Picking up from March a bit is Age of Vikings (2024), a stand-alone RPG built from Basic Roleplaying. It’s a revamp of Mythic Iceland, also for BRP (genuinely surprised to learn that had a physical print run; I love the unicorn polar bear on the cover of that, gonna need to snag it). Both, in turn, seem to be inheritors of RuneQuest Vikings, at least to some extent.
This isn’t Viking Raid: The RPG. Rather, like Pendragon, the game seeks to construct a plausible framework of culture, place and time for players to explore and participate in as they wish. Raiding can be part of that! But there’s a community to foster and protect, and strange forces in the wilderness to contend with — a compelling mix of the sort of creatures you might expect from Norse myth and folklore, but with a little bit of British or Germanic faerie lore. There are Kraken, too, and I have to say, you’d think there’d be a point where knew interpretations of sea monsters would finally stop spooking the fuck out of me, but no, not so far — the Kraken illustration here made my blood run cold.
There’s quite a lot of Pendragon in here. Family history is an important part of character creation from which Passions are derived. Reputation stands in for Glory, which only goes up, and Status subs for Honor, which can fluctuate depending on character actions. Combat is fast and brutal, with song, passions and training all able to raise skills above 100%. The number of points can be used to reduce the skill of opponents (the example in the book is a 120% sword skill being used to lower an opponent’s shield skill by the number above 100%) and thus open them up to brutal critical hits.
The two magic systems feel rather RuneQuest inspired to me. One is a fairly free form system (a la Ars Magica) revolving around carving runes for magical effects that are unlocked at the appropriate time by singing. These are immediate, often combat-related. The other system is shamanic, consisting of long rituals that effect people and the environment.
There’s a booklet adventure, The Cursed Farm, that I quite like. I hope more scenarios surface. I could see myself running this (while I wait for the Great Pendragon Campaign).
