleb Congrove, and RW Stenberg and we may get a guest writer here and there.
Grant will be writing Adventures of the North! A series of articles that take you deeper into the Ice Kingdoms, covering locations, people, events and cultural phenomena. He begins us this month with a look at Thanelaw and how you can use it in your games.
Caleb will be writing Ungainly Swordsman, discussing his interests in Old School Gaming, his experiences and random thoughts about the Ice Kingdoms and games in general.
RW will stop by now and then to profile a piece of art or one of our artists.
I will delve deeper into the Ice Kingdoms ranging from stats of new monsters to entries for new playable races (the Eski/Gnomes are currently available in my area). This will include previews of upcoming material and general discussion of the state of the Ice Kingdoms.
Overall we hope to provide you a peak at our setting and make you feel welcome in the Frozen North.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
In the beginning (Part Two)
So I decided to make my own setting. The issue for it was quite simple. Which setting? I have many floating around in my head. Science fiction. Alternate history. Fantasy knights. Fantasy vikings. Fantasy Egyptians. And so on.
I decided to go back to the first AD&D campaign I ever played in, went over the notes of twenty odd years of gaming in that setting and pulled out key elements that would work for developing a setting that didn't interfere with the campaign we had played or any future material for that world. I centered on a terrain feature, the Land Bridge, and one obscure not I had scribbled on a map in college. The Ice Tribes of Thrar.
Other references to Thrar had it listed as "Home of the Ice Kings" and other elaborate titles involving the terms Ice or Frozen. From this I decided to use The Ice Kingdoms.
Immediately it became vikings. But I wanted some Lieber and Howard, so I threw in Conan, Fafhrd, Red Sonja, Grey Mouser and more. I borrowed from Russian, Arthurian, Finnish, Irish and other mythologies and legends. Then I added a firm layer of D&D. But I didn't have a system.
I thought about just going 3E or Pathfinder. But my heart always belonged to old school 1980s/1990s D&D and AD&D. I was tempted by OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord and even by adapting my own version. But then I found For Gold and Glory. A little known clone of AD&D 2E. No real support, no real fan base to speak of. Free PDF for the rules, cheap print options. Everything I needed. FG&G would do quite nicely.
I created a Facebook page, invited my gaming buddies to join and started crafting legends, stories, tales and entries for the book. Eventually I had 40+ pages of typewritten cultural and game notes and rules. I hit the OGL content to grab some information to mold for my gods and clerics, some extra spells and monsters. I hired a few artists from Fiverr to start designing the feel and look of the Ice Kingdoms and the maps. I hired some writers, most notably Chris Lites, James M. Ward and Moses Wildermuth to shape the material into the book that eventually was produced. I had old friends and new friends work as editors. I had enough after a year of so to do the Kickstarter and here we are.
Here we are.
The Adventure Begins.
Monday, March 6, 2017
Reviews
While not always 100% perfect, we have generally received good to great reviews with most issues revolving around personal preferences and tastes not outright dislike or disgust.
Here are some of our first reviews for those interested.
These reviews, and future reviews, will all be stored (in link format) on our reviews page.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Now Available: Into the Mournwood
Featuring the art of David Newbold, Cory Gelnett, Sayu
Gonzales, Eric Kempher and more.
The Hagwood has long been avoided by rational men, even
thanes dare not walk the woods. Only the desperate, the insane, and the dark
souls of Pohjola travel the paths of the forest by choice.
But destiny calls the brave and the fool.
The greedy and the heroic.
Can you face the dangers of the haunted wood?
Will you save the lost travellers?
How far will you go...
Into the Mournwood?
Into the Mournwood is
the second adventure set within the Ice Kingdoms, written by industry legend
James M. Ward, Into the Mournwood thrusts a band of adventurers into the dark
and evil forests haunted by savage orcs, curses, zombies, canibals and the most
feared monsters of the Thanelands, the hags of the Mournwood.
Into the Mournwood can be used as a stand alone adventure or
as part of an ongoing campaign and the adventure module can also be used as a
campaign guidebook by Game Masters to set further adventures in the Haunted
Forest.
Don’t forget to get our earlier releases.
Friday, February 24, 2017
In the beginning.... (Part One)
When I first decided that I wanted to publish my own role playing game material I really had no clue what I was doing. It was in early 2007 and I had just discovered OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord and finally realized what the Open Game License truly meant. I then found our about www.lulu.com and something that existed back then called guru (not sure if it is still around, but it was a way to contact professionals, such as writers and artists, and hire them). It dawned on me. I COULD PUBLISH MY OWN BOOKS! Armed with a handful of not quite fully fleshed out ideas and a small budget (taken from my drinking money) I began to work on Forgotten Arcana.
Forgotten Arcana was an attempt to make a supplement for OSRIC that provided optional rules based on the rules from 2nd edition AD&D. It was executed horribly. The proofreading was bad, the writing was bad, the layout was horrid, the art was all stock images (except a few commissioned pieces), it was overall bad. But I didn't realize that and I went ahead a made a second book. Forgotten Arcana Book II: Artifacts and Adversaries. The intent of the second book was to provide stats for all of the monsters that were listed in the various spells and encounter tables in OSRIC that at that time were not in the OSRIC book. A noble idea.
Again poorly executed.
After that I moved on to my own setting for Berlin '61 which was based on the GORE rules from Goblinoid Games. It was a horror espionage pulp adventure game set during the cold war in East and West Berlin just prior, during and after the wall going up. It was better received, had two supplements and the adventure I wrote for it even won second (or third or some other runner up place) in Chaosium's Adventure Design Competition a few years later. The neat thing about Berlin '61 was that Chaosium actually picked it up and published it as one of their Monographs, so it technically became my first paying work. But much like Forgotten Arcana, Berlin '61 fell to the side and was forgotten by most.
Dark Heresy was released and for several years I was chasing that dragon. I wrote a short lived fanzine called Unearthed Apocrypha for Dark Heresy where I covered articles about Commissars, Dark Elves, the planet K'Otal, new rules and so forth. It lasted probably six or seven issues (and by issues I mean articles) and I even had a few people write their own submissions for Unearthed Apocrypha, most notably Nathan Dowdell who went on to actually write for the 40K RPGs and now works with Modiphius on such titles as Mutant Chronicles and Conan.
Dark Heresy was replaced by Dust, which I became heavily involved in. Heavily. I wrote articles for Dust Chronicles, became a playtester for Dust Warfare, became a writer for Dust Warfare and then one day I was contacted by Chris Birch at Modiphius who offered me a job writing Dust Adventures the Role Playing game. I worked with Chris Lites and we produced what I consider to be a pretty good game. Though Modiphius didn't put their support behind the project because of the results of a Dust Tactics Kickstarter SNAFU. So like all my other works, Dust Adventures fell to oblivion. But it was my first true experience as a game designer, and a paying gig that allowed me to learn the system and make connections. Such as Chris Lites.
I decided then to create my own products again, with my own setting and publish the damn thing myself.
Forgotten Arcana was an attempt to make a supplement for OSRIC that provided optional rules based on the rules from 2nd edition AD&D. It was executed horribly. The proofreading was bad, the writing was bad, the layout was horrid, the art was all stock images (except a few commissioned pieces), it was overall bad. But I didn't realize that and I went ahead a made a second book. Forgotten Arcana Book II: Artifacts and Adversaries. The intent of the second book was to provide stats for all of the monsters that were listed in the various spells and encounter tables in OSRIC that at that time were not in the OSRIC book. A noble idea.
Again poorly executed.
After that I moved on to my own setting for Berlin '61 which was based on the GORE rules from Goblinoid Games. It was a horror espionage pulp adventure game set during the cold war in East and West Berlin just prior, during and after the wall going up. It was better received, had two supplements and the adventure I wrote for it even won second (or third or some other runner up place) in Chaosium's Adventure Design Competition a few years later. The neat thing about Berlin '61 was that Chaosium actually picked it up and published it as one of their Monographs, so it technically became my first paying work. But much like Forgotten Arcana, Berlin '61 fell to the side and was forgotten by most.
Dark Heresy was released and for several years I was chasing that dragon. I wrote a short lived fanzine called Unearthed Apocrypha for Dark Heresy where I covered articles about Commissars, Dark Elves, the planet K'Otal, new rules and so forth. It lasted probably six or seven issues (and by issues I mean articles) and I even had a few people write their own submissions for Unearthed Apocrypha, most notably Nathan Dowdell who went on to actually write for the 40K RPGs and now works with Modiphius on such titles as Mutant Chronicles and Conan.
Dark Heresy was replaced by Dust, which I became heavily involved in. Heavily. I wrote articles for Dust Chronicles, became a playtester for Dust Warfare, became a writer for Dust Warfare and then one day I was contacted by Chris Birch at Modiphius who offered me a job writing Dust Adventures the Role Playing game. I worked with Chris Lites and we produced what I consider to be a pretty good game. Though Modiphius didn't put their support behind the project because of the results of a Dust Tactics Kickstarter SNAFU. So like all my other works, Dust Adventures fell to oblivion. But it was my first true experience as a game designer, and a paying gig that allowed me to learn the system and make connections. Such as Chris Lites.
I decided then to create my own products again, with my own setting and publish the damn thing myself.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Welcome to the Ice Kingdoms
Welcome to the Ice Kingdoms.
The Ice Kingdoms is a fantasy adventure setting for Old School Role Playing Games, such as OSRIC and For Gold & Glory. The premise of the Ice Kingdoms is a far away land to the north of the world where a series of petty rulers wage wars against one another for dominance and to keep the dark powers of Pohjola at bay.
The Ice Kingdoms is a fantasy adventure setting for Old School Role Playing Games, such as OSRIC and For Gold & Glory. The premise of the Ice Kingdoms is a far away land to the north of the world where a series of petty rulers wage wars against one another for dominance and to keep the dark powers of Pohjola at bay.
The Ice Kingdoms. Get involved now! Sword and Sorcery fantasy action and adventure set in the far north.
Welcome to the Ice Kingdoms, a fantasy role playing game setting for old school games. Compatible with most modern D20 based role playing games and specifically aimed for classic games, the Ice Kingdoms provides all the information need to run adventures in the Thanelands. Including: New racial variants for Humans based on culture. New rules for class modifications. Detailed gods and pantheon and rules for priests of every deity. Monsters. History. Geography and more.... Pick up your sword and face the cold!
Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/6828478
Drivethrurpg: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/…/203510/Ice-Kingdoms-Campaign-… and http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/203919
The map is available at http://www.printerstudio.com/…/101607316660-ice-kingdoms-ma…
We have some great content written by James M. Ward and Chris Lites with contributions from Moses Wildermuth and Scott Morgan as well as Caleb Congrove and many more. Some fantastic artwork by David Newbold, Marko Radulovic, RW Stenberg, Sayu González, Cory Shonuff Gelnett and more. Written to be compatible with the various editions of D&D from original to 1E and 2E (and all clones) and with notes on how to use with 3rd and 5th edition.
The Ice Kingdoms is a sword and sorcery epic campaign set in a world based on Viking and Greek mythology merged with the classic aspects of R.E. Howard's Conan stories. Please check us out.
Thanks to Kevin Reynolds for the image.
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