Delayed Primeval Thule RPG setting, compatible with Pathfinder, 13th Age, or 4e D&D

[dnoonan]

 

Primeval Thule is a brand-new campaign setting compatible with the Pathfinder RPG, 13th Age RPG, or 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.

 

Check out the KS video and campaign here: http://kck.st/11dxIWq

 

Created by Richard Baker, Stephen Schubert, and me (David Noonan), Primeval Thule is a savage world inspired by Robert E. Howard (Conan) and H.P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu). Come to Thule, the home of barbarian freebooters and dark magic, of star-spawned monstrosities and elder gods, of fabulous adventures and mind-blasting terror.

 

The hardcover campaign setting book will feature cover art by Todd Lockwood, interior cartography by Christopher West, and (depending on stretch goals) writer contributions from Ed Greenwood, Jason Bulmahn, and Owen Stephens.

 

And here's some recent news from over the weekend: We've added two PDF adventures to all backer levels of $40 or more:

 

• An adventure designed by noted third-party publisher Legendary Games.

• An adventure designed to utilize the minis in the just-kickstarted Cthulhu Wars boardgame. (You can play it just fine without the minis, too.)

 

If you have any questions, ask away!

 

--Dave.

(@davidnoonan on Twitter)

[Trodax]

This looks cool, I do love me some Sword & Sorcery! I'm curious of the mechanical adaptations; is this setting meant to run Pathfinder/D&D 4th/13th Age straight out of the book, or in heavily modified forms? For example, is the world human-only? Is alignment thrown out the window? Is arcane magic modified to be more dark, blasphemous and corruptible as is common in the genre? Is divine magic present?

[dnoonan]

Good questions, Trodax.

 

From the player's perspective at character creation, the Primeval Thule setting runs your game system of choice right out of the book...mostly. You can still be an elf. You can still be a wizard or a cleric.

 

Where Thule differs from an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink setting is how the world feels once you're out and about. Let's use player race as an example.

 

There are elves and dwarves in the world, sure, but it's not a cosmopolitan culture. You won't walk into a town to find that the blacksmith is a dwarf and the tailor is an elf. The elves live in decadent city-states (not unlike Melnibone, for the sake of comparison). The dwarves have walled themselves off from everyone else, emerging only to sell the strange metals only they can smelt and alloy.

 

I expect that PC elves and dwarves will exist as they always have, but they won't meet other other elves and dwarves unless they specifically go to their homelands. Just as Elric rarely saw other Melniboneans on his travels and Conan rarely saw other Cimmerians, those PCs are going to stand apart. The tavern falls silent when they walk in the door—and those players probably wouldn't want it any other way.

 

So the overall thrust of our answers is: we're staying true to the "feel" of a swords-and-sorcery world, but players are going to stand apart in that world. And frankly, we wouldn't want it any other way. Some aspects are going to be rare in the world, but not necessarily rare at your table.

 

We're going to do a series of blog posts in the next couple of weeks that talk about races in the world, arcane magic, divine magic, and a bunch of other topics. (There are only three of us and we're trying to pace ourselves.) We'll post them all at sasquatchgamestudio.com.

 

--Dave.

@davidnoonan on Twitter

[Trodax]

Sounds good, thanks for the in-depth answer. While I generally prefer my Sword & Sorcery to be human-only, I also really enjoy Pathfinder/D&D 4th/13th Age and feel that these are systems that benefit from being run mostly by the book. Elves as Melniboneans certainly works for me.

 

Actually, a problem with this Kickstarter for me is that I'm kind of interested in all three of these systems; I like D&D 4th, but we also just started running Pathfinder and its got me a bit 3rd edition nostalgic, and I have the 13th Age book on preorder and have really liked what I've read of the PDF. Choosing which one to go with would be tricky at this point, and I think my best bet would be to grab the PDF of all three to test the waters and see which system+setting combination I like the most. But getting all three PDF's is quite a bit pricier than I like to pay for digital copies, I'll have to think about this one. Really hope this gets funded though, and I'll see if I can scramble up at least a little something to throw in support.

[Trodax]

Well in the last update they changed it so that if you're getting a PDF, you'll get one for each of the three rules systems. I'm throwing these guys $40 in support, it's quite expensive for a PDF, but since it's now three PDF's it makes it a lot easier for me to justify.

[Trodax]

Just a heads up; this KS is in its last three days. It's been seeing a lot of action recently, but still needs to scrape up almost $15K to be funded.

[MonkeySloth]

Looks really cool but I loath 4th edition, am completely burned out on d20 (probably will never play it again) and don't know enough about 13th Age to know if I'd like it as it seams to be D20 based which is an immediate turn off for me. Sadly there's no reason for me to back because of the systems they chose. Kind of sad too as they've got a lot of talent, and claim they're spending a lot of time balancing stuff, so writing a new rule set can't be more work then writing for three different ones.

Edited July 29, 2013 by MonkeySloth

[Trodax]

Hmm, yeah, as they're shooting for several systems maybe a better option would have been to make a system-less, fluff-only big setting book, and then small supplemental books with the rulesy parts. Might have catered better to people who want to run it with Savage Worlds, Barbarians of Lemuria, BRP, or whatever.

 

Anyway, I hope they make it to their funding goal. Looks like they *might*.

[JackMann]

I almost hope they don't, just so they learn a lesson about pricing PDFs. No reason a PDF should cost 40 bucks, unless it's one hell of a nice PDF. Especially on Kickstarter prices.

[cthulhudarren]

Looks really cool but I loath 4th edition, am completely burned out on d20 (probably will never play it again) and don't know enough about 13th Age to know if I'd like it as it seams to be D20 based which is an immediate turn off for me. Sadly there's no reason for me to back because of the systems they chose. Kind of sad too as they've got a lot of talent, and claim they're spending a lot of time balancing stuff, so writing a new rule set can't be more work then writing for three different ones.

Amen. At least one of the systems should have been OSR.

[Trodax]

I almost hope they don't, just so they learn a lesson about pricing PDFs. No reason a PDF should cost 40 bucks, unless it's one hell of a nice PDF. Especially on Kickstarter prices.

 

I hear you. A more reasonable pricing would have been perhaps $15 for the PDF of one rules system, $20 for two, and $25 for all three systems. Or something like that.

 

My pledging on this KS is very much in the vein of helping this project see the light of day rather than getting a good deal, though. Conan vs. Cthulhu is just a very good selling point for me I guess, and I want to see what they make of it.

[MonkeySloth]

The setting is really cool in concept, when I watched the video yesterday I really wanted to pledge--but then I remembered my dislike for the systems they were using and walked away.

[Trodax]

Funded, and now only $1000 away from the first stretch goal with 7 hours remaining! A week ago I had some serious doubts that this KS would make it, but it really has made an amazing finish!

[dwarvenranger]

I'm glad to see we made the first stretch goal. They had me when I heard about the art team, but having Ed do some of the work on the campaign setting is like icing on the cake.

[MonkeySloth]

Congrats on it funding for you guys. Now I'll just be bitter that I dislike the systems it's for. Maybe one day I'll pick it up for the read.