And Then There Were Four erm Five - Beyond The Ice Falls By Joseph D. Salvador From Raven God Games For Swords & Wizardry - Hyperborea rpg Session Report II

 So we're going to pick this right up from where we left off last week on the blog here.  Our crew of Viking warriors got in over our heads as the 'ice spirits' got their vengence against us. Early this morning we  got together over coffee & donuts. Gunther Bloodbear caught up with us at the pass as we had the ice spirits hot on our heels. And we lost one of our number due to bad dice rolls this morning! Beyond The Ice Falls By Joseph D. Salvador hits different on this side of the screen. 

Jess's PC got flash frozen in a two way crunch as the ice maiden had her revenge against us. That store of Winter fish looked far more away from our party at the moment! I got one of the guys with a lucky dagger roll. And then circled back to take out Guther in a last move only to come face to face with his frozen corpse! 
The woods were turning deadly around the village of the village of Askibakken. We needed more men and had to buy ourselves some time?! 
So an offering of treasure & relics was the only way?! And the ice maiden wanted it all and the life of one of us. There were only three left and we couldn't afford to lose another. We offered the treasure and the promise of another warrior or maiden. That seemed good enough for the moment. 
We made it back to the village of Askibakken. And were able to grab a fisherman or two as replacement warriors. We dropped our gear & grabbed hunting outfits. We also changed weapons to disguise ourselves as hunters. Then waited two days (game time) to go back into the woodlands around the village of Askibakken. The woods were deadly quiet and we almost killed a wise woman who was making her way to the village. She promised us answers for two fish if we'd escort her back to her hut in the woods. 

Her son was waiting for his mother 'Ashcor the woodsman' (replacement PC) whose mother Arsha the witch was more then happy to have us. We paid the old woman her fish & gathered around the fire to warm our bones. Arsha made us tea & tended to our wounds which cost us another fish. Her hut was a maze of herbs & dried salted  corpses of various alien fish. She was more then happy to have us as her usual clientele of the local women and mothers had dried up with the ice maiden stalking around the village. 

The ice maiden has influence over the local humanoids, monsters, and even the trees the old woman told us. We were told to relax as no monster would dare to come to the hut. Our party looked relaxed but we were ready for anything! 

And anything didn't happen. DM Paul seemed a bit wrung out this morning and the game progressed rather nicely. His style is a bit easier to deal with then DM Steve's killer style of encounters every time we'd settle down.  We ended here until next week.. 

OSR Commentary - Beyond The Ice Falls By Joseph D. Salvador From Raven God Games For Swords & Wizardry - Hyperborea rpg Session Report

 "In the village of Askibakken, the winter has been harsh and an unnatural blizzard has gripped the area. The village chieftain has called upon young warriors to search for a missing supply ship, but this endeavor leads the adventurers into a mysterious adventure. Will the party discover what lies Beyond the Ice-Fall?" 

Wayback in 2017 Raven God Games sent me a copy of Beyond The Ice Falls By Joseph D. Salvador for Swords & Wizardry. But tonight I'm not running this deadly little adventure instead I'm playing Scotta Berarus last viking theurorist noble to the tribe of Odin's rabble. Scotta Berarus has fled to his cousin Gunther Blood Bear's tribe after his was wiped out by an orc raid in the lower ice flows of Hyperborea. Gunther has sold our party's services to  the village of Askibakken in exchange for a Winter's store of fish, sea greens, and other food stuffs. With the unnatural Spring weather the village of Askibakken is deep trouble! We came into the village & observed that the village was in poor shape with everything covered in snow. 

Beyond the Ice Falls has quite a bit of talent behind it; "Features cover art and an interior piece by Del Teigeler! Writing, cartography and additional art completed by Joseph Salvador. Included in this 28-page product are a mini-setting, a dungeon crawl, two maps, new monsters, new magic items, new spells, and a viking name list!"We sat with the chief to find out particulars and while the catch was amazing the hunting around the village had suffered as animals were found flash frozen, beheaded, and destroyed in ways that spooked even the hardest of the village of Askibakken's hunters & trackers. 

So I'm a party of a party of hardened Viking mercenaries & warriors having joined up with my cousin's band in a fit a promise of a life of plunder & adventure. So far things had worked out. We were recruited to go on patrol with the village fishermen as monster patrol because of problems with sea serpents & the like. Next we were asked to help as monster patrol with a hunting expediation. Something wasn't right & finally we asked the village headman why didn't the village's warriors help out?! Then it was revealed that they had been found dead flash frozen by some mysterious force?! 

The woodlands & waters around the village of Askibakken are highly unnatural. There's few sounds, the spirits are quiet as in too quiet, and there are highly dangerous monsters in the woods around the village. Darr The Brave our scout & tracker found the tracks of a highly dangerous monster! We got into it hot & heavy with a Hyperborean  owl bear! And it wasn't even our first session! The monster was pretty dangerous & highly violent! He took out two of our hirelings & almost one our fighters but I got off a magic missile spell to distract him while Gunther got Valt out of the monster's reach. We were barely able to get our wounded back to the village. 
And now we've got to track down the owl bear back to it's lair to put the monster down! It's wounded, dangerous, and a terror to any other villages in the area. 
So DM Pual was incharge of tonight's Hyperborea rpg session. He's got a slightly different style to DM Steve's killer DM style of play. Being a forever DM being on the otherside of the screen for once has been both enlightening & very dangerous. We're all 2nd level PC's and there are six of us at the moment. 

Review & Commentary on Beyond the Ice-Fall By Joseph D. Salvador & Raven God Games For Swords & Wizardry White Box & Your Old School Campaigns

Recently I've put a six month hiatus on doing reviews for this blog mostly to concentrate on my own writing, designing,running, & enjoying the OSR games that I own. The reasons for this are myriad but it all comes down to a matter of time & work. There are going to be exceptions from time to time but those are going to be under my purview; I'm getting very picky these days. When Joseph D. Salvador contacts me about an adventure with artwork, writing, & interior pieces done by Del Teigeler. .Well Beyond The Ice Fall  is worth checking out.



Well now you've got my attention but then when I begin checking out Beyond The Ice Fall. It turns out that this is a Sword & Sorcery style adventure for Swords & Wizardry. We'll let that bit slide for now & come back to that later, for the moment this adventure has been inspired by Algernon Blackwood’s The Glamour of the Snow  &  Robert E. Howard’s The Frost Giant’s Daughter.

"In the village of Askibakken, the winter has been harsh and an unnatural blizzard has gripped the area. The village chieftain has called upon young warriors to search for a missing supply ship, but this endeavor leads the adventurers into a mysterious adventure. Will the party discover what lies Beyond the Ice-Fall?"

This is basically a good old fashioned crawl and investigation style adventure using a good solid easily adaptable premise for PC's levels 1-3 not 6 to 20,but levels one through three. The adventure clocks in at a reasonable twenty pages is a fully enclosed package that can be used for a wide variety of OSR style games with some adaptation on the part of the dungeon master. The quality is up to Raven God Games standards and the cartography is particularly well done with evocative interior pieces. The writing flows smoothly & the encounters seem well balanced for the Nordic style mythological setting of the adventure. There is a Frazetta & Robert Howard style to Beyond The Ice Fall but its not a coy rip off but a well thought out homage to the classic sword & sorcery pulp material. Let's me state this right off a stupid party of adventurers are going to end up very dead in no time flat. This isn't an instant TPK adventure but a thinking man's sword and sorcery adventure. This adventure is as much OSR adventure resource tool kit as it is adventure with a viking flare. You've got  a mini-setting, a dungeon crawl with room for expansion, two maps, new monsters, new magic items, new spells, and a viking name list. Everything here is balanced towards old fashioned play, in other words this is a pick up and go adventure. Can it be played with original Dungeons & Dragons besides Swords & Wizardry White Box? Absolutely & it can also be used as a fill in for an Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea first edition adventure with some  adjustments.  But be warned this has some tricks, traps, and twists to it.
The adventure flow here is wickedly dangerous and the PC's are messing with otherworldly powers from beyond ken of men.

Vikings added for color & for  pulp effect these Vikings don't appear in the adventure
but these could be your party of fools errm adventures dealing with the events of Beyond The Ice Falls.

Now for the obvious question, could this adventure be used with Mad Martian Games  Ice Kingdoms OSR campaign setting book? Well, with some adjustments using the conversion tables within the Ice Kingdoms book sure. In fact I'd go so far as to say that Beyond the Ice-Fall is the sort of beginning adventure that I was hoping was going to be used for that setting. But I think that the village of Askibakken stands on its own. I'd adapt this adventure for any OSR Viking, Nordic themed, or OSR sword & sorcery campaign in a heart beat. This is a top draw quality adventure simple with  nuances of complexity in the right places and plenty of room for OSR DIY D&D customization on the part of the dungeon master.

In fact I would say that this adventure with little modification could infact be used with other OSR settings such as Dark Albion where the Vikings of Beyond The Ice Fall could be used to fill in one or more factions from Dark Europe's Norse regions. The material here is loose enough to fit the adventure ideals of the setting and easily adaptable which in my opinion is one of the strengths of it. This is an adventure worth grabbing and getting in on.
Five out of five
Get it at DriveThruRPG! It will be on sale 20% off until March 24!

Now I'm going back to a six month hiatus for a while. Thanks for your continued support.