Midgard Setting released

[NickMiddleton]

PDF is now available at DriveThru RPG:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... gn-Setting

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[Saisei]

Got my download link!

Wheeeee!

[Elfie]

Hmm... I'm very interested in this, but my concern is that the cover of the book presents it as Pathfinder material. AGE seems to be mostly a footnote. I'd feel a ton better about buying it if the PDF example actually showed how the material was presented rather than just being a table of contents.

[Saisei]

Well I can answer some questions if you want to throw them my way Elfie.

There's a heap of new Midgard specific backgrounds in it (Kobolds, Minotaurs, Goblins etc.), as well as half a dozen new specialisations. There's also 40 new spells and 3 new "schools" of magic. There's about 20 pages of AGE material all told.

It's billed as Pathfinder, but I mean it is a campaign setting so the guts and the worth of it is in the lore of the world. And there are some absolutely brilliant ideas in there. I'll be lifting parts of it whole hock to create the missing parts of DA (such as Tervinter and whats beyond the Sea of Ash).

I mean if you're perfectly happy with DA and the setting and don't want to transplant your game I don't know how much it would be worth to you. For inspiration and new material and the like it's a gold mine.

[Elfie]

Yeah I definitely want to keep my game as true as possible to Dragon Age (for now), but new schools of magic are great, unless they're terribly un-lore-friendly (teleport and the like). New weapons are also great, again as long as it's not things like guns. I've used a few things from the Midgard Bestiary already. The backgrounds wouldn't be usable, but I'm definitely interested in anything that's translatable into the Dragon Age setting.

You said there's 20 pages of AGE material. Does that mean it's segregated from the Pathfinder material?

[Saisei]

Yeah, there's an AGE appendix at the back. About 6 pages or so are backgrounds (I'm in work now, I can check for definite later).

There's Ink Magic, which is like tattooing magic onto yourself (I'm going to use it to have something like a mage version of Fenris from DA2), there's Clockwork Magic for creating constructs likes golems and dogs and things, and there's Star and Shadow magic which are quite funky from looking at the spells.

If you're going to stay as close as possible to the DA lore I don't know how much it would be worth to you. All the spells are really great but if you're not interested in taking from the Midgard mythology and design I'm not sure how much its worth.

[Elfie]

Hmm that stuff actually sounds pretty cool. When it comes out in print, do you know if I'll be able to find it at my local shop? I like having physical and digital versions of books when possible, so I'd love to flip through it before buying.

[Saisei]

I'm not sure honestly. Are you in the US? I'll ask on the KQ forums for you.

I was going to order the hard back myself but the price to deliver to Ireland was astronomical.

[Elfie]

Yup. I'm in the US. Maryland, specifically.

[kronovan]

I'm not interested in keeping my AGE DA setting, since I already stopped using AGE for it a while ago in favor of another system. I'm actually much more interested in running a campaign soley in the Midgard setting. I'm wondering if someone who has it can comment on how in depth the coverage of the 50 kingdoms the publisher advertises is? From what I've read in the description, it sounds like they haven't added the 50+ beasts to the AGE beastiary to bring it in line with the 100+ that are available in the Pathfinder and D&D 4e beastiaries, so am I correct - the additional AGE beasts aren't in this? I saw the comment on 20 pages solely dedcated to AGE and it sounds like very worthwhile material, what I'm wondering is how many pages are dedicated solely to Pathfinder? I'd read that Minotaurs, Gearforged, Kobolds and Humans were playable races, are there any others?

[Disemvowel]

It is a very complete campaign source book, ala Forgotten Realms or Kingdoms of Kalamar. Very detailed info on the various places and groups in Midgard.

Only bitch soo far is they associated Loki with fire...very week one, day one mistake. Even Marvel, as far from the actual mythos as they ran, got his lineage correct in the Avengers.

[Elfie]

For anyone who has it, what other AGE-specific stuff is in there? Do the magical items, weapons, and other gear all have AGE stats? Are there new Talents or just Specializations?

I'm thinking I might be able to get my group to pitch in for the hardcover if I can convince them there's enough stuff in there that they'll all want to take advantage of

[shonuff]

Yeah, I was thinking the same... DA is a little light IMO in the gear dept.

[Vaelorn]

For anyone who has it, what other AGE-specific stuff is in there? Do the magical items, weapons, and other gear all have AGE stats? Are there new Talents or just Specializations?

I'm thinking I might be able to get my group to pitch in for the hardcover if I can convince them there's enough stuff in there that they'll all want to take advantage of

There are 25 Midgard specific backgrounds, 7 specializations, 3 new schools of magic (with the attendant talents) and 40 spells. I think there's a bunch of background specific gear and magic items too, but nothing AGE specific. I got it basically for the AGE material, but there's a lot of interesting background stories, cities (and city maps!) etc that could be lifted quite easily.

[Elfie]

Huh, so the gear and magic items are all statted for Pathfinder only? No AGE equivalents?

[Vaelorn]

Yeah, from what I can see after a quick scan. E.g. there's a table of "pack animals and transport' and stats for a large river barge which are definitely Pathfinder. Magic items likewise... Just FYI the specializations are:

Arcane Adept (Warrior)
Artificer (Mage, Clockwork School)
Harem Assassin (Rogue)
Scrivener (Mage, Glyph School)
Shapeshifting Berserker (Warrior)
Spymaster (Rogue)
Star Mage (Mage, Illumination School)

[shonuff]

Ugh then. The specializations look neat, but $50 is a little too pricey for me for a handful of specializations and backgrounds. The setting could be fun, but I'm more interested in Thedas to gamble on things that could be useful.

[kronovan]

Yeah, not having the AGE specs for gear and arcane items kills my enthusiasm for running the setting with AGE. I own and are as equally adept at GM'ing True20 though, so I'm wondering about the possibility of running this setting with it. When I checked out the Midgard Campaign setting preview at dtrpg, the table of contents didn't list any classes.

Is it implied with the setting ,that GMs wanting to run it with Pathfinder would just use the classes from that system?

[cjovalle]

Elfie and Saisei, I mentioned this on the KQ thread, but I believe it will be available at gaming stores. My local (Austin) store is getting copies, and I hear the ISBN is 978-1-936781-08-9.

kronovan, yeah, it assumes use of Pathfinder classes, although they're not generally statted out.

[shonuff]

Elfie and Saisei, I mentioned this on the KQ thread, but I believe it will be available at gaming stores. My local (Austin) store is getting copies, and I hear the ISBN is 978-1-936781-08-9.

kronovan, yeah, it assumes use of Pathfinder classes, although they're not generally statted out.

That's good to know. I wish it were a little more AGE friendly to justify the cost at a FLGS though -- but if it an online store has it for cheap enough, I'd consider picking it up.

[kronovan]

kronovan, yeah, it assumes use of Pathfinder classes, although they're not generally statted out.

Great stuff, it should definitely be doable with True20 then. It just means adapting the races, adjusting gear damage and checking Feats to ensue they align properly - fairly simple and well documented in the True20 core rules.
If KQ releases an errata with the AGE specs for gear and arcane items, I'll switch back to AGE.

[Elfie]

I checked out the hardcover at my local game store last night and it's a fantastic book... if you want to play Pathfinder. If you want it for AGE, it's definitely not worth the price for the physical copy, and probably not worth the cost of the PDF either. If there were a separate PDF that just contained the AGE appendix for like $5, I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat. But as part of the larger whole, the AGE material just felt like something that was slapped on at the end. It's really a shame, too. I think it could have been amazing if the entire book was presented as both AGE and Pathfinder... every chart had stats for both systems, every enemy or item or encounter had both sets of stats. The only reason I can think of that they didn't do that is that they didn't get enough patrons who were interested in the AGE material to actually spend the effort required to flesh it out, but they had already promised that the book would be AGE-compatible, so they felt obligated to at least include something.

Bummer, because I had really high hopes for this when it was announced, but hey, DA set 3 is out next month and GR is doing their own AGE-based setting next summer (I think?), so there should be plenty to keep us busy.

[Saisei]

Speaking as one of the AGE contributors I can say that yep, there were only a few of us. Again it didn't bother me at the time because as far as I knew it was always going to be an appendix.

I did completely fall in love with the setting itself so the AGE thing was an added bonus as I would have gotten the book anyway lol

[Elfie]

Personal email I got from KQ on 7/27/2011 after emailing them to compliment the AGE material that had been published in the magazine so far included the sentence, "Right now, we've got the Midgard patron project going that will be statted out for both AGE and Pathfinder." Certainly not definitive, but it didn't seem to me to imply anything other than it being fully statted for both systems. Like I said, regardless of what the original plan was, it's too bad it didn't turn out that way.

I'll still hold out hope for a separate PDF release for the AGE-only material.

[Pytorb]

Personally I've really enjoyed what I've read of it so far and having all the AGE stuff as an appendix hasn't dampened my interest or enjoyment of the setting. Some of the new Backgrounds and Specialities are really good and I think could transfer well into Ferelden. Others, like the Dragonkin and Gearforged obviously couldn't.

Having read the AGE stuff I think there is an opportunity for someone, or a group of someones, who is familiar with both AGE and Pathfinder to go through and write some more spells for other schools of magic such as Demonology, Illusion and Necromancy (both Black and White). A Spirit Pact School and Speciality written for Avvar magic could probably work well in Midgard as well.