Because it’ll come up [vikings]

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Raleel

Raleel

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So I’m looking for adventures, any system, on the conquest of England or Ireland by the Vikings. Specifically, I’d really like a sort of campaign adventure. Yes, I could almost certainly put something together, and Mythic Britain is pretty cool (and 400 years too early), but hoping for something I can crib. Any suggestions?
 
Does the old Runequest 3 supplement Vikings cover that at all?
 
TristramEvans said:

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that doesn’t seem like much of what I’m looking for. Like.. that’s fantasy Vikings, and that’s all cool, but looking for more of a campaign of raiding England.

Bunch said:
Does the old Runequest 3 supplement Vikings cover that at all?
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zarion said:
Vikings of Legend. For the Legend RPG. I think that's right.
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I have that. Not the adventure. Looking for Adventures. Specifically I’m trying to find an adventure or series of adventures for running the great heathen army or similar. Should be raiding England or Ireland.
 
I might be wrong, and hopefully I am and someone can help, but a quick search on the old googlee says you are shit out of luck. Several Viking supplements for various systems, or fantasy Viking adventures, but historical stuff is all but non-existent.
 
How much Swedish do you know?
 
raniE said:
I’m assuming this is from something because it sure ain’t Swedish.
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I can't remember the provenance but you're supposed to say it in a Swedish accent while pointing the handle of your mug towards Stockholm. It may just have been a drinking game.
 
The reason I ask is because of the Swedish RPG Viking (what the game is about should be obvious) from the 1990s. It had an enormous amount of information about viking age culture, and also had a few modules released, first the campaign modules Norden (The North) about the Scandinavian countries primarily focused on 970, and Västerled (The Western Way), about Western Europe and the Mediterranean, again primarily focused on 970. Both of these included some more detailed adventures as well as some NPCs and maps (for instance of London in 970), but the adventures weren't entirely focused on England or Ireland.

Then there were the two adventures released. Unlike the rpeviously mentioned books, these two I don't own myself so can't say for certain exactly what they entail. The first one is Jarl Eriks Arv (The inheritance of Jarl Erik) is about the Jarl/Earl of Orkney dying. One of the PCs is the heir but is attacked and the group needs to find allies as far afield as Rome in order to retake Orkney. This is neither Ireland nor England but it is at least set in the British Isles.

The second adventure is Gudarnas Nåde (Graced by the Gods, roughly), where no children born in the village have survived the past year and the PCs are tasked to find Tormod Korp, who has supposedly been favored by the god Frey and can hold a fertility ritual (doubtful that this is portrayed as more than superstition, Viking was a no-magic game with some GM options for spooky supernatural stuff as seen in some sagas but no more than that). However to find him they need to travel west. This adventure includes a detailed description of viking age York, so I assume the PCs travels bring them there.
 
Fenris-77 said:
Drikker du ol?
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That's more Danish or Norwegian (Swedish doesn't use double Ks), the Swedish spelling would be "Dricker du öl?" but it's understandable. To answer the question, yes and no. In general yes, right now, no ("Dricker du öl" can mean both "Do you drink beer" and "are you drinking beer," you need to use context to figure out which).
 
Fenris-77 said:
Yeah, I speak toddler-level Norwegian. So does my toddler. You can do the math.
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Your toddler taught you Norwegian?

Norwegian is generally quite intelligible to Swedes, and Swedish to Norwegians. Written Danish is also legible enough to Swedes (it's the same as standard Norwegian). Spoken Danish is incomprehensible to most Swedes, Norwegians and Danes, as evidenced by this.
 
I'm learning as he learns. My wife speaks Norwegian. A Swedish buddy of mine didn't have any trouble talking to my older boys who are fluent so I thought I'd try it out.
 
Fenris-77 said:
I'm learning as he learns. My wife speaks Norwegian. A Swedish buddy of mine didn't have any trouble talking to my older boys who are fluent so I thought I'd try it out.
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That makes sense. My dad is American so he was learning Swedish with us kids when we were younger. Helps that he lived in Sweden of course, immersion is really the key to learning languages. And yeah, Norwegian will usually let you communicate fine with Swedes and Danes. The line between dialect and language is very thin between those three.
 
We're moving back to Norway sometime in the next 6 months so I'm ramping up the language acquisition.
 
Raleel said:
I have that. Not the adventure. Looking for Adventures. Specifically I’m trying to find an adventure or series of adventures for running the great heathen army or similar. Should be raiding England or Ireland.
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I don't think you're going to find too many adventures where you raiding England and/or Ireland are more than possibly background. Sacking fairly defenseless villages isn't usually thought of as great adventure fodder. Even the Swedish ones for the rpg Viking I mentioned earlier are going to feature a bit of raiding at best, with more focus on travel and politics and personal feuds.
 
Viking lore is very popular and you do have some options for a Viking age game. Runequest Vikings and Vikings of Legend are very good choices. As supplements, they do offer some very good info on Viking society as well as some great Viking Age Authentic magic systems.

If Legend/Runequest isn't your jam might I also suggest Mythic Iceland by Chaosium.

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Mythic Iceland does lean rather more heavily on the supernatural, and I don't know how much OP wants in terms of Fantasy Elements, but it can also be used much like Runequest Vikings. In fact, since Runequest and Basic RolePlaying are so similar, you could easily use both of them together.
 
I think Mythic Iceland suffers from something a lot of Viking/dark ages Scandinavia focused stuff is going to suffer from in this regard, which is that much of it is focused on the actual North, so Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. From what I understand that isn't what Raleel Raleel wants. He wants adventures based around viking raids or invasions of the British isles (possibly excluding Scotland).

edit: Flipping through my copy of Mythic Iceland, yeah there's a short chapter about going viking, page 185-199. The sample adventure contained in the book takes place, not surprisingly, on Iceland.
 
That's an interesting premise. Do you have any idea what direction you want the campaign to go?

If you are looking to reskin modules, I think adventures where the players are on the receiving end of the invasion are common, but from the POV of the invader? None that I can recall off hand.

If you are looking for mechanics like recruitment and supplies, searching "Vikings" on Wargames Vault brings up a few titles, some specific for the Great Heathen Army and Alfred.

However, if you are looking at some more traditional campaign, I suggest looking at Xenophon's Ten Thousand, or the Odyssey as templates.

Start off with the usual raiding, maybe having the PCs be given a scouting mission, or some special forces stuff - they do well and earn the command of a longship.

Then the PCs' longship gets separated from the fleet by a storm and they are shipwrecked in somewhere on the British Isles, with just the PCs survibing: are they in Ireland? England? Or the fey realm?

Or they are returning home, after sacking a monastery, and God decides to visit his vengeance on the heathens and send a storm to blow them off-course.

The campaign will then be about them finding out where they are, surviving the hostile locals and monsters, and figuring out a way to either rejoin the main army, or else return home.
 
raniE said:
How much Swedish do you know?
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Virtually none, despite my heavy Swedish ancestry. Grandmother on mother’s side is full blooded Swede born in America, fathers side can trace their ancestry back to the Motala area about seven generations ago. The rest of my blood is a bit of German, welsh, and English/Norwegian

raniE said:
He wants adventures based around viking raids or invasions of the British isles (possibly excluding Scotland).
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not excluding Scotland, but definitely the idea of playing the raids and war of the time. Being part of the great heathen army, the Danelaw, etc. this is definitely a war, raid, build, and settle sort of game

arjunstc said:
That's an interesting premise. Do you have any idea what direction you want the campaign to go?
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one thing I’m looking for is for the party to not just go off on their own a whole bunch, at least not without a strong purpose that ties back to the larger group. They are going to be a part of that.


arjunstc said:
If you are looking for mechanics like recruitment and supplies, searching "Vikings" on Wargames Vault brings up a few titles, some specific for the Great Heathen Army and Alfred.
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Thanks. I will go look there as well. I hadn’t looked there specifically

arjunstc said:
However, if you are looking at some more traditional campaign, I suggest looking at Xenophon's Ten Thousand, or the Odyssey as templates.
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Actually trying to avoid Anabasis. That’s a different campaign. This one is more about pushing snd expanding and perhaps trying to find a new home in England, not about trying to get back home.

arjunstc said:
Start off with the usual raiding, maybe having the PCs be given a scouting mission, or some special forces stuff - they do well and earn the command of a longship.
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Yes, this is sort of where I am looking. The first arc should involve acquisition of a longship, or they should have one immediately.
 
Might be worth looking at Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword and Hrolf kraki's Saga. Plus the other era-specific novels by Poul Anderson for some inspiration.
 
Arcane_Avatar said:
Might be worth looking at Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword and Hrolf kraki's Saga. Plus the other era-specific novels by Poul Anderson for some inspiration.
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i do have a big volume of the sagas of the Icelanders but I don’t think that one is in it. I’m hoping to not have to recreate, but might have to! Sort of “The Great Heathen Army” campaign. I would expect negotiations, raids, army fights, etc.

I sort of did the other side of this with red hand of doom.
 
It's not an RPG, but Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series is about precisely this, though mainly from the Anglo-Saxon point of view, not the Viking. I think it's up to 14 books now. Still, there'd be plenty of material to plunder, if you wanted it.
 
I also don't know RPG books on it, but there's a ton of adjacent media with rich sources..

- Cornwell's Saxon books.
- Vikings TV show.
- Crusader Kings 2/3, Total War: Age of Charlemagne, and Total War: Thrones of Britannia videogames.
 
Lofgeornost said:
It's not an RPG, but Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series is about precisely this, though mainly from the Anglo-Saxon point of view, not the Viking. I think it's up to 14 books now. Still, there'd be plenty of material to plunder, if you wanted it.
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Yes, these should be great for giving you ideas. In the first book, the main character is captured by the Danes on a raid and he is raised as a Dane as if he is the chieftain’s son. Later books have him fighting on the side of the Anglo Saxons, but the first novel (or two, I can’t remember) should provide some plot hooks and ideas of the politicking and types of “missions” they would go on.
 
Lofgeornost said:
It's not an RPG, but Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series is about precisely this, though mainly from the Anglo-Saxon point of view, not the Viking. I think it's up to 14 books now. Still, there'd be plenty of material to plunder, if you wanted it.
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silva said:
I also don't know RPG books on it, but there's a ton of adjacent media with rich sources..

- Cornwell's Saxon books.
- Vikings TV show.
- Crusader Kings 2/3, Total War: Age of Charlemagne, and Total War: Thrones of Britannia videogames.
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Andrew J. Luther said:
Yes, these should be great for giving you ideas. In the first book, the main character is captured by the Danes on a raid and he is raised as a Dane as if he is the chieftain’s son. Later books have him fighting on the side of the Anglo Saxons, but the first novel (or two, I can’t remember) should provide some plot hooks and ideas of the politicking and types of “missions” they would go on.
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Yea. I am familiar. I have watched most of the seasons of Vikings, a couple of the last kingdom, read one of the books, etc. I’m currently playing ac: Valhalla. I own war of the Vikings the video game. I’m pretty steeped in the lore.

I'm just sort of baffled that the campaign doesn’t exist as an rpg supplement
 
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Raleel said:
mom just sort of baffled that the campaign doesn’t exist as an rpg supplement
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I think raniE hit it on the head:
raniE said:
I don't think you're going to find too many adventures where you raiding England and/or Ireland are more than possibly background. Sacking fairly defenseless villages isn't usually thought of as great adventure fodder.
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I know when I had a short-lived Viking campaign using RQ3 Vikings back in the day, my players got their fill of raiding in just one adventure. It just didn't seem heroic to them, unless they were up against a well-armed enemy. Now maybe your players feel differently, or perhaps you have more in mind clashes between the elements of the Great Army and Anglo-Saxon troops. But in a way I'm not that surprised that there is not an existing published campaign about the Viking invasions of England.
 
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Lofgeornost said:
I think raniE hit it on the head:


I know when I read a short-lived Viking campaign using RQ3 Vikings back in the day, my players got their fill of raiding in just one adventure. It just didn't seem heroic to them, unless they were up against a well-armed enemy. Now maybe your players feel differently, or perhaps you have more in mind clashes between the elements of the Great Army and Anglo-Saxon troops. But in a way I'm not that surprised that there is not an existing published campaign about the Viking invasions of England.
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i see you point, though I think there are many other adventures and supplements out there that I think are plenty questionable. Still, it may not be fun at all! I can't even think of anything that uses it as a backdrop.
 
Raleel said:
i see you point, though I think there are many other adventures and supplements out there that I think are plenty questionable. Still, it may not be fun at all! I can't even think of anything that uses it as a backdrop.
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Well, the Viking adventures I listed above do use raiding as parts of campaigns and a backdrop, but as they're only available in Swedish not much use to you. One big thing to remember is that the Scandinavians who went to other places didn't just go as raiders. They were just as happy to trade or settle or serve local lords if the pay was good (hence Normandy and the Varangian guard). A group of Scandinavians with a longship is probably as close to a more amoral old school D&D adventuring group as you're going to get in the real world.
 
There is a blog post from 2019 that sketches the beginning of a Mongoose RQ campaign built around the raid on Lindisfarne in 793. That's earlier than the Great Army, of course, but still in the general area. The title is Legacy of Lindisfarne
 
The Butcher said:
Your path is as clear as the Bifrost:
- read up on history
- stat it up on Mythras
- run it
- share your notes with us
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Pete already did that for Legend! sort of ;)
 
Raleel said:
I have that. Not the adventure. Looking for Adventures. Specifically I’m trying to find an adventure or series of adventures for running the great heathen army or similar. Should be raiding England or Ireland.
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I've not heard of any series of published adventures like that. The only thing that comes to mind that's slightly in the ballpark are the Ravenar Sagas for Cthulhu Dark Ages. But there's not any raiding in England or Ireland (the adventures skirt north of Great Britain), and a lot of Mythos horror involved.
 
I wonder if you might have more luck if you refocused on wargaming scenarios? I did a few searches on Wargame Vault (one of DTRPG's subsidiaries) and didn't find anything obviously relevant, but there might be other places you could at least find a campaign outline to hang scenarios off of.
 
Simon Hogwood said:
I wonder if you might have more luck if you refocused on wargaming scenarios? I did a few searches on Wargame Vault (one of DTRPG's subsidiaries) and didn't find anything obviously relevant, but there might be other places you could at least find a campaign outline to hang scenarios off of.
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honestly, it does seem like not a bad idea. the construct is there.
 
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