I’ve been spending far too much time giving out my opinion on concepts and events, and not nearly enough time giving out my opinion in a focused manner, specifically related to RPG products. Let’s start to turn that around a bit.

I’ve mentioned this product, and the surrounding product line, on social media a few times, but that’s not quite the same as doing a review, so let’s settle in and start looking at The Player’s Guide to Norrengard, a supplement from Lazy Wolf Studios for Tales of the Valiant.

Warning, this one is going to go a little long, longer than it would for products a lot bigger, but that’s because it’s got a lot of player-focused items, which I want to look at with at least a little bit more scrutiny.

Disclaimer

While I have purchased several Lazy Wolf Studios products before, I have also received some products as review copies, and this is one of those products. I have not had the opportunity to play with or run a game for someone using these options, but I have already been working with elements of this supplement in Shard Tabletop to set up a session zero, with some of my players picking options from this source.

Thrones & Bones: The Players Guide to Norrongard

Lead Designer, Art Director, Publisher: Lou Anders
Editor: Misty Bourne
Cover Art: William O’Brien
Interior Artists: Margarita Bourkova, Justin Gerard, Ksenia Kozhevnikova, Dio Mahesa, William O’Brien, Aleksa Stajsic, Bryan Syme
Cartographers: Rob Lazzaretti
Initial Graphic Design & Layout Concept: Invisible Rocket
Norse Language Consultant: Trond-Atle Farestveit

The Saga of the Layout

This review is based on the PDF version of the product. The PDF is 52 pages long, with the following breakdown of page count:

• Cover, Title Page, and Credits Page: 3 pages
• Setting Map: 2 pages
• Table of Contents, Introduction, and Pronunciation Guide: 3 pages
• Setting Information: 8 pages
• Lineages and Heritages: 9 pages
• Subclasses: 13 pages
• Backgrounds: 6 pages
• Talents: 1 page
• Spells: 2 pages
• Monsters (i.e. the Butter Cat): 1 page
• Contributor Bios: 1 page
• Ads and Back Cover: 3 pages

I am a fan of the art in this book, which manages to be thematic to the Norse inspiration, adventurous and animated in appearance, and bright in color. Even with multiple interior artists, there is a consistent feel across all of the pieces.

The individual pages are parchment colored, with dark brown headers and black lettering. Most of the book is set up in two column layouts, with the exception of the chapter titles, which have about a half page of art and a single column introduction of the topic. There is a very light alternating watermark of knotwork and a stylized dragon throughout.

I am always happy when publishers make sure to clearly credit contributors, and this book goes one step further and gives a bio of the various people involved in the production of the book, usually one or two paragraphs. I know that some products are going to live under the tyranny of the page count, but this is a welcome sight that I would love to see more often.

The Setting

While this isn’t primarily a setting sourcebook, there is enough material to explain the context in which all of the options in this book reside. This setting is based on the setting author Lou Anders created for this Thrones and Bones book series. This setting takes a lot of inspiration from Norse folklore, but it stands out a bit from some other Norse themed 5e SRD products, in that Norrongard, the central land to the setting’s framing, doesn’t go raiding.

The current High King has suspended the practice, so what we get to see is more of a country that has a martial tradition but aren’t sending warriors off in longships to raid on a regular basis. This is a land made up of farmers and merchants and craftsfolk, albeit a setting where there are a good number of people that remember when raiding was supplemental to Norrongard’s other daily activities.

The setting doesn’t assume everything that exists in a typical D&D or Tales of the Valiant campaign setting. Humans, Huldrafolk, Dwarves, and Elves are the most common adventuring peoples, with Goblins and Gnomes being less common, and halflings, kobold, and orcs not appearing. Dwarves and even some frost giants trade with the humans, and many Dwarves live alongside humans. While there are multiple Elves in the setting, the Svartalfar are the ones most common to Norrongard, although their nation sends agents to spy on and sabotage other species rather than trade or negotiate with them.

This book provides the family of gods worshipped in the setting, although it only introduces them and what their portfolio is, but doesn’t ascribe specific domains to them, in game terms. The gods used are very archetypically similar to the Aesir and the Vanir, but they aren’t directly representing those gods one for one.

Conflicts in the setting involve troll raids, the undead, linnorm dragons, people scheming against the current high king, and some of the Norronir that are ignoring the king’s prohibition against raiding. While most of the creatures in the setting are influenced by Norse folklore, they are commonly encountered (at least by adventurers), and have the big, bold traits that are common to D&D-esque monster.

The lead character in the Thrones and Bones books was introduced to many of the characters via his ability to play the titular game, so it gets a few pages explaining it as well. I like that the description of the game is approachable and feels very authentic, and I like the setting element of people wagering their high end, customized sets of playing pieces.

One thing I find very compelling about the setting is that this is a land where your average adventurer probably grew up on a farm, not raiding other countries on a longship. It’s a perspective that doesn’t get used as much when Norse elements are introduced into a game, and that shuts out many aspects of Norse-themed stories that can otherwise be told when you have a more broadly peaceful setting as your baseline. It allows for more interaction with social structures and political maneuvering than a Norse setting that’s more concerned with only warbands. I’m not saying those are bad, I’m just saying those are easier to find.

Engaging with that setting does bring up one thing that a GM will need to keep in mind and work with their gaming group to address. This is a setting that still engages in slavery. While it’s not a permanent state that cannot be changed, that slavery doesn’t end with the death of the slave, but is enforced for four generations, assuming the slave doesn’t pay off their debts and buy their freedom, which is a possibility, and not uncommon.

The text doesn’t endorse slavery, nor does it condemn it. The inclusion is going to be a non-starter for some players, and that’s something that has to be respected, but it’s also not something that’s central to a lot of the narrative. In fact, I don’t recall it being much of a plot point in the novels at all. That said, I would have been more comfortable with a sidebar discussing this more directly with GMs and players, pointing out that this is wrong, but that due to the fact that there are laws enforcing reasonable treatment and allowing slaves to benefit from their labor, allowing them to make money to buy their freedom, that can sometimes lead people that would otherwise oppose slavery to ignore how wrong it is to own another human, even with rules.

I’m not against having that as a setting element, I just am less comfortable if it’s meant to be a setting element that a heroic character won’t see as a societal evil. In fact, given the transitional period Norrongard finds itself in, for players that do not want to avoid the topic, it’s a great roleplaying topic and goal to engage with, outside of direct clashes of swords and spells.

There is another aspect of the setting that could be more directly addressed, but I appreciate how it is framed in the narrative. There are two subclasses that are traditionally reserved for women, however, whenever this is mentioned, it is clear to point out that whether someone is a woman is based on who they are, not on any biological determination made at birth. I would love to see some interesting guidelines on how to address gender roles, even ones that are less oppressive, in a longer campaign treatment, but I also like that you don’t walk away from those entries wondering if transphobia is an additional barrier.

From a setting standpoint, I don’t know that there is enough setting information for a GM to take this and spin a whole campaign out of it, but having read through some of the adventures for the setting, this gives enough detail to provide additional context for the adventures, and to allow the GM to introduce broader setting elements into them if they want to do so.

Game Elements

There is a lot about Tales of the Valiant that I like, but I also think that it needs an infusion of more flavorful material. A lot of what was included in the core book is foundational, but with the limited number of options in the book (see above, I get the tyranny of word count), it could have used more colorful options not striving to be broadly archetypal. That’s one of the reasons I was very interested in seeing these rules. The number of different options is as follows:

• Lineages–5
• Heritages–5
• Subclasses–9
• Backgrounds–4
• Talents–3
• Spells–8
• Buttercats . . . er, Monsters–1

Some of these options are similar to the core elements of Tales of the Valiant, and some mirror one another. For example, Humans, Elves, and Dwarves all appear in the core rulebook, but there are some tweaks to them making them more aligned with this setting. Three of the barbarian subclasses follow the same pattern but with different patron animals. Two of the talents are setting specific martial arts, with a similar benefit, and then unique elements based on the form.

Lineages and Heritages

As mentioned above, we have a few returning friends among our lineages. The full list is:

• Dwarf
• Elf
• Frostborn
• Huldrafolk
• Human

Humans and Dwarves are mechanically the same as the Tales of the Valiant version of those lineages. There is a little bit of setting-specific lore in the lead-up to their statistics. Elves are similar but actually gain an additional benefit section.

There are five different types of Elves in the setting, though the Svartalfar are the ones most closely associated with Norrongard. The Elves are differentiated by their connection to Sky, Sea, Mountain, Forest, and Earth. That gives us the following subgroups:

• Ljosalfar (Light Elves)–you can glow
• Muntaelfen (Mountain Elves)–you have a climb speed and are hard to knock down
• Saealfen (Sea Elves)–you can breathe underwater and have a swim speed
• Svartalfar (Shadow Elves)–you have darkvision
• Wuduaelfen (Wood Elves)–you can hide better in natural environments

Tales of the Valiant already has similar mechanics in the entries for Kobolds, Smallfolk, and Sydereans, so this works fine, and actually . . . I think these work very well with traditional D&D Elves as well and maybe I like this better than the Tales of the Valiant Elf?

Frostborn are the children of a frost giant and a human, and they aren’t meant to be common, but the setting has multiple noteworthy individuals that are Frostborn, so they get included on that basis. If you know me, you know that any kind of giant-related option is going to catch my attention. Nothing especially surprising here. They have resistance to cold and powerful build. Honestly, I wish they had a little bit more. At the very least, a higher movement rate due to their stride.

The Elves in the setting are Norse folklore mixed with some Tolkien and D&D influences to produce something a little bit unique from those sources. The Huldrafolk are more like some of the Norse stories of Elves. They are Fey, not Humanoid, and they can charm once per long rest, as well as use their hidden tail to slap someone. It’s a setting detail to point this out, but since the Huldrafolk are trying to remain undetected, casually tail-slapping someone isn’t usually done. I enjoy the Huldrafolk, and I think they give a fun additional option for players.

I know there is an advantage to not being Humanoid in some circumstances, but I feel like the benefit is going to vary a lot depending on how likely the GM is to throw in things like spells that have a restricted effect on non-humanoids. I wish the Beguiling Gaze would let you choose your spellcasting stat, instead of assigning Charisma. Charisma makes sense, but it also potentially makes this less effective for that one time you use this without using your spell slots if you have a Huldrafolk druid or wizard. That said, while a lot of more recent 5e D&D design allowed for this flexibility, I noticed some Tales of the Valiant options that defaulted back to setting a single stat for abilities like these, so it’s actually in keeping with the current design for the game.

Before I move on to heritages, I wanted to interject something about the Frostborn, and the wider umbrella of current design trends. It is a problem to portray “half” races as being unable to be accepted by either of their parent’s people. The terminology “half-X” brings up some uncomfortable connotations. But I don’t think erasing options like half-elves or half-orcs is the right way to go. I think the narrative needs to move away from being rejected, the terms need to be revisited, and we need to move away from only having humans with some other humanoid as a parent, but we don’t need to erase people that have a background that includes parents of different cultures coming together. I mention all of that to point out that the Frostborn does all of this. The discomfort they feel doesn’t come from Frost Giants or Humans rejecting them, it comes from literally being halfway between human and giant-sized. They aren’t half-giants, they have their own terminology that respects them for being who they are, while also acknowledging where they came from. This is a template to look at.

The Heritages that are available include the following (with my very quick interpretation of the benefits of each):

• Dvergian–armor training, tool proficiency, bonuses with gems
• Hidden–faster hiding, faster movement over some difficult terrain, “hiding” skill
• Norronian–farming and survival-related skills, similarly themed tools, vehicle proficiency
• Shadow–sneaky skills, sneaky tools
• Ymirian–no slowing down on snow or ice, skills that represent a big personality

Each of these is most closely associate with a specific Lineage, but isn’t limited to that Lineage, acknowledging that people are affected by the culture where they grew up. The Dwarves of the setting are a prime example of this since it’s as common for them to share the Norronian heritage with humans as it is for them to have the Dvergian heritage, which indicates a Dwarf that grew up in the dwarven settlement under the Dvergian Mountains.

The Hidden is the heritage associated with the Huldrafolk, the Ymirian is the heritage associated with the Frost Giants, and the Shadow Heritage indicates someone who grew up in the underground city of the Svartalfar. Some of these take a little more work to justify when it comes to mixing and matching.

A human living on the border of Frost Giant lands, closer to his giant neighbors, but helping facilitate trade, isn’t too hard to see. It’s a little harder to envision someone other than the Huldrafolk intentionally disengaging with other societies and learning how to sneak around and hide, although it would be interesting to see the changeling story from a different angle, with a human raised by a Huldrafolk parent in their ways.

It’s also interesting to think about those rarely seen, but still present, options being mixed in with this. It seems odd to have a human or a Dwarf raised in a Svartalfar city, given the paranoia of the government there, but what about a Goblin? Would a Gnome, here or there, end up living and working with the Dwarves of the Dvergian Mountains? This is why I really enjoy the Lineage/Heritage split because it opens up this kind of conjecture for character-building and roleplaying. I also appreciate that in a specific setting, these heritages can have a bit of a stronger flavor to them than some of the broader ones presented in the Tales of the Valiant core rules.

Class Options

Let’s take a look at what we have when it comes to subclasses. One thing to note up front is, the setting has a certain feel, and that means, there aren’t Norrengard specific subclasses for every class. Earlier in the guide it mentions that if you want to play people with classes that aren’t common here, that’s fine, but it probably means those characters aren’t native to Norrengard, or they were, and learned skills from someone elsewhere. Our subclasses are:

• Barbarian: Bear Warrior
• Barbarian: Wolf Warrior
• Barbarian: Boar Warrior
• Cleric: Courage Domain
• Druid: Volva
• Fighter: Shield Maiden
• Rogue: Svatalfar Agent
• Rogue: Svartalfar Bat Rider
• Warlock Pact: The Norns

There is a certain irony in that I wish there were more barbarian subclasses that allowed you to roleplay a character with less of a supernatural connection, but I also really like our trio of barbarian subclasses, in that they root the barbarian in the more traditional, more magical lore of the Berserkr. They have some magic about them, but it’s also related to the magic that a lot of the old stories associated with them.

In theory, you could have presented all three of these as the same subclass, and have the barbarian choose which shirt they were adopting when they picked up the subclass, because they all have certain things in common, and other subclass abilities that are distinct, but linked by theme. But, if you don’t have to worry about page count, I like splitting them out so they can each have enough space to feel like they are distinct.

Each of these subclasses needs a special shirt to access their subclass abilities but can make a new one if they lose their current one. They gain an animal-themed natural attack when they adopt the subclass, thematic resistances, and the ability to count their animal-themed attack as magical with their next subclass benefit, an ability to commune with the spirit animal that inspires them (the divination ritual) at 11th level, and an animal-themed ability that either gives you a kicker to your attacks or boosts your allies, at 15th level.

I like subclasses that tell stories. I am not a fan of subclasses that are designed around the idea of “What if we give this class these abilities they don’t usually have, and then build a theme around those abilities.” One of the best measures of this is, does this class feels like they are uniquely their subclass on a regular basis from the time they take the subclass, and yes, these all check that box. The abilities don’t all build on the same mechanic, which is probably my favorite way to unify the theme, but they are all built on the same story, and I like that. They follow a similar pattern to the core rulebook subclasses, although it feels a little like the 11th and 15th-level pattern is flipped, but that’s deriving an opinion from a sample size of two and isn’t that important.

I am going to admit my biases here. I think fear works fine in the 5e/Black Flag paradigm, especially compared to how some editions handled it. But it feels like it’s missing something to make it fun to engage with, so anything that heavily interacts with fear or the negation of fear doesn’t excite me much. The Courage Domain cleric is fine. Courage makes sense for the setting, and getting martial weapon proficiency encourages getting up close and personal to plant a great axe in someone’s face. But resistance to fear is like the gaming equivalent of a healthy snack. I like that additional resistance to damage given at 11th, but Sacred Strike feels a little late in the progression and feels like it’s very “you” focused on a level where some clerics are getting an “us” focus.

When I told one of my players, who is getting her degree in Anthropology, that one of the options in this book was the Volva druid, she was very excited to see how that translated to the game. There may be a way you could have gone the cleric route with this, but I think there is something about the feel of someone with a magic staff tied to the Tree of Life that is just the right kind of priestly trapping that skews more druid. I think they made the right call in the design.

The Volva is all about the staff. Like most 5e era dependencies, if you lose it, you are never more than a short rest away from making a replacement, but it reinforces the importance of the item. Your staff lets you cast a few divination spells a number of times per long rest without slots, based on your Wisdom modifier. I’m still getting a handle on ToV best practices, because I’ve seen abilities use both proficiency bonus and ability bonus as a basis, and I’m still trying to discern if there is a pattern on when to use one over the other, but that’s not a unique issue to this subclass.

The Galdr feature is similar to the Divination wizard from the 2014 rules, but that makes sense for this subclass, and that’s a cool ability. The 7th level ability is kind of wild, but I think I’m here for it. You can use your wildshape to turn into a minor Norn, and when you do so, you can reverse an action or a movement you just committed to, removing the effects of whatever happened. When you use this ability you gain a level of exhaustion, which makes sense, and is thematic, but it means that people may be a little less likely to want to use this ability unless they are really sure that their last action or movement was a disaster.

The 11th level ability fits with the stories of Volva, but it also breaks with the theme of this subclass so far, getting “fate-based” abilities. You create a localized storm that you can move around to damage foes, and it’s a neat effect that you can trigger “when you use the seidstafr as a spellcasting focus,” meaning you are manifesting this without damaging your action economy, as long as you need to use your staff to do something else. It does lock you out of casting augury or detect thoughts, but if you need to zap someone with a tiny thunderstorm, I don’t think you want to be performing divinations anyway. It’s not a big limitation, but it is kind of a neat thematic element to reinforce that your power is dependent on how the staff does what it does.

Your 15th-level ability lets you cast a higher circle divination spell without a spell slot, once per long rest, which is a definite boon but isn’t boosting your combat presence. However, you’ve had a persistent damage effect that you can just summon when you cast other spells since 11th level, so that’s kind of a consolation. Despite the slight break in “game” theme, which wasn’t a break in “lore” theme, I think this one holds together well and does something new with the druid, that still feels like a druid subclass.

The Shield Maiden fighter is fun. You get shield abilities, from hitting people with a shield to using shields for your dex saves, providing a better bonus when you guard someone else, and finally just trapping a weapon with your shield. Shield Bind is cool, but feels like it hits a little late. Otherwise, this is a fun subclass that is on theme for a Norse setting and also on theme for someone who wants to play a shield specialist.

I don’t think I’m against subclasses that are restricted to a particular type of character, and I like that both the Agent and the Bat Rider have a prerequisite that can be either based on lineage or heritage. I think there is some room to play with that kind of cultural specialization and setting detail. I’m not sure I would have put these in a general player’s guide, thinking about the kind of characters you may make up to play some of the adventures for the setting, versus some broader archetypes. I may have saved these for a full setting book, but that’s me.

That said, I love the Agent’s abilities, and how it reflects a spy/assassin trained by a society to send them into dangerous situations to cause havoc. The 3rd level base of this subclass is gaining a number of tricks that augment your actions or movement, which you can use a number of times based on proficiency bonus . . . not ability score. Later on, you get advantage on initiative and can hide at the start of combat, then you get the ability to reroll attacks where you would have caused sneak attack damage when you miss, and finally, at 15th level, you can use a light weapon to just shiv anyone within reach. That’s a great 15th-level ability, and I like this as a spy/assassin subclass.

The bat rider is cool, however . . . you get a large creature, and a lot of your abilities are based on using that large flying creature, which inherently means you may not be able to use your class abilities in some pretty standard adventuring situations. I’m also kind of surprised this isn’t a ranger subclass, since it has to do with a close affinity for an animal and doesn’t have much that interacts with other core rogue abilities, like skills, tools, or sneak attacks.

The Warlock Pact has your PC making a pact with The Norns, so you’re trying to benefit from knowing what’s coming up, while also helping them make sure the right things happen at the right time. You get advantage on initiative, and I like that over a boost, because, well, fate could have you roll low on both dice. Your additional spells feel very thematic, either messing with someone’s probability to do something, knowing something you otherwise wouldn’t, or making someone do something they don’t want to do.

Weave of Fate goes back to the “roll some d20s and record their rolls to replace rolls later” well, and I would be a little less receptive to that since we’ve already seen that with the Volva, except there is a fun spin on it here. One die is able to alter your fate, and the other is about altering someone else’s fate. It’s a nice way to tie this back to threads of fate and destiny, by putting a slight restriction on the mechanic. Regarding their next, ability, at 11th level, I like the ability to damage something that hits you with something you are resistant against, as a general concept for a subclass ability.

The 15th level ability is something that I’ve seen several Warlock subclasses get, a variation on Hurl through Hell, but I love this one, because of the reason that it causes psychic damage. You show them the wider weave of fate and how insignificant they are against the enormity of all reality. I’m not sure I, myself, not a character, wouldn’t take psychic damage if I thought about that one too much.

Backgrounds and Talents

There are four new backgrounds, and I’m going to try not to take too much time on these. The new backgrounds are:

• Farmer
• Freefolk
• Housecarl
• Svartalfheim Exile

These do your standard background jobs, i.e. providing skills, proficiencies, and equipment, as well as letting you pick from one of three talents. Where I think these shine is in the Adventuring Motivation. Most of them serve as a really good explanation for why you would be adventuring, a really good campaign seed to hand to the GM to let them weave into the campaign, or both.

As an example, as a housecarl, you’re jarl may have died, or you may have been dismissed from service . . . but have you considered that maybe you just want everyone to think you don’t work for your jarl anymore and you are working on a long term plan for them?

The Freefolk background is a great example of something I touched on earlier in this review. You can tell a great story by having a background where you were set free from being a thrall, but you need to make sure everyone at the table is comfortable with that being a character element that one of the PCs is going to have as a foundational element. It is a strong story element, it’s just one that has to be employed carefully.

This section is also a very strong example of why adding some actual story weight to a background can make them a useful part of creating a character and contributing to a campaign, rather than something that gets reduced to a proper noun that gets to be the dumping ground for a mechanic that you decoupled from a problematic element, but somehow didn’t just eliminate by rolling the assumption into your starting ability score numbers. But surely no company would do something like that.

The three additional talents are noted as being alternates that you could let anyone from one of the previously listed backgrounds take, instead of the three talents listed for each background. Dirty Trickster and Glima Master are similar, in that they allow for unarmed attacks using dexterity instead of strength, increase your unarmed damage, and then give you a kicker ability, either a penalty from a dirty trick or an additional bonus action to shove or trip. Avid Gamer is all about tying everything back to the name of the book series, by giving you proficiency with a game and a boost to playing other games as well, and my favorite part of the talent, you can make insight checks based on how they play the game to get answers to questions about the person you are playing. You don’t need to ask questions to which you already know the answers (sorry, I got caught up with playing chess, Charles and Erik, you know the whole thing).

Spells (and the Butter Cat)

There are eight new spells in this section, which are as follows:

• Create Butter Cat (1st-Circle, Arcane)
• Eye of the Valkyrja (4th-Circle, Arcane, Divine, Wyrd)
• Free Air or Water (Cantrip, Arcane, Primordial)
• Ice Armor (2nd-Circle, Primordial)
• Ice Shield (1st-Circle, Arcane, Primordial, Wyrd)
• Ice Sword (2nd-Circle, Arcane, Primordial, Wyrd)
• Kvir’s Fortune (1st-Circle, Divine)
• Sky God’s Vengeance (4th-Circle, Arcane, Divine, Primordial)

We’ll come back to Create Butter Cat. Eye of the Valkyrja is fun, in that it frames the debuff as the Choosers of the Slain paying attention to the target of your spell.

Freeze Air or Water can damage in a specific circumstance, but otherwise, it does what it says. Ice Armor is interesting, because the material component is another one of those things that makes me wonder if the spell is meant to be hard to cast, or it’s just very specific flavor. I don’t know many people who carry a whole bucket of water so they can cast a spell, so this spell might require another spell to fill the bucket to begin with. Ice Shield is a slightly less aggravating-to-the-GM version of Shield that just imposes disadvantage. Ice Sword gives you a cold damage-based melee weapon, but it’s a little less flexible than other weapon-conjuring spells in that it doesn’t let you use your casting stat to attack with it, but you can throw it and then summon it again as long as you’re concentrating.

Kvir’s Fortune is a “buy now, pay later” spell, giving you advantage, then disadvantage. Sky God’s Vengeance gives you a concentration-based persistent damage effect, which you can shift from ice, to lightning, to thunder, to wind, with each damage type calling for a different save, meaning you might be able to figure out what your opponent is good or bad at regarding saves, and shift accordingly.

Then there is the best spell in the whole product, Create Butter Cat. When you create a butter cat, it exists for one day. You make it out of yarn and cat whiskers. It then proceeds to go out and absorb up to five gallons of milk and returns it to you. If anyone damages the butter cat, it hurts you. But you’ve got milk. But the best part about all of this is that sometimes a butter cat doesn’t cease to exist at the end of the spell, it just starts to act like a normal cat. Except made out of yarn and whiskers, and able to absorb vast quantities of milk.

Hostile to Bad Reviews

This product just oozes with personality and presents some strongly Norse-themed options that feel like they would be appropriate in any game with Norse elements, but also make perfect sense for the setting for which they are designed. This is a strong showcase of what you can do with some of the underlying concessions native to Tales of the Valiant, making good use of the split between lineage and heritage and adventuring motivations, and showing how those things can be used to convey roleplaying hooks, setting details, and personality.

Eager to Experience the Rough Road

It’s not something the product does a bad job of presenting, but I do wish there were a little more guidance on both the narrative inertia of a setting with slaves, as well as a discussion of safety around the topic. Humans and Dwarves make sense to include, just to highlight that they don’t change, but they don’t change. Every once in a while, a strength can be a weakness, and the very strong setting personality presented may push a couple of options, like the bat rider, into less than immediately useful territory.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

If you like the feel of D&D 5e from the 2014 rules, you should probably be taking a serious look at Tales of the Valiant, and if you are taking a serious look at Tales of the Valiant, you should be taking a serious look at the Player’s Guide to Norrongard. For a product created early in the life span of a game by a third-party publisher (albeit one that’s worked with the game’s producer before), it’s a great showcase for where Tales of the Valiant/Black Flag products can go, if designers embrace and understand some of the unique elements of the game.

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/08/26/what-do-i-know-about-reviews-thrones-and-bones-players-guide-to-norrongard-tales-of-the-valiant/

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