When you enjoy playing a character, you get passionate about it. And it’s human nature to want to share your passions, to share what excites you. But no one likes to hear about character. No matter how much they dig you, and no matter how awesome and original the character, sharing said character is slightly indulgent.
Doubly so on a first date.
RPG Publisher Kobold Press (née Open Design) is twelve years old, as is their campaign setting of Midgard. The campaign setting was created for 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons before elements of it were converted to 4th Edition then Pathfinder before being just recently updated to 5th Edition D&D.
The first full campaign setting book was released for Pathfinder back in 2012. Last year, Kobold Press Kickstarted an updated version of the book, revising the world for use with both 5e and Pathfinder. This is not just a reprint of the 2012 product, as it incorporates lore from the dozens of adventures published since that date, greatly expanding the world. A small portion of the Southlands hardcover is also included, and the timeline of the world has advanced.
The Midgard Worldbook is a 461-page full colour hardcover. Because it has the thick matte pages of other Kobold Products, the book is huge. Much, much thicker than the Player’s Handbook. This is not a book you want to be carrying to a game session in a backpack.
The vast majority of the book focuses on lore and the setting. The 40-page first chapter is an overview of the setting, and the next 292-pages are entirely focused on regions of the setting. Included are chapters on the following regions: Zobeck & Crossroads, Dark Kingdoms, Rothenian Plain, Dragon Empire, Southlands, Seven Cities, Wasted West, Grand Duchy of Dornig, Northlands, and the Shadow Realm.
The book also has a sizable chapter on various gods, a 36-page 5th Edition Appendix, and a 26-page Pathfinder Appendix. Both contain material deemed “GM material” opposed to the player focused products released separately. For 5e this includes antipaladin, oath of the giving grave, lust domain, serophage sorcerer origin, blood magic and void magic wizard traditions, some drugs, a few magic items, some variant magic rules, and a few spells. Pathfinder has the hunger domain, and alternate lust domain, a gnoll focused fighter and rogue archetypes, and void based archetypes for the wizard and occultist plus some feats, magic items, and spells.
An associated online tool is the interactive online map which is pretty darn slick.
It’s tricky to review a product like this. A review of Midgard Worldbook *should* focus on the presentation: how well the product presents the world, how it compares to prior campaign settings, and how usable it is as a setting book. Especially as the appeal of the world is deeply subjective and one of personal tastes: I can’t easily classify a particular region or aspect of the setting as either “good” or “bad” let alone “ugly”, because what I find “ugly” someone else might find “awesome”. However, someone who dislikes the foundation and assumptions of the setting will likely be inherently displeased with this book regardless of how well it does or does not present the setting. So some discussion of the setting is necessary.
Midgard is your standard European fantasy setting with a twist. In this instance, the twist is fairly minor compared to other worlds: locales have a Northern & Eastern European feel rather than Western. As the name suggests, there is a distinct Norse tone to much of the world, with Loki, Thor, and Woden/ Odin being influential gods. There’s several real world analogues, especially to the north and south. And the folkloric character Baba Yaga is an important figure throughout much of the eastern lands. It’s also a much darker setting than other worlds, with some pretty grim themes running throughout the book. This is demonstrated with how the Romania analogue is overtly ruled by a kingdom of vampires. But it’s a moderate level of dark, and the setting isn’t universally bleak or as grimdark as, say, Midnight or Ravenloft, and PC heroes won’t necessarily live short, pointless lives.
That said, there’s a lot of unique elements that don’t align analogously to Europe, such as the Magocracy of Allain or the Wasted West where Lovecraftian Great Old Ones were used as nukes in a magical war. This makes the setting as a whole significantly less generic.
Midgard is a little more focused and less of a kitchen sink than other fantasy worlds (while still accommodating all of the races from the Player’s Handbook), but there is no shortage of humanoid races and places to tuck new people and options. But this is mostly due to its size: each region could function as their own micro-setting with very different styles of campaign. It’s a half-dozen small campaign settings that all fit together.
The book starts with seven key facts of the world. These are presented as “secrets” but I think a few of them might be somewhat known or rumoured. Presenting how a campaign setting is different (how it varies from the baseline assumptions of fantasy gaming) is a good way to start.
Following the introduction is a timeline and history of the world. While the timeline has advanced since the previous product, there is no “Realms shaking event” or major reworking of the world. Time has passed and several of the adventure hooks built into the setting have assumed to have occured. I appreciate a reluctance to “blow up” the world or otherwise overhaul large sections to “fix” perceived problems.
After the timeline is a summary of how the various player races fit into the world, with most being given a solid role. There’s not a lot of information against playing against type for some races (like non-Winter halflings or non-Cursed gnomes) but I imagine that’s intentional and part of the thematic aspects of the world.
Unsurprising for such a massive book, but there is a tonne or lore here. So much lore. Almost an overwhelming amount of lore, especially as so many pages are unbroken walls of text.
The book is organized in the least offensive way: by large regions. There’s no perfect way to organize a campaign setting. Alphabetical can work, but that gets lengthy with lots of small kingdoms and city-states, and often means associated kingdoms are seperated. It helps that several of the regions are used in-world, such as “the Crossroads”, making it feel less arbitrary. This method works better with settings divided into large fantasy kingdoms, like Greyhawk or Dragonlance. Each region is fairly easily identified. Mostly.
There’s a fair amount of art throughout the book. Less than one might wish for, but honestly more than I was expecting. (Art is expensive.) There’s a few recycled pieces from past Midgard books—especially the Heroes Handbook—but that’s to be expected. Each nation or kingdom is also given a crest: a little emblematic shield with the symbols of the nation. These are cool, and decorate the summarizing sidebars of each nation allowing quick details of that land to quickly stand out. It also adds some instant depth to the setting, emphasising each nation feels the need to formalize their iconography.
In addition to the summarizing sidebars, there are quite a few other sidebars in the book. Most detailing little notes, potentially describing magic in the area or the role of certain races or classes. Additionally, each region gets a sidebar describing adventuring in that region, giving the assumed tone of adventures as well as some hooks. There are great little additions that give you a quick and useful description of what the land is like and the type of stories you’re expected to be telling.
I quite like the status rules included in the book. They’re fairly simple but a nice way to represent how well known the characters and an adventuring party are.
While the vast majority of the book concerns itself with the moral world, it does provide a description of the larger cosmology, with some descriptions of the planes. The Shadow Plane gets the most attention, being a full region with its own character. There’s some great stuff on the Plane of Shadows and those aspects would be pretty useful in many different campaigns. I plan on stealing some elements for my homebrew campaign setting.
(I also plan on stealing ley lines, which are a big part of Midgard. I’ve had ley lines in my world for years, but it’s nice to have rules and more details to be inspired by. I quite like how ley lines are important enough to warrant a place on the map.)
A note should be made about the map. The book comes with a gorgeous poster map that is included in the book as a two-page spread. It’s a lovely naturalistic map with some great attention to detail. (If you plan on running Midgard, I would recommend just tucking away the poster map that comes with the book and getting the rolled version Because why not spoil yourself?
I love the map. But there’s no separate map PDF included with the digital copy of the book. I like having a seperate file so I can just swap tabs while reading. And it’s useful when running to zoom in on regions and areas, or use for reference.
After the introduction the book jumps into a history followed by description of the races. There’s no introduction to the regions and places in the world, so newcomers have a place to start or idea of what might appeal to them. (Thankfully, this is in the player’s books. Look there.)
While having each region have its own chapter works most of the time, some of the smaller kingdoms are a little fuzzier in placement, possibly fitting into a couple different chapters—such as the Mageocracy of Allain, the isle of Kyprion. And finding specific cities in the book can be tricky at times. Often a keyword search through the PDF is the easiest method.
There’s an absence of NPC statblocks. In the national summaries, important NPCs are given a name, class, level, and alignment. But that’s not a lot to go on. And also means there’s no unique little traits or powers included.
There’s no index at the back of the book. The table of contents is pretty expansive, but a good index can direct you to particular NPCs or cities. And there’s no glossary either. While non-standard, I’ve always thought a glossary of world terms and locations would be nice.
The big complaint with the book is that it contains crunch for both Pathfinder and 5th Edition. Regardless of whom buys the book there’s 20+ pages of superfluous material.
Curiously, the gnoll caravan raider background is reprinted, being both here and in the Heroes Handbook. Odd… And a waste of precious page real estate.
It’s always interesting to look at total populations of species in a product like this, which gives full demographics for each region. It seems like there’s less than 6,000 hugin/ ravenfolk across Midgard. (A small number to be sure, but technically sustainable without genetic drift.) Medieval populations were pretty small, so the numbers in the book probably aren’t unreasonable, especially in the northern reaches. But damn does it feel sparsely populated…
The book describes how the various races fit into the setting but doesn’t do the same for classes. It’d be nice to know the place of sorcerers vs wizards, notable bardic colleges, or how monks work (if at all).
One thing I like to see explained in a book is where dungeons come from. It’s nice to have some common default explanation for who or what created the many myriad implausible dungeons and/or filled them with ancient magical items that can’t be easily replicated. The book hints at this in a couple places (especially in the Wasted West, which is pretty much “dungeonland”) but it’s not quite as firmly stated as I would like.
I adore that there’s a chart with travel times between locations. That’s fantastic, and something more campaign setting books should do. Idea stolen.
There’s also a list of famous mage colleges across the land, with descriptions. This is gold. I love this idea and it reinforces schools of magic are an important aspect of the world.
As someone who likes his dark worlds, I like the Blood Kingdom ruled by vampires. It has a fun Ravenloft/ Castlevania vibe. But I was surprised to enjoy the Empire of the Ghouls even more. Ghouls are intelligent undead but are often relegated to being mindless scavengers barely more than animals, which feels like a missed opportunity. The Empire somewhat brings ghouls back to their Lovecraftian roots.
I do love that the large island in the middle of the token central sea—the Crete analogue in the Mediteranean—is the heart of a minotaur society. That’s fun. Plus it associates minotaurs with navies, which is something I enjoy; sailor minotaurs are a big part of Dragonlance, which helped get me into D&D.
Oh, and in one of the sections there’s a page on acquiring a barony in Dornig. Additions like that are why I like having an “awesome” section in my reviews.
As a campaign setting, Midgard is a little awkward. It’s not quite thematic and distinct enough to completely different from other kitchen sink fantasy worlds. But neither is it generic enough for published adventures to be dropped in without modification or used without explanation. It’s a dark setting, but not so dark as to be bleak & morally grey enough to appeal to fans of grim-and-gritty worlds. It almost feels like a stepping stone between a generic heroic fantasy setting and other more distant worlds.
However, a middle ground world could have some strong appeal for people looking to move away from the Realms or Greyhawk (or even Golarion) but not ready to go “full Dark Sun” or entirely abandon the conventions of D&D. It’s not a world that only reluctantly uses the tropes of D&D, or remakes the game. In this regard, the setting is just right (like bear-made oatmeal); Midgard is a large world with room for many, many different campaigns, each with a distinct tone. It easily matches the Realms in baseline scope and variety, and far surpasses the Tal’dorei Campaign Setting in pretty much every metric. It’s also a solid world that feels internally consistent without random additions that feel tacked-on or even illogical placement of nations, cities, rivers, and the like.
In terms of presentation, the Midgard Worldbook falls a little short of the highest bar set by previous campaign settings. It’s not going to dislodge Ptolus from its long-held spot at the top of the ranking. And while it’s easier to navigate than the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, it lacks that book’s inclusion of key NPCs. But, in exchange, it’s more comprehensive and detailed than the FRCS and much less cookie-cutter. And there’s more than enough lore to run a campaign in every nation in the book. While you sometimes long for more, that’s a common complaint that would be hard to avoid even for a book twice the size of this one. The largest problem is the book itself: there’s so much information, reading through the book and parsing all its details is a daunting task.
Having looked through quite a few campaign settings over the years, Midgard holds up fairly well in comparison. It’s a deep and engaging world that should more than satisfy Dungeon Masters looking for a campaign setting to make their own. It has enough generic regions that most published adventures can fit in the world with minimal modification. Meanwhile, a few hundred miles away, there are other lands wholly different in tone. A DM that gets bored with their current campaign can send their party to the north or south, dramatically changing the feel of the story without having to restart with new characters.
Anyone complaining about the absence of published campaign settings from Wizards of the Coast should look no further than this book. As should anyone who thinks WotC should publish a brand new setting. If either of the previous statements describes you, then this is the product you’ve been asking for.
First off, I play in a Star Trek Adventures game every Saturday at 3:15 EST, streamed on Twitch and archived on YouTube.
If you liked this blog, you can support me and encourage future reviews.
I have T-shirts available for sale over on TeePublic!
I also have a number of PDF products on the Dungeon Master’s Guild website as part of the 5 Minute Workday Presents line. Such as Artificer Specialists, Rod of Seven Parts, Traps, Diseases, Legendary Monsters, and Variant Rules.
Additionally, my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding, is available for purchase on DriveThurRPG or Print-on-Demand through Amazon. The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.
Kobold Press, the midsized RPG publisher, is famous for several things: crowdsourcing before it was cool, a fascination with Kobolds, being run by a guy legitimately named “Wolfgang”, and their campaign setting of “Midgard.” (Which has lots of kobolds. Because of course it does.)
The Midgard setting was originally created as a city to serve as a backdrop for adventures being published by the company (then known as “Open Design”), which soon expanded from a city into a region that grew into a subcontinent that became a world. Midgard is heavily inspired by Norse Mythology but has a wealth of other inspirations, both real and fantastic.
A version of the setting was originally compiled for Pathfinder in 2012, but in early 2017 Kobold Press Kickstarted an update of this campaign setting, raising funds for an expanded and updated campaign book along with PC focused accessories: one for Pathfinder (The Midgard Player’s Guide) and one for 5th Edition D&D.
This review focuses on the latter, the player splatbook Midgard Heroes Handbook for 5e.
(A blog reviewing the Worldbook will come later, when I’ve had more time to digest that massive freakin’ book.)
The book is a 211-page hardcover with full colour art and coloured page backgrounds, and also available as a PDF on the Kobold Press site.
Included in the book are eleven new races (bearfolk, centaur, dhampir, gearforged, gnoll, Midgard kobold, minotaur, ratfolk, ravenfolk, shadow fey, and trollkin). Also included is the winter folk halfling subrace and a variant ethnicity for humans. The book has a wealth of new subclasses (1 barbarian path, 2 bard colleges, 17 cleric domains, 1 druid circle, 6 fighter archetypes, 2 paladin oaths, 2 ranger conclaves, 3 rogue archetypes, 2 sorcerer bloodlines, 3 warlock pacts, and 11 wizard traditions). In total, there’s a staggering fifty new player options!
The book also includes 16 feats, 19 backgrounds, and weapon combat styles. There’s several new spellcasting rules and variant forms of magic (including ring magic, key lines, and runes) and well over a couple hundred new spells.
Heroes Handbook is a giant book of crunch. It’s basically what would have been considered a “Players Handbook 2” in earlier editions.
After the Kickstarter, the content of the book was divvied up and released to backers of the Kickstarter for playtesting, concept testing, and general review. A lot of the more problematic or egregious mechanics were quickly caught, leaving this product fairly well balanced. There are a few warts here and there, but in general the balance of 5e leans to “close enough” that nothing I saw in the book would break a game. I’ve seen more egregious elements in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.
Several of the archetypes seem surprisingly generic for a book ostensibly aimed at being a guide to a particular setting. To call out a few, there’s the the shieldbearer fighter, duelist and whisper rogues, elementalist wizard, shadow and genie bloodlines, and the great machine and light eater pacts. All could easily fit into the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or even Greyhawk with minimal work. And several of the new clerical domains also have a generic feel, such as the apocalypse, darkness, dragon, hunting, justice, prophecy, and travel. There’s a lot of gaps filled in this book, making it useful to players in a homebrewed campaign setting or even running through one of the published adventures set in the Realms.
Even a few of the races are generic. The Midgard kobold is a nice alternative for someone not wanting to use the version in Volo’s Guide to Monsters, and absence of the gnoll in that book was frequently commented on. The gearforged will do nicely until an official warforged can be released. And quite a few settings make use of minotaurs, such as Dragonlance. And more esoteric races like the dhampir, shadowfey, and trollkin wouldn’t be too hard to work into a setting. The ratfolk and bearfolk are more of an exception, but they’re both pretty cool. I’m surprised I never realized how much I dug the idea of a humanoid bear person.
Early in the book is a sizable table with the random ages, heights, and weights of the various species covered in the book. Very often this is forgotten, so kodos for Kobold Press for remembering!
The table of contents is fully hyperlinked. Handy.
At the start of the “Divine Characters” chapter, there’s a table with a brief summary of gods. This is a big chart that quickly tells you who worships which gods and their primary domain. This is always handy for clerics (and paladins).
There’s no index. Sadness. But, as there’s a solid table of contents, which covers pretty much all the bits you’ll want to find, so this is an exceedingly trivial complaint.
While the book is a lovely source of player crunch for Midgard, it doesn’t function very well as a player’s guide to the setting. For example, while a chart for the gods is included, there’s no details and expansion of the gods and their churches.
I’m not sold on the arrangement of the classes. The book divides the classes into “Martial and Roguish”, “Divine” and “Arcane”. It works, but it feels odd that the classes aren’t alphabetical. And someone looking for the bard might end up looking in the wrong section (they’re roguish not arcane) or wonder where the “rune magic” is located. This formatting also places various side elements, such as magical options and new weapons, in the relevant class sections.
Several of the subclasses are a little more complex and fiddly than some players might be used to. These are not always “newbie” classes. I’m not always convinced the payoff of the subclass is worth the added complexity. But for someone who wants a rogue with some more moving parts then the Duelist might appeal to them.
The book is missing some character. As much as I disliked Xanathar’s meta jokes and modern commentary in Xanathar’s Guide to Monsters, having in-character sidebars makes for a more enjoyable read. This book could use a little more in-world touches and personality.
The big problem with this book is that it’s reprinting a lot of content previously put out by Kobold Press. If you’ve already purchased several of the racial PDFs, like Unlikely Heroes, then seven of the nine presented races are reprinted. Several options for the Deep Magic series of PDFs have been partially or almost completely reprinted. And a large percentage of the Beyond Damage Dice PDF has been copied as well. (But if you haven’t purchased those products, or don’t have hard copies, then this probably isn’t a big issue.)
There’s a fair amount of recycled art, which is shared with the Worldbook. And the aforementioned PDFs. This isn’t unusually with smaller publishers, as good art is expensive. What art is in the book tends to be the generic quarter-page figure shots with larger half-page scenes at the start of chapters. There’s few pictures of gear or locations. And the pages don’t have little artistic flourishes, like items or bloodstains or inkblots (or the national crests that fill the Worldbook). This is especially noteworthy in the magic section with its many pages of straight text.
The absence of a map at the beginning is problematic. There little bits of world lore slipped here and there, but there’s no context for what is where or the scale.
(There is a lovely minimalist map in the ley line section on page 129, but this might not be the first place you check, and a lot of the detail is covered by the red ley lines; I’d love if the book had a cleaner version of this as a map the players/DM could print and cover in notes.)
There’s a heading for “Elemental Magic Feats” but none exist. Instead it goes to “Negotiator”. Similarly, a few feats in the “Dragon Magic” heading are only tangentially related to dragons (specifically Fortifying Healing and Unthreatening).
I’m still not a fan of how the trollkin is designed. It can use a bonus action to spend Hit Dice. I dislike this design. How fast you can spend Hit Dice is meant to be variable so you can have faster or slower healing (heroic games or gritty realistic games). Plus, being able to spend HD in combat doesn’t increase your overall health or extend your adventuring day. The trollkin doesn’t end up feeling like it heals more.
The feats section in general feels pretty anemic and heavily focused on magic.
There’s an uneven number of options in the book. Before this, the cleric was already well served, while the barbarian, bard, and druid had few options. After this book, the barbarian, bard, and druid are still under supported.
The book starts with brief explanation of the setting, and there’s a little description of how each race fits into the world. So this serves as a player’s guide to Midgard. (Except, sadly, certain PC races aren’t mentioned, like dragonborn, tieflings, and half-orcs.)
The Martial chapter includes variant options for using weapon, effectively giving fighters different abilities based on what weapon they’re currently wielding. This is pretty darn awesome. It *might* make said characters a little more powerful by giving them more options to use each round, but the effects in play should be minor.
There’s a lot of awesome subclasses that just bring me joy. The Vampire Slayer ranger is probably a little too focused to be a “good” subclass, but dammit I love the idea. (It’s also not *really* a full subclass being a variation of the Hunter, adding more options to that subclass.) And the Beer domain just lends itself to fun character concepts. Who doesn’t want to play a high cleric of hooch? (Or the priest of the oh God of Hangovers?) The bardic College of Entropy is luck stealers. That’s cool. The Clanking Mercenary option for fighters are effectively gearforged cyborgs, which is messed up but fun. Half-warforged. And, lastly, the Ghost Knight fighter is a dash of Ghost Rider (or the Headless Horseman), which is enjoyable.
The haunted villager, miner, and prophet backgrounds are fun and should fit most worlds. The rest of the backgrounds are much more world specific, which is an excellent way of making your character fit the setting.
There’s not many new monsters in the book, but there are some variant horses for famous breeds in the world with neat new traits. I like the idea of being able to “reward” a player with a unique horse. Similarly, there are mounts for kobolds, which would also serve as faithful steeds for other Small sized PCs.
A lot of gamers have been anxious for more character options for 5th Edition, with the official releases just whetting the appetite. Even Xanathar’s Guide to Everything barely quenched the continual desire for splat. The Heroes Handbook should help alleviate that, providing a wealth of balanced options for the game. A couple year back, when I was looking at the couple racial PDFs from Kobold Press and wishing they’d do more rules options… well, they delivered what I was hoping and more. Oh so much more.
This book isn’t perfect and there are some small quirks and imperfect rules. A few bits of awkward design. But it’s close enough and nothing should break your game. And if anything proves to be a tad imbalanced, it should be easy enough to tweak at the table.
This is simply a must have book for any 5th Edition table. (Excluding those running Adventurer’s League.) It’s great if you’re running Midgard, but there’s also more than enough to make it a solid purchase for games using other setting. And, for DMs, the options here can enrich your world with new people and factions. You might buy it and decide to add ley lines to your world. Or gearforged and related cyborg mercenaries.
Or a god of alcoholic drink. Because every setting with an adventurers needs a deity of beer and spirits.
First off, I play in a Star Trek Adventures game every Saturday at 3:15 EST, streamed on Twitch and archived on YouTube.
If you liked this blog, you can support me and encourage future reviews.
I have T-shirts available for sale over on TeePublic!
I also have a number of PDF products on the Dungeon Master’s Guild website as part of the 5 Minute Workday Presents line. Such as Artificer Specialists, Rod of Seven Parts, Traps, Diseases, Legendary Monsters, and Variant Rules.
Additionally, my book, Jester David’s How-To Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding, is available for purchase on DriveThurRPG or Print-on-Demand through Amazon. The book is a compilation of my worldbuilding blog series, but all the entries have been updated, edited, and expanded to almost two-hundred pages of advice on making your own fantasy world.
