This is an adventure that could have been ripped from the pages of Conan the Barbarian... it has caught the very essence of such tales well.

It has it all - a mad necromancer, an ancient crypt, a strange and almost mythical monster, untold riches there for the taking - and is set notionally in Hyperborea, although notes are provided to enable you to transplant it to another setting if preferred.

The adventure begins with some clues that the characters can discover or be given to point them in the right direction, all bound up in a teeming city that Conan himself would have felt at home in - at least, when he was in the money. Then it's off across a barren wasteland (of course) in search of the Sightless Serpent and the crypt wherein it apparently makes its home. A crypt replete with sarcophagi, mummies, traps and all the usual appurtenances to make for an exciting dungeon crawl, naturally.

It's as near as the characters will get to adventuring like Conan, a fine adventure in appropriate style.

North Wind Adventures has a real winner here.I can heartily agree with the writer of the game's foreward, Stuart Marshall, when he describes this game as Dungeons and Elder Things. AS&SH definitely captures the feel of the Weird Fantasy genre from beginning to end. The game system is based on D&D/AD&D and it also introduces some very cool additions to that design. The writing is clean and precise. Anyone that likes the 'Gygaxian' flavor of the AD&D books of old will really appreciate what the author has accomplished with this great game. I highly recommend the boxed edition of AS&SH as well as it will bring back memories of the days when you got a set of dice with your games. Seriously, you will not be disappointed. Old School fans unite! Buy this game today..........

This is a great game with smooth rules, an old school feel, and a freshness in playability. I used the pdfs and had my first game started in an hour. My players grumbled when I stopped the session after 4 hours. THAT to me is a sign of a fun game!

The pdfs are beautiful scans, from the box covers & books to the character sheets & maps. All you'll need are the dice. If your portable e-reader can handle pdfs, this is the best value for a complete game with ultimate portability.

Even if you have the boxed set, this is a great bargain for its convenience. I enjoyed the pdfs so much, I had to get the boxed set as well -- another great bargain when you'll see all that's included.

Play on!

There is just something about a big red box for games.
I have not been able to get Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea in it's big red box form, but I do have it on PDF, and let me say it is really nice. So what do you get with this? Well there is a 256 page player's book, 240 page Referee's book, a map of Hyperborea and pdfs of the Box Covers. So all in all about 500 pages worth of old school playing goodness.

Now there is a lot here that is old hat for the experienced role-player and some that is similar to many of the OSR games. That all being said it does also make it a great intro game for anyone and there is a still so much here for the old-timers that I don't feel a page is wasted.

The Players Book focuses on making characters, magic and combat. So ability scores are covered, alignment and classes. Most of this is the same as say D&D or S&W, but there are enough little changes to make it worth your notice. for starters the races of Hyperborea are all human-centric. So we have Amazons, Kelts, Kimmerian, Vikings and Hyperboreans among others. All what I call the "Conan" races. Let's move to the classes. There are the four basic classes, the Fighter, Magician, Cleric and Thief. But each also has 4 to 6 subclasses. Fighter has the Barbarian, Berserker, Cataphract, Paladin, Ranger and Warlock. The Magician has Illusionist, Necromancer, Pyromancer and Witch. The Cleric has the Druid, Monk, Priest, and Shaman. Finally the Thief has the Assassin, Bard, Legerdemainist and Scout. Each subclass is very much like it's parent classes with some changes. The classes look pretty well balanced. I liked the bard as a single class option (nice to have and not something that we had in 1979). I would love to try out the Necromancer, Witch and Warlock and I know my son would love to try the Pyromancer. Each class has a "Fighting Ability" and a "Magic Ability" which relates to attacks. So yes, even magicians can get a little better in combat as they go up in level. It's a great little shorthand and works great. So a 4th level Fighter has a fighting ability of 4. A 4th level magician still only has a fighting ability of 1 and a cleric 3 and thief 3. Sub classes can and do vary.

AC is descending (like old school games), BUT with the Fighting Ability stat it could be converted to an ascending AC easy. There are background skills and weapon skills.

The next 90 or so pages deals with magic and all the spells. The max spell level is 6. Not a bad number really and that is still plenty of spells.

The last 60 pages of the Player's book deals with combat in all it's forms. So combat, mass combat, saves and conditions. A great collection really of some of the "Best of" ideas I have seen in many games, but it all works really nice here.

The Referee's Manual is next.
It is nearly as big (240 pages vs 256). The first half is fully devoted to monsters. The format is most similar to Basic or Labyrinth Lord, and it is full of the usual suspects with some notable exceptions. For starters this book includes the Demons (but not the devils). It does NOT include any dragons. But to make up for it there are many of the "Lovecraft" races such as the Great Race, Elder Things and fish men. Great inclusion.

The next 50 or so pages covers treasure. Among the magic items are things like Radium Pistols and other sc-fi artifacts. Very pulpy.

Finally we end with the Hyperborea Gazetteer. A great bit that I can easily drop into my game. The lands are a pastiche of Howard, Vance, Lovecraft and Smith. If these names mean anything to you then you know, or have an idea, of what you are going to get here.

All together this is a package of such great ideas I can't wait to use it somewhere.

Another fantastic retroclone rpg. The setting with this mix of lovecraftian and barbarian fantasy is a real blast and open lot of possibilities different from the classical fantasy rpg. The rules are very well done, avoiding to be too much a burden but covering almost all the situation you can encounter.

Disclaimer: I was credited in the book, though my role was mostly as a consultant for (some of) the statistical aspects of the game. So I was not involved with the actual writing, playtesting, nor setting development (except very few bits.)

This said, this product is absolutely stunning. It goes back to the roots of the hobby's inspirational literature and original mechanics, and gives them a thoroughly new spin, without creating too much of an hurdle to learn the game (a thing which cannot be said of, say, DCC RPG by Goodman Games, which completely rewrites the roots of the D&D game.) Also, it implements weird fantasy much better than what other games do or claim to do (like Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG.)

The art is fantastic and inspired; the Cthulhu mythos critters are some of the most beautiful, enticing and repulsive representations I have ever seen; some of them far better than anything Chaosium itself ever did.

In short: if you want a game which threads very close to AD&D, yet streamlines it in a meaningful way and at the same time adds SUBSTANCE; and if you want an excellent setting for weird and sword & sorcery fantasy gaming, look no further.

Reviewed this on my blog -- http://mysticbull.blogspot.com/2012/11/albino-apes-beast-men-and-great-race-of.html.

Great read -- haven't played it yet, but it's in the rotation.

I own this product in both PDF and print. I can't say enough good things about this game. I've been gaming since I was 9 (41 now) and most of that time has been spent playing swords & sorcery via AD&D (mostly 1st edition). I can say, without hesitation, that Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea is a fine homage to classical swords & sorcery gaming - I might even go so far as to say it's the first RPG I've played that actually gets the feel and style of swords & sorcery right. 5 out of 5 stars.

I expected this to be just another D&D 1e/2e clone but it is so much better. The classes are great with each of the four (fighter, cleric, magician, thief) also having 4 character kits allowing for a total of 20 classes. It provides some good upgrades to the old D&D games, well worth the buy.

For full disclosure I have followed this project for a couple years. I helped work on a couple minor areas of the game. I then pledged the product when it became a Kickstarter project. I don't receive any remuneration from the sale of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Now I would like to tell you why I think this is a great game...

The setting is Hyperborea or the "Land Beyond the North Wind". Hyperborea is a rather small place but bursting with adventure. The setting combines Sword and Sorcery as a base and adds otherworldly gods, weird science, alien technology, and the familiar such as Earth races and gods. These are all jumbled together into a believable and wonderful world begging to be adventured in! This type of setting may not be for everyone but each of the elements can be toned down or left out without hurting the continuity of the setting. The world of Hyperborea is a grim place with an aging sun and civilization fighting against decline. This is a dangerous place and only the most ambitious of adventurer would dare leave the civilized areas. The author constantly reinforces this idea in his style of writing. The descriptions of the various places, creatures, characters, and magic seem to be written by a traveler of Hyperborea. The verbiage is very immersive. Though immersive the detail level is about right. Not so little that you don't get the gist of whats going on in the world but not so much that you the Referee are stifled. The Referee still has lots of areas to make their own but with Hyperborean handrails. The vision of Hyperborea set forth by the author is made to shine by the supporting artwork. I hope some of the interior artwork can be featured in a preview soon as it sold me as soon as I saw it. The box art is gorgeous but not indicative of the interior art by Ian Baggley. Ian does every piece in the game books. The consistency of having one artistic vision and one style throughout the book cannot be understated. The style is all black and white mostly in charcoal, with some pencil and ink and is very good. The artist catches the vision of Hyperborea very well.

The system is a tribute to an early incarnation of the world’s most popular RPG. There are twists and changes that make the system unique but is otherwise very familiar.

There is a lot of material here and a lot of game for the money. There is also a passion for the genre that shines through.

I have known the author for over 19 years, and while my review may seem biased, I was getting tired of products on the market taking the fun out of the game by creating rules for everything. This puts all the power back into the DM's hands and gives it to the players...

This is a lot of RPG for 10 bucks... The art is fantastic. The game system is excellent (modeled after AD&D 1st edition) and the campaign world is very rich. I'm still reading through (and there's a lot to read) and I keep giggling like a school girl when I see the bits and pieces of this game. I was prepping for a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG campaign this fall, but this game is quickly gaining popularity.

I give it a score of A+. I would give it A++ if they had included a full map of the world. Right now, they broke down the map into 9 pages for assembly. A PDF of the whole map would have been appreciated.

PS. I am no way affiliated to whomever wrote this game. Thank you.

I supported this product from its inception as a Kickstarter project, and it has not disappointed!

The pdf is properly bookmarked, which is good, since the game is gigantic. The pdf bundle is split into several files: The game box cover, the map (split into nine pages), a Player's Manual containing the first three books in the box, and the Referee's Manual, containing the other three books.

It almost pulsates with atmosphere, thanks in large part to Ian Baggley's stupendous, moody, visceral penciled artwork all the way through the game. With the exception of Zak S.'s Vornheim, I don't think I've ever seen an independent product this well illustrated. Jeff's vaguely Gygaxian writing dialect helps, too.

The mechanics will be familiar for anyone who's played That Game, with plenty of twists to keep things interesting. The world of Hyperborea is perfectly detailed---just enough to spark the imagination, not enough to smother it. The only thing I would have liked to see is a larger Referee section specifically focused on running the game in the Hyperborean milieu, but that's perhaps a personal quibble rather than a fault.

Fabulous stuff---and at $10, well, it's a crime not to buy it.

I was able to actually play the adventure with the author at Gary Con. Taken from Dunwich gives a great feel for the very unique world of Astonishing Swordsmens and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. The thematic elements of sword and sorcery with a dash of technology and alien strangeness make for an interesting premise. The adventure is fairly linear yet provides some choices. Well imagined Taken from Dunwich provided a great evening of entertainment and I can't wait to use this on my own group.