New Campaign Idea

Here is my latest idea for a new D&D or AD&D campaign.

This campaign that Starts in England in 1066. I know what you are thinking here- another military style campaign with a different historical period. That is only half true, my 1066 campaign would be set during the conquest period, but not really be a part of it. Just straight D&D adventures, with dungeons and all the other stuff (within the context of the setting); my thought is that the PCs are NOT members of either the defeated Anglo-Saxon or Norman armies, but rather the type of rogues and scoundrel that follow any military undertaking, opportunists taking advantage of the chaos generated by the multiple invasions of 1066. Maybe your character is a Norwegian that got stranded in England, for whatever reason, or maybe he's a Lithuanian trader with a taste for high risk, high reward opportunities



William the Conqueror's England was not really all that stable, pretty much for the rest of his life. In 1066 England was invaded by two major north/west European powers, major battles were fought in the north and south of England. Additionally, the Scots, Welsh and Irish made major raids into England that year. The Anglo-Saxon nobility had fled to the Scottish court looking for help, Edward the Aetheling was the last surviving real heir to the English throne; his sister Margaret would eventually marry Malcolm Canmore, the Scottish king, thus cementing a weak claim to the English kingdom for the Scots. Edward would go on to join the Byzantine Emperor's elite Varangian guard, like so many other defeated English lords and warriors, which changed the ethnic make up of the Varangians to mostly English from nearly totally Scandinavian within a generation. Anyway, it was a really chaotic period of time to be in England for more than two decades.



Now you are thinking “But there are no monsters in England!”, au contraire mes amis, England has a rich tableaux of mythology, tradition and history to draw upon, from the ancient Celtic Britons to the Romans that conquered them to Arthurian myth and legend surrounding the post-Roman period in Britain and the Nordic type religion of the old Anglo-Saxons, as well as the actually Nordic mythology of the Norsemen themselves who invaded and settled England in the preceding centuries. All kinds of Christian stuff can be thrown in there too, check out some of the stories about English saints.



Add to that flavorful mix of northwestern European myth and legend the fact that this is a D&D campaign world we're designing, and you can throw in pretty much anything from the Monster Manual if you want. Humanoids? My take on this is that they are just men that have been tainted by the chaos and evil of the Norman Conquest period. Petty, tricky men might become Kobolds; brawny, bullying scavengers might be twisted into Gnolls. Dragons are all over the British isles in myth, St. George the Dragonslayer is the Patron Saint of England (although not yet, he has to wait until the 14^th century). Dungeons can be Roman ruins, or ancient Celtic sites, or simply a manifestation of the world reacting to the conquest itself. Then mix in the undead, plenty of reason for the unquiet dead to be poking their restless spirits around Conquest period England.



Plus, all of this stuff falls directly into the middle of my college major, History with an emphasis on the medieval period and my minor, Medieval Studies; so I think I can pull off the atmosphere of this campaign pretty well. Big Darryl always says that I majored in D&D at college and I don't think he's really wrong.



I might ditch some of the more anachronistic stuff, like plate mail, but maybe not, I can see an argument either way on that.

 See- They are wearing plate in this medieval depiction of the battle of Hastings :)

But not in this one :(



Lack of local players may necessitate  going a non-standard route to run this campaign, like PBEM or even Google+, despite my Luddite ways; anyone who is interested in going one of these routes should probably comment here with their preference or email me here. 

Even if you aren't interested in playing,I'd still like to see any commentary that might help me improve the experience for my prospective player, thanks!

Minor edit: I also wanted to mention that no one won the Celtic Halloween contest, because there were no entries. I noticed that as soon as I hit publish.

April 27th X Day

Truth be told, I got nothing here folks. There is no Old Norse letter X, and damned few words to cheat with, so when it was suggested that I go with Xenophilia and Xenophobia as cultural traits among the Norse, how they interacted with various other cultures they came across, I have to say I was really tempted by this easy out, so here goes.

They seemed to have some really xenophiliac tendencies towards both the Byzantines and, at least as trading partners, the Arabs. They also seem to have really had it in for, in a really xenophobic way, the cultures that they most resembled, the Anglo-Saxons, the Irish & Scots, the Franks and other Germanic tribes, and let's not forget the poor Slavs. They also had really super xenophobic tendencies towards their nearest non-Indo-European speaking neighbors, the peoples of the Baltic countries, the Finns and the Lapps, who might as well have been martian sorcerers to the Norsemen. They were also none too fond of the Inuit and whatever other Native American Indians they ran across.

What it comes down to though is that they seem to hate everyone near them, that has shit they can take, or whom they can dominate; regardless of cultural similarity or how foreign, exotic or strange your culture might be. They could literally speak with the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of England, if both parties spoke slowly and used simple words, the languages had not diverged enough to make that big a difference yet, they were still about 30-50% mutually comprehensible, and they still committed atrocities on a grand scale there, against a people that they had a shared cultural heritage with, a shared corpus of oral tradition and mythology. When the Viking Age began the last of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had converted to Christianity perhaps roughly a century earlier.

The Irish and the Scots and the Welsh, who all had similar heroic traditions were treated much the same as the Anglo-Saxons and, while their languages were certainly different enough to be absolutely unintelligible, the cultural similarities were certainly abundant, and they too had only been Christian for, depending on which country, at most a few centuries, and in Scotland's case it was still relatively new, like in England. But the British Isles got stomped, raped, robbed, and eventually settled, their people enslaved to the point where half of the DNA in Iceland is Irish in origin.

The Lapps, and the Finns and a bunch of other Balts ended up on the short end of the raiding and enslaving too, or were just conquered and forced to pay tribute, or were colonized. That happened to the Slavs too, that's where Russia comes from. The Franks got their share too, Normandy isn't just a cool name for a place to invade in WW II, Norsemen took that land by force and then forced the French Kings to legitimize it by making them Dukes.

But if you are far away strong and wealthy, like the Byzantines or the Arabs, the Norsemen loved you. You got to be a trading partner, they might serve as mercenary soldiers for you, the sky is the limit, although the odds were good they'd try their hand to see how tough you were at least once before deciding on whether a subordinate role was OK.

The fact of the matter is they traded with all the same people the hated and raided too. They weren't exactly racist either, although they had a preference for blue-eyed blondes. There was an entire "race" of half-breed Irish-Norsemen called the Gille-Gall, the "Sons of the Foreigners", the Irish hated them, not the Norse, so they rejected Christianity and came over to the Norse Gods of their fathers. In Russia a Half-breed dynasty, the Rurikovich ruled over Kiev, and apparently became Czars of Russia until 1605.

The only place I can think of where their xenophobia really got the better of them was the Greenland colony, they refused to adapt to Inuit methods to survive, and attempted to cling to their own clearly failing ways. That said, it is entirely possible that the Inuit got sick of their shit and just wiped them out. I guess you can only take being referred to as a Skraeling so many times, especially when you figure out what that word means.

April 9th H Day

I am back on the proper schedule again. Unfortunately H is another long day, H being such an important letter in Old Norse. I am going to skip over things that are just direct translations of English words, like Hrafn meaning Raven, and try to stick to unusual words that have an important cultural context or English words that might have a special meaning to the Norsemen.

H is for Hnefatafl and Halatafl are a pair of Norse board games that were very popular until they were supplanted in popularity by Chess. Hnefatafl is called "King's Table" by some, and the object is to block attackers from getting the king, or to get the king if you are the attacking player. Halatafl is also known as "Fox and Geese" and the object is to protect your geese and trap the fox, or to eliminate the geese if you are playing the fox.

H is for Hair, and, believe it or not, hair is really important to Norsemen. What color it is, what length it is, whether or not you are balding. Fair hair is considered better and more attractive in both men and women, which I think sucks because I have dark hair, which is considered a sign of low birth and untrustworthy character, as well as just being ugly. Free men wore their hair to about shoulder length, women as long as waist length. Thralls of both sexes often had their hair cut short to show their unfree status.

H is for Height, burials indicate that the average male Norseman was 5'8" tall and the average female 5'6" tall, which isn't too far from where modern Scandinavians are. Compare that with the average Saxon who was 6" shorter and I guess that's why everyone assumes the Vikings were giants. That said, I know that the nobility of medieval England stood easily 6" taller on average than the peasants, so I am guessing that the Norsemen just got more meat and dairy in their diets, and more food overall, than the peasantry in the countries they invaded. Score one point for quasi-democratic systems there, eh?

H is for Hel, a Goddess, but I am not certain how to classify her. She is one of the monstrous children of Loki and the Giantess Angrboða, but she certainly lacks the destructive feel of the other two. Sure she is the unfeeling ruler of the land of the dead, which has the same name as her conveniently, but there's not really any malice in it, it's more like it's just her job.

H is for Heimdal, a God of the Aesir, guardian of Bifröst, the rainbow bridge to Asgarð. Interesting things about him include the fact that he has nine mothers, who are possibly the daughters of Aegir, and that he has a cool horn called Gjallarhorn, which can be heard across the nine worlds, and that he is also the father of the three races of men, the Thralls, the Karls, and the Jarls. Oh, he can also see and hear things well beyond what any other God can, and he is bright shining white, blindingly so, needs next to no sleep, and will kill Loki at Ragarok.

H is for Hospitality, which the Norsemen took very seriously. Once hospitality had been granted it was inviolate. A guest was protected from his enemies, even if they were your friends, even if it was discovered he had done you wrong.

H is for Huskarl, which is as close to being a full time standing army type soldier as you get in the Norse world. A Huskarl swears an oath to become a King's or a Jarl's man and lives in his service. I guess it's a pretty sweet deal if you can get it, but you are expected to die with your lord if he falls in battle.

H is for Hávámal, the Sayings of the High One, Odin in this case, it is essentially a Norse code of conduct, full of proverbs and wisdom to live by, most of which, if you updated it to modern terms, would be perfectly applicable today.

H is for Heathen, which, like Pagan, means roughly "person who lives in the country", but with a Germanic root instead of a Latin one; it obviously came to mean a non-Christian. In my current D&D game all of the Characters are Heathens. I am using this term so as not to confuse the modern reconstructionist or neo-pagan terms within the context of in game religious discussion.

H is for Heim, which just means "Home", but can mean that as in "abode of", "region of", "Land of" or even "world of", like Vanaheim

H is for Helga, in addition to being a woman's name, it means "to make holy", which I thought was noteworthy enough to mention.

H is for Hersir, an Old Norse word for "Chief", but in a purely political and military sense, rather than anything religious.

H is for Hildisvíni, the name of Freyja's Boar.

H is for Himinbjörg, the name of Heimdal's hall.

H is for Hliðskjálf, the name of Odin's high seat, from which he can see any point in all the nine worlds.

H is for Hnoss, a Goddess, probably of the Vanir, the Daughter of Freyja and Ód. Her claim to fame is that she is so beautiful that all lovely things are called Hnossir after her.

H is for Hlín, a minor Goddess of the Aesir, a servant of Frigg, whom Frigg sends to protect those she wishes to save from danger.

H is for Hodr, the blind brother of Balder whom Loki tricks into killing Balder with a dart made of mistletoe.

H is for Hoenir, a brother of Odin, exchanged as a hostage to the Vanir after the Aesir-Vanir war, he alone of the oldest generation of Gods will survive Ragnarok.

H is for Hof, Old Norse for temple, technically it is a building with a roof used for religious purposes.

H is for Hörgr, an altar, usually made of stone, that is open to the sky.

Celtic, Saxon, Viking & Norman

Since I started my new B/X game I noticed a couple of things about the attitudes towards the various ethnic groups in Britain in the 12th century by the players in the game. So then I just asked my wife and kids what they thought; this is an admittedly unscientific poll, but I have noticed that Celts are pretty much universally favorably received when they get mentioned, only slightly less so when they are differentiated into Welsh, Cornish, Irish or Scottish. I didn't mention Manx or Breton, but I am sure they would have received a favorable reaction too. That makes sense in this house, my wife is 1/4 Welsh and I am half Scottish, so we fairly strongly identify with the Celts here; it probably doesn't hurt that we live in one of relatively few ethnically Irish counties in the US* either. What does surprise me though is the over all positive reaction the Celts in general get, even from people with absolutely no Celtic connection other than the odd CD they like to listen to for relaxation.

The Saxons get mostly favorable reactions too, which is odd to me considering their conquest of Celtic Britain, but there you have it; maybe it's the good press they have in Ivanhoe and Robin Hood. Maybe it's their heroic stand against the Vikings under Alfred the Great. Maybe it's just because we all speak English. I don't know. When they don't get a favorable reaction the never get a negative reaction though and that confuses me some, because I was practically raised on Arthurian legend and Prince Valiant comic strips. When the reaction isn't favorable it's more like "Meh, Saxons, whatever".

Vikings are another bunch that get universal love. I am a little confused by this and a little amused by this. I am confused because EGG took the stereotypical Norse Warrior, the Berserker, and made them a monster in D&D; so they are clearly the "bad guys". They might as well be Orcs in Human suits. Hell, 3e 1/2 Orcs pretty much were just amped up, ugly Viking Berserkers with green skin and fangs. When D&D has to choose between the easy myth of a stereotype and the hard reality of educating people about a culture of the past, it almost always chooses easy myth, but even the easy myth of the stereotypical Viking is grounded in reality and truth, so the Viking Adventurer that is so popular among D&D players, myself included, is actually one of the more blood-thirsty and nasty bunches named here, yet, here they are, universally loved. No one is ever horrified at the possible inclusion of the Vikings.

Then we come to the Normans, and it's the prevailing attitude towards the Normans that made me write this, because I really can't think of a more significant group of people in the High Medieval Period than the Normans. The face of western civilization would be different today without their contribution, but they are pretty much loathed as a people and I am at a loss as to why; is it because of their French culture? Or is it because they were the last people to mount a successful invasion of England? The way they re-invented western European feudalism? Their role in making the First Crusade such a resounding success? The fact that they drove the Moors from Sicily and Southern Italy? Or is it just because they are the bad guys in Ivanhoe and Robin Hood? The weirdest part of this, to me anyway, is that they are the literal direct descendants of the Vikings that everyone loves; so what, you throw a little civilization** at them and they aren't cool anymore?

I don't want to have to go into my rant about how Americans in general don't really know anything about the French, our oldest and best allies, without whom we would not have our independence from Great Britain; or how we adopted the English attitudes towards the French in spite of our close, essentially permanent alliance with them***; but the Normans are stone cold bad-asses that managed to conquer shit everywhere, usually while they were outnumbered and in hostile territory, and hold it pretty well too for the most part**** against all comers, kind of like Mongols. The only reasons I didn't import Normans into my Garnia campaign world were that it was getting a little late period for groups to just disappear from Earth without people really noticing and I was afraid that if I did we'd have to deal with a super bad-ass French speaking aristocracy wherever they landed. That said, some of the old maps would seem to indicate that Frodia had maybe been conquered by Normans at some point

*According to US census data Oswego county in NY state has an ethnic majority of Irish. One of our neighboring counties is also majority Irish and I think two downstate counties were, near NYC. There were also some in eastern Massachusetts as I recall, I don't remember if there were any others in other states.

**Before the Sons of Norway or some other proud Scandinavian group takes offense at that statement, I am aware that the Norse had their own distinct civilization, I was speaking in hyperbolic terms for effect, the "civilizing" influences in question here were Christianity and French culture, the Norsemen in Normandy stopped being Norse and joined Western European (Frankish, as it was called at the time) mainstream culture.

***Way off topic for a D&D blog, but our War of 1812 was caused in part because we in the US tried to be neutral during the Napoleonic Wars and the British refused to respect our neutrality with regards to trading even non-war goods to the French, plus they kept impressing our sailors into their navy. We've had a rocky relationship with a lot of countries over the last couple of centuries because we didn't want to enter into any permanent alliances, but the French have always been pretty favorably inclined to us and us to them. Oddly, we have a pretty similar relationship with the British since about sometime after the US Civil War I'd say.

****The County of Edessa was maybe a "Bridge Too Far" into Turkish territory, but even it lasted over 50 years.