April 26th W Day

I am not holding out a lot of hope for W day, since W is not an Old Norse letter. I am going to have to cheat some to get anything here today. I guess I have two choices here, I can either start stealing similar words from Old English, and explain how they fit the Old Norse world view because they are "cousin" cultures, but I think I covered most of those concepts already with the actual Old Norse words; or I can just throw out a few modern English words and explain the ways the Norsemen used those things or concepts. I think I'll go with the latter.

So W is for Weapons, and in my B/X Norse campaign the most common weapons currently are Spears and Axes. Not a single PC was wealthy enough at the start of the game to afford a Sword. I did this deliberately to reflect the higher prices and prestige of the better weapons and armor. Knives aren't exactly uncommon either, but the main weapon in the party is certainly the Spear, which is reflective of Viking Age reality.

W is for Women, and it's a damned good thing women have a decent status among the Norse, because over half of my players are women. In the Norse world women might not be exactly equal to men, but it's as close as it's going to get until roughly modern times, so it makes it a little easier for me to maintain my historical veracity AND not piss off over half the party, try doing that with a game set in, say, Ancient Rome. That being said, my Garnia campaign world being populated by Ancient Celts has roughly the same set of advantages, and my old Steppe Warrior Mongol online gaming guild also has a pretty good standard of treatment for women based on the actual treatment of women in the Mongol empire.

I am actually more worried about tomorrow, because X day is, as near as I can tell, going to be impossible for me to do and maintain any semblance of my Norse theme.