Midgard is What?

What is Midgard?

I have been reading this for a while, and the best way to describe it is that the setting is a mix between the Forgotten Realms and Pathfinder's Golarion.

It is similar to Golarion in that it features theme park areas that share a similar flavor and style. The world has published adventures, but few adventure path-style experiences.

Like the Forgotten Realms, it is an organic, living, and breathing place with a rich history and a set of current conflicts and situations. Unlike the Realms, the world is designed as a whole with history, and wasn't "expanded out" with a series of novels in the 1990s. The Realms have this "tacked-on" feeling, where if an author needed a kingdom similar to one that was already there, it would just get created in a new spot. Now we have two similar places in the world, and the setting gets a splotched and muddled feeling to it, where things are all over the place and shoved together like food on a plate at a buffet.

The Realms wasn't designed; it was written out as it expanded.

Midgard was designed.

Golarion was designed, in the same way Mystara was intended, as a theme park first, and we will make it make sense later. The old Golarion (above cover) was a fun, if somewhat insane and evil, place, akin to a Conan meets D&D setting, where crumbling empires and lost civilizations were the norm. I loved this place, and every land was a call to adventure.

The setting also embraced the 3.5E edginess and the 2010s' extreme culture, and it screamed fun at the top of its lungs to grab attention. And it worked. Evil was downright nasty, and it taunted you with its power. And this isn't "5E evil," where it sits in a room, and the encounter is designed for you to win. This evil could TPK you, spit on your corpses, and raise you as undead to replace the monsters you killed. Yeah, they were vile and depraved, and being a hero was good.

The new Golarion feels uninspired and dull. The writers let guilt and fear take over their creativity, retconned any mention of enslaved peoples (which is a huge heroic call to justice), and turned the setting into a modern-day cosplay metaphor with guns, travel guides, and steampunk. It is overly safe, with all the heroic Frazetta-style art painted over, as if church prudes were put in charge of the art department, and it has lost all its charm. They would put Conan in a tourist shirt and cargo-pants khakis and give him a side-shaved Supercuts hairdo. The art is still great, but it's just too safe and modern, falling flat for me.

Where does Midgard fall flat for me? It does not feel like a "points of light" setting. While the world isn't a "safe feeling" setting, I want that constant assault by evil and chaos that calls adventurers to action. The Forgotten Realms has an even more "peaceful Western European" feeling, where they will toss out a map of a town with no walls around it, and I am sitting there thinking the regular wandering wilderness encounter tables will have a fun time sacking this unprotected place. Midgard has walls around towns, so it is a step better.

The world is mine to do as I want with, so I can throw in all the threats and dangers myself. Old Golarion did this for you, and there were lands you did not go to. So Midgard is "some work required" to lay down the evil lands, threats, and threats to civilization. To make this world shine, you will pick a starting location and begin scribbling all over the map, adding a dragon kingdom here, a huge badlands filled with Orcs there, a vile demon-worshipping bandit kingdom here, the Realm of the Drow down there, and the lands of the undead over there.

Midgard does not shine out of the book; you need to make it yours first before you play. It is a blank whiteboard with the map and kingdoms set up, but adding all the danger and evil is YOUR job. Do not play Midgard as-is, like the Imperium in Traveller; playing there is pretty dull without investing a lot of work into firing up current conflicts and laying down the bad guys in your subsector. There are suggestions in the book, but they seem more like subtle hints and story hooks than they do full-blown threats to civilization.

This is also a strength of Midgard. Where other settings give you everything, there is a considerable amount of DIY in Midgard, at least to turn it into a points-of-light setting. If someone else has the book, they will know about the map, people, and places - but since it is your job to fill in the threats to this civilization, then they won't see that part. Take a city and make it conquered by a demon-lord's cultists. Point to a valley and say this is the realm of an elemental dragon and their humanoid followers.

If you want that 2010s style wickedness and evil, you will need to add it yourself. For me, this is a weakness of the Midgard setting, but for some, it allows their creativity to fill in the blanks. To be fair, this is a problem in most published settings today; the creators fear their customers, and they write down as if everyone were children. It sucks, and it is not fantasy gaming. The settings that leave lots of blank space take work to build up, but at least they are not talking down to you.

Oh, and at least Tales of the Valiant includes a nod to this era of play on page 17 of the Player's Guide. Thank you for keeping the edgy and classic 2010s style of fantasy alive, which is more than many games these days will do. One piece of art can change the game, and for me, this piece, so early and in the Player's Guide, is a statement.

Pathfinder 1e's edge and grit have not died. They just switched games. It is still DIY to add this in, but the door is open for you, and the company is not afraid to engage with its audience.

You must change the map to Midgard. Do not play straight from the book. You will spend more time trying to get unimportant and inconsequential details right, and you will miss the opportunity to create the fun that the setting gives you room to add.