Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok

Right then give me a mo to figure out this sign up thing and i'll put those up. In the mean time Island spirit

>They're sailing
>Had a fight with a sea monster not to long back, which unfortunately destroyed some of their stores.
>don't have the money to trade for more food
>Are in the middle of viking territory so they can't just go burn a village down and take it.
>A jarl they've had disagreements with in the past sends out notice of a festival he's having for the annual sacrifice to the vadr (i'm probably spelling this wrong. Point is, island spirit.) of his island.
>Pc's get the great idea to steal food from his banquet.
>Of to the Island they go, dock in a little cove far from the village at night.
>cue sneaking around snatching hams and barrels of salt cod out of the store houses.
>One of the players decides to tweak the Jarls nose a bit, releases the Polar Bear he had set aside to sacrifice.
>Come the time of the ceremony dude is pretty put out, sacs a few thralls and has his Galdr and Seithkarl petition the Island to punish those who stole what would have been it's proper sacrifice
>Players on their way back to the boat, slowed down by their ill gotten goods.
>The spirit sends Haugbai after them. Basically norse super undead.
>I've was a dick. Stated out the Haugbai with shadow step so they could pretty much pull *appears behind you nothing personal kid*
>Giant undead viking bone monster flicking in and out of existance from the shadows harrasing them as they try to make their way back to the ship
>pops out, does some damage, runs away, slowly wearing them down
>they're running and fighting desperately to get to their ship
>On of the pc's has all of his runes in damage, we talk it over and decide to fluff it as the monster hamstringing him.
>He's yelling leave me, but they refuse
>Haugbai pops out again
>start up the combat round
>Group's Seithkona pulls the runes she needs to bind it
>can't do it's disappearing act anymore

1/2.

Seconding the request for books. I haven't been able to find Fafnir's Treasure anywhere. And I am not sure of Lords of the Ash is out yet.

Uploading the pdf's into a media fire file now. Not sure what the step after that is though. Anyway, back to really bad story time. Never can seem to do these right.

>Fight turns into a knock down drag out brawl
>They're going hammer and tongs with it
>Rather than physical the Haugbai does spiritual damage, which is a real bitch to deal with
>The parties Berserker takes full lethal damage, down he goes, but they drive of the Haugbai
>Can't actually kill it, just damage it enough that it dispates, but given time it will reform and return.
>High tail it to the boat
>Boat's been driven aground by the tide, which has since receded
>Groups Galdr does his priest thing, throws some runes
>Island is right pissed that they ruined it's sacrifice and made it make do with the sacrifice of a thrall and not it's polar bear
>They either find and sacrafice the bear themselves, or it's going to take their blood in compensation
>Hi ho hi ho bear hunting we go
>Find the bear
>Did i mention that polar bears themselves are very difficult encounters?
>guy who had been badly wounded earlier but since recuperaited someone takes full lethal damage, dies.
>They eventualy bring down the bear and the Galdr slits open it's belly and pulls out it's heart to hang from a tree. Sprinkles blood around, does his whodo.
>Take their dead buddy and go back to their boat
>It's floating pretty now and they can leave
>Can't burn them because that would draw attention from the Jarl and his men
>Don't have the correct type of female priestess to do a proper funeral
>Have to build their buddies cairns there on the beach and then leave them
>Check to see if either of them make it into Valhalla (which is influenced in part by funeral circumstances)
>Neither of them do
>The two players have to roll up new characters and didn't even get to advance their player level by getting their dead characters into Valhalla
>The group still doesn't have food because they had to ditch it all while running

>Not sure what the step after that is though
If will allow you to copy a link once you are done

Story wasn't bad IMO, it shows some insight into the type of game this is which is a good thing from such an unknown system.

Lords of ash I do not have. Fafnirs Treasure however, I have right here.

mediafire.com/folder/j2we1q2k3kods/Ragnarok

I think. Lemme know if this doesn't work.

>Sail off tired, hungry, wounded, and dispirited.
>Leave to go find new crew and work.

Did I handle it properly, eh I don't know. There are big consequences for interfering with sacrifices according to the setting material, and it was close enough that i decided it would make for some good drama. Ended up being a bit more on them than I had intended.

Seems to be working, thanks mate.

and if there are big consequences it seems like you handled it well, the game does encourage dying and discourages desecrating the dead.

Thank you very much, user!

These PDFs are really hard to find.

Next up character creation

>Be us
>decide to play this for first time
>Group doesn't know what characters they want to play
>suggest we use the random creation tables in the book
>they figure why not.
>first guy starts pulling runes.
>He's a merchant
>With a long boat
>Who has a powerful enemy
>We talk it over and decide he owes a debt to the Jarl
>Move on to next guy
>He pulls the runes for a weaver
>With some sheep
>we all kind of laugh a bit since somehow neither of them pulled more stereotypical viking stuff
>Last guy, only playing with three this time
>He's a blacksmith.
>Can't remember what level of wealth he got
>We all just kind of sit there for a moment and then I say
>Viking merchant campaign?
>Viking merchant campaign
>We decide they are buisiness partners. The trader keeps the other two in buisiness, but his debt to the Jarl is coming due soon and regular trade isn't going to cut it
>So they pack up in his ship and set sail in search of opportunities for profit in order to get enough money to pay of the debt to the Jarl at the beginning of the next year.

Had a lot of fun with that one. investigating mines that had stopped producing, chasing after rumors of greenhouses on iceland, arms trading down where the Viking King was fighting crusaders of the white god (christ). Did some really hammy stuff there. We just had fun with it.

And what about the story with slave girls?

Sounds like a good party DESU, better than most parties I have had of everyone trying to be the best.

>Fighting crusaders of the white god

Damn that's a cool way of doing it. How does this run on tabletops? My group right now are a bunch of first time players that I've led through a cheerful 5th Ed D&D campaign to get them introduced to it. Do you think it'd be simple to make the transition?

I think the biggest problem with the game is the lack of published adventures. While you don't have to use published material (and a lot of people will tell you that you shouldn't), having published material gives you a sense of scale, especially in such an unfamiliar setting.

My group comprises of a bunch of university students, most of whom study anglo-saxon or norse history and language. Hopefully we'll manage with making our own adventures.

Can you run this game online? my group is an online only group using Fantasy Grounds (we did not like the UI and a bunch of other stuff in roll20 so we decided paying for something robust was better) but because it lacks dice I can't imagine running it.

Ah that's pretty cool, my group mostly know superficial stuff that you can get out of a wiki but haven't even read a wiki so it's an issue to say the least.

It's not a horrible transition, but since the system doesn't revolve around dice it takes a bit to figure it out and get used to it. Once you get past the initial awkward stage though it's great.

Oh jeez, here we go.

>same group different characters different campaign
>Doing some political stuff this time around
>At a banquet, they are there because the king got invited and they want to try and build connections with the king
>Just doing my general descriptions of the long house/ hall that the party is being thrown in.
> Food, drunken vikings, food, drunken fight, food, game of braids-
>What's that user
> never really meant for this to be more than a background detail,
>truth be told i'm not really comfortable with the concept of the game of braids
>it was in the source books so i threw it in as part of the banquet but i figured it'd just get glossed over
>Nope, onto the game of braids we go
>There's a thrall girl with her head sticking out through a hole in the wall
>Her hair is plaited out into braids which are then stretched out and affixed to the wall around her head.
>The party goers take turns tossing axes to sever her braids while making bets
>If you kill her you get laughed at
>and loose the game of course, can't forget that
>she's still dead though
>did i mention these vikings are very drunk?
>now we probably just would have moved on, but I made a mistake
>I described her as having red hair. Wasn't really thinking about it, just decided that the thrall would be Scottish or Irish in the spur of the moment
>I done goofed
>One of my players has a huge hard on for redheads
>HUGE
>Immediately decides that the slave girl will be his waifu, on the spot, and somehow comes to the conclusion that if he wins at braids she will belong to him.
>I don't know how he came up with that, since I never said it, but there you go
>He goes to play braids to try and win her

1/2

I've heard of it run online by replacing the runes with a deck option in the online interface, but I've never done it over the internet myself. I think it could be done, but it would be difficult.

>Now the game of braids is essentially a skill check where one needs to pull a certain number of physical runes to succeed in not killing the girl when you throw the axe
>the number gets higher every few braids that get severed
>She starts with nine braids
>He steps up and grabs a throwing axe
>did i mention he was playing a Galdr (priest) ? And that he had almost no physical runes?
>Seriously, I think he had like three at most. The rest were all spiritual and mental.
>I'm pretty sure he's going to end up splitting her head open
>really don't wanna deal with his whining when it happens, but what can you do
>by some miracle, he manages the first, and the second check by the skin of his teeth.
>finally clues in that this is a bad Idea
>Rather than give up he calls for the master of the house hold
>well he's up at the head of the table sitting with the king
>causes a bit of a scene,Master of the house doesn't want to leave the high table so sends his servant over to deal with the player
>Player demands that the servant release the girl and sell her to him
>servant says he can't do that, and to bugger off your getting in the way of the game
>Asks rest of party to guard girl, shoves past servant and starts walking towards high table
>Oh balls
>So he walks up to the table and tries to get the guys attention
>Guy finally turns away from the king and various other important people to ask what the hell this madman wants
>He demands that the guy sell him the slave girl
>Guy says your bothering me for that? No, piss off I'm not going to sell to you.
>before he can make more of a scene the actual plot, which has been unfolding while they were doing this, hits it's high point

2/?

>An argument further down the table near the doorway between two nobles turns violent, and in a fit of drunken passion one stabs the other.
>realizing what he's done he and his men flee the hall, forcing their way past anyone who tries to stop them, killing one of the guards in the process of their escape.
>King is furious, dude who got stabbed was a supporter of his
>declares a reward for whomever brings the man to justice
>banquet is forgotten and everyone scatters to chase after the guy
>Pc's included of course
>They track him via magic and the eyes of a raven.
>After a long harrowing chase over cliff and through woodland where one of the pc's nearly fell from a ledge and killed himself during a climbing check they catch the guy right as him and his men are trying to get into a boat
>He attempts to bribe them if they will let him escape
>He himself is very wealthy and influential, he can make it worth their while
>They refuse, decide the kings favor or bust, and attack
>Miraculously no deaths, I remember their annoying bitch woman (I can't remember the name of the archetype, but that's what I call them) did a really good job in that fight prioritizing targets and preventing them from getting at everyone else
>Kill his men, tie off his boat so they can come back and loot it later, and then drag him off to the King
>Trial, some Norse legal stuff I had researched at the time but since can't remember and he got off
> Leaves making evil eyes at the party
>latter recuring villian
>Anyway, king says name your reward.
>guess what the Galdr asked for?
>Yep, you guessed it, he demands the random redheaded slave girl.
>bloody favor of the king, and he asks for some kitchen Thrall who pissed off the master enough to get chosen for playing braids.
>well he gets her
>takes her back to their ship, proceeds to set about wooing said bonnie lass

3/?

>I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say there was a lot of drama culminating with them tying to take her back to her family
>But she decides to stay with him of course
>Now this was mostly just a side thing, a foot note really as the rest of the campaign went on, other than this one session that was about it which the Galdr player requested and the other players agreed would be fine to do
>Well after it finishes they get it into their heads that they want their own cute ex-thrall waifus
>feed me some bs about their characters having their eyes opened to the evils of slavery after interacting with the redheaded lass and getting to know her
>Long story short they become viking abolitionists and the rest of the campaign is spent liberating thralls, spiriting thralls off to an Island, and training and arming said thralls because the other vikings are rightly pissed that they are showing up in a long boat burning their shit and stealing their slaves.
>cause a huge curfuffle and ultimately get themselves killed, but they manage to kill the king before they go, as he had come to personally put an end to their nonsense
>so yeah they plunged the vikings into a war of succession between his three sons because they wanted some imaginary slave pussy
>but at least we had the stage set for our next campaign.

That was pretty adorable.

Someone sell me on this?

Not for me, but so I could draw interest from others.

>>did i mention he was playing a Galdr (priest) ? And that he had almost no physical runes?
What does that mean? I thought that everyone draws from a sack of all of the 20+ runes. Care to explain?

Sure I can explain. When you create your character you select your character's runes, which go into that characters rune bag. See depending on your level and how you spend your levels your character has a certain number of runes. These runes are divided into physical mental and spiritual runes. They are almost like your stats, although technically speaking the game claims your only two hard stats are the number of runes you have and how many runes you draw when taking an action or turn, but the runes are kind of like your stats. So he had made a priest that was really smart and magically powerful, but not all that physically strong, which was represented by the runes he had. Because he had fewer physical runes he had fewer chances to draw them when he dug his hand down into his rune bag, so he wasn't as good at tasks that called for physical runes. You can trade at two for one with the other runes, but that still means you won't be able to beat out say a Berserker who has mostly physical runes in a task that calls for them. You can still stand toe to toe with them in combat, but out of combat you'd be good at different skill checks. Hope that makes sense.

I see, so you only get a small amount of Runes to draw from in the beginning. I was wondering how the game plays because it seemed to me like low level characters would barely be able to use their abilities, now it makes sense.