Why Pay to Play?™

Jörðgarð™ is a product of the Vintyri™ Project, a subsidiary of Steigerwald EDV Verlag. Jörðgarð, the Vintyri Project, Dungeons Daring™ and Steigerwald EDV™ Verlag are trademarks of Steigerwald EDV Verlag. This entire website is Copyright © 2003-2021, Steigerwald EDV Verlag, all rights reserved.

MENÜ: · Book & OSRD Downloads · Adventure Trail & OSRD Downloads · Adventure Map Downloads · Character Portrait Downloads · Reference Documents ·

· Pre-Release Maps · Icon Downloads · Dungeons Daring™ · Product Release Dates · Open Game License · Armed Forces Help · Impressum

Too Many Clues, Draug Hunters, In the Salt Mine and A Tale of 2 Books:

The first 4 of 5 Jörðgarð Trails™ Adventures have been released!

For the Dungeons Daring™ and OGL 3.5 game systems!

The adventures Too Many Clues, Draug Hunters, In the Salt Mine and A Tale of 2 Books are the first 4 chapters out of 5 in a series of adventures on the Fallen Empire Trail, which takes place for the most part in the ruins of the fallen Æsir Empire. Like all Jörðgarð products, the adventure includes gaming and NPC statistics for both the Dungeons Daring and OGL 3.5 game systems. The latter includes such fantasy roleplaying games as Pathfinder® from Paizo Publishing LLC and Dungeons & Dragons® 3.5 from Wizards of the Coast® Inc.

The main booklet for Too Many Clues is a 388-page bookmarked PDF file. The main booklet for Draug Hunters is a 500-page The main booklet for In the Salt Mine is a 396-page bookmarked PDF file. Bookmarking makes it easily for the user to jump quickly from one theme to the next. As with all other Jörðgarð products, these are free products released under the Open Game License 1.0a. They also are open source products; all texts, maps, floor plans, dungeon plans, battle map scenarios and NPC portraits can be downloaded separately in 100% editable form. This gives every game master the ability to modify the original products to best fit his or her campaign, and it gives game designers who wish to use our work in their products an easy means to do so.

Too Many Clues places considerable emphasis on being easily useable for first-time game masters who are working with beginning players. It contains extensive advice on how to run the various encounters under both the Dungeons Daring and OGL 3.5 guidelines and rules. In the course of the adventure, the player characters will encounter such opponents as draugs (undead), human brigands, halfling thieves, orcs, ogres, bugbears and harpys. In the end, they are invited to meet with a high white druid of the Northern Circle.

That's where Draug Hunters continues the adventure. The high druid invites the PCs to go to work as agents of the Northern Circle. If they accept, two rangers of the circle lead the PCs out of their native Slovania and into the ruins of the Fallen Empire, to the imposing Vilji's Eye fortress of the circle.

There, they are trained by high druids and then assigned a territory where they are on their own to root out the Darkness and to solve mysteries. In the course of the adventure, the PCs visit dungeon and a dragon and have mostly hostile encounters with a wide variety of creatures.

With In the Salt Mine, the Northern Circle sends the PCs off on a mission into the Fallen Empire to find a lost Æsir salt mine where strange things appear to be happening. The PCs not only find the mine, where strange things are indeed happening, but they also find many more things, far more than they or the Northern Circle ever imagined.

The Fallen Empire Trail adventure reaches its climax in A Tale of 2 Books – an epic adventure in itself (832 pages) that tales the PCs on a journey to castle ruins throughout the ruins of the Æsir Empire in search of two artifacts. Both have to do with fallen high draug (undead) Martröð. One is the ice key needed to enter Martröð's ice castle in the polar regions. The high druids of the Northern Circle need the key to ebter the ice castle, where the true bodies of the high undead are that the druids must destroy. The second artifact is Martröð's Black Book, which must be destroyed because of its utterly evil but powerful content.

The finale comes in the 5^th and last part of the adventure – Trailsend – where the PCs must enter the horrible dungeon of the dark draug þráinn, to destroy the remaining true bodies of the high undead and to recue captured King Vilji. The segment of the adventure still is in production and is not yet available.

Too Many Clues, Draug Hunters, In the Salt Mine and A Tale of 2 Books work closely with the Jörðgarð geographical accessory, The Northwest, a 1,500-page bookmarked PDF in 4 parts that also can be downloaded free.

The Northwest thoroughly details the continents of Ása and Énéa in the northwesternmost corner of the gaming world known as the Jörð, a gaming setting that has its roots in real world mythology. The Northwest deals specifically with continents based upon Finnish mythology and the Eddaic Icelandic mythology in a time before and shortly after Odin (Óðinn) and the other Norse deities migrated northward. The key areas covered are:

· The ruins of the Æsir Empire. In such works as Snorri Sturluson's Poetic Edda (also known as the Younger Edda), one learns how Óðinn, þórr, Týr and other Nordic deities migrated from Thrace in Asia Minor (Ása) to the north. The fallen Æsir Empire is what remains of their former homeland in Ása. In the current year upon the Jörð, Óðinn and the other deities already have left the old empire and migrated to Miðgarð and Ásgarð. Much of the ruins of the old empire now are in the hands of undead draugs and bitter, surviving Æsir druids, magi and rangers.

· The island known as Northland (Pohjola, also Norðland or Dökkálfheim), a dark elven enclave ruled by the dark elf Witch Queen Luohi. Northland is a mix of Icelandic and Finnish lore.

· The coastal nation of Karelenland (Karelenmaan), based upon Finnish mythology as retold by Elias Lönnrot in The Kalevala.

Scenes from the Jörðgarð World

What is Jörðgarð?

Jörðgarð is:

· A campaign setting, that is, a world in which one can run fantasy role-playing adventures.

· An RPG environment that is rooted in but not fanatically adherent to several real world mythologies.

· An open source, open gaming product. It is an open gaming product in the sense that it is being released under the Open Game License Version 1.0a. It is an open source product in which all texts and maps are available not only in PDFs but also in editable form to make it possible for game masters and game developers to modify all elements to fit their own campaign desires and their own product designs.

· A gaming world in two versions, one that runs hand-in-glove with our own free open game, open source Dungeons Daring™ RPG and a second version that is compatible with the OGL 3.5 system used by such popular RPGs as Pathfinder® from Paizo Publishing® LLC, Dungeons & Dragons® Version 3.5 from Wizards of the Coast® Inc., and, to a certain extent, 13^th Age™ from Pelgrane Press.

Technically, the Jörðgarð World will have some aspects not common to most campaign settings:

· All texts will be offered in Jörðgarð Reference Documents in the fully editable ODT Open Document Format of the free open source products Open Office.org and Libre Office.org. This format also can be opened in Microsoft® Word.

· All maps are offered in their native Fractal Mapper™ 8 formats. This will give each game master licensed for FM8 the ability to modify and/or expand upon the official maps. To do so, the game master will need the Fractal Mapper 8 program.

· All character portraits are offered in their native Character Artist™ 3 formats. This will give each game master licensed for Campüaign Cartographer™ 3 and Character Artist 3 the ability to modify and/or expand upon the official portraits. To do so, the game master will need the Campaign Cartographer 3 and Character Artist 3 programs.

· The maps also are designed to serve game masters and gaming groups who are involved in online campaigns or who run tabletop campaigns aided by a digital projector or a laptop LAN system.

· Game masters who do not have access to FM 8 or the CC3/CA3 combination will have no difficulty using the campaign setting. They merely will not have the ability to edit, modify or manipulate the original maps or character portraits in their native formats.

· The Jörðgarð setting does not use drawings of bikini warrior maidens, comic book style pictures or other exaggerated graphics. Our illustrations for the most part are photographs of actual sites in the real world that are ideal representations for a fantasy RPG setting.

· Jörðgarð is being developed in part based upon mythologies in various areas of the real world. Several areas are based upon the Eddic or Norse mythology, the Celtic Tuatha de Danaan as Sidhe, the Finnish Kalevala and Slavic mythologies. This does not mean that the world will replicate these mythologies. Rather, it will attempt to adapt their elements to make them suitable for good RPG campaigns. The world is being developed to allow reasonable and logical travel between areas with varying mythological roots.

· Material from the history of our own world is being used and adapted as the basis for several totally fictional lands within the Jörðgarð World.

· Jörðgarð will attempt to combine the best elements of static and dynamic worlds. The end release documents will be current to the Vintyri Year of 1406. Timeline information will be provided for official events which will occur in the years 1407-1416. This will give game masters who want a dynamic world a 10-year span of defined change. As of the Jörðgarð Year 1417, the world will be static. There will be no official Jörðgarð definitions for events beyond that time, giving game masters a free hand to develop their own futures.

Publication of the Jörðgarð World under the Open Game License will give all gamers worldwide the right to develop additional unofficial Jörðgarð World material and to distribute it as they wish, free or commercially, without royalty payments to us or restrictions other than compliance with the Open Gaming License.

Help for members of armed forces

We've received inquiries from members of armed forces of various nations who are stationed in foreign lands and who are unable to access our download site. If you fall into this category, please inform us by E-Mail at info@vintyri.org, and we'll try to resolve the problem.