The Northern Reaches
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| Authors | Ken Rolston and Elizabeth Danforth |
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| Genre | Role-playing game |
| Publisher | TSR |
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Publication date
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1988 |
The Northern Reaches is an accessory for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The book describes the land known as the Northern Reaches, which lie on the eastern seaboard of the D&D game's Known World, also known as Mystara.
The guides Helfdan Halftroll, Onund Tolundmire, Saru the Serpent, and Dwalinn the Dwarf take the reader on a tour of the Northern Reaches. The accessory describes the three Viking-style lands of Ostland, Vestland, and Soderfjord. The thirty-two page Players Book gives an overview of the Northern Reaches, and contains rules for Northman characters, including optional rules for character personality traits. The sixty-four page DM Book contains the history, geography, nations and governments, rules, and nonhumans of the Northern Reaches, three scenarios, rules for adapting the setting to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, an epic campaign outline, and a new system of clerical magic: runes.
The gazetteer also includes a large color map and cardstock cutouts for constructing scale model Viking buildings. The complete 3-D card village can be assembled and used as the setting for two of the detailed adventures.
GAZ7 The Northern Reaches was written by Ken Rolston and Elizabeth Danforth, with a cover by Clyde Caldwell and interior illustrations by Stephen Fabian, and was published by TSR in 1988 as a sixty-four page book, a thirty-two page book, four cardstock sheets, a large color map, and an outer folder.
Jim Bambra reviewed The Northern Reaches for Dragon magazine No. 143 (March 1989). He said that the book "introduces these cultures in a highly entertaining and informative manner", concluding, "With its solid role-playing excitement and easy to digest background, this Gazetteer belongs in every D&D game collection."
Lawrence Schick, in his 1991 book Heroic Worlds, felt that the gazetteer gave "an excellent feel for what the Norsemen were really like".
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