Is there any 13th Warrior game module?

[Cikomyr2]

I was watching the movie and wondering if any writer ever tried creating a module based off the viking adventure depicted in the 13th Warrior.

[FrogInATopHat]

I was watching the movie and wondering if any writer ever tried creating a module based off the viking adventure depicted in the 13th Warrior.

I'm not aware of one, and would be surprised if it existed.

I will always have a soft spot for that movie, but it is a bit niche.

[Eldan]

I mean, it's officially a (very unusual) adaptation of parts of Beowulf. I'm sure there's a module based on Beowulf you could use as inspiration.

[Yora]

The movie is often considered to be the closest thing there is to a movie adaptation of old school Dungeons & Dragons.

I mean, what are the basic components?

Party hears that a lord calls for warriors.
His domain is being raided by scary savages and he fears an assault on his town.
The heroes repell one attack at night.
They go into the forest to find the savages' lair, sneak inside, and kill the leader.
The survivors return to the town and repell a full scale assault by the barbarians wanting to avenge their leader.
The End.

That's as basic as it gets. There are dozens, if not hundreds of adventures that are similar to that. What specific are you looking for?

[Vykryl]

Try reading the book, originally titled Eaters Of The Dead. May help you design/ write such a campaign if you want one.

I haven't watched the whole movie but have seen enough to know Hollywood butchered another book I enjoyed 😡

[Cikomyr2]

That's as basic as it gets. There are dozens, if not hundreds of adventures that are similar to that. What specific are you looking for?

An adventure with a little bit more meat.

Have the players *know* there is an attack happening every night. Those who participate don't get their long rest. Have the campaign be an endurance challenge, where its about spending resources during the day to investigate the plot , but knowing that you will need to spend whatever resource left at night during the assault.

Kind of an investigative sandbox with a ticking clock. The players can't afford to dwaddle, or stray too far from Hrothgar's keep.

[Yora]

Maybe Night's Dark Terror?

[Lapak]

Try reading the book, originally titled Eaters Of The Dead. May help you design/ write such a campaign if you want one.

I haven't watched the whole movie but have seen enough to know Hollywood butchered another book I enjoyed 😡

Eh. I read Eaters in the 80s, long before the movie came out, and I enjoy both. Yeah, they're very different, but they're very different ENOUGH that I don't feel it to be as much of a problem. Kinda like the Lucifer TV show - it's so removed from its source material (beyond the basic concept of 'Devil in LA' and some character names) that I'm able to enjoy it for what it is in its own right, ridiculous bits and all.

And it's a better adaptation of Beowulf than the actual Beowulf CGI adaptation from 2007, too.

[Vykryl]

Eh. I read Eaters in the 80s, long before the movie came out, and I enjoy both. Yeah, they're very different, but they're very different ENOUGH that I don't feel it to be as much of a problem. Kinda like the Lucifer TV show - it's so removed from its source material (beyond the basic concept of 'Devil in LA' and some character names) that I'm able to enjoy it for what it is in its own right, ridiculous bits and all.

And it's a better adaptation of Beowulf than the actual Beowulf CGI adaptation from 2007, too.

I don't watch much tv or movies. Mostly try to avoid books I know that get turned into video. Too many get butchered. This particular one gets me because the book was renamed after the movie. It's just a person pet peeve. When I was looking to replace my worn out paperback the title I was looking for was gone.

First part of my thought was the book would help a dm script out parts of the adventure without the time constraints a movie script gets forced upon it. There will be more details in the book to help with setup.

[Feldar]

I don't watch much tv or movies. Mostly try to avoid books I know that get turned into video. Too many get butchered. This particular one gets me because the book was renamed after the movie. It's just a person pet peeve. When I was looking to replace my worn out paperback the title I was looking for was gone.

First part of my thought was the book would help a dm script out parts of the adventure without the time constraints a movie script gets forced upon it. There will be more details in the book to help with setup.

Eaters of the Dead was published in 1976. I have a first edition right here.

[KineticDiplomat]

Blade of the Iron Throne.

It’s not D&D. It exists specifically to handle low fantasy and sword and sorcery. Fighting is about fighting, not about min-maxing magic classes or chipping HP to death, and characters start a “Hollywood human” and don’t worry too much about advancement. Magic, where and if present, is ritual, rare, and an at best dimly grasped contract with the great unknown - not how you solve problems on Tuesday before going to your local magic favored bar. Monsters are terrifying, because they are Grendel and not Orc number 7.

If you want to do something Beowulf-esque, that’s the system. Trying to hack D&D is going to leave you vastly disappointed that a game about stuffing high magic races and spells of all varieties into a mediocre combat system aimed at grinding through a lot of challenge appropriate encounters is not good at portraying mostly humans having bouts of high stakes melee combat.

[warty goblin]

Beowulf as written in the poem is way, way beyond even Hollywood human. Recall that he yanks Grendel's arm off at the shoulder with his bare hands, then dives to the bottom of a lake so deep it takes a day to swim to the bottom. He apparently has a recurring problem with hitting things so hard his swords all break.

This sort of stuff tends to get a bit occluded in modern tellings, since that sort of unexplained mythological power is kinda a hard sell to a modern audience. It's not like Beowulf gets bit by a spider, or comes from another planet or something, he's just that absurdly strong and tough. The whole thing gets weirder because the poem is cut with lots of very low-power clan feuds and other totally ordinary dark ages politicking. Even in the source, it sets up this weird frisson where Beowulf is doing all these superhuman things, but the really important stuff is all the clan wars and so on - even his funeral oration is mourning the Geats' coming destruction by other peoples, not by various monsters. He's sort of an anachronism in his own epic.

[KineticDiplomat]

I’ll give you that Beowulf in the original is pretty supernatural. Less so in the 13th warrior or most modern retellings.

As to the system reference, unfortunately Beowulf in the original doesn’t fit either - in D&D he would soak up melee damage while a band of wizards flew around sending lightning finger death to Grendel for roughly 45 minutes of dice throwing. At leas the more modern less extreme tellings fit well to Blade.

[warty goblin]

I’ll give you that Beowulf in the original is pretty supernatural. Less so in the 13th warrior or most modern retellings.

As to the system reference, unfortunately Beowulf in the original doesn’t fit either - in D&D he would soak up melee damage while a band of wizards flew around sending lightning finger death to Grendel for roughly 45 minutes of dice throwing. At leas the more modern less extreme tellings fit well to Blade.

I think trying to cramp mythological heroes into modern RPGs is basically a fool's errand in the first place. The focus is too much on the single hero, which is a poor fit for team/party based games and more modern storytelling's fixation on small groups of friends having relatable friend moments.

And if you look at heroes from myth and epic, their abilities are too uniform and too idiosyncratic and heterodox to fit comfortably in our mental framework of distinct power sources creating characters with distinct niches. Everybody is a great warrior when needed, but in a pretty general way, where they're just good with swords and spears and shields and bows and whatever else pops up. It isn't like person 1 specializes in this weapon and person 2 in that one, there's no role protection going on. Outside of that, sometimes they can hold their breath for two days, or talk to animals, or turn into animals, or get stronger until noon, or cannot eat the flesh of a dog, or are only vulnerable in the heel, or have a scabbard that heals any wound, and so on. You can create a system that has these powers, sure, but just imagine trying to take just two of these dudes and generate a satisfying adventure for them. Bob spent a ton of points on being able to swim for a week and can only be harmed by the skin of a sparrow's beak, and Alice is the child of a mountain and a woman who is now a tree, can play the harp so beautifully that the moon stops in the sky, and has a sword that can cut through anything but will turn on the wielder if they ever unsheath it in the presence of a black cow. You can tell a story with those two, but a combat encounter?