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Outcast Silver Raiders: The Mythic North
Outcast Silver Raiders is a blood-drenched occult medieval roleplaying game in the old school tradition.
Inspired by Scotland circa 1200CE, the Mythic North is an epic setting, a massive low-prep hexcrawl detailing a frigid land of mountains, heather, crumbling castles, and ancient stones.
There are no wizard guilds, no orcs or dwarves. Monsters exist, but only as legends haunting distant reaches. The ascendant Church hunts down any hint of magic, and witches and enchanters practice their forbidden arts only in secret. Lords command, knights ride to battle, and peasants die in the mud.
With 88 detailed encounters, six factions, 30 mapped and keyed locations, 4 multi-level dungeons, and an enormous 48-page mega-dungeon, The Mythic North offers enough intrigue and mystery to run endless exciting campaigns.
Inspired by Scotland circa 1200CE, the Mythic North is an epic setting, a massive low-prep hexcrawl detailing a frigid land of mountains, heather, crumbling castles, and ancient stones.
There are no wizard guilds, no orcs or dwarves. Monsters exist, but only as legends haunting distant reaches. The ascendant Church hunts down any hint of magic, and witches and enchanters practice their forbidden arts only in secret. Lords command, knights ride to battle, and peasants die in the mud.
With 88 detailed encounters, six factions, 30 mapped and keyed locations, 4 multi-level dungeons, and an enormous 48-page mega-dungeon, The Mythic North offers enough intrigue and mystery to run endless exciting campaigns.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2023
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February 7, 2026
The Mythic North is the reason I wanted to try Outcast Silver Raiders and the reason why you too should give it a try. As I said in the review to the Player’s Guide, I am almost completely outside of the Old School Renaissance movement. An insider might have a better insight at the (un)originality of this book, but for me, it is a perfect RPG supplement, one that has redefined what campaign setting and sandbox mean.
I’ll start with the one but, which in no way detracts from the “perfect RPG supplement” label. The Mythic North is only inspired by Scotland circa 1200 AC. On a superficial level, it looks like all you need to get an idea of what the setting is about is to watch “The King”, Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth”, and have a shot of Ardbeg (to be clear, none of these are cited as sources of inspiration). On the other, which it is probably much closer to the truth, is that VanDuym used what most of us, no True Scotsmen (or Scotswomen, or Scots…) know about the country and made it his own, very playable setting. Wall? Check. Lake? Check. Islands? Check. Castles? Check. Painted Men in Kilt giving speeches with Uilleann pipes in the background? Hard pass. This is to say, it is not the almost-historical setting I expected. It is something better than that.
In the years I did not play RPGs, I read a fair amount of CoC adventures. They are fun to read on their own, (mostly) short stories you can have idea how they would play, if you had someone to play with. The Mythic North is another book that can be enjoyed by itself, but reading it and playing it are going to be very different things. While by looking at the map one might be tempted to say this is a mini version of western Scotland (I have not bother to measure the real and fictional areas) there are more places of interest: cities, villages, hamlets…than your players could visit in a long campaign. There are ruins, prisons, and towers too. And dungeons. Two small ones, two large ones. These last two alone, “Lair of the Spider King” and “The Rishae Hive”, would be reason enough for a DnD or DnD adjacent GM to get their hands on this book. And while you are traveling between locations, you might have one of 120 encounters (which in OSR do not have to end in combat). Overall, an extraordinarily rich setting for your players to explore. The best thing? It is entirely theirs. This is perhaps the thing that I found most incredible. The book comes with six suggestions for intro adventures (each one takes a third of a page), and six competing factions, but there is no overarching plot, at the very least not from the start. There is a plethora of ways in which places and people can be connected, but it is very much left up to the players, the dice (there are great random tables around), and the Referee. More than any other RPG book I have read, no two games based on this book will be alike. It is not a supplement with a great setting that nevertheless leaves the GM with the feeling “Now how do I create a story based on this material?” (I believe many Rifts books would fall into this category), nor is a tightly scripted story where the heroes happen to enter the room the moment the ritual is about to be completed (many CoC ones and a remarkable Starfinder campaign). I think I might have found my Grail of settings (at is not even Arthurian!): detailed enough to know that people/places/things can be connected, loose enough that a) might not require too much preparation and b) leave a lot of room to find new things at the table.
I have already praised the art of Kim Diaz Holm in the other two volumes and this one is no different. It might take me a while, but I hope one day to own one of his original pieces. They are phenomenal, balancing minimalism, beauty, horror and ultra violence in a way not many people could. In this volume, we also have Lex Rocket’s…maps. Except they aren’t maps, not the kind you can quickly print a grid over and have your minis run amok. More like sketches you may think a (unhinged) kid could do (nope, they could not) that would give you an idea of what the place looks like. I am a sucker for maps in RPGs (and almost any other kind of book) and these are more evocative that anything else I had seen before.
Worth every penny, I cannot wait to play it.
I’ll start with the one but, which in no way detracts from the “perfect RPG supplement” label. The Mythic North is only inspired by Scotland circa 1200 AC. On a superficial level, it looks like all you need to get an idea of what the setting is about is to watch “The King”, Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth”, and have a shot of Ardbeg (to be clear, none of these are cited as sources of inspiration). On the other, which it is probably much closer to the truth, is that VanDuym used what most of us, no True Scotsmen (or Scotswomen, or Scots…) know about the country and made it his own, very playable setting. Wall? Check. Lake? Check. Islands? Check. Castles? Check. Painted Men in Kilt giving speeches with Uilleann pipes in the background? Hard pass. This is to say, it is not the almost-historical setting I expected. It is something better than that.
In the years I did not play RPGs, I read a fair amount of CoC adventures. They are fun to read on their own, (mostly) short stories you can have idea how they would play, if you had someone to play with. The Mythic North is another book that can be enjoyed by itself, but reading it and playing it are going to be very different things. While by looking at the map one might be tempted to say this is a mini version of western Scotland (I have not bother to measure the real and fictional areas) there are more places of interest: cities, villages, hamlets…than your players could visit in a long campaign. There are ruins, prisons, and towers too. And dungeons. Two small ones, two large ones. These last two alone, “Lair of the Spider King” and “The Rishae Hive”, would be reason enough for a DnD or DnD adjacent GM to get their hands on this book. And while you are traveling between locations, you might have one of 120 encounters (which in OSR do not have to end in combat). Overall, an extraordinarily rich setting for your players to explore. The best thing? It is entirely theirs. This is perhaps the thing that I found most incredible. The book comes with six suggestions for intro adventures (each one takes a third of a page), and six competing factions, but there is no overarching plot, at the very least not from the start. There is a plethora of ways in which places and people can be connected, but it is very much left up to the players, the dice (there are great random tables around), and the Referee. More than any other RPG book I have read, no two games based on this book will be alike. It is not a supplement with a great setting that nevertheless leaves the GM with the feeling “Now how do I create a story based on this material?” (I believe many Rifts books would fall into this category), nor is a tightly scripted story where the heroes happen to enter the room the moment the ritual is about to be completed (many CoC ones and a remarkable Starfinder campaign). I think I might have found my Grail of settings (at is not even Arthurian!): detailed enough to know that people/places/things can be connected, loose enough that a) might not require too much preparation and b) leave a lot of room to find new things at the table.
I have already praised the art of Kim Diaz Holm in the other two volumes and this one is no different. It might take me a while, but I hope one day to own one of his original pieces. They are phenomenal, balancing minimalism, beauty, horror and ultra violence in a way not many people could. In this volume, we also have Lex Rocket’s…maps. Except they aren’t maps, not the kind you can quickly print a grid over and have your minis run amok. More like sketches you may think a (unhinged) kid could do (nope, they could not) that would give you an idea of what the place looks like. I am a sucker for maps in RPGs (and almost any other kind of book) and these are more evocative that anything else I had seen before.
Worth every penny, I cannot wait to play it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review