Boreal Frostlands Play Report

06 Sep, 2026

Intro

This summer, I ran a three session mini-campaign of the Boreal Frostlands from Games Omnivorous using a modified Cairn rule set. I haven’t seen many post-play reviews of Games Omnivorous’s hexcrawl settings, so I wanted to give my thoughts for anyone thinking about picking one of them up. Overall, Boreal Frostlands is a good structure to build a fun sandbox on. It is not entirely ready to play out of the box but once you put in the initial work, I think it can support at least a half dozen sessions (and probably double that). I’ll focus my thoughts on the Boreal Frostlands content and limit discussion of how my Cairn hack worked at the table (I’ll throw that in an appendix at the end). If you are reading this, I’ll assume you already know about Boreal Frostlands so will also skip covering the contents of the box.

What style of game I was aiming for

With many players missing from our growing community during the summer holidays, we ran a few one-shots and mini-campaigns to keep the momentum while the “main” games were on break. Boreal Frostlands had been collecting dust on my shelf for a year so I offered to run a two (possibly three) session adventure. Between the time limit and the group’s mixed levels of experience, I wanted a rules-lite system that we could easily jump into and quickly resolve rules-questions. Additionally, the focus needed to be on the overland map rather than details at in single location.

I opted for a modified Cairn2e rule set to meet these requirements. The major changes were the Myths/Omens system from Mythic Bastionland, replacing the spellbook magic system with a free-form GloG style, and stripping down the hexcrawl exploration procedures in Cairn and Boreal Frostlands to accommodate Omens/Myths and the random tables included in the Boreal Frostlands. I managed to fit all the player facing rules on the back of their character sheets and all the major GM facing rules on the front and back of an A4 sheet of paper (provided in the appendix).

Preparing the Game

Boreal Frostlands is presented as a low-prep, self contained setting, but I personally didn’t feel comfortable just improvising everything at the table. The entirety of the setting is on the inside of an A4 trifold GM screen so the descriptions are often only the bare necessities to adjudicate. I needed time to highlight connections between locations and factions as well as some tinkering to make it my own. Overall, the initial prep took about twelve hours but that also included designing my hack of Cairn and the extra work that goes into one-shots so your mileage may vary. Afterwards, I only needed about 10 minutes to prepare for a session. Some key points about prep:

• The art style of the Boreal Frostlands leaned a little more into the “whimsical” (not fey, just eclectic), but blended well with Cairn’s themes. The art for the pre-made characters, for example, was not out of place at all. I think that there would be no problem running it in any standard fantasy system although I foresee theme clashes for some of the darker or doomier systems.
• The Boreal Frostlands seems aimed towards rules-lite systems, so incorporating into Cairn was seamless. I only added new subsystems to put more focus on hexploration.
• As part of the Myth/Omen system I essentially replaced random encounters with Omens. The meat of this subsystem came from all the random tables, hooks, etc. provided by Boreal Frostlands. While this took a few hours to prepare, Boreal Frostlands provided a solid foundation and I just had to fill in the gaps. It was largely very enjoyable to think about the connections in the game world.
• Matching the system-neutral monsters in Boreal Frostlands to the limited bestiary of Cairn took a lot longer than I had planned. For some monsters, like the ice trolls, the swap was 1:1 and I just narratively described the differences. The 6 legged ice salamanders, on the other hand, didn’t have clear substitutes and took time to find the stat block requiring the fewest changes. I was surprised at how long this took and I’m not sure I could have done it on the fly at the table.
• The breadth of the available content felt overwhelming for only two sessions, and I fear it could leave the players with analysis paralysis. So I chose to focus my prep around four locations plus the hub city and pared down the rest of the material.
• The depth of the content is somewhat lacking. Often, only the bare minimum is provided so the world lacks the details and dressing you might get in other settings. This is only a problem, though, if your table wants that rich woven-tapestry world; it functions fine as a minimum viable product, especially for one-shots.

Play

After the initial rule-learning phase, the players picked up on the exploration procedures and the game ran smoothly. After our first session, we knew we wanted more time here so coordinated a third session. By the end of our third session, the PCs had explored 26 hexes including a 6-room mini dungeon, a 10 room trifold dungeons (included in Boreal Frostlands), and a large city filled with factions and five districts. My players and I both commented on how refreshing it was to be able to cover so much content without getting bogged down in a lengthy combat or spending large chunks shopping. Some key points about play:

• The sandbox approach of Boreal Frostlands meant that an “organic” goal didn’t really appear until the end of the 1st session. Once the PCs were able to set their own goal, however, the exploration become faster and more focused. I influenced this by limiting which hexes were available to be drawn until the hub city was found.
• I was glad I cut content during prep as the extra time on the remaining content helped my improvisation during play. The PCs only meaningfully interacted with two of the four factions and didn’t even visit two of the larger locations which could easily have been a session on their own.
• The evocative and stylistic art style of Boreal Frostlands did a lot of heavy lifting during play. If PCs wanted details that weren’t provided, we simply looked at the art, asked if it seems reasonable, then kept moving. Additionally, the PC handouts were truly worth 1000 words and I showed them off when ever I could. They create a lot of “ooh, I wonder what that is” moments which generally drove further exploration.
• The “always north” rule for hex placement created an elongated play map that in-turn created interesting route choices for the PCs. Contrasted to a concentric hexmap, the elongated map created meaningful distances between interesting locations and the hub city. The split of land and water hexes also served to create more organic barriers to the map which in-turn created interesting route. This helped to shift the discussion away from “what is the shortest path” to considering every hex they planned to enter.
• To avoid writing too much about the use of the Myth/Omen system outside of Mythic Bastionland, I will just emphasize the inspiration in the Boreal Frostlands materials worked as well in play as it did in prep for Omens.

Final thoughts

The players and I had a blast through all three sessions. The system and setting had the right level of crunch to feel like an OSR game without the bookkeeping I’ve encountered in other hexcrawls. The players really praised the Myth/Omen system for keeping a coherent narrative throughout the random encounters and the contents of Boreal Frostlands were very helpful in creating my own. Even in the free-form sandbox setting, the sessions had a good cadence of rising and falling actions and we were able to arrive at a satisfactory ending to our story arc. The loose ends left at the table could probably be explored for five more sessions without additional prep. Overall, I can recommend Boreal Frostlands to someone looking for a casual, short to mid length hexcrawl campaign, especially if you want a break from dungeon crawling. I was left inspired and will likely revisit the Boreal Frostlands with other modules injected into existing locations.

Appendix A

I have linked all my prep materials including GM and PC reference sheets for those interested. My hacks to Cairn2e follow:

1. Replaced the magic system with GLoG Magic in Cairn and the more free-form “Words of Power” Block, Dodge, Parry!. Arcane Mishap Table was also lifted from GLoG Magic and I used the Magnitude of Effects table from Blades in the Dark for adjudicating how costly a spell is (basically evaluated area/scale, duration/range, and quality/force for each casting).
2. After the first session, we also added a simplified gambit system from Mythic Bastionland to add a little more combat variety and inspire players with examples of things to do in combat other than “hit him with my sword”. I offered:
   Expose an opening for +1 total damage
   Position yourself, the opponent, or stop the opponent from moving next turn
   Impair a weapon or item on their next turn
   Other effect of a similar level of impact
3. Random encounters were replaced with Myths/Omens from Mythic Bastionland. I was inspired by 3x5 Arcana’s post on The Mythic Engine and how to craft them from existing rumors and random encounter tables.

• Came up with four Myths based on the two trifold dungeons included with Boreal Frostlands, the giant ice dragon on the front cover, and a drilling site that has a A4 full color illustrated handout.
• Used the same format as Mythic Bastionland and took hooks, rumors, and applicable entries on the random encounter tables to come up with a reasonable narrative.
• I would consider using four or eight Omens for simpler or more complex Myths.
• I would tweak the frequency of Omens appearing to be less common. I felt it happened too often and the Boreal Frostlands is still a location based exploration game with 16 named hexes that have complex situations going on.

4. Changed the exploration procedure to incorporate the Weather and Cold Snap tables and added a “fatigue” tax instead of tracking supplies used along the way. Any torches or rations carried by PCs became like other tools to solve problems with rather than a necessity.
5. Removed money and used a simple barter system. PCs offered an item for trade and I would use the reaction table to determine if it was a good trade or if they needed to add something to sweeten the pot. Next time, I would provide a short inventory list to inspire the PCs on what they could seek out.