The Lost Lands: A New Campaign World for Pathfinder
On the opening day of Gen Con 2000, Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons was unveiled. That same day, Necromancer Games released The Wizard’s Amulet, more or less the second OGL/D20 adventure (that’s another discussion).
Necromancer, working with other companies such as White Wolf, Judges Guild, and Kenzer and Company, became one of the most successful d20 companies. Their mega dungeon, Rappan Athak, is one of the best known Third Era adventures.
However, the advent of Fourth Edition spelled doom for Necromancer. Co-founder Bill Webb founded Frog God Games, a clear successor to Necromancer, and they published products for Paizo’s Pathfinder. Frog God produced new items and also updated old Necromancer goods as well, Pathfinderizing them.
With the advent of Fifth Edition D&D, Frog God is now publishing for both lines (in addition to retro-clone, Swords & Wizardry). Necromancer and Frog God adventures and supplements had loosely been connected in that they took place in Webb’s personal campaign world.
Frog God is currently putting out that campaign world under the moniker The Lost Lands. It is going to incorporate nearly everything produced by Necromancer and Frog God Games. Some products, such as their Judges Guild updates and the Hex Crawl Chronicles, belong to other folks and won’t be included. But if you look at the long list of products, there’s an awful lot, including Gary Gygax’s under-appreciated Necropolis.
While the actual campaign book is due out sometime in 2015 (I believe), they’ve been releasing Lost Lands modules, such as Stoneheart Valley (which contains my all-time favorite adventure, The Tomb of Abysthor) and The Lost City of Barakus through Kickstarters. Recently, one of Necromancer’s long rumored projects, The Sword of Air, was funded for The Lost Lands.
Meanwhile, newer products such as the kickstarted Rappan Athuk (for Pathfinder), the epic Slumbering Tsar series and the ill fated but ultimately successful The Razor Coast, will all be part of this world.
There are several campaign worlds for Pathfinder, with Paizo’s own Golarion and Kobold Press’s Midgard two of the most popular. But with the back catalogue of Necromancer available, added to the impressive output of Frog God Games (check out the Northlands saga), The Lost Lands looks to be awfully meaty.
Though some of it is a bit dark for me, I’m a big fan of Necromancer/Frog God: especially the history they’ve built into their products. And because one can never have enough monsters, you should check out their Tome of Horrors Complete: all three of their third edition Tome of Horrors books, Pathfinderized, with over 800 pages of monster goodness….err, badness.
John has written about Necromancer’s outstanding updating of Judges Guild’s Wilderlands of High Fantasy here.
You can read Bob Byrne’s ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column here at Black Gate every Monday morning.
He founded www.SolarPons.com, the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’ and blogs about Holmes and other mystery matters at Almost Holmes.
And he’s been an RPG fan since the seventies.
Without getting into all the sordid details, Razor Coast was Nick Logue’s eagerly anticipated, well (crowd source) funded project that vanished, leaving some loud, angry RPGers holding the bag.
When Lou Agresta and company revived the project, they worked diligently to make good to those who had gotten shafted during the initial Razor Coast.
It was actually a pretty impressive effort on Lou’s part.
Frog God produced another quality product and a once lost mega-campaign was out in the marketplace. If you like tropical islands and nautical-based adventures, it’s for you. It’s 546 pages and there are a few additional products related to it.
For anyone interested in Sword & Sorcery campaign worlds, I also recommend “Primeval Thule”. It’s a continent in the world of Kulls Atlantis and Conans Hyborea, set on tropical Greenland. It has it it’s own distinctive character and has close ties to the Old Ones and creatures of Lovecraft that Howard only occasionally hinted to. Quite well done and clearly worth a look.
Both Frog God and Necromancer are incredible companies, and Bill Webb is a great designer, person, and RPer. I can’t say enough good things about them.
The most pulp-like RPG setting (outside of Conan) that I’ve come across is the World of Xoth campaign. I think they evolved into Pathfinder rules, but aren’t too difficult to convert.
They read like the old pulp magazines.
http://xoth.net/blog/category/sword-and-sorcery/
Frog God Games continues to develop the Lost Lands, with products for Pathfinder, Swords and Wizardry and D&D 5th Edition.
I’ve already received the kickstarted Quests of Doom, a collection of 18 adventures (6 Necromancer Games updates, 12 new ones) that are compatible with The Lost Lands.
Just yesterday (April 17), another Lost Lands Kickstarter, The Sundered Lands, went live. It funded in less than 24 hours!
[…] they make RPG products for Pathfinder, 5th Edition and Swords & Wizardry. Way back in 2014, I wrote here about The Lost Lands, the campaign world that would synthesize almost all of the Necromancer and […]
And, after Cults of the Sundered Lands successfully kickstarted, The Borderlands rolled out at KS. It’s off to a great start. The Lost Lands is shaping up to be a whale of a campaign world.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/froggodgames/the-lost-lands-borderland-provinces
Hello! I saw in your “Of Necromancers & Frog Gods” article you mentioned that you were going to talk about tying together Crucible of Freya and Tomb of Abysthor in a later article about Frog God games. I don’t see that you ever wrote about this in an article though, and I was hoping to hear your thoughts, especially as you mentioned that Tomb is your favorite adventure!
I am starting a new campaign (3rd edition, set in Greyhawk) and running Crucible of Freya (Ehlonna IMC) for the first time. I was not originally planning on tying ToA into this, but in my research I keep coming across people talking about how awesome it is and while it wasn’t on my radar back in the day, I have been looking through it and decided I’m going to drop it in.
However, despite it being considered a sort of follow-up to CoF, I don’t really see any tie-ins other than the Orcus stuff and Tavik teleporting there? In my campaign the orcs who raid Fairhill (Orlane IMC) also capture two people who are connected to my party, presumably as slaves, and I assume the party will want to find them. Tavik of course will teleport back to ToA once defeated. Given these two things and other people’s experiences with the modules, can anyone help with some ideas on how they would or have tied these together? ToA has a ton of information presented and a lot is going on, but it is one of the few modules I have read that doesn’t have any real hooks given in the intro and, as mentioned, even the Stoneheart Valley reprint doesn’t make an effort to tie it to CoF.
If you have any thoughts that could help me out, I’d appreciate it. Thanks!