The hardcovers for the Northlands Sagas and Worldbook came today, and I am impressed. These are very nice books, and they don't try to paint a modern veneer on what should be a brutal and savage world. They don't go out of their way to shock us with violence or gore, but the art does present the setting in a respectful, culturally appropriate, and non-modern way.
If this were 5.5E, Wizards would purposefully do things to annoy you with the art, take shots at old-school players, and then sanitize classic monster lore to the point where nobody has a reason to fight anyone. ToV is my 5E for the foreseeable future, and D&D 5.5E let me down.
Despite all my struggles with 5E, I do keep up with all the Kobold Press crowdfunding, so I am happy I jumped in on this even though my ToV books are in the closet during my last shelf reorganization. They are out now and occupy two of my premium display shelves, next to the three I have for DCC.
We get character options, a gazetteer for the Midgard setting, and new spells and monsters. We also get detailed rules for cold survival, which part of me wanted in the corebooks, but I understand why they were placed here. The rules are here and keep parties from walking straight lines
We also get a book of adventures, a complete adventure path for this land. The adventures are well-written and look fun, and are themed around the new setting.
You could also use these books to play a ToV version of Gods of the Forbidden North, an excellent OSE adventure across three huge books, but if you wanted to play this with ToV and a version of Open 5E, these books are your best bet. This would be a fun campaign with a lot of monster swapping, but worth the effort if Open 5E is your system of choice.
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