Hyperborea: The Black Gulf, a D&D 5E Campaign

 

North Wind Adventure's Hyperborea 3rd Edition is fantastic and I'm using it as the setting of my Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition campaign. We just wrapped up or first Adventure (a mash-up Late Trapper's Lament and Orbital Vampire Tower--both are excellent) and next session we will jump ahead about 6 months in time and the Characters will go from 3rd to 6th Level (as a group we have completed several DnD 5E campaigns and my intention is to move them up to about Level 8-10 pretty fast).

Here are the Setting rules I'm using:

Characters can only be Variant Humans. For Sword and Sorcery I feel this is a good fit and I'm just kind of sick of Elves and Dwarves. I might expand it to Tcho-Tcho (Halflings), Tieflings, and Cambions or I might not.

At Level 4 the Characters get a +1 bonus to 1 Ability Score and a Feat. I read about this on Reddit and thought I'd give it a go. I had contemplated a bonus Feat at Level 1 and this satisfies that idea for me, we might choose this option through Level 20.

I'm ignoring the need for specific types of weapons (silver for instance agains Lycanthropes) and the need for magical weapons to harm a creature. To me that isn't something Conan or the Grey Mouser worried about, but I could be wrong. I'm going to keep the bonus from magic weapons to account for 5E's Bounded Accuracy though. I don't really intend for magic items to be that important to the whole campaign.

I'm focusing on the Weird as much as I am the Swords and Sorcery. The Characters were transported to a space station of a Vampire named Regulus Onar via a Weird Science Teleporter and dealt with the owner and a couple of aberrations and then discovered a lost world of ancient technology not that far away via a cavern system. I got some looks but I'm kind of just letting my sensibilities as a Dungeon Master take center stage. I like Weird Tales and if nothing else that trip to the Manse of Onar will be a running subplot. The adventure I used for their journey into the night sky above Hyperborea was the brilliant Orbital Vampire Station from Dungeon Age Adventures and Joseph R. Lewis. The layout was so DM friendly and I've since bought everything he's releases. I urge everyone to check it out.