In August 2023 we presented the Hyperborea 3E Bundle featuring the new 2022 Third Edition of Hyperborea, the sword-and-sorcery FRPG from North Wind Adventures. This vividly dangerous, edge-of-the-world campaign setting takes inspiration from the weird fiction of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, and many others. Capturing the spirit of the original AD&D 1E and John Eric Holmes blue-box D&D rules sets, Hyperborea is compatible with old-school retro-clones such as OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry.
The isolated Land Beyond the North Wind is a flat hexagonal realm hemmed in by the mystical boreas. In the unchanging scarlet radiance of a bloated, dying sun, roiling seas spill eternal over the world’s rim. In this land of perpetual decay, heroic cataphracts, pyromancers, runegravers, purloiners, legerdemainists, and sublunary Gnoph-Yikks delve dungeons and ruins, explore frontiers, and plunder gold and treasure.
In the vast geography of D&D retro-clones Hyperborea is, fittingly, an outlier. The game focuses on a pulpish sword-and-sorcery experience, where mighty-thewed heroes and heroines match steel against sorcery as they plunder treasure and magic in a decaying world. Though built in the traditional way (3d6 rolls for the usual six attributes, Fighter-Magician-Cleric-Thief), all player characters are human (no dwarves or elves), from an array of offbeat subclasses, flavorful cultures, and religions drawn from ancient, primeval, and Mythos sources. There’s a lot of the Mythos in Hyperborea, befitting its foundational inspiration, the Hyperborean cycle of Clark Ashton Smith.
Hyperborea designer Jeffrey Talanian started his game design career working with no less than Gary Gygax, on the Castle Zagyg line Gygax published through Troll Lord Games under his “Trigee Enterprises” imprint (2005-2008). In 2008 Jeff started North Wind Adventures to publish his own modules such as Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent. In 2012 he published the First Edition of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, and, over the next decade, built out its support line in a sequence of successful crowdfunding campaigns.
We presented the 2017 Second Edition of AS&SH in March 2021. This new Hyperborea 3E Bundle featured the two-volume 3E rulebook (2022), atlas, and introductory adventure from the successful July 2021 Hyperborea 3E Kickstarter (1,678 backers, US$172K). Third Edition reworks character abilities, makes spells easier to acquire, streamlines combat, and adds many races, monsters, magic items, and languages. The layout and artwork are new, and the text has been completely re-edited for clarity. (And all older 2E AS&SH material remains compatible with Third Edition!)
There were five titles in our Hyperborean Collection (retail value $49) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete 333-page Hyperborea 3E Player’s Manual and 317-page Referee’s Manual (plus the free 3E Character Record); the beautiful color Atlas of Hyperborea; the introductory 3E adventure The Late Trapper’s Lament; and (pulled in from our March 2021 Hyperborea 2E offer) the Referee’s Screen.
Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) of this Hyperborea 3E offer went to the charity designated by designer Jeffrey P. Talanian, the Millstone Wildlife Center. Millstone Wildlife Center provides rehabilitation services for injured or orphaned mammal wildlife in the state of New Hampshire. These services include medical treatment, rehabilitation, and release of mammals brought to the center, as well as educational outreach programs for students of all ages.
