Age of Vikings - Starter guide

What is Age of Vikings?

Age of Vikings puts you in medieval Iceland in the year 977 AD - the era of the great Icelandic sagas. You are not a roaming barbarian or a horned-helmeted warrior. Your hero is a landowner in Iceland, a farmer or fisher with a small plot of land. From that grounded starting point, you seek honor, reputation, and legacy through feuds, voyages, law, and - if you dare - contact with the mythic world lurking just beyond the edges of the known.

Age of Vikings is the new full-color revision of Mythic Iceland, now a complete game in its own right, written by Pedro Ziviani, who also authored the original Mythic Iceland supplement for Chaosium. The setting walks a careful line between historical authenticity and Norse myth. Want supernatural drama with trolls and ice giants? You're covered. Prefer a grounded tale of blood feuds and outlaw justice? That's here too.

How does the system work?

Age of Vikings uses the Basic Roleplaying engine, a percentile-based system with conflict resolution via rolling under a target number. If your Sword skill is 65, you need to roll 65 or lower on a D100 to succeed. Clean, intuitive, and with decades of refinement behind it from other Chaosium titles like Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest.

What sets Age of Vikings apart from a straight BRP game is how much of the Icelandic saga culture is baked into the mechanics. Character creation includes Passions - motivations and emotional stakes - as well as family history, Icelandic nicknames, and everything that emphasizes social and narrative identity, not just class and gear. You generate the lives of your grandparents, parents, and your youth, which affects character statistics and Passions. Your father's war, his death, his reputation - it all shapes who your hero is before play even begins.

The game adds unique mechanics on top of BRP: a dedication point system for Devotions, a spirit animal for each character, new skills like Prophecy and Spirit Sight, Viking-style ship combat, rules for running a Viking raid, drinking contest rules, Status rules, and guidance for legal battles. 

Magic is present but deliberately constrained. The rulebook includes a guide to Icelandic magic: rules for combining different Norse runes to cast powerful spells, and the shamanic practice of seiður. Magic points spent on a single powerful spell leave a character helpless for the rest of the scene - which means magic feels weighty and rare, exactly as it does in the sagas.

Combat is gritty and consequential. This is not a system where heroes shrug off wounds.

What do you need to start?

Age of Vikings is a standalone game - the core rulebook contains everything you need to both play and run it. No additional books required.

The Cursed Farm is a free demo scenario available as a PDF download from Chaosium's Age of Vikings resources page, along with a map of Iceland, pregenerated characters, and blank character sheets. It is also available as an inexpensive print softcover. This makes it an excellent no-commitment first look at the game.

The core rulebook also includes an introductory adventure called The Alþing, designed for first-time players, which comes with a suite of ready-to-play heroes.

Who is this game for?

Age of Vikings is a great fit for players who want their setting to mean something. If you are drawn to historical depth, clan politics, law as drama, and a world where reputation is a resource - this game delivers all of that. Players who want characters with meaningful identities - nicknames, family history, passions - rather than a class-and-gear build will feel right at home. 

It suits groups who enjoy story emerging from situation rather than from pre-scripted plot. The saga tradition is full of misunderstanding, pride, and cascading consequence - and the mechanics support exactly that.

Where it may not suit you: if your group prefers heroic high-fantasy power progression, or if the relative crunch of detailed character creation and percentile tracking feels like a barrier, Age of Vikings asks more investment than lighter systems. New players may feel somewhat overwhelmed by the interlocking numbers until they get the hang of the system. The free scenario is a good test before committing to the full book.

How does it differ from other systems?

The closest comparison is RuneQuest - both use BRP, both are historically grounded, and both treat culture as a mechanical layer rather than window dressing. Age of Vikings is more focused in scope: it is set entirely within Iceland and the Norse world, which gives it a depth that broader systems cannot match.

Compared to D&D 5e, the differences are fundamental. There are no classes, no levels, and no spell slots. Characters do not grow more powerful by accumulating experience points in the traditional sense - they grow through reputation, relationships, and skills developed through play. Combat is far more dangerous.

Where do you start?

Download The Cursed Farm for free from Chaosium's website. Read through it and run it with pregenerated characters. This gives you a feel for the BRP mechanics, the tone, and the stakes before you invest in character creation.

If the game resonates, pick up the core rulebook and read the first few chapters on Iceland's history and society before building characters together. That context makes character creation much richer.

For further resources, Chaosium runs a New Gamemaster Month each January that features Age of Vikings as one of its spotlight games - the associated guides and community posts are helpful for new GMs.

Recommended products at Netherbook

The Age of Vikings core rulebook is the obvious starting point and the only book you strictly need. It is a complete game. For groups who want a lower-stakes entry, The Cursed Farm softcover is an inexpensive way to try the system with pregenerated heroes before committing to the full experience.