Sagas of Midgard

Sagas of Midgard is a cinematic, story-driven RPG set in a mythologized Norse cosmos. We went to Kickstarter on February 8th, 2018  and funded in 90 minutes. With an expected date of February 2019, I'm proud to say that we went live to retail on December 8th, 2018!

Yeah yeah, we get it. So what's the deal with the game?

First off, I do want to brag about the art. We spent 100% of the Kickstarter money on the game, and a lot of that was on the art and graphic design of the book. We exceeded our funding goals and we wanted to make the book look as professional as possible as a result.

So we mentioned cinematic and story driven above, and those are largely statements of intent. This is because:

Sagas of Midgard is built to allow Yes, and ¦ styles of collaborative GMing/playing where players are encouraged via in-game mechanics (more on that later) to try ridiculous things.

We don't encourage a grid for combat and the math/mechanics are, compared to a lot of other systems, really quite simple. We utilize what we call the Rollover system: the player makes all of the rolls. The GM (Skald in our system) determines the difficulty of the roll based on a 1-100 system and tells the player the Rollover. The player rolls d100, adds any applicable bonuses, and either succeeds or doesn't succeed.

So what makes Sagas of Midgard different?

This is the most common question we get in interviews. Although we have a lot of different unique mechanics, let's start with the big one:

Dying is a feature, not a bug.  Vikings believed that they had to die in battle to ascend to Valhalla. As such, we had to make dying a little more palatable. Therefore, we decided to give every character a starting ability called  With Joy I Cease, allowing him to pass into Valhalla and enter the Sagas as a hero.

With Joy I Cease: In your darkest hour, you call upon the Gods to give you strength for one final act of glory. Advancing toward your enemy, you strike him with a death-blow; with his dying breath he strikes you down as well. Any healing, magical effects, rune effects, or damage reduction effects are ended upon you. Your hit-points are then immediately brought to zero and you die. Any other Heroes within bow range gain 5 Favor. This ability must be used on your turn.

This ability has been central to the theme of Sagas of Midgard: that for a Viking, death in battle is glorious rather than something to be feared. Our playtesters have loved this ability; we've seen characters use  With Joy I Cease  to save their party, elect not to and live through the encounter with 1 HP, and elect not to and get run through and thrown off a high mountain before their next turn.

Because of this,

Character creation is simple.  

Ridiculousness and creativity are encouraged.  Between Raiding Seasons (game sessions), players are encouraged, in character, to boast about the most noteworthy thing they did in the previous session. The character determined to have done the craziest/most interesting/dumb-but-hilarious thing is rewarded with additional skill points.

What's in the book?

Sagas of Midgard. What will YOUR Saga be?