Cresting a white-capped wave, a longship races the gulls towards the rain-lashed shore, its red-and-white sail silhouetted from behind by the flash of lightning within the storm clouds rolling in off the sea...
In a smoke filled hall, two masters of poetry and song trade riddles for the amusement of their host and his guests, until the thunderous sound of a gigantic fist rings against the barred door...
Standing on the barrow-top at dusk, the wizened crone lights her torch of juniper wood and prepares to draw out the buried brigand whose avarice knows no end even in death, her knife blessed to cut even the flesh of ghosts...
Ravens caw as two mail-clad warriors land on the tiny island, each stepping off their own small boat with swords drawn and shields raised, confident in the knowledge that only one of them will leave the island alive...
For the past year or so, I've been working on a major design project, and I'm finally ready to start showing it off to the wider world. To that end, this is Bodil's Gap.
Bodil's Gap is a folkloric fantasy campaign setting for Dungeon World inspired by viking-age Scandinavia and its neighbours. It focuses on the adventures of the men and women living in the geographic region of Bodil's Gap, a frontier land removed from the old world by the broad expanse of the sea, much like viking-age Iceland was a remote frontier removed from the familiarity of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
Themes:
Civilization and the Wild
Bodil's Gap boasts a harsh landscape framed within the confines of two towering mountain ranges and divided north from south by the restless waves of a vast and might fjord. Even centuries after the first settlers landed on its shores, large stretches of it remain barely explored and almost entirely unsettled. Brave men and women must carve their places from the wilderness, and defend their homes and families from the ravages of an often hostile world. Dealing with the dangerous nature of the wilderness and its contrast with the safety and comfort of civilization is one of the major themes of the setting.
Honor and Glory
Ingrained in the society of the Gap is a strict code of honour by which people are expected to live their lives and by which they are judged by those around them—a code entirely founded on forming and upholding a good reputation in the community. Because of this code, insults are a matter of life and death, crimes are often repaid in blood, and a feud between two people can quickly come to encompass entire families. Human drama leads to conflict, and conflict almost always leads to violence in one way or another. Dealing with that conflict is another of the major themes of the setting.
Spirits and Folk-Magic
Magic is present everywhere one cares to look in Bodil's Gap; it is fundamental and intrinsic to the world itself. It lies close to the skin of everyday life, and can be felt in countless small ways, from charms that really do bring good luck to funeral rites that keep angry ghosts from troubling the living, from spirits that shepherd their flocks of rainclouds around the sky to trolls that dwell in the local woods and harass travelers. Human affairs constantly brush up against the world of spirits and magic, and dealing with that contact is the last major theme of the setting.
Features
Bodil's Gap is an enormous undertaking, and beyond the setting itself there's a lot of mechanical content that I'll be talking about in future posts. For now, I just want to lay out some of what you can look forward to:
- Six new playbooks custom-designed for the setting, including a wide variety of different thematic magical traditions separated out from the too-broad umbrella of the Wizard:
- Dýrsark: A warrior who fights under the influence of a berserk rage or other battle trance, beloved of the valkyries and liable to undergo a bestial transformation while in combat.
- Goði: A priest of the gods and goddesses who created the world and its people, particularly devoted to one or more patron divinities from among the pantheon, and endowed with divine power by those patrons.
- Óttimaðr: A practitioner of giantish sorcery who draws their power from the Realms of Fire or Ice, or from the Realm of the Dead, but who must take care lest their power draw the attention of the giants themselves.
- Rúngaeti: A master of the runes, each privy to only a few of those divine letters of power, and able to speak spells or inscribe objects with their mastered runes for a variety of effects.
- Seiðkona: A witch and shaman who deals with spirits, bargaining with them for magic and favours or binding them to serve and obey.
- Skald: A master of sagas and riddles who invokes the powers of legend to force the present to conform to the shapes of ancient songs and stories.
- Seven new compendium classes.
- A massive bestiary of over a hundred monsters created new or adapted for the setting
- A bunch of new and reworked equipment, including some new systems for customizing arms and armour
- A bunch of universal moves made custom for the setting
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