Vikings!

I am thinking that I will explore an area of my Garnia campaign world with this next campaign that I haven't really touched on too much yet- the Viking settlements based around Kaupangrfjord. I have always loved the vikings, I am partially descended from them so I guess that makes a narcissistic kind of sense. My first long running D&D character Mandark was a Northman from Soderfjord. My initial SCA persona was Bjorn Asgeirssen. My only NWN module was based on the same campaign area of Kaupangrfjord and the isles. My long running alt AOL NWN character was Odinbjorn the berserk. I essentially wrote the Viking campaign sourcebook a year before the TSR version of it came out because I wanted to modify AD&D to fit a more historical/Norse mythological framework, we only ran a few adventures there, kind of a series of linked one-shots, but it got pretty good reviews from most of the participants.

My wife Mona is the only player from those games that I still have any contact with, but she remembers it fondly. At the time she started to write/draw a comic book based on the first adventure we played, she only got a few pages in but it was pretty cool to see my game in another medium. I almost remember the cast of characters. I pre-generated them based on what the players in the game were going to want to play, but at the last minute a couple of them switched. Knut the beardless, a massive berserker under a curse, was played by Bill N. Skuli Silver-tongue the Skald was played by his brother Danny. Mona played Sigrid Lignisdottir a priestess of Freyja and Darryl C. Jr. AKA "Little-Darryl" played her brother whose name I forget, but I remember he was an alcoholic and the party leader. His dad, Darryl C. Sr. or "Big-Darryl" played a grizzled old viking named Ragnar. Jamie W. played Ivar the only experienced woodsman and the only Christian viking in the party. Lance W. played a sorcerous and nasty fellow named Magnus.

I remember that Bill and Danny traded characters for the second installment and stayed that way there after, and that Big Darryl never made it back to any of the later games, I think Lance might have made it back for one more game. Darryl's girlfriend (later wife, then ex-wife) Muriel made it into one game as Kara Grey-cloak, but that was after TSR released the Viking Campaign Sourcebook (HR1) and I significantly revamped the characters and setting to bring them into alignment with actual AD&D rules. I wish I hadn't done that. We played it more before. I did run an entire, brief VCS campaign over one summer in the early nineties though and it was fun.