I'm trying to set up a viking fantasy game. By which I don't

Let's start with some real shit: Crossdressing gods, Loki got fucked as a female horse.

>>53924880
Thor tricked a dude into marrying him.

>>53925116
Actually, he tricked a dude into wanting to marry him and then beat him to death with a hammer as soon as he got it back.

A sort of medieval scam for wedding gifts.

But I mean, the dude kind of had it coming. The dude has a giant red beard. You probably should've seen the whole thing coming.

>>53924790
Sounds like you should read soem icelandic sagas. Barely any magic, don't remember any gods. Human interaction, many vengeances, people going viking, discovering the new world. You can learn some offensive poetry from Gunnlaug serpent tongue.

>>53924790
Mythic Iceland, from BRP. It has everything you want.

>>53924790
>battles, tactics, culture, whatever. I know some, being from that neck of the woods, but something tells me you good lads know a great deal more than what I was old in school.

Look up the Shield Wall, which was heavily used by both the Norse and Anglo-Saxons. Norse culture was famous for their lack of laws, or at least laws which were grossly ineffective and portrayed as such even in the old stories. Man steals something from another man? That's for them to work out, and often the only law that would fall into use here is whether or not the man was justified in killing the thief where he stood, and even then the price of this act was weregild.

>>53924790
I'd strongly suggest picking up Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. It just came out, and Gaiman's writing style makes the old sagas easily understandable. Lots of really great stories there.

Also, is no one going to mention that the emblem on that shield is Goatse?

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>>53924790
I'm a viking-age reenactor and history grad, so if there is anything specific you want to ask I could probably help.

Obviously you choose the level of historical accuracy that you want/enjoy, but there is plenty of flavour there to sink your teeth into especially if you are keeping the most well known and fantastic gods and monsters at arms length.

>>53925825
Icelandic Sagas are really good, and a mix of Dark Age Slice-of-Life and Adventure with the odd supernatural bit. Ghosts and revenants, prophetic dreams and curses are some of the go to fantastic elements.

Most are quite short as well and can be found online. http://sagadb.org/

And for fun: https://tattuinardoelasaga.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/tattuinardoela-saga-if-star-wars-were-an-icelandic-saga/

>>53925905
Truth with some modification. Depending on when and where you were, law and order had different levels of importance. Thing (as in the word for dudes meeting up at a place of religious importance to discuss legal matters) was... well... a thing. Iceland had, at some points, extremely strict laws against dueling, murder, vengeance and whatnot because their blood feuds kind of went out of hand.

Not to mention niding/nithing/whatever the fuck you want to spell it. At some points in time, committing crime meant you were a gay wizard (no really, all criminals being gay AND wizards was totally a thing), leading to outlawry.

Granted, raiding was seen as a heroic thing to do, and there was a lot of killing dudes and taking their shit, but most of the Norse actually had legal differences between murder and killing, as well as raiding and straight up stealing. Also, who it was okay to raid and kill.

>>53924790
I've been playing Expeditions: Viking recently and they seem to do the low/mundane magic stuff really well. On the game system side the Sagas of the Icelanders is good for historic stuff while AGON can easily be reskined for a norse slaying experience. It even has the Glory mechanic you speak of.

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How accurate is The Saxon Stories towards Norse and Anglo-Saxon culture?

>>53926186
Not too bad, especially for popular historical fiction. Easy intro, but be prepared to unlearn some stuff if you want to look into the period further.

Last Kingdom TV series is alright as entertainment but between changes to plot/characters and the costumes/set design it is thrall-tier for accuracy. Utter tripe.

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>>53926265
I've gone up to Death of Kings before deciding I'm kind of exhausted on the adventures of Uhtred and, although I really love reading into the world and learning this-and-that about the culture or mindsets of the time, I'm really looking for an alternate view into Invasion-era England.

What would you recommend as reading?

Yeah, I stopped watching The Last Kingdom after they glossed over the entirety of Uhtred's time with Ragnar, which is to say I gave it one episode. Shame, I was actually kind of interested in seeing how they handled Leofric or Alfred.

>>53926025
>Gaiman
God no, stay as far away from the fuck as possible.

>>53925873
Add in RQ Vikings/Vikings of Legend, and you've covered ..pretty much everything.

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>>53926298
I am really drawing a blank for historical fiction of that period which is worth talking about. Sorry.

The Tale of Ragnar's Sons is a Norwegian Saga, but finding a translation might be hard.

I found myself watching all of both series of LK, mostly out of horrified fascination for what they would mangle next. The battle from Ep.1 is a masterclass in what a Norse vs. Saxon fight did not look like and if I ever meet the costume designer who said "we didn't try to make it accurate because nobody knows how they dressed" I will beat them to death with my crate of books on that very subject.

>>53926341
Any specific reason why? I'm not familiar with him.

>>53926836
Beocca being kind of handsome will never not make me mad. He's supposed to be a hideous ogre with a heart of gold whose singular moment of raw badassery saves Thyra and earns him the love he's always yearned for.

Did they at least do the redheaded whore right? Æthelfnad or whatever? What about Steapa or Father Pyrlig?

>>53926025
What's a goatse?

>>53927021
>Someone on 4chan not knowing what Goatse is.

All is lost. 4chan is well and truly dead.

>>53927021

A game of discovery and endurance.

>>53927021
you don't want to know

>>53924790
Symbaroum if no one else has said it.

>>53926091
>Star Wars
>Icelandic Saga
Shit I remember someone posting that more than two years ago. A great read.

Play MyFaRoG bro. It's exactly what you are looking for.

There was a really nice /v/idya tactical RPG recently called Expeditions: Vikings that had a strong historical slant.

>>53932438
...and in fact which is basically about exactly what this anon is looking for >>53926298 so I recommend it to him.

It does do one ahistorical thing which is that you encounter a lot more woman NPCs in every role than you would have historically, and in Denmark there's mostly no stigma to you playing a woman Viking (there's more stigma in Christian England, and less in pagan Scotland). Expeditions: Conquistador which was their much less RPG-y previous game did the same thing.

Expeditions: Conquistador also had supernatural elements that were basically explicit once you got to the endgame, which Expeditions: Vikings sensibly sidesteps away from. You *might* meet Odin, or it might just be a dream. You *might* meet Freya, but maybe she's just a strange kind of noblewoman. There are character skills of 'Witchcraft' and 'Benediction' but they're as believable as the effects of belief and herbal knowledge as anything else.

>>53927021
google it

>>53926025
>Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Sounds fucking awful.

"The Longships" is a great novel for this, it's a fun and easy read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Ships

There's a rules light rpg called Kiss my Axe, which despite the name actually looks pretty good for this. (If you want low crunch narrativist rules) It's basically "Sword Noir", rewritten for vikings.

>>53931502
It's written by Swedes, but the setting of Symbaroum is not Scandinavian-inspired, it's closer to generic fantasy, but with a mild eastern European influence. Some parts of the setting for Drakar och Demonar would work better if OP reads swedish.

>>53932394
No.

Postchristianization folklore is cool, I read a lot about it as a kid
The näck who plays amazing music nude in streams to lure you in, giants who can't stand church bells (large boulders were often said to be misses by giants), the lady of the forest with some sort of inhuman trait (tail, back like a rotten tree hollow) that you would best pretend not exist or you would face her curse (the tailed version sometimes came to the farm in human clothing, and if her tail peeked out under the dress you should make a remark that subtly informed her of this and shed marry you or give you a boon or something), the myling which is the ghosts of abandoned children that jumped on travellers backs and grew to enormous sizes and crushed them under its weight, crib swaps, satan himself making visits in disguise, witches familiars made out of balls of yarn with sewing needle legs that sucked the blood or milk out of livestocks for it's mistress (useful for blaming neighbours for your cattle weakening), the household tomte that needed appeasement so he didn't sperg out and punch your only cow to death (one story is how a girl put the butter in the christmas porridge on the bottom instead of the top, so he instantly went berserk and killed their cow, but then he went and ate it anyway and went full of regret when he saw the butter and made it up in some way i forget), and so on

Even if you don't include blatant supernatural stuff it's still real to the people and gives insight to their psychology

>>53935220
Adding to this with some more or less obscure pieces of norwegian superstition.

You get good, strong beer by yelling at it while it's fermenting.

Men should not be allowed in the brewhouse.

Make a noise before entering the barn, this is to warn the "nisse" (farm sprite or goblin) so he has a chance to hide. He is generally good natured, but can get mean if humans see him.

If you mention the wolf by name you will draw him to you. Call him greyleg/greyfur

Likewise, call the bear rumbler or brownfur

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning

Mounting a horse skin on a pole and displaying it in the direction of an enemy will curse that enemy.

The dead celebrate "black mass" at midnight once a year in the local church, but they're harmless if you leave them alone.

Churches are decorated with dragons to scare away the old powers.

Trolls are killed (or turned to stone) by daylight.

There's an underground kingdom, but if you go there you can never go back.

Never eat mackerel, they eat drowned sailors.

>>53924790
Check out Fate of the Norns.
It's set in the Fimbulvinter, and it's pretty brutal.

>>53926899
If you ask me you're safe ignoring one-line condemnations on /tg/. If they had any complaints worth actually considering they would have shared them.