Saturday, January 21, 2017

Commentary On OSR The Ice Kingdoms Source Book From Mad Martian Games & The Ice Kingdoms Map For Your Old School Games

No I'm not being bribed by Mad Martian Games but they did send me a really nice gift a huge color map of the Ice Kingdoms setting on heavy poster material suitable for actual play at the table. This piece of cartographic awesomeness is massive and works on a grand scale, it covers 24x36 inches and its available right over here. Now let me give you the scale of this map, I'm standing on a chair to get the whole thing in the frame!


The detail is very well done & Mad Martian is making it very difficult for me not to want to use their setting at the table. I believe that this is a part of some diabolical plan on the part of writer/designer  Christopher Barnhart
The Thanelands is very well detailed here and the whole thing resonates with me for a sword & sorcery style adventure setting. Even though the game setting is keyed for either second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or For Gold & Glory a second edition retroclone system. Neither of these options really clicks my switches but not because I don't like second edition AD&D but because I'm in a different place with my sword & sorcery gaming itch. Let me explain, The Ice Kingdoms hits the same sword & sorcery buttons that Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea trips. Congrats to all of the kickstarter backers who have gotten their books. They look from what I've seen fantastic & the setting resonates with a very different feel from other stuff on the market including some of the OSR Viking material. But what I like is the ease of use, there are several different pages of conversion tables that make The Ice Kingdoms very accessible to Ninety percent of the OSR retroclones currently on the market.
This book has all of the tools to take PC's into a home sword & sorcery Thanelands  based game campaign. Several reasons why this works is:

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