What are peoples thoughts on the Kobold Press Midgard setting? I've been reading the worldbook and Southlands, and I like the Southlands suff quite a bit but not sold on the fey stuff. Any other areas of it worth exploring?
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What are peoples thoughts on the Kobold Press Midgard setting?
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Shut up schizo.
fpbp
Take your shill paranoia leave. I wish game devs did come here and shill their products. At least there'd be interesting threads instead of yet another AI, OSR, D&D, WH4k, CYOA general.
It's hard to care about anyone else's kitchen sink fantasy setting. I've spent literally decades with Forgotten Realms, so why bother starting over with more of the same? Either I'm going to run my own setting because I have a campaign that the setting is tailor built to or, if I'm just gonna run generic fantasy, then I might as well use the generic fantasies from the TSR days that I already know inside and out.
Is this why KP seem to be removing/reducing references to Midgard more and more in their newer stuff?
>It's hard to care about anyone else's kitchen sink fantasy setting
Nail on the head. Unless there's something that stands particularly out (and can even just be overall quality for the matter) i don't se a reason on why i should bother with whatever off-brand d&d-flavored fantasyland coolaid you're trying to sell me, often because there's nothing exciting about, it's the same regurgitated crap, most of the time even worse than anything else that existed until that point.
Do you want "go fricking crazy kid" kitchen sink? Mystara existed since forever.
Do you want the "tries to make sense internally" kitchen sink? Greyhawk and greybox Forgotten Realms.
Do you want the stoner trip kitchen sink? Elder Scrolls or Moorkwiener-verse it is.
"Anything goes" fantasy themepark? Modern FR
Etc...
Greyhawk makes no fricking sense either geographically or politically or "magical ecology"ly.
"Tries to" doesn't mean that makes a good job necessarily, but greyhawk has defined places with defined interactions, defined cultures, a defined cosmology that doesn't stray from its rails (much) etc...
Sure. None of them do, ultimately. You can pick any fantasy setting to pieces. Which is true of every one you have ever read, and all of the ones that you haven't, too. So if that's your barometer for which you'll use, then save yourself the trouble and use the one you already know. That's the point.
It's not that there isn't value in yet-another campaign setting, sometimes. Maybe the setting is tailored to a specific campaign, like Ravenloft. Maybe it's tailored to a specific type of game you want to play, like Earthdawn. Maybe it's tailored to a specific backstory you want to explore, like Exalted. Or a specific rules set you like, like Pendragon.
But if it's "here's a kitchen sink fantasy for use in your game that already has half a dozen worlds of kitchen sink fantasy?" Then who frickin cares.
What is you don't have a pre-existing relationship with D&D settings. You're coming in from neutral. Why pick specifically D&D official settings over anything else?
No reason at all. Pick Midgard. Pick any one of a thousand others. Pick the one you like the cover of the book or the map for. Or the one your friends are playing. Or that you have an adventure for. The D&D ones are the same as all the other ones.
Grogs like us use those because we've had them for thirty or forty years so it's convenient. If they don't give you that advantage then there's no particular reason to pick D&D over anything else.
I'm just making examples but the collective imagination is already saturated as-is of the "d&d reminiscent kitchen sink", think about fantasy videogames, anime/cartoons, tongue-in-cheek 90s fantasy shows (Hercules, Xena, etc..), literature, etc...
Then pick one you have an existing attachment to. You like WoW? Run the WoW RPG. The Witcher? There's a couple for that. Etc.
Pre published is convenient, but in current day, one with an RPG that covers the mechanics you want, and a Wiki that covers the setting indepth, is fine.
What most of these settings (non-5e), such as Midgard, Mystara, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, Planescape, Midgard, Zyathé, Ptolus, Eberron, Dark Sun, Golarion, offer, is a fleshed out 'wiki' type world you can use, in book form, with the mechanics to match the setting included.
Forgotten Realms & Ravenloft & Middle Earth & Stormbringer & Conan & Hellboy offer all that with a whole bunch of attached multimedia in the setting.
The Hasbro 5e / MTG 5e settings offer neither.
Most other settings, the question is whether there is a good TTRPG suited to run it, and whether it has decent published mechanical support for the stuff in the setting. Like, there IS a Warcraft RPG if you like Warcraft. But is it Warcrafty enough for you? I wasn't super impressed with the classes.
If I were determined to run 5e (quite the opposite, but let's say I was, for sake of argument) - I would mostly consider Zyathé or Midgard. They're fleshed out, they fit the game mechanics, they provide any missing mechanics.
PF2: Golarion
PF1/3.5: Golarion or any 3e setting or 2e setting.
4e: Points of Light.
Etc.
I've got some Zobeck books somewhere, but I'm much more interested in the real Midgard setting by that Deutsch company. Kobold Press' work never really grabs me and always feels like it's sterilized for corporate space.
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Is shilling really how you want to leave your life? Self-respect is a precious thing, anon. It might seem an easy buck, but is it truly worth it?
>Kobold Press
Who?
Small d&d publisher. They used to publish kobold quarterly magazine. Then gave up after a few years and just focused on setting books and adventures. Wolfgang Bauer's company. IIRC he wrote Out of the Abyss. They outsourced all those early 5e adventures.
I've DMed a 3+ year long campaign using this setting+ a bunch of my own homebrew stuff. We went through most of the northern provinces and kingdoms, such as Dornig and Morgau, as well as the fey stuff in the Shadow Roads.
I really enjoyed the setting. What drew me in were the interesting monsters in the monster manuals that they put out.
I don't necessarily think it's better than any other setting out there. The downside is since other settings are more popular it's harder to find content and discussions on Midgard for inspiration. They have a few campaigns in the setting that are okay. I think one about the subterranean empire of ghouls and another that's more of a series of loosely connected adventures in the Margreve forest, sort of like the Saltmarsh book that Wizards put out a while ago.
I think if you're interested give it a shot.
>I really enjoyed the setting. What drew me in were the interesting monsters in the monster manuals that they put out.
When you thought no one can be lazier than shills, they start using shitGPT to write their reviews
I keep confusing it with Battle for Wesnoth and 20 other generic fantasy settings.
I used to enjoy Midgard, but now they're succumbing to the woke rot, and are refusing to expand their world for fear of racism - that's why they canceled the Oriental Adventures splat they planned to do after Southlands.
Damn I've come in late so didn't know they planned an oriental style splat. That sucks. It seems with their latest KS they are kind of abandoning the setting and just appealing to 5E neutral more than anything else.
It's the worst of all Midgard settings
Midgard has a few interesting concepts, but none of them are central enough to really define the setting.
Kobold Press mentions 'the Void' and 'Void magic' and 'Void creatures' almost every publication, positioning the entire thing as this existence-antithetical force that the world is eternally struggling against. But then it exists alongside Hell and the Abyss and all manner of 'normal' evil outsiders. I think their satarre (pic related) is one of the coolest race designs D&D-related media has ever put out, but they're functionally just generic evil humanoids who want to destroy everything. It's a vacant concept.
Clockwork magic and the associated gearpunk aesthetic drives many parts of Midgard's supernatural flair, but it still exists alongside normal 'do-anything' magic (which naturally outshines it at every turn). To my knowledge, they haven't published anything that even makes it remotely interesting for a player to use themselves (since it's not normal do-anything magic). Same goes for their edgy blood magic stuff, wacky time magic, and the many instances of 'creature warped by simply being in a place with bad vibes for too long'. Too many flavours; none strong enough to keep my attention.
The fey stuff is more unique and cool and far more fleshed-out than many other settings... until you realise that it's a stagnant set of Powerful Guys™. If they die, they respawn. If you want to stop one respawning, that's the focus of the entire campaign. It's essentially just another pantheon to keep track of; nothing particularly special except it's got a theme.
If Kobold Press rebooted the setting as something focused and genre-driven, a bit like how Eberron was deliberately built as pulpy steampunk D&D, then I'd be interested. But, until then, I'm simply not. At least their monster books are useful and have pretty art.
(Also their mechanical stuff beside creatures and items is very often terribly written or balanced, but that's another story.)
>wacky time magic
Which book is that in?
Deep Magic (vol. 16 of the series; also has a chapter in the compiled book), a couple references across the Tome of Beasts books (e.g. Akaasit and Zeitgeist from ToB2), and a few of the Warlock series I think. I don't remember anything particularly dedicated to time/temporal magic; it was just a weird incongruous thing chucked in because apparently the classic six magic schools were too boring. (If it's in the actual Midgard books I admittedly never properly read them except the Heroes Handbook. If that makes makes me a hypocrite, shoot me.)
>If Kobold Press rebooted the setting as something focused and genre-driven, a bit like how Eberron was deliberately built as pulpy steampunk D&D, then I'd be interested. But, until then, I'm simply not. At least their monster books are useful and have pretty art.
Zobek basically is that and has all that specific genre clockpunk slavic flavor, it's just that the greater world around it is a generic kitchen sink.
If you're gonna keep the shill thread up, at least give links to download their stuff
Does anyone have a link to a trove/mega folder of KP Midgard stuff? There is a lot and I sure as hell ain't buying it all.
I have a Midgard bestiary for 13th Age but never looked into the setting itself. I think some of the less straightforward stuff turned me off.