I grabbed this as part of the 'DriveThruRPG hiking their colour printing rates' rush - mostly driven by the fact that I liked the look of the Southlands book, liked the general vibe of Kobold Press and figured I would give their core setting a look. In all I am coming at this setting line completely backwards - I bought and reviewed Dark Roads & Golden Hells, the planar supplement for this setting a while back. I backed the Southlands kickstarter, and now finally I pick up the setting core book. At a chunky 300 pages, I am quite content with what I got and it still stands up to this haphazard approach of mine.
First impressions is this is a big block setting book, even though just 20% bigger than a 5e hardcover like Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica it feels a lot thicker due to the paper quality. Art throughout is nice, varied but coherent with nice page border design that looks good without being overly busy or intrusive as you read through it. Primarily written as Pathfinder compatible, there is also a section on using it with the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) system. I picked it up with a view to using it at 3.5e or 5e tables and am finding plenty to use in the fluff alone.
So what is all this stuff you get in the box?
14 pages of intro in 'Welcome to Midgard'
18 pages of character building in 'Heroes of Midgard'
34 pages for the first gazetteer section on The Crossroads
22 pages on the Rothenian Plain
30 pages on the Dragon Empire
30 pages on the Seven Cities
30 pages on the Wasted West
22 pages on the Domain of the Princes
16 pages summarising the Northlands
40 pages discussing the Pantheon of Midgard
23 pages on using this book with the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) system
4 pages of regional encounter tables
A half page with references (mostly Kobold Quarterly) to material mentioned
3 pages of an index - not nth-level comprehensive but useful.
Starting with Chapter One: Welcome to Midgard we get a nicely tuned overview, with a spin of 'why is this setting different. I think this is a great way to start - explaining why folk should put down their hard earned coin on this particular fantasy realm. Highlights include Seven Secrets about what make Midgard different - the big opener, front and centre on the first page of the chapter. There is a summary of the setting history, how time works and some festivals, a page on the greater cosmology and the rest is on Ley lines, one of the unique signifiers of the setting. A half dozen feats allow ley lines to be harnessed by players and a table of the spells that ley lines themselves can be set to cast plus a backlash chart for their over-use rounds this out. Ley lines, the power they can confer and the pursuit of control of that power acts as a major conflict driver through the setting. A great tense main-spring to drive adventure.
Moving to the Heroes of Midgard chapter we find the races of Midgard - seven major, seven minor - and some great character building setting lore like the major regional languages and who speaks them. The last third of this section are feats and traits split by the major regions of the setting.
Next we have the first of the seven Gazetteer sections; each starts with the major aspects of that region - the customs, the powers that be, recent history - whatever it is that tells you what you need to know about that region. Each section also has a map spread with lots of useful detail, then the major realms of that region. Each gets a coat of arms and a classic Pathfinder summary box with Symbol, Ruler, Important Personages, Population, Capital, Major Cities, Minor Cities, Great Gods and Trade goods, then a block of content that varies widely between entries.
This first section opens with the Free City of Zobeck, roughly the centre of the setting and generally intended as the start point for parties. We get 14 pages on Zobeck covering districts, a two page map, trade, magical schools, mercenary companies and places of interest. Lots of good detail here to set up for a good start. The rest of this chaper is filled out with the neighbours, their powers and drivers, for the most part confined to a single page each with an illustration for most of them.
The next chapter covers the Rothenian Plain - the great steppe with moveable wagon-cities, centaurs doing a better job of being plains nomads than the Dothraki and windrunner elves with their pilotable kites. There is a variety of peoples across this slavic-inspired region that are both interesting and original while remaining sufficiently aligned with their real world cultural inspiration that more can be easily slotted in. The Slumbering Ursine Dunes could find a home in a corner of the Rothenian Plain if you so wanted, for example.
Next comes the Dragon Empire and the upper reaches of the Southlands. Here we find scalyfolk and others running a Empire with the mighty dragons at the top. The nearby neighbours get a shallow introduction - the Ruby Despotate with their demon ships, the angel-descended of Ishadia and the ancient-when-all-others-were-young Nuria Natal. There is enough here of each to whet the appetite. Finally we find lots of great trade goods, magic items and spells - eight pages worth - at the end of this to give treasures to be found both in the Empire and in the holds and packs of traders throughout the Ruby Sea region
The next chapter covers the Seven Cities - a cluster of warring city states where campaigning season every year provides chance for mercenary companies to march out. There are mechanics to win status as the leader of a company, a nice chance for the party who want more men and arms at their call. Of the cities themselves, I really liked Kammae Straboli - where even possession of an oracle is not the key to world domination one might think.
Next we have the Wasted West - all that remains after the great mage wars. Here we find a shattered waste still crawled across by the remains of Cthuloid horrors and the horrid residents of it. There are a few nations in the region - a Duchy with mage and knight bonded pairs, a Magocracy with its great Bottle Market for potions, and the city at the end of the world, where exploration is the coin of the realm.
The next chapter covers the Domain of the Princes last successor state of the fallen elven empire. Here we find a potted history of the elves, the successor houses still remaining within the Grand Duchy of Dornig, how the players can get their hands on their own Dornitian Barony, how the ley-lines and the elven shadow-roads work and what remains to be found in the ruins of the old Empire.
The chapter covering the Northlands opens with the major cultural drivers and different sense of honour and goodness. I liked elements in this like the universal culture of hospitality - and its variations, such as you will be able to find hospitality at the table in the great halls of Trollheim, but you may not like what the trolls are serving up for the feast. I liked the fiercer, meaner dwarf reivers of the North compared to their stalwart stereotypes in most fiction. The Northlands fizzes with an energy of all-against-all that is a nice step up from the more common 'frozen wasteland' approach seen in many books covering an icy region. Undead legions fighting living glaciers was another thing I liked a lot.
Last of the chapters covers the Pantheon of Midgard, where there is another major aspect of the setting. Here we have the concept of 'masks' - that the known gods may be masks worn by a lesser number of more powerful gods. This element of mystery about the powers and motivations of the gods aims to recapture some of the ineffability of the divine, the sense that such beings cannot fully be understood. I like the concept though I would need to sit and think how to properly deploy it to my tables. Certainly it is a differentiator that makes Midgard something else compared to standard fantasy realm.
The traced outlines of western Europe and surrounds can be seen - the Black, Baltic, Mediterranean and Adriatic seas and their neighbouring land masses - the only notable absence is the British Isles - with cultural cues being broadly where you might expect them. The orignality of the cultures is not what you came here for, it is the tightly coiled energies of conflict-in-waiting that make Midgard interesting. Throughout the book the rulers of realms and their people come across as driven and energetic whether through nature or necessity and there is a strong sense of no peaceful status quo, just todays balance of power. In the opening of the book you are encouraged to adopt time-lapes mechanics such as a month of downtime between adventures to allow action to progress around the players. Further you are encouraged to take the setting as written just as its starting state and then let realms rise and fall as they may. I like this hand-off of the setting, with its promise of meaningful actions and consequences, as opposed to the 'monster of the week' approach where the backdrops remain essentially static.
All in all, there is plenty of good stuff here - both to set up to play in Midgard or to port into your homebrew. I liked the flagging for where it would be convenient for players to do certain things - if domain level play is something it looks like the players want to do then it would be perfectly reasonable for an NPC in game to go 'you want a patch of your own to rule, get yourself to Dornig, impress the Imperiatrix'. If they want to run a mercenary company, the place to be is the Seven Cities. Each of the regions feels like it has its own purpose and own flavour of campaign to support, not just more or less the same thing with different weather in the back-ground. I like this sufficiently different approach to things.
For another perspective on this see reviews on Gnome Stew or Critial Hits.
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