Age of Vikings Companion (RPG Review and Deep Dive)

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Table of Contents

• Introduction
• What is the Age of Vikings tabletop RPG?
• What is the Age of Vikings Companion about?
• What is the player-facing content like?
• What is the GM-facing content like?
• What is the art and design like?
• How much is the Age of Vikings Companion?
• Is the Age of Vikings Companion worth picking up?
• Final thoughts and review score

Chaosium is setting sail once again into the windswept fjords and mythic shores of the early Middle Ages with the Age of Vikings Companion. Following in the wake of the standalone Age of Vikings core rules which was released in June 2025, this new Companion marks the first major expansion for the game, pushing far beyond the icy coastlines of Iceland and into the wider Norse world.

Just released on September 14th, 2026, you can pick up the book now in hardcover and PDF format from your local game store, Chaosium, DriveThruRPG and Amazon.

So is this latest release for Age of Vikings worthy of gaming Valhalla? Below, I consult the ravens and offer up my complete review to the dice gods. (NOTE: A review copy of the book was provided by Chaosium, but no other compensation was provided and all thoughts are entirely my own).

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What is the Age of Vikings tabletop RPG?

Age of Vikings is a historical-fantasy tabletop RPG published by Chaosium. Set primarily in 10th century Iceland, its world and rules are inspired by Norse folklore and real-world medieval history. Rather than high heroic fantasy and dungeon delves, however, campaigns revolve around family dynamics, clan rivalries, personal honor and survival against both human enemies and mythic terrors lurking in the untamed wilderness.

Mechanically, the game is powered by Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system, which is the same d100 roll-under engine that also powers Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest. There are, however, a few other elements that set Age of Vikings apart from other BRP games, including:

• Passions and Oaths: Concepts like Loyalty, Love, Honor and Hate directly drive narrative stakes and can mechanically inspire skill checks during clutch moments.
• Wyrd and Fate: Characters navigate destiny itself, using meta-currency points called Wyrd to influence outcomes.
• Grounded Magic & Devotion: Magic is deeply tied to belief and sacred tradition, manifesting primarily through ancient rune magic, shamanic rituals and Devotions to the gods.

While Age of Vikings is a relatively new game, its mechanical and thematic origins actually go back to 1985, when Chaosium first published the classic Vikings: Nordic Roleplaying for RuneQuest expansion, which was written by Chaosium founder Greg Stafford and Call of Cthulhu creator Sandy Petersen.

Several decades later, in 2010 Mongoose Publishing released a supplement entitled RuneQuest II Vikings and a follow-up entitled RuneQuest II Vikings of Legend in 2012. That same year, Brazilian-Icelandic author Pedro Ziviani created the sourcebook Mythic Iceland for Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying system. Fast forward to 2025, when Chaosium officially revived and expanded the original material into the Age of Vikings core rulebook, with the Age of Vikings Companion arriving in September 2026 as a follow-up.

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What is the Age of Vikings Companion about?

Age of Vikings Companion is a 174-page supplement that does require the Age of Vikings core rulebook to use. The book is written by Pedro Ziviani (who also created the 2021 Mythic Iceland Basic Roleplay supplement) with additional material from Chaosium veteran Jason Durall.

The Companion contains the following chapters:

• Chapter One: New Hero Options (11 pages): Foreign cultures and mythic playable races.
• Chapter Two: Faith (11 pages): Expanded devotions along with new skills and divine abilities.
• Chapter Three: Communities (36 pages): A procedural engine for generating sandbox settlements, local leaders and social connections.
• Chapter Four: Bestiary (34 pages): A compendium of historical mortals, northern beasts, fairy-folk, and colossal saga monsters.
• Chapter Five: Adventures (49 pages): Five adventure scenarios set in a single location that can be run individually or together.
• Appendix: Disease & Reference (3 pages): New reference tools for infections and Medieval maladies.

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What is the player-facing content like?

The player-focused material offers a variety of fresh concepts that go far beyond the standard Icelandic farmers and warriors found in the Age of Vikings core rulebook.

Foreign Heroes

The book details the major non-Icelandic cultures that players can hail from, grounding each in historical 10th-century context. For each culture the book provides a breakdown of how Icelanders view them, how that culture views themselves, their politics, potential reasons to be in Iceland, a table of devotions, male/female names, homeland skill bonuses and equipment.

• Byzantine Greeks: Wealthy, cultured travelers carrying deep knowledge of European lore and Mediterranean medicine.
• English: Anglo-Saxons skilled in advanced farming, maritime travel and church lore, favoring the long spear.
• Finns and Sámi: Indigenous nomads from Finnmark renowned for bowcraft and ancient shamanic traditions.
• Irish: Fierce Celtic warriors and skilled skalds carrying rich traditions of poetry, music and druidic-tinged Christian belief.
• Scandinavians: Close kin from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, sharing language and customs but navigating growing religious friction.
• Scots: Ruthless Gaelic fighters who shun shields in favor of deadly two-handed axes and longbows.
• Slavs: Pragmatic survivors from Baltic and Pomeranian tribes skilled in wilderness tracking and riding.

All of these new options are absolutely incredible and there’s a ton of historical info packed into a short amount of content, and the book does a fantastic job of showing how ancient real world cultures can be just as interesting as any fantasy RPG species.

Mythic Races

While the book does lean heavily into historical accuracy, if you’re looking for something taken from real world folklore, the Companion introduces five playable mythic races. Notably, if you do go this route your character does not get access to an animal spirit and you cannot burn Wyrd to turn failures into successes. Instead, you gain unique racial capabilities. As with the foreign cultures, each mythic race is given a write-up on how they’re viewed by Icelanders, how they view themselves, their politics, their religion, a devotions table, the steps needed to create a hero (including characteristics, base skills, magic and powers), male/female names, skill bonuses and equipment.

The races include:

• Dwarfs: Subterranean smiths who craft legendary artifacts, distrust the gods and hold grudges with unyielding stubbornness.
• Hidden People: Peaceful elves who are naturally invisible to mortals lacking Second Sight and operate under a strict code of non-violence.
• Jotunn: Young, growing giants blessed with immense strength and the supernatural ability to change their physical size.
• Ravens: Heroic ravens that speak human languages and possess the macabre Death Vision power, allowing them to swallow the eye of a corpse to witness the exact final moments of its life.
• Sealskins: Marine shapeshifters akin to selkies who live as seals in the frigid waters, shedding their pelts to walk the land as humans.

The mythic races are incredibly well done, and feel like a much needed addition to the Age of Vikings core rulebook in terms of adding some interesting options for players looking for a bit more fantasy with their character, while also drawing on real world folklore.

Expanded Faith & Divine Abilities

The book reimagines the divine allegiance mechanics that first appeared in the Mythic Iceland supplement. Instead of generic spell slots, heroes earn Dedication Points to their deities. When spending points to boost a deity’s favored skills, the bonus jumps from the standard +20% to an impressive +40% or even +70%.

Devout characters can also manifest thematic Divine Abilities. For example:

• Odin grants Berserker Fury (doubling hit points and maximizing damage).
• Thor offers the ability to call down Thor‘s Hammer directly from the storm clouds.
• Freyja bestows a protective Aura of Beauty that prevents enemies from attacking.
• Loki provides Loki’s Lie, which literally rewrites the memories of witnesses to accept a falsehood as reality.
• Other Norse Gods: There are also detailed boons for Baldur (healing and limb restoration), Heimdallur (distant sight and conjuring a rainbow bridge), Freyr (weather manipulation and ghostly steeds) and Ran (drawing massive fish hauls or pulling enemies into drowning undertows).

Foreign faiths receive equal mechanical support. Followers of the Christian God can perform Exorcisms against possessing demons or endure horrific physical torture unscathed through saintly Perseverance. Devotees of the Finnish Pantheon can draw on the Breath of Life to regenerate magic or summon the sacred brown bear to their aid. The book also includes rules for playing Godless Heroes who reject all worship, gaining reputation for their fierce self-reliance while permanently cutting themselves off from divine favor and rune magic. Mechanically, it’s all great stuff, using real world historical beliefs to support a robust magic system.

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What is the GM-facing content like?

The Gamemaster tools found in the Companion form the real backbone of the book, providing a ton of support for running campaigns that feel both dangerous and grounded.

The Communities Engine

This is easily one of the best parts of the book, featuring a system that allows GMs to procedurally generate a fully-realized Icelandic settlement in roughly an hour. The book walks you through a number of tables as you fill out a detailed Community Sheet and Community Passions chart that includes:

• Demographics & Roles: Rolling determines an NPC’s age, social standing (from slaves and tenant farmers to wealthy householders and runemasters), distinguishing visual features and primary skill proficiencies.
• The Web of Passions: Each NPC receives two interpersonal passions (Loyalty, Love, Hate, Fear, Envy or Oaths) connecting them directly to other villagers or legendary beings.
• Secret Motivations: Every NPC is assigned a personal agenda, such as taking revenge, getting away with murder, stealing a rare item or discovering who slew their lover.
• Passions: During social encounters, heroes can use the Insight skill to deduce an NPC’s passion, gaining a +40% bonus to persuasion or intimidation checks by playing into their desires and fears.
• Oaths: The book formalizes oaths as a tangible economic commodity valued based on a character’s Honor multiplied by their Reputation. Breaking an oath carries devastating social consequences, stripping away significant Honor and tarring the reputation of the offender’s entire family.

This is honestly one of the most unique ways I’ve ever seen to generate a TTRPG settlement that feels like a living, breathing place with fully developed and connected NPCs. More games need tools like this.

Bestiary

The Bestiary takes up almost a third of the book and features around 50 stat blocks for a range of enemies and NPCs. This is definitely great to see as the Age of Vikings core rulebook was a little light on foes. Options in the Companion include:

• Mortals: Christian monks, blacksmiths, village healers, outlaws and Viking raiders.
• Mythic Folk & Fae: Strange otherworldly creatures, including swan maidens, water nymphs and Valkyries.
• Northern Beasts: Arctic animals including walruses, brown bears, giant octopi, hawks and Great White-scale sharks.
• Horrors & Giants: Includes trolls, stone/frost giants and Norse-style dragons.
• Spirits: Ancestral guardians, wights, immortal warriors, imps and nightmare spirits.

The bestiary also introduces new tactical rules for Fighting Giants. Heroes on the ground are restricted to targeting a giant’s lower limbs unless using long reach weapons or elevated terrain, while immense foes can unleash massive horizontal sweeping attacks that knock entire lines of warriors prone. It’s a very cool concept and something that other TTRPGs don’t really seem to factor in when fighting larger creatures.

Adventures

The book also delivers five fully fleshed-out scenarios centered around the regional hub of the Eastern Stronghold Fjord, complete with a map and detailed gazetteer of the area. Rather than simple linear dungeon crawls, the scenarios lean heavily into saga structure, moral choices and community ties. Notably you can run the scenarios individually, drop them into an existing campaign or string them together into a complete campaign. Details on the adventures are as follows:

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***

• Cattle Raid!: The heroes’ peaceful summer is shattered when a 50-man fleet of ruthless raiders storms the area. In true saga fashion, the odds are virtually insurmountable. Instead of fighting to the death, the party must make tactical decisions under fire: obey their chieftain to free the livestock and evacuate thralls, or risk their lives fighting alongside their lord before executing a desperate midnight counterattack.
• The Hunt: During a raucous midwinter Yule celebration, a grievously wounded survivor stumbles through the hall doors bearing news of an ancient beast that slaughtered her family’s farm. The heroes are dispatched on skis across the freezing wilderness to track the predator down, discovering a ruined farmstead where they must confront whatever lurks in the area.
• Gone Viking & Trade: These are actually two scenarios that form a linked maritime mini-campaign. In Gone Viking, the party auditions for berths aboard the newly christened warship Sea-Warrior. The adventure includes a fully realized 40-man crew roster with individual loyalties and personalities. The crew is soon tasked with hunting down a Frankish cog, weathering ambushes from rival jarls and conducting coastal raids. The follow-up scenario Trade continues the saga, exploring the concept of shore-trading with foreign cultures – and how quickly things go sideways.
• A Ravenous Heart: By far the most inventive scenario in the book, this mystery is specifically built for an all-Raven party. Playing as sacred, intelligent ravens possessing Death Vision, the heroes must investigate a spreading blight of undead livestock and discover why a fallen raven named Heartbane is raising the dead.

*** END OF SPOILERS ***

All of the adventures are fantastic, avoiding the cliched pop culture concept of Vikings and offering narratives that are culturally and historically thoughtful while also offering a ton of mystery, exploration and adventure.

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What is the art and design like?

From a graphic design and layout standpoint, the book is well organized and easy to read during prep. The maps in particular, are a real standout, covering everything from key regions to the deck plans of a warship. They have a unique style and visual identity that really suits the tone of the game perfectly.

When it comes to the interior illustrations, however, the art is serviceable, but not particularly mind-blowing. The standalone character designs are great and there are some really fun pieces scattered throughout that have a lot of drama to them. In general though, the quality is hit or miss and the book doesn’t have quite the same visual polish of a product from publishers like Free League or Kobold Press, or for that matter recent Chaosium products like Call of Cthulhu:Innsmouth. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it would be nice to see Chaosium step up their game a little in the art department.

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How much is the Age of Vikings Companion?

The hardcover retails for $47.99 USD (not including shipping and handling), which includes the PDF for free when purchased directly from Chaosium. If you prefer to stay purely digital, the standalone PDF is available on DriveThruRPG for $24.99 USD.

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Is the Age of Vikings Companion worth picking up?

Pros

• Incredible settlement building tools: The system for generating a living settlement – complete with NPCs, conflicting passions and hidden grudges – is one of the best GM sandbox frameworks Chaosium has ever produced. The book is worth picking up for this alone.
• Culturally rich character options: The book does an amazing job of offering new character options based on real world historical cultures as well as mythological races that feel genuinely unique and distinct from standard fantasy tropes.
• Fantastic adventures: The scenarios are incredibly well done, with a mix of mystery, action, exploration and social encounters. Playing them together is a great way to experience the best of Age of Vikings as a system.
• The perfect blend of lore and mechanics: The Companion does an great job of combining real world history and folklore with mechanics that bring it to life. Oaths, for example, are a type of meta-currency that has a meaningful impact on play.

Cons

• Hit or miss art: While the cartography is great and there are a few standout pieces, a lot of the interior illustrations feel somewhat plain compared to other TTRPG publishers and even some of Chaosium’s recent products.
• Mythic races require careful GM handling: Allowing high-powered options like young Jotunn giants feels like it could potentially unbalance the game if GMs aren’t careful, and also may cause issues for groups looking for more realistic play.
• Very high lethality: The included adventures (especially Cattle Raid!) have the potential to absolutely brutalize players new to the game who expect standard D&D 5E-style high fantasy heroics.
• A relatively new system: This might be a bit of an unfair criticism, but the fact is that Age of Vikings is still in its infancy as a system with a relatively small community. And while the content in the Companion is excellent, one of the biggest challenges may be in getting buy-in from your table or finding players to try it out.

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Final thoughts and review score

The Age of Vikings Companion is an outstanding supplement that expands Age of Vikings into some unique and incredibly innovative new areas, both mechanically and narratively.

And while the interior artwork doesn’t quite reach legendary heights, the game design, brilliant sandbox settlement generator and expertly crafted adventures more than carry the weight. If you love gritty historical roleplaying, Norse folklore and well-balanced TTRPG rules, the Age of Vikings Companion deserves a prime spot in your longhouse.

Final Review Score: 19 out of 20

You can pick up the Age of Vikings Companion now in hardcover and PDF from your local game store, Chaosium, DriveThruRPG and Amazon.