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Vikings Campaign Sourcebook
"From the wrath of the Northmen,
O Lord, deliver us..."
Now you can take your campaign and player characters into the realms of the Northmen. This is no mere fantasy world - this sourcebook is set in the historical world of Viking legend. Included in this sourcebook are new character classes, new magic, new spells, new monsters, new treasures and the necessary background information on the life and times of the Vikings. Numerous floorplans and a full-color map of the Viking world give you a complete role-playing package.
O Lord, deliver us..."
Now you can take your campaign and player characters into the realms of the Northmen. This is no mere fantasy world - this sourcebook is set in the historical world of Viking legend. Included in this sourcebook are new character classes, new magic, new spells, new monsters, new treasures and the necessary background information on the life and times of the Vikings. Numerous floorplans and a full-color map of the Viking world give you a complete role-playing package.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
David Zeb Cook
90 books80 followersDavid "Zeb" Cook is an American game designer best known for his work at TSR, Inc., where he was employed for over fifteen years. Cook grew up on a farm in Iowa where his father worked as a farmer and a college professor. In junior high school, Cook playing wargames such as Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps. "I was primarily a wargamer, but there wasn't any role-playing available then," although in college, he was introduced to the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game through the University of Iowa gaming club. Cook earned his B.A. in English (with a Theater minor) in 1977. He married his high school sweetheart, Helen, with whom he had one son, Ian. Cook became a high school teacher in Milligan, Nebraska, where his students gave him his nickname of "Zeb"; the name derives from his signature, which is dominated by a stroke resembling a 'Z'.
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January 21, 2022From 1991-4, TSR produced seven guides to playing in real historical eras, including system-neutral culture and history (“this is what it was like to be a Viking”) and D&D specific rules (“here is what a wizard can do in Charlemagne’s times”).
Of course, if you were only interested in the first part, you could have picked up any “A Day in the Life of a Roman”-type book (oh boy, I used to take out from the library this one book on the Saxons all the time) or even picked up a longer RPG book, like a GURPS guide to Imperial Rome. (I feel like the GURPS books were generally considered the best sources for historical eras, even if you weren’t playing GURPS.)
So I guess the real draw for this series is the D&D-specific rules. And I guess that promise wasn’t enough of a draw since this series only ran to seven books. (Compare to the DM’s guide books — nine — and the player’s guide books — 15!) Or at least: I only ever bought the first two in physical form.
Overall, the products are fine, but you will hear one big comment from me on most of these historical settings, which are mostly low-magic in order to keep some sense of history: if you want the power-fantasy of D&D, what would make you want to play the low-magic historical version?
Or put another way: what is the core activity for the PC group and how does that set it apart from (or draw it closer together to) core D&D? Like, it is easy to imagine a Viking game, since the idea of “killing things and taking their gold” is pretty core to D&D and a lot of Viking pillaging. But if you’re playing in Imperial Rome, what’s the core activity? Fighting barbarians for the glory of Rome? Fighting gladiators for your own glory (and maybe freedom)? Fighting politicians for control? There’s a lot of promise there, but no focus.
Vikings
* History of the Viking era (9p)
* Characters (19p) — including lots of flavorful rules, like having a gift, being part troll, a berserker, a runecaster, or a Viking skald (a bard)
* Rune magic (10p) — OK, so this is actually pretty much power fantasy, but it’s low-level and again, very flavorful
* Monsters (14p) — information on Norse-ifying the monsters from generic D&D (some of whom, yes, are Norse in origin)
* Equipment (12p)
* Culture (19p) — a year in the life of a Viking lad, social class, religion, etc., where that “etc.” includes layouts of a house or a ship
* Gazetter (7p)
Note: to me, this is the gold standard of a historical fantasy, mixing the historical with the mythological, giving the players a lot of options and a lot of flavor even where those options are limited. (Like: it’s not really in keeping for the PCs to be throwing around fireballs like wizards in standard D&D, so I like the simple drawing of a bunch of Viking warriors facing an NPC witch who is controlling a fire elemental. You can’t do that — sorry — but here’s a different story you could tell.)
Charlemagne’s Paladins
* History (7p)
* Characters (14p)
* Setting (27p!)
* Equipment (5p)
* Tales of Charlemagne (12p) — includes a primer on the major characters and some of their major tales, e.g., how would you gamify Roland being attacked and trying to hold the pass)
* Adventures on the Saxon Frontier (24p) — two adventures (a hunt for a Christmas boar goes wrong, possibly involving foul play from a neighboring and rival count; Saxons attack and a church has to be defended)
Notes: One really smart thing this book does is provide a big knob for historical vs. fantasy play: you can play straight historical (no wizards), legendary (wizard patrons and enemies), or full fantasy (wizards galore). And the setting chapters goes above-and-beyond in discussing the social classes by giving portraits of typical people your players might meet from those classes (and how they might interact during an adventure). I even like the adventures — well, more or less. Still, there is always the question: would you want to play in Charlemagne’s Europe or just transpose some of this to your own cod-medieval Europe?
Celts
* Celtic history (10p)
* Characters (16p) — I dig that there’s discussion of mythic feats
* Magic (10p) — +1 for discussion of magical islands, fortresses, and other locations
* Monsters (14p) — good discussion of skinning monsters as Celtic myths (or in some cases, returning them to the myths they were taken from)
* Equipment (6p)
* Culture (20p) — I’m a sucker for “let’s learn about this world by following an average person for a year” structure
* Gazetteer (11p)
* Enech (2p) — special rules for honor
Notes: On one hand, this feels very reminiscent of the Viking book, mixing history and mythology, and even sharing some of the same style (as in the “year in the life” way to introduce us to culture); on the other hand, as the intro notes, “Celts” is a pretty broad category, and I never quite twigged to what a Celt game would be at its heart.
A Mighty Fortress
* A history from 1500-1650, including lists of kings/queens (15p)
* A daily life description (for all of Europe?! For over a century?!) (18p)
* Rules for characters (19p) — spells are hard/limited, social standing and religion are important
* Military life (15p)
* Four wars (14p) — mostly history of four wars, not a lot about how to use this info
* The New World (1p)
* Folklore and fantasy (7p)
* Adventures (3p)
Note: I do like one of the adventure seeds, which is about trying to get a mill’s worth of grain for a besieged city, but the rest of this isn’t worth much: a lot of the info is Wikipedia-level info on the wars of this era; and I am not quite sure how I would sell to players “would you like to play a low-magic Europe ripped apart by religious and political wars?” Perhaps also of note: there’s a lot of public domain art in these. I know books like this still get made, but to me it really does feel like a pre-internet product. Maybe people bought this for the gunpowder rules?
Glory of Rome
* Intro (2p) — with a note to GMs to decide what sort of campaign to play — legionaries, politicians, travelers, etc.
* History of Rome (12p)
* Characters in Rome (19p) — wizard magic is again limited to keep the flavor
* Magic and Religion (11p) — one thing that is curiously repeating over these different eras is how much legal and judicial authority the religious figures have
* Equipment (5p)
* Armies and Enemies (15p) — including a lot of art featuring different enemy armies, which feels very much like something out of an Osprey book (not a bad thing!).
* The Arena (7p) — charioteering and gladiatorial fights
* Roman Culture (17p)
* Gazetteer (5p)
Note: a lot of purpose-drawn art! It’s a great relief after slogging through A Mighty Fortress But still: who wants to play in Rome but only wants to play D&D but also wants to give up the magic that makes D&D fantasy notable? Still, I do think there’s a space for a D&D city to be really modeled on Rome.
Age of Heroes
* Greek history (18p)
* Characters (24p)
* Greek life (18p)
* Equipment (12p)
* Myths (5p)
* Adventuring in Greece (9p) — a sample adventure of getting to the Olympic Games
* Appendices on pregen characters (3p), glossary (2p), and siege tactics (2p)
Note: Like the Charlemagne book, this offers some discussion of historical vs. fantasy games set in Ancient Greece; and like a lot of the other settings, it boils down to: there’s no magic in history, and even in the legends, magic isn’t usually D&D style. And it occurs to me that maybe I’m approaching these wrong: these are really open-ended toolboxes for people who are interested in the subject (or in D&D’s take on a subject, or for new rules to incorporate in their own games). What I’m missing from these book is a _reason_ someone would want to play this game or the _focus_ that this game would have, but I think the assumption is that you bring those reasons and that focus to the game yourself.
Crusades
* Through crusader eyes (4p)
* Saracens (8p)
* Characters (18p)
* Military orders (6p)
* Outremer (13p) — the Crusader states
* Magic and monsters (15p)
* Tales of the crusaders (16p) — more in-depth history of the Crusades
* Adventure ideas (8p)
Note: a bunch of easily fixed typos in the first few pages make this seem like a rush job (though I’m a little fond of “Scaracens” as a Halloween-style pun on “Saracens”); and of course, this is very Euro- and Christian-centric in its framing. (Which is funny insofar as it makes reference to the Al-Qadim books that clearly exist — and which it also reuses some art from.) That said, I kind of like the focus on the diverse cultures here: like, mercenary characters are probably Byzantine or from the Italian city-states, which is not the specificity we always see when dealing with Europe as a whole (or fantasy lands where everyone speaks Common). And I am also curious about Outremer as a setting: a conquered city where the invaders basically said “what if we use all this spice that we couldn’t get in France?” Also does that smart thing of providing some notes for historical, legendary, and fantasy games, but not really enough. I wonder if there was anyone back in the day — or even today — who is using this material? Or put another way: have there been any historical guides like this for post 2nd edition?
Of course, if you were only interested in the first part, you could have picked up any “A Day in the Life of a Roman”-type book (oh boy, I used to take out from the library this one book on the Saxons all the time) or even picked up a longer RPG book, like a GURPS guide to Imperial Rome. (I feel like the GURPS books were generally considered the best sources for historical eras, even if you weren’t playing GURPS.)
So I guess the real draw for this series is the D&D-specific rules. And I guess that promise wasn’t enough of a draw since this series only ran to seven books. (Compare to the DM’s guide books — nine — and the player’s guide books — 15!) Or at least: I only ever bought the first two in physical form.
Overall, the products are fine, but you will hear one big comment from me on most of these historical settings, which are mostly low-magic in order to keep some sense of history: if you want the power-fantasy of D&D, what would make you want to play the low-magic historical version?
Or put another way: what is the core activity for the PC group and how does that set it apart from (or draw it closer together to) core D&D? Like, it is easy to imagine a Viking game, since the idea of “killing things and taking their gold” is pretty core to D&D and a lot of Viking pillaging. But if you’re playing in Imperial Rome, what’s the core activity? Fighting barbarians for the glory of Rome? Fighting gladiators for your own glory (and maybe freedom)? Fighting politicians for control? There’s a lot of promise there, but no focus.
Vikings
* History of the Viking era (9p)
* Characters (19p) — including lots of flavorful rules, like having a gift, being part troll, a berserker, a runecaster, or a Viking skald (a bard)
* Rune magic (10p) — OK, so this is actually pretty much power fantasy, but it’s low-level and again, very flavorful
* Monsters (14p) — information on Norse-ifying the monsters from generic D&D (some of whom, yes, are Norse in origin)
* Equipment (12p)
* Culture (19p) — a year in the life of a Viking lad, social class, religion, etc., where that “etc.” includes layouts of a house or a ship
* Gazetter (7p)
Note: to me, this is the gold standard of a historical fantasy, mixing the historical with the mythological, giving the players a lot of options and a lot of flavor even where those options are limited. (Like: it’s not really in keeping for the PCs to be throwing around fireballs like wizards in standard D&D, so I like the simple drawing of a bunch of Viking warriors facing an NPC witch who is controlling a fire elemental. You can’t do that — sorry — but here’s a different story you could tell.)
Charlemagne’s Paladins
* History (7p)
* Characters (14p)
* Setting (27p!)
* Equipment (5p)
* Tales of Charlemagne (12p) — includes a primer on the major characters and some of their major tales, e.g., how would you gamify Roland being attacked and trying to hold the pass)
* Adventures on the Saxon Frontier (24p) — two adventures (a hunt for a Christmas boar goes wrong, possibly involving foul play from a neighboring and rival count; Saxons attack and a church has to be defended)
Notes: One really smart thing this book does is provide a big knob for historical vs. fantasy play: you can play straight historical (no wizards), legendary (wizard patrons and enemies), or full fantasy (wizards galore). And the setting chapters goes above-and-beyond in discussing the social classes by giving portraits of typical people your players might meet from those classes (and how they might interact during an adventure). I even like the adventures — well, more or less. Still, there is always the question: would you want to play in Charlemagne’s Europe or just transpose some of this to your own cod-medieval Europe?
Celts
* Celtic history (10p)
* Characters (16p) — I dig that there’s discussion of mythic feats
* Magic (10p) — +1 for discussion of magical islands, fortresses, and other locations
* Monsters (14p) — good discussion of skinning monsters as Celtic myths (or in some cases, returning them to the myths they were taken from)
* Equipment (6p)
* Culture (20p) — I’m a sucker for “let’s learn about this world by following an average person for a year” structure
* Gazetteer (11p)
* Enech (2p) — special rules for honor
Notes: On one hand, this feels very reminiscent of the Viking book, mixing history and mythology, and even sharing some of the same style (as in the “year in the life” way to introduce us to culture); on the other hand, as the intro notes, “Celts” is a pretty broad category, and I never quite twigged to what a Celt game would be at its heart.
A Mighty Fortress
* A history from 1500-1650, including lists of kings/queens (15p)
* A daily life description (for all of Europe?! For over a century?!) (18p)
* Rules for characters (19p) — spells are hard/limited, social standing and religion are important
* Military life (15p)
* Four wars (14p) — mostly history of four wars, not a lot about how to use this info
* The New World (1p)
* Folklore and fantasy (7p)
* Adventures (3p)
Note: I do like one of the adventure seeds, which is about trying to get a mill’s worth of grain for a besieged city, but the rest of this isn’t worth much: a lot of the info is Wikipedia-level info on the wars of this era; and I am not quite sure how I would sell to players “would you like to play a low-magic Europe ripped apart by religious and political wars?” Perhaps also of note: there’s a lot of public domain art in these. I know books like this still get made, but to me it really does feel like a pre-internet product. Maybe people bought this for the gunpowder rules?
Glory of Rome
* Intro (2p) — with a note to GMs to decide what sort of campaign to play — legionaries, politicians, travelers, etc.
* History of Rome (12p)
* Characters in Rome (19p) — wizard magic is again limited to keep the flavor
* Magic and Religion (11p) — one thing that is curiously repeating over these different eras is how much legal and judicial authority the religious figures have
* Equipment (5p)
* Armies and Enemies (15p) — including a lot of art featuring different enemy armies, which feels very much like something out of an Osprey book (not a bad thing!).
* The Arena (7p) — charioteering and gladiatorial fights
* Roman Culture (17p)
* Gazetteer (5p)
Note: a lot of purpose-drawn art! It’s a great relief after slogging through A Mighty Fortress But still: who wants to play in Rome but only wants to play D&D but also wants to give up the magic that makes D&D fantasy notable? Still, I do think there’s a space for a D&D city to be really modeled on Rome.
Age of Heroes
* Greek history (18p)
* Characters (24p)
* Greek life (18p)
* Equipment (12p)
* Myths (5p)
* Adventuring in Greece (9p) — a sample adventure of getting to the Olympic Games
* Appendices on pregen characters (3p), glossary (2p), and siege tactics (2p)
Note: Like the Charlemagne book, this offers some discussion of historical vs. fantasy games set in Ancient Greece; and like a lot of the other settings, it boils down to: there’s no magic in history, and even in the legends, magic isn’t usually D&D style. And it occurs to me that maybe I’m approaching these wrong: these are really open-ended toolboxes for people who are interested in the subject (or in D&D’s take on a subject, or for new rules to incorporate in their own games). What I’m missing from these book is a _reason_ someone would want to play this game or the _focus_ that this game would have, but I think the assumption is that you bring those reasons and that focus to the game yourself.
Crusades
* Through crusader eyes (4p)
* Saracens (8p)
* Characters (18p)
* Military orders (6p)
* Outremer (13p) — the Crusader states
* Magic and monsters (15p)
* Tales of the crusaders (16p) — more in-depth history of the Crusades
* Adventure ideas (8p)
Note: a bunch of easily fixed typos in the first few pages make this seem like a rush job (though I’m a little fond of “Scaracens” as a Halloween-style pun on “Saracens”); and of course, this is very Euro- and Christian-centric in its framing. (Which is funny insofar as it makes reference to the Al-Qadim books that clearly exist — and which it also reuses some art from.) That said, I kind of like the focus on the diverse cultures here: like, mercenary characters are probably Byzantine or from the Italian city-states, which is not the specificity we always see when dealing with Europe as a whole (or fantasy lands where everyone speaks Common). And I am also curious about Outremer as a setting: a conquered city where the invaders basically said “what if we use all this spice that we couldn’t get in France?” Also does that smart thing of providing some notes for historical, legendary, and fantasy games, but not really enough. I wonder if there was anyone back in the day — or even today — who is using this material? Or put another way: have there been any historical guides like this for post 2nd edition?
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