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Announcements » OGL 1.1 and Hyperborea » 1/12/2023 10:56 am

There’s a fairly clear video from Matt Finch on this. Individual words are not a major issue in his view but things like spell lists are. I’ve not compared strings of text in Hyperborea with wotc owned games so can’t tell what the problems would be if any. The bigger issues are likely to be A how many copes of 3rd Ed are on pallets and B can the ogl license page be cut out if needed.

Adventures » The Broken Nail Campaign, free module » 6/03/2022 10:29 am

I wrote up my last campaign notes into a free module (see google drive link). Its formatted in word with my limited skills but is hopefully understandable.

I'd welcome any feedback on it. Some parts have been play tested other not, as is the case with sandbox adventures.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HJKyMfk9tKxwtWbcTFeut0HZRpzXI3T8/view?usp=sharing

I will post it on the ODD74 boards and might upload it elsewhere. Are there any rules on distributing free material for Northwinds game?

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 3/29/2022 7:13 pm



They enter the Black Obelisk!

There was variable or zero gravity? They deduced the way around the deathness trap by walking up the walls, trigged the grey ooze trap by poking it.  They killed a shadow using radium arrows. They found an infinite spool of pipe, some wands of light, a lightning lance and three Oon in sarcophagus that they awakened (the other 9 died in the waking process). They explored the map room and realised this is a beacon or portal to other worlds. But the items they seek, the orbs where missing. Apparently taken by Ghouls. Next week, can they escape the island? and make it across the island to the beacon point?
 

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 3/22/2022 6:32 pm

Session 2

The party was recruited by Teltut the Antiques dealer for another task, bring back the Iridium and Basonite Orbs. He wants these for this backers, the secret societies of Port Zangeros. The orbs have magical properties -  not yet disclosed - and are able to open portals to other worlds - also not yet disclosed.

Having heard rumours of a great Obelisk the party decided to search there. They hired a privateer ship for drop off and pick up captained by Marbin, a tattooed naturist with a trident. They haggled him down to 700gp for the trip, half of which was covered by Teltut.

Enroute with the wind behind them they rolled a random encounter, a reaver ship crewed by dagonites with slave rowers. The fight ended up being way more one sided that i expected. Mabin's ship had a balistae the reavers did not. Engleburk the necromancer had Phikissipe shoot down an albatross that he then raised as carrion to use as a spy drone. He then used ventriloquism to have the opposing captain shout drop anchor at an opportune moment before ramming, causing the reavers to about turn. The party / Mabin's ship sunk the reaver's in two ballistae shots. It took about an hour to go down, so they boarded killed the captain, freed 14 slaves and salvaged some loot, of which they got a 1000gp cut.

They landed at the south end of the Root Nails larger island near the obelisk. Forged crappy flint spears for the freed slaves, gave them half their rations and a barrel of oil adn send them north to set up the come collect us beacon. They then murdered a group of fishmen worshipping the obelisk. The necromancer used his undead albatross to steal some of their weapons whilst they were worshiping then got surprise so this fight was also fairly one sided.

They then camped for the night, end of session.

I doubt the slaves will make it to the north end of the island. Will have to think of how to handle this. They are poorly equipped and there is quite a bit of danger on the island. Might just

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 3/08/2022 6:34 pm

OK, that first dungeon I posted above more than a month ago. Got 3 players and ran it
> Engelberk  the Necromancer
> Rotam the Cataphract
> Fiscaby the Fighter

Were all hired by Teltut the antiques fence of Bitter Shore to seek a lost ship and its captains emerald signet ring. He sent with them his Android / Metal Golem Faber, who carried a 6 hour fuelled lantern and some medical supplies. ( a nanny for these newb players).

I wont recount the whole adventure, we played for 3 hours and they got through the 12 room dungeon but some elements they did not explore at all. They were not old school smart players choosing to see what happens if i do touch X a lot. There is a bull statue standing guard in one of the early rooms. It is awakened by using the magical knockers to open doors. use 3 and the bull awakens and attacks. They used two and worked out the knockers were lighting rings around the bull, so decided to knock the third to see what would happen. Once they realised the bull would attack Engleberk and Fiscaby decided to stand in front of a door and dodge the bull then try and slam the door behind it. Not a bad plan. I made them roll avoidance saves when it charged. They both failed and got slammed for D8 damage which Ko'd both. they were knocked 20ft down a corridor and straight into a false wall. Rotam managed to send the stone bull back to sleep by closing one of the doors and knocking its knocker again. Both KO'd characters were restored to a couple of hit points and the adventure continued but man, each trap they encounters they considered springing to see what would happen. Like the final encounter with a sleeping siren. I though, given its a 1st level adventure, making the siren asleep they could sneak up on it and kill it quick. Instead they started looting the corpses on the other side of the cave for 20mins. So i rolled "wandering monsters" and it awoke. Fortunately they had waxed their ears already and out numbered it, so the fight was fairly easy.

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 1/18/2022 7:22 pm

So i did not really decide when I drew it, but I'm thinking 6 mile hexes and its the line of islands tracking south across outer Dagon Bay. It doesn't map perfectly on but my players wont notice if i ever give them the whole Hyperborea map.

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 1/16/2022 7:13 pm




Might use this map, or I might use the hex map i posted in the mapping thread. You can tell I like maps, but that im not good at layouts

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 1/16/2022 7:04 pm

After a hiatus, ive managed to claw together two players. Not much of a party, one Fighter, one Necromancer. I've thrown this together as a first dungeon.


Maps » the hex map for the hex crawl » 1/26/2020 5:58 pm

some sage advice in this thread, thanks

Maps » the hex map for the hex crawl » 1/23/2020 7:03 pm

I missed that river connection to the lake, yes i should add that.

Yeah its note quite finished and there are still a few aesthetic decisions to make.

I need to add;
>River link to lake
> a scale bar
> some sort of key
> some sort of north arrow or navigational orientation arrow
> i need to think about what names to add. THe problem with adding name text is that it obscures the hex numbers. Second the world map i am working from has the rivers, the red desert, death valley (which is really almost off map) and Larchmere named. But someone unfamiliar with the setting may ask for the names of the other towns/cities, for the steppes or the forests. Do i create names? Not decided yet.
> might change the colouration or create a better boarder. It doesn't really look like brown paper, which was originally what i was heading for, but then i got distracted with reds and purples and kind of liked it. Maybe just plain white looks better? more old school.

I will probably key most of the hexes first before a further map update as i might change some of the points of interest once i have written the hex descriptions and drawn up encounter tables.

I also need to be more specific on my intentions. I tend to prep stuff mostly for myself/my players but, part of me has an eye on others. I dont expect to publish any of my work but will happily chuck it to fanzines or free release on the internet so i sort of design with wider accessibility in mind. However at some point one has to head one way or tother. When i did underborea stuff it was a blank canvas mentioned in one or two sentences/rumours in the 1e books. However here using the world map i find it tougher to break from 'canon' and start adding my own names and setting material. This is sort of silly since the whole purpose of the game and RPGs in general is to do just that, take the canvas given by Ghul and write on it. But despite this part of me thinks what if someone else uses my map + key in their game, should i leave it

Maps » the hex map for the hex crawl » 1/20/2020 7:48 pm

ok, so this might be done. but i might also revise it some more, but probably not until i've keyed the hexes. I might decide to rearrange the sites of interest if they are too close or too far apart geographically. 

I went 12 rather than 6 mile hexes in the end, which is a little large but will work i think.

if you want a jpeg of the map; https://i.postimg.cc/2yq7CBQR/larchmere-hex-crawl3.jpg

i had to compress it a little to get it to upload, but if you go to the image upload website and view it, there is an option to download the original uploaded image, which is good enough quality.

 

Maps » the hex map for the hex crawl » 1/19/2020 9:54 am

i'll upload a better version once i've done some revisions. The map still needs a fair bit of work.

Adventures » Snake People (spoilers) » 1/16/2020 6:51 pm

What adventures are there out there (old school) that use Snake People?

Reading Kull at the moment, there must be a lot of adventures that have tapped this. But then perhaps not?

edit: chainsaw adjusted title

Maps » the hex map for the hex crawl » 1/16/2020 6:29 pm

1st draft

needs;

>a texture for steppe/scrub

>probably a fort, possibly a better temple icon/sketch

>some place names

>a key and boarder

done in gimp, using pen sketches as paint brushes over a PDF downloaded hex numbered set from an autogenerator

Campaign » Hyperborean Hex crawl » 1/15/2020 4:27 pm

crawling out of lerker land for a post.

Not GMed in several years but the imagaination itch is making me restless. I might not get a group together for this but i want to design it anway. 

So i'm going to try and write a hex crawl and at least map it up nice for somewhere in hyperborea.

so where to map?

My criteria is;

> im going for 6mile hexes as these map approx 4 to the 24 world map hexes (i doubt mine will fit perfectly)
6 miles is a good density for exploration in my view, any thoughts?

> I want a good variety of biomes / environments. I really want some desert, some good Howardian desert. I'd quite like some sea with small islands, and some stepps or grassland. Mountains and woods are of less importance.

> no large cities, or only 1. Ideally a hex crawl should be about exploring the wild, therefore players need motivation not to pursue city adventures and the rural area needs to not have too many settlements.

> variety of danger levels, ideally starting area should be fairly tame and some areas should be death zones.

> i recon total size 50 hexes - 300miles. That should cover a short-medium campaign if this thing gets run.

The options; 

1 Xambaala - Yithorium area, pros; lots of desert, starting area populous, therefore safe(r), mountains create good barrier to south. The bad - perhaps too populous with major city just off map, no reason for players not to head off game area to west.
2. Esquimux bay to north Zakath Desert; pros, could extend south to desert area, has colder area to north for good climate gradient, ice could be used to prevent players just sailing off, cons; no mountains at all. no clear map boarders
3.Larchmere Yys - Dagon Bay - Lizard Coast - Red Desert. Pros- Larchmere Yys would be about right as a starting location with the lizard coast and black forest being good harder areas. Provides lots of biomes in tight area. Also hemmed on 4 sides by mountains and sea. Cons; none?
4. Wold Phellora to Cap Calencia region. Pros; Diamond

General Discussion » AFS 7 - Seeking submissions » 10/14/2015 3:06 am

I'll see what I can do, like creating deities.

General Discussion » AFS 7 - Seeking submissions » 10/12/2015 1:02 pm

you get my two submissions Scaly? I might be able to throw together something else if its needed, perhaps a table or npc or something

Play-by-Post » Game Lab 2: Committee game opening discussion / ideas » 8/06/2015 2:29 pm



here is the map.                    EDIT! 1 square = 10miles

It looks like its just you Scaly for the time being, so this will be less committee game and more solo vs the umpire, though I will message other users of teh site and get them to make Ai decisions for the various other factions perhaps.

I will post a new thread with the opening game description and the first month briefing asap

the map covers an area spanned by around 2-3 hexes on your hyperborean game map. I do have an area slightly larger than shown mapped, so the game can expand if the campaign pushes outwards.

Play-by-Post » Game Lab 2: Committee game opening discussion / ideas » 8/02/2015 4:27 pm

Unity on the Fields of Vol The fields of Vol are a described as a grassy plain abundant with beast and game ruled by disparate horse tribes of Kimmeri-Kelts. If these tribes were but to unite they would pose a great threat to the peoples and powers around them.

Each player represents the warlord of a small Kimmeri-Kelt nomad tribe near the mouth of the River Vol at the start of the year 590 (Whale). I need each of you to decide the following;

a name for your warlord
a character class and level for your warlord (level = 3+d3)
up to 3 character traits and 2 personal objectives for your warlord (do not post these in the thread, pm them to me, we can discuss them).

a name for your tribe
the primary religion for your tribe
the size of your tribe (= 250+d6x10)
one thing that identifies your tribe as unique or interesting
one thing your tribe is particularly good at.


The flow and play of the game;

Turns will be 1 month long, though multiple decisions and things may happen in one month, so this will be sort of abstract but gives a general frame work.

Players currently active are assumed to have their tribe in an area (will produce a map) around the mouth of the River Vol on the fields of Vol.

Here a formal alliance has been agreed by (starting two players, more can join or leave).

The tribes in the alliance will be given descriptions of opportunities or threats and will have to discuss them present responses. They will have the resources of their tribes to consider, the needs of the forth coming winter, their personal goals, and the fragility of the alliance.

Each month players will have to decide make a few generic decisions; the broad activities of their tribe, where it is going to relocate too, what it is willing to trade or stockpile etc. Then they may undertake specific tasks such as expeditions, monster hunts, rituals, and many more in response to scenarios as they arise. Think of this game a

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