We know fairly little about Nordic ideas on magic, I'm afraid.

A Viking OSR setting would probably sell better than a Viking-specific retro-clone imo.

GURPs Magic for 3rd edition had a pretty decent Norse Rune-based magic system.

Quote from: P&P;617665We know fairly little about Nordic ideas on magic, I'm afraid.

A Viking OSR setting would probably sell better than a Viking-specific retro-clone imo.

If I were doing a Nordic setting, I probably wouldn't use Vikings as the chief inspiration, honestly.

There's more to the north lands than just the Vikings.

Quote from: J Arcane;617675If I were doing a Nordic setting, I probably wouldn't use Vikings as the chief inspiration, honestly.

There's more to the north lands than just the Vikings.

Hmm, like?

Do you mean more to the Northlands then the raiding that was done during raiding season? Yeah there was a lot more.

Or do you mean more then just the people we think of as the Norse and are talking about the Sami, Finns, etc?

A game with Rus Explorers blazing the first Volga route would be pretty crazyass.

Quote from: CRKrueger;617680Hmm, like?

Do you mean more to the Northlands then the raiding that was done during raiding season? Yeah there was a lot more.

Or do you mean more then just the people we think of as the Norse and are talking about the Sami, Finns, etc?

A game with Rus Explorers blazing the first Volga route would be pretty crazyass.

The Viking period is only one section of the history, just a few centuries out of many.  

Hell, many of the mythological and aesthetic elements that people associate even with the Vikings themselves actually predate them significantly.

If I were to do it, I'd probably base it on earlier pre-Viking times and playing up a "hardy folk surviving an inhospitable clime" element, or if I wanted to stick with the D&D playstyle, perhaps set it post-Vikings of a sort, leaving open the possibility of leftover spoils to be found from previous wars.

The former I think would offer greater mythological inspiration, while the latter could be used as inspiration for an "old way vs. new foreign faith" element of the setting.

And Finns and Sami are woefully neglected for inspiration, though in fairness this is partly because so much of their lore is oral histories that have large chunks missing, or the relentlessly dry poetics of the Kalevala.  Tolkien took significant inspiration from the Kalevala, and Forgotten Realms writers love to nick Finnish names for things, but mostly that's it.  

And more generally, there's just that sense of Nordic stoicism and bleakness that never seems to get captured, because people focus so heavily on the Viking "warrior race" idea and forget the hundreds of years of history where that wasn't really the case.

Quote from: J Arcane;617675If I were doing a Nordic setting, I probably wouldn't use Vikings as the chief inspiration, honestly.

There's more to the north lands than just the Vikings.

Okay.  My point is that it'd be better as a setting than as a RPG in its own right, that's all.

I do think the Vikings are more interesting than Migration Period Scandinavia, though.

Quote from: P&P;617687Okay.  My point is that it'd be better as a setting than as a RPG in its own right, that's all.

I do think the Vikings are more interesting than Migration Period Scandinavia, though.

I'd just as soon work with the rules I'm most familiar with, which would be the Hulks and Horrors system I wrote personally.

So if this were OSR, it would most certainly use that.

Quote from: P&P;617665We know fairly little about Nordic ideas on magic, I'm afraid.

Yes and no.  There's a huge amount of stuff we don't know or that's lost.  There's also a shitload of stuff that's been studied and continues to be learned, including rather recently.

For example, we know WAY more about nordic magic than we do about original celtic magic.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;618041Yes and no.  There's a huge amount of stuff we don't know or that's lost.  There's also a shitload of stuff that's been studied and continues to be learned, including rather recently.

For example, we know WAY more about nordic magic than we do about original celtic magic.

This is intriguing.

Any sources you can point us towards?

Quote from: RPGPundit;618041For example, we know WAY more about nordic magic than we do about original celtic magic.

RPGPundit

This is certainly true.  Mind you, we probably know more about the planets of Upsilon Andromedae, or the life forms of the Mariana Trench, than we do about original Celtic magic.

Quote from: The Butcher;618048Any sources you can point us towards?

For example:-

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=5316491216&searchurl=isbn%3D041525650x

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gjq6rvoIRpAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Quote from: The Butcher;618048This is intriguing.

Any sources you can point us towards?

Stephen Flowers, Stephan Grundy, Jenny Blain, Jan Fries, Freya Aswyn; also, a bit dated but H.R. Ellis Davidson and Georges Dumezil.  Of course, a lot of the people researching and writing about norse magic are people who publicly or secretly practice it.  But unlike their equivalent "celtic pagans" or the like, most of these actually do have PhDs on the subject.

There are of course, shitloads of stuff being done in german academia, which I wouldn't be qualified to list by name.  But I know this has become more true of late, with this being the first generation in german academia since the war where being interested in old german magic or religion isn't immediately tainted by Nazi esoteric bullshit.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;617643I'd love to see something done for old-school that actually tried to make a magic system based on nordic ideas on magic, especially the runes.

RPGPundit

Don't want to be too pimpy as I mostly just lurk here, but I've been working on an Anglo-Saxon/Migration Period setting for Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox. It's called Redwald.

Here's the write up for the rune casting rules and the meaning/uses of the runes. I thought I'd posted the write of the class (Dweorgas Wyrdwebba) but I can't seem to find it.

Quote from: Weru;618657an Anglo-Saxon/Migration Period setting for Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox. It's called Redwald.

I pimped/mentioned your game in the master list thread.

What are your plans for publication? Will it be a print product (PoD)? Just a setting or a stand alone Whitebox variant?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;618683I pimped/mentioned your game in the master list thread.

Ta very much!

QuoteWhat are your plans for publication? Will it be a print product (PoD)? Just a setting or a stand alone Whitebox variant?

At the minute just get a draft finished, then prolly a cheap Ashcan edition. Not sure after that, but Christopher Brandon wants to do a Redwald supplement for his Heroes & Other Worlds TFT clone so that version will be PoD and PDF.

I'd like to see a clone that specifically emulates ad&D's Oriental Adventures. I loved that book and one of my favorite PC's was a Kensai (albeit in 2e as a ranger with a Kensai kit.)