Weird North
A downloadable game
Available in print (digest size) through Lulu.com
> https://tinyurl.com/52tha44k
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WEIRD NORTH is a role-playing game for one referee and a handful of players. Players take control of wandering sellswords and adventurers, exploring a huge and curious world in order to claim great wealth, expand their renown, and achieve personal goals.
What This Is
- An RPG is a conversational game where everyone at the table plays in a shared world of imagination.
- This game centers on questions, creativity, and nuance, all of which form an emergent story.
- Player characters are empowered, but vulnerable. The world is huge, and filled with places to explore.
Who You Are
- The referee is a neutral arbiter of the world, presenting information and circumstances clearly.
- The players take the world at face value, treating it as real, consistent, and full of both risk and reward.
- Together, you trust each other to engage with a shared setting, objectives, and consequences.
Sword & Sorcery
- The universe is decadent, mostly dead, and without vested interest in cosmic good and redemption.
- Any given world is rent apart by ancient machinery, fell magicks, and intervening godlings.
- Humankind bands together to manage a living, but tensions are high and threats are everywhere.
Picaresque Adventure
- You play as and compete with daring scoundrels, out for treasure, power, and reputation.
- Opportunities abound for high-stakes expedition. Your context is dangerous, but you have grit.
- Fair fights are bad odds. You need to negotiate, plot, haggle, ally, and deceive to survive.
Inspiration
- Howard's Cimmeria, where Conan slogged against petty rulers and snakepeople for profit and renown.
- Vance's Dying Earth, where Cugel crossed through portals to far sanctums while his own world rotted.
- Lieber's Lankhmar, where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fleeced nobles with bounties on their own heads.
Thanks goes to Chris McDowall for creating Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland, David Black for The Black Hack 2nd Edition, the Bastionland Discord for remarkable ideas and feedback, the yawning sea of pulp fantasy and science fiction authors of the 19th and 20th centuries for their communal wellspring of weird tales, and my young son who daily pores over Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.
Submitted as part of BastionJam.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $6 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
Each copy of Weird North you buy helps someone else grab a free copy if their budget doesn't enable them to pay the listed price. If you're unable to afford a paid copy of this game, please claim a community copy and enjoy it as yours.
Development log
- Weird North now in PRINT!Jul 15, 2022
- Character Sheets, CC Plain Text Rules, and Final EditsSep 10, 2020
- CleanupAug 14, 2020
Comments
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thank you so much for making community copies available. I’m a disabled pension and can’t afford much besides the basic living expenses so your generosity is greatly appreciated and helps people like me still be able to have a hobby
My pleasure! I hope you enjoy the PDF.
How many non-bulky items can you carry before your HP is reduced to 0? Is it more than 10 or exactly 10?
More than ten. Up to ten is safe, but more than ten or more than two bulky items (even with less than ten full slots), makes you overburdened with 0 HP.
On page 8, it says to consult page 3 for names. Except the names are on page 10.
Good catch! That's a layout error.
On pg 19 there is "Corruption and Fell Sorcery" with "When directed, make a WIL save to avoid indulging chaos, adding your current corruption to the result."
On pg 25 there is "Add saves against corruption to critical damage effects, artifacts, machines, ande nvironmental detail."
Are these different saves? When shall the WIL saves be done?
Hello! Those are the same saves. That is, calling for players to make WIL saves against corruption is an easy way to amplify the danger of monsters or anything sketchy in the game world.
Art is great, setting is amazing. If you like Electric Bastionland/Into The Odd, and are a fan of Robert E Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria, grab this game. Love it!
Thank you for the kind words!
I purchased a print copy off of Lulu and was looking for a PDF. I know the Lulu listing says to download a community copy, but it feels a little odd. You have done some good work here.
Thank you! By all means, you really can just grab a community copy. If you prefer, I can send you a download key.
Downloaded a community copy. Thanks!
Hi man,
This looks very promising.
Can you clarify me something about the example on page 22, 23?
It reads:
This reads like the impact table rolled a result of 3, Walloped. However, on page 20 it says that impact is rolled when:
Thus, I dont understand why impact is being rolled on the combat example, is it because narratively it made sense?
Regards
Bendu had 3 HP remaining, so the result of 3 (highest among 1, 1, and 3 as all are rolled together and take the highest to "gang up" on him) applies to him. 3 HP with 3 damage = 0 HP, so we roll on the impact table given the blow. The "he's safe" aspect refers to him absorbing all incoming damage to his HP, as anything beyond that would go to his STR score, which would trigger a critical damage save. Failing that, he'd be down for the count until rescued.
In short, any time your HP is reduced to exactly 0 from a damaging attack, you roll for the impact.
Hi man thanks for answering.
I did not realized than when ganging up only the highest damage is taken into account. Just noticed it is on page 18.
Makes sense now
This is probably one of the best hack of into the odd I've read.
Is a physical version planned (maybe with a more polished layout) ?
Thank you very much for your kind words!
Yes, a physical print edition is planned but the timing is Soon™. I hope to clean it up, expand it a bit, and have it ready for booklet format at some point.
Now available in print!
https://tinyurl.com/52tha44k
I just noticed a small PDF error. On page 32 on the NPC Personas table there's a small errant rectangle overlapping the first two rows in the right column.
Jacob, thanks for noting that. I’ve spotted a few little bits like that after many passes and I’ll revise the document when I set it up for print.
Been enjoying the heck out of this since downloading it. SO much flavor and inspiration in such a small package. Looking forward to whatever else is in the pipeline.
Thank you! I have many plans for expanding Weird North in 2021+.
I am absolutely loving running this, so I'm just curious, any plans for more Weird North goodness?
Happy to hear it! I am currently working on the first of many adventure modules while I weather the large delays in DTRPG POD progress. Expect more to come in 2021, to be sure!
Fantastic news! I'd love to see some more archetypes and tables...your tables are honestly so evocative.
Edit - Not the delays, the extra content. ;)
More tables are planned, to be sure. I may put together more archetypes at some point. What would you like to see, concept-wise?
Just off the top of my head?
- Some kind of cunning barber surgeon?
- A class that eats parts of beasts and imbues aspects of their nature?
_ A volatile ritualist type, a super high risk/reward archetype, where they can call forth "spells" via rituals but corruption is accrued rather quickly when doing so?
Just bought this and loving it! Great work and most importantly, very usable and with great tools to get playing quickly.
One question I do have though is, could you elaborate on the Doomsayer Prestige? I'm not quite following how this is intended to work.
Thanks!
Thanks for the kind words! Useability was my primary goal. Keep it fast and simple.
The Doomsayer is quite narrative. It's up to the discretion of the table and the context. The intent is to lean into the self-fulfilling prophecy concept and especially when used alongside elaborate plans or dire intimidation.
Perfect, thanks!
Hi. Is it OK to share the link to this product and the cover image in a free newsletter about rpg releases? Our first issue is coming out the first week of November and I'd like to include Weird North. Thanks!
Absolutely! Thank you for including Weird North.
Your work came to my attention with Galaxy Far Away: Star Wars. Its Free Kriegspiel Revival play philosophy just appeals to me immensely. I play OSR games, too, and I love fast, flavorful, stripped-down games like Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland, and 17th Century Minimalist. Loving the Sword & Sorcery adventure genre as much as I do, I was thrilled to find this mashup of Sword & Sorcery with Into the Odd coming from you. I can't wait to experiment with this one. Thank you!
Thanks, Trellis! I do tend to vacillate between somewhere around Into the Odd and somewhere around "roll 2d6 and... that's it" approaches.
Rolled up characters the other night. Some real surprising and jarring things came up. As a solitaire player, the number of options and depth available in this streamlined system is very exciting. The character options offer oddity, depth and grit. (replayability!) Also, there are a number of world building generators in the last section, which lets the player get going and playing within minutes. Some of these are quite exciting. It's a low magic system, but the context and quirks really open up possibilities for playing Dying Earth, Mythos, Artifacts, dangerous magic. Cool stuff!
I absolutely love this, incredibly evocative material, beautifully laid out and intelligently selected public domain art! Fully approve, 20/10 would buy again!