Trudvang Chronicles
What you see above is the Kickstarter edition. The top picture has Jorgi's Bestiary, Player's Handbook, Game Masters Guide and the adventure Wildheart. The lower picture contains Pad of character sheets, the GM screen and the slipcase (Kickstarter exclusive).
In terms of the game system, it is a familiar three books. The covers give you a good idea of the quality of the art throughout the books. It is mostly in sepia with some colour work scattered through the books but it is all good and invocative of the setting.
As for the setting, it is a game world influenced by Norse and Celtic Myth. Here is a picture of the map of the world
The main write up for the world is in the Game Master's Guide. I will now describe the three core books in some detail
Player's Handbook
Chapter 1
Jumps straight into Character creation. It uses a point buy system with three different starting levels (a bit like Savage Worlds). The starting level dictates how many Creation Points the character starts with. These are used to buy character traits (think stats or attributes), skill levels, disciplines and specialities
The Character Traits are Charisma, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Perception, Psyche and Strength. They all start at 0 (which means you neither excel not struggle) and you buy modifiers. The choices +4, +2 and +1. If you take negative modifiers, -1, -2 or -4, you gain points. The modifiers adjust target number when testing again traits. Each Trait gets a page describing the impact of each modifier
Skills are broad strokes so within the Agility skill, you can have disciplines like Horsemanship with specialities such as Riding or Driving Wagon
Page 9 gives the sequence of character generation which is
1 Agree the number of creation points
2. Determine Affiliation (This is race, culture, native language and what religion
3 Do your character traits
4. Choose Archetype
5. Buy Skills, disciplines and specialites
6 Determine secondary traits, age height etc
7 Name character, choose background and personality
8 Equip character in agreement with GM
Chapter finishes off describing the available races and cultures and the finishing up of character generation
Humans can be Stormlanders, Mittlanders, Viranns or Wildfolk
Elves can be Korpikalli or Illmalaini
Dwarves are Buratja or Borjornikkas
There are also mixed races
Half-Trolls - Changelings, Gray Brutes or Ogro (All offspring of human and one of the types of Troll)
Half-Elves - Dyfir or Barkbrule (Offspring of human and Elf)
Dwarf-Trolls -Zvorda
Archtypes are
Bard,
Dimwalker (Priest/Cleric),
Dweller (someone who lives off the land),
Ranger,
Rogue (whilst they will share the same kind of skill set as a D&D rogue, in Trudvang they are outcasts or vagrants
Vitner Weaver (the weavers of magic in Trudvang)
Warriors
One of the secondary traits is Raud which is kinda like fate points in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or bennies in Savage Worlds). You role for a starting amount, modified by Charisma modifier.
Chapter 2
Skills. As I mentioned before, you have the skill, then the discipline and then the specialisation. Comparing it to other systems I'd be inclined to say in Trudvang skills are skill groups, disciplines are skills and specialisations are specialisations. They are organised into skill trees. In the books they are illustrated as trees like this
The skill list looks quite comprehensive. If you want your character to be a spell user you must have the relevant skill, Faith for Dimwalker and Vitner Craft for Weavers of Vitner
Chapter 3
Weavers of Vitner
First you get a description of what Vitner is and that there is light and dark versions of it as well as a blending of the two. There are flows of vitner all over Trudvang. There is also Mistvitner which is hidden magic, There are three types of wizard or enchanter which is based on what type of vitner they weave ie. light, dark or balanced (the mix of the two). To be clear, this is no innate power, they manipulate or weave the magical power coursing throughout the land. If things go wrong the wizard can get a backlash which could involve a roll for Fatal Magic which is then checked on the Table of Fatal Magic Effects where wild things can occur including death if it goes really wrong.
Spells are not learnt in any college, no such institutions exist. Most are self taught through experimentation. Spells are collected together in groups of linked spells called Vitner Tablets. Enchanters number of spells is only limited by the the number of Vitner Tablets they learn
Chapter 4
Dimwalkers
The humans of Trudvang have four main religions
Gerbanis - strong in the Stormlands to the East
Eald Tradition a fading grip on Mittland in the centre
Tenet of Nid - strong in the West and increasing it's presence in Mittland
Haminges - The dark faith, strong amongst the Wildfolk
Dwarven religion is known as Thuuldom and the religion of the Elves is called Toikalokke.
Whilst you can have knowledge of more than one religion, you can only be loyal and draw power from one of them. Dimwalkers have heir abilities grouped together in Holy Tablets which are unique to each religion.. Reading through these, you get the sense that this is quite a gritty setting with Blood Magic for example
Now I move onto the Game Masters Guide and Jorgi's Bestiary. To avoid spoilers I won't go into too much detail
Game Masters Guide
Chapter 1
Introduction
This is a quick run through dice mechanics, the system uses d6, d10 and d20 dice, Character Traits and Skills, Skill and Situations Rolls (d20 + Modifiers). Initiative is a d10 role + modifiers
Chapter 2
Trudvang
14 Pages decribing the lands and faiths of Trudvang There is plenty of flavour in these pages and is enough to get you going. More books will come. In March Riotminds had a successful Kickstarter for Stormlands but when that is going to hit retail i don't know. The core books were funded in Oct 2016 and only got to retail, at least in the UK, in the last couple of months (backers got them last November)
Chapter 3
Campaign Play
Covers movement, travelling and environment modifiers, adventure points (Experience Points). It is short and sweet
Chapter 4
Combat
Yes you are not misreading that, there is no rules for combat in the Player's Handbook. So you have rules for initiative, you can delay actions. You spend combat points (generally equal to your fighting skill rating) per round ie they are refreshed each round. so the choice you have is do you put all the points in attack making it easy to successfully hit or do you hold back points to use for parrying? You can only parry once by the way. There are certain combat actions you can take which will cost different amount of combat points depending on what you do eg Evade Attack, Draw weapon, Feint etc, typical combat stuff really. At the end of the chapter you get a combat example detailing 4 combat rounds
Chapter 5
Damage and Fear
Damage does what it says on the tin and Fear is pretty self explanatory as well, there are scary beasts out there
Chapter 6
Equipment
Pretty much what you would expect, weapons, armour and adventuring gear and food. Also services that people can provide for characters sellswords, errand boy etc. From a technology standpoint, weapon wise nothing beyond crossbows, armour ranges from thick fabric to plate armour
The chapter also covers Extracts which is kind of like herbalism but also includes using ingredients from animals
Chapter 7
Monsters and Beasts
It is a small collection of potential adversaries but also has rules for targets of different sizes, attack modifiers etc. The creatures described and statted are animal, some undead, demonic, fey type creature, Wurms (ie Dragons) etc. You also get some NPC statted at the end as well
And the index closes out the book. Now you could probably start with these two books but Jorgi's Bestiary gives you a lot more choice of beasties, there is only a few in the Game Masters Guide
Jorgi's Bestiary
Chapter 1
Jorgi's Bestiary
A very short chapter detailing creature stats, natural armour, creature actions etc and also has an introduction for Jorgi himself
The format that follows is a chapter for each type of creature with each individual creature getting typically two or three pages in it's description. First you get a write up of the creature by Jorgi, followed by that creatures abilities and then the stats for the creature. each creature gets at least one picture
Chapter 2
Beasts
Giant snakes and spiders but also also beasts unique to Trudvang Night Ulm, Galtir, Thorn Beast amongst others
Chapter 3
Beings of the Mist
All look to be unique to Trudvang, some are definitely undead
Chapter 4
Creatures of nature
Some are instantly recognisable such as fairies and nymph but we also get Logi, Hulders and others
Chapter 5
Dragons-Wurms
7 different types in all and i am not talking red, blue, green, black etc. we get Braskelwurms, Hrimwurms and other evocatively titled Wurms
Chapter 6
Jotuns and Tursirs
Trudvang giants with loads of Body Points, these will not be easy to kill
Chapter 7
Trolls
Includes different types of Troll and also Goblins and Ogres
An index closes out the book. This book takes a different approach to say a Monster Manual. There is a lot less creatures but they are very evocatively presented. The artwork is fabulous. To be fair not just in this book, in all three. 50 creatures in all but I would be likey to use most of them
So there is a quick summary of Trudvang. It is a rich setting, fairly gritty by the Swedish company Riotminds (so much great stuff is coming out of Sweden at the moment). At the moment I believe GI Games has the Game Master Guide and Jorgi's Bestiary. Hopefull the Players Handbook, GM screen and the adventure Wildheart should also be available in retail now.
Oh did I mention it was voted "the most anticipated role playing game of 2017 " by EN World readers
