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The Northern Tier

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The Northern Tier is a small (42 one-mile hex) hexcrawl set in the Rosewood Highlands. 

Just south of the mist-shrouded peaks of the Endless Mountains, the Rosewood Highlands is a borderland between the civilized lands to the east and west, and the wild, untamed Northands beyond the peaks. 

The Northern Tier is a small, wild wooded region populated by faeries, undead, monsters and hardy Highland Folk. Great treasures can be found buried in mysterious ruins, calling to the adventurous and the foolhardy. Strange creatures, both baleful and benign, roam the hills and valleys of the region.

The Northern Tier is a small Hexcrawl set in the northern part of the Rosewood Highlands, east of Newtown, west of Great Oaks, in the foothills of the Endless Mountains. Ten NPCs, over 70 significant random encounters and 42 fleshed out hex encounters are detailed herein, offering both "fixed" and random encounters as a party travels through the area.

Linked to the region are nine "Highlands Locations" avalable separately from Rosethrone Publishing:

  • The Chantry of the Deepflame
  • The Ghost Downs
  • The Hall of the Gnome King
  • The Palace of the King Under the Water: Blackfalls Hall
  • The Rusted Tomb
  • The Sepulcher of the Burning King
  • The Shrine of the Fallen Angels
  • The Summer Court of the Silver Queen
  • The Tumble and Faller Village
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Reviews (2)
Discussions (6)
Customer avatar
Sam C September 03, 2020 8:32 pm UTC
PURCHASER
The quality here is excellent! The material is highly usable. I found the first material, and then consumed it all. I am actually switching my home campaign to be based in the Rosewood Highlands and plan to fill in the blanks, although I would (figuratively) kill for even a couple of sentences on Hamlin, the Twin Cities, religion or even tweaks to S&W in the homebrew. I plan to use OSE for this because it's so malleable, but I could as easily have used 1E, BX or even 5E with tweaks. Thank you for a great session...and if you're working on any of the bigger picture stuff, I will happily buy it even in partially complete form!
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Customer avatar
William B September 04, 2020 9:55 am UTC
PUBLISHER
Thanks! The Highlands Campaign is scattered over hundreds of pages from the past 30+ years, much of it handwritten... Regarding the ruleset: OSE is a fantastic choice. I started with B/X back in the early 80s and it heavily influenced me, even when we switched to AD&D and then 2ed... As far as rules tweaks - I've tried to write the material to be fully compatible with "standard" old school rules, so many of the houserules and tweaks that we employ (which are continually evolving) aren't fully reflected in the material as published. For example, we use a heavily modified version of the 2ed thief (with more skills) so that the player has more control over which skills his or her character emphasizes (there's a huge skillset difference between a forger and cat burglar, but both might be considered thieves). Lots of tweaks like that...

Regarding religion: the primary religion of the region is the Church of the Holy Saints, a loose analog of the medieval catholic church with more infighting...See more
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Customer avatar
Sam C September 05, 2020 10:54 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Thank you so much for the extra detail. I really appreciate it. I've been diving into the work of fleshing out the campaign, and there's so many great tidbits in the documents. It's fantastic.

If I had one wish at this point it would be to have the maps you use (even hand drawn) a level up showing the Southlands (where orcs are from?), the Midlands, the Confederation, Hamlin and even the North lands.

Oh, and more on the North Wars and the Landings Wars.

Thanks again for a truly inspiring setting and way of communicating it all.
Customer avatar
Steven Q July 05, 2018 4:40 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I think there is a lot of creative content here. Thank you for share it.

Have you noticed that your "Palace of the King Under the Water" has been reviewed over at http://tenfootpole.org?
Customer avatar
April 22, 2018 4:09 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I have purchased both the adventures and am enjoying reading through them. There are hundreds of ideas and a ton of nights or days of roleplaying here. Can you tell me about your Swords & Wizards in the Highlands RPG and at least the basics of how it differs from stock Swords and Wizardry, please or better yet publish it here. Thanks, Aaron
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Customer avatar
William B April 22, 2018 4:43 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Aaron. Thanks for purchasing the books. Swords and Wizards in the Highlands is, like many rulesets, a houseruled version of S&W. It's human-centered and I'm kind of going for a Celtic/Norse/Germanic feel - but it's so very far from complete. I have another small location (The Shrine of the Fallen Angels) waiting for approval and two more in process (both are in layout - another small location "The Hall of the Gnome King" and a larger location, "Blackfalls Hall: The Palace of the King Under the Water"). Once I've finished the layout for those and uploaded them, I have a draft of the bestiary that's in layout (but it's a living document - that is, I only add creatures as I use them/need them). The creatures are one of the areas that I'm trying to differentiate from standard S&W (all undead drain attribute points, for example). I'm not sure how soon S&W in the Highlands would be ready, but I'll keep plugging away at it. I'm learning as I'm going.
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Customer avatar
April 22, 2018 6:22 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Thanks for the reply, I thought that was the direction you were going with this game and on reading more it came to me that this would dovetail very nicely with Necrotic Gnome's Dolmenwood campaign, not everything but a lot of it could especially the Faerie creatures aspect! I will be looking for your other endeavors soon.
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Customer avatar
William B April 23, 2018 7:58 am UTC
PUBLISHER
I have a passing knowledge of Dolmenwood. I'll look at it more closely. Thanks again!
Customer avatar
William B March 13, 2018 11:37 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
A Changelog? Great idea.

I'm new at this. Thanks for asking.

Most of the changes have been formatting - getting the items on the proper two page spread and getting it ready for POD. There are a couple typos that I found going through looking for changes... I will do an update to fix those soon...

Special Encounter 29 (The Crow) has some extra content (NOTE Chart in Appendix New Items is incomplete)
Hex 9A (Boat Ruins) - new wording
Hex 12 (Witch of the Wilderness) a new table, some new text and very different format (2 page spread)
Hex 13 (Garris Stone) additional paragraph
Hex 23A (Stones of the Fallen Kings) considerable new material
Hex 23B (Basin Stone) some new material, reformat
Hex 26 (Griffin Lair) one additional paragraph
Hex 30A (Tiresh Village) new chart
Hex 35A (Grammian Village) 2 new entries in the chart (I think!)
Hex 38A (The Forest Master) Fiannan's Responses altered slightly (Typo in the Stat Block...)...See more
Customer avatar
steve J March 13, 2018 2:21 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Is there a change log for the changes and/or additional material? Just want to quickly find that content. Great work!
Customer avatar
Peter K October 29, 2017 9:06 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Northern Tier? Endless Mountains?

Is this some sort of homage to Northeastern Pennsylvania?
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Customer avatar
William B October 29, 2017 9:16 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Kind of. Northwestern PA is where I live and we hear a lot about the Southern Tier of New York state around here, so I figured there could be a place in the region called the Northern Tier... I've always liked the name "The Laurel Highlands" which is in the center of PA - but well known enough that I couldn't use it, so this region became "The Rosewood Highlands". So think of the Highlands as wooded small mountains climbing into the higher, Rocky Mt. type mountains of the Endless Mountains... Anyway, thanks for checking out the hexcrawl...
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Customer avatar
Peter K October 29, 2017 9:31 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Hah. I'm originally from Bradford County PA, and spent a lot of my youth there and in Sullivan County. So I remember hearing "Northern Tier" mentioned on the local TV and radio stations quite a bit.

Friends and family have mostly moved on and there's not much for me to go back to there these days. But even after all these years the landscape still holds a place in my heart.
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File Last Updated:
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This title was added to our catalog on September 11, 2017.