Recently I picked up the print on demand version of The Primal Order by Wizards of the Coast founder Peter Adkison. I have the original edition of the book, I managed to grab a copy of it back in the day, and I have the other published books for the unfortunately uncompleted game line. The idea behind The Primal Order was to build what they called a "capsystem" that would work as an overlay to other game systems, expanding them into new directions. The Primal Order line dealt with gods and clerics, an important part of many fantasy role-playing games.
This capsystem was in conjunction with a series of conversion notes in the back of the book, explaining how to use the book's rules in your favorite fantasy game. Systems such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Ars Magica and Runequest were among those that had conversion notes in the book. These conversion notes were also the book's greatest stumbling block, as Kevin Siembieda of Palladium Games sued Wizards of the Coast for copyright infringement, over the inclusion of the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game among the notes. The suit was settled out of court, but it lead to a second printing without Palladium Fantasy in the conversion notes (also, strangely, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was dropped), and with the addition of conversion notes for the World of Darkness, Earthdawn and Kult (among others).
It is this second printing that is available through the OneBookShelf sites. A couple of years ago I spoke with Adkison about the background of The Primal Order, and that interview might be of interest to some of you. There are also art and layout changes between the two printings as well.
In the interview, Adkison brings up what I have come to think is one of the major conceptual issues with the book. It falls into that pit that was common in fantasy games in the 70s and 80s, mostly that gods end up being treated as being little more than "super-heroes," ridiculously high powered characters that become little more than another fight for the player characters. This ends up taking the mystery and the "godliness" out of these beings in a lot of cases. Adkison sums this up himself in the interview by saying "Peter, you missed the point. You wrote about gods, but you didn’t write about Gods."
This approach can drain much of the myth and mystery out of deities in fantasy role-playing games. It isn't necessarily a bad approach to using gods, but it might not be the most flavorful way to approach the material.
Where The Primal Order really sings is in how it makes clerical characters stand out as something interesting and unique, rather than being a magic-user with a different set of special effects. At the core of this is what the book calls Primal Energy. If you have ever read a Jim Starlin comic where Adam Warlock and/or Thanos monologued about using their cosmic powers, you have an idea of what Primal Energy is supposed to be. It is a fundamental energy in the universe that makes gods into gods. It gives gods their immortality, their godlike powers and it is what allows them to do things like cast mortal magic. It is also the Primal Energy of the gods that empowers clerics, letting them heal and do things like cast spells.
Primal energy is used by deities as a "wrath of god" style of energy attack that no mortal protection can stop. Primal energy can also create shields that no mortal magics can penetrate. The idea behind primal energy is to come up with a mechanic that can make fantasy game gods into something more than just high powered characters. No matter how much they try, mortals can never take on primal energy to use as their own. The very nature of primal energy is what defines the divine in The Primal Order. Sort of like how Doctor Doom always failed in the end when he would steal the power of The Silver Surfer or Galactus or The Beyonder. There are energies that are just not meant to be contained by a mortal body. The primal energy mechanic is point-based, new gods start with a base primal energy of 100 points with which to empower their abilities, and to imbue their followers with powers and abilities. Primal energy is regenerated by deities, but it can also be replenished by worship of the deity or sacrifices to them. As gods become more "powerful" and do their equivalent of leveling up, they also can access more primal energy.
I think that this approach works better for some games than others. I think that it would work well in a system like Runequest, or a game like GURPS, better than it might for Dungeons & Dragons. But the rules on creating religions and church structures would have more utility for a broader spectrum of games than the primal mechanics themselves might. While games like D&D prominently feature religion with Clerics, the organizations that they are a part of are often left vague. What does it say about a deity that they create numerous ass kicking traveling martial orders that wander their universe? How does that deity form an organization that will train and support those types of people? These are the kinds of questions that The Primal Order was written to answer. There are sections talking about secular concerns like a church's sources of income and how does the organization interact with other churches, and the secular powers of cities and nations. There isn't always a lot in a fantasy role-playing game to differentiate the different churches of the different clerics in an adventuring group. What do "dueling" clerics have to accept, or ignore, in order to work together in a group? These aren't always addressed by role-playing games, but when a book like this does give GMs and players some options about these things it can increase the depth of opportunities for role-playing by the players.
There is also a discussion of how deities can craft spheres of influence and domains of power in order to not only empower their followers, but to also spread their power and grow their influence. All of these little moving pieces come together to form a greater machinery that adds depth to campaign worlds.
All deities have a place of power, their home plane. There is a chapter that discusses how to create interesting home planes for the deities in a campaign world that reflect their nature and their power. Not all deities may have them, but a home plane is the place where a god is most potent, and where they go to heal and regenerate their primal energies. How do the domains of power of a deity influence their home plane? These are some of the things that the chapter on planes discusses. But this chapter has a greater utility than just creating homes for your deities. You can just as easily use these rules to flesh out any extradimensional plane that player characters might visit.
In some ways, The Primal Order is rooted in the game design concepts of the 90s, but in other ways the material is very forward looking, to the point that the book would still be useful for gamers running games today. If you want to run a game where the characters interact with deities, or if the campaign world has an active contingent of deities that are involved with it, The Primal Order is a book that you should have on your shelves. There is a lot of really good guidance for creating deities that have character, and using that character to help define the world that they are a part of (or that they created).
One flaw with the book is a physical one. After having picked up a number of print on demand books from the OneBookShelf sites with excellent physical quality. The copy of The Primal Order that I received wasn't as well done. The printing in the book had uneven ink coverage, and a number of pages had that shininess that comes from a poorly maintained photocopier. After having received so many high quality print on demand books from the sites, this was a major disappointment. The printer could have stood to make a closer quality inspection of the book before sending it out.
This capsystem was in conjunction with a series of conversion notes in the back of the book, explaining how to use the book's rules in your favorite fantasy game. Systems such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, Ars Magica and Runequest were among those that had conversion notes in the book. These conversion notes were also the book's greatest stumbling block, as Kevin Siembieda of Palladium Games sued Wizards of the Coast for copyright infringement, over the inclusion of the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game among the notes. The suit was settled out of court, but it lead to a second printing without Palladium Fantasy in the conversion notes (also, strangely, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was dropped), and with the addition of conversion notes for the World of Darkness, Earthdawn and Kult (among others).
It is this second printing that is available through the OneBookShelf sites. A couple of years ago I spoke with Adkison about the background of The Primal Order, and that interview might be of interest to some of you. There are also art and layout changes between the two printings as well.
In the interview, Adkison brings up what I have come to think is one of the major conceptual issues with the book. It falls into that pit that was common in fantasy games in the 70s and 80s, mostly that gods end up being treated as being little more than "super-heroes," ridiculously high powered characters that become little more than another fight for the player characters. This ends up taking the mystery and the "godliness" out of these beings in a lot of cases. Adkison sums this up himself in the interview by saying "Peter, you missed the point. You wrote about gods, but you didn’t write about Gods."
This approach can drain much of the myth and mystery out of deities in fantasy role-playing games. It isn't necessarily a bad approach to using gods, but it might not be the most flavorful way to approach the material.
Where The Primal Order really sings is in how it makes clerical characters stand out as something interesting and unique, rather than being a magic-user with a different set of special effects. At the core of this is what the book calls Primal Energy. If you have ever read a Jim Starlin comic where Adam Warlock and/or Thanos monologued about using their cosmic powers, you have an idea of what Primal Energy is supposed to be. It is a fundamental energy in the universe that makes gods into gods. It gives gods their immortality, their godlike powers and it is what allows them to do things like cast mortal magic. It is also the Primal Energy of the gods that empowers clerics, letting them heal and do things like cast spells.
Primal energy is used by deities as a "wrath of god" style of energy attack that no mortal protection can stop. Primal energy can also create shields that no mortal magics can penetrate. The idea behind primal energy is to come up with a mechanic that can make fantasy game gods into something more than just high powered characters. No matter how much they try, mortals can never take on primal energy to use as their own. The very nature of primal energy is what defines the divine in The Primal Order. Sort of like how Doctor Doom always failed in the end when he would steal the power of The Silver Surfer or Galactus or The Beyonder. There are energies that are just not meant to be contained by a mortal body. The primal energy mechanic is point-based, new gods start with a base primal energy of 100 points with which to empower their abilities, and to imbue their followers with powers and abilities. Primal energy is regenerated by deities, but it can also be replenished by worship of the deity or sacrifices to them. As gods become more "powerful" and do their equivalent of leveling up, they also can access more primal energy.
I think that this approach works better for some games than others. I think that it would work well in a system like Runequest, or a game like GURPS, better than it might for Dungeons & Dragons. But the rules on creating religions and church structures would have more utility for a broader spectrum of games than the primal mechanics themselves might. While games like D&D prominently feature religion with Clerics, the organizations that they are a part of are often left vague. What does it say about a deity that they create numerous ass kicking traveling martial orders that wander their universe? How does that deity form an organization that will train and support those types of people? These are the kinds of questions that The Primal Order was written to answer. There are sections talking about secular concerns like a church's sources of income and how does the organization interact with other churches, and the secular powers of cities and nations. There isn't always a lot in a fantasy role-playing game to differentiate the different churches of the different clerics in an adventuring group. What do "dueling" clerics have to accept, or ignore, in order to work together in a group? These aren't always addressed by role-playing games, but when a book like this does give GMs and players some options about these things it can increase the depth of opportunities for role-playing by the players.
There is also a discussion of how deities can craft spheres of influence and domains of power in order to not only empower their followers, but to also spread their power and grow their influence. All of these little moving pieces come together to form a greater machinery that adds depth to campaign worlds.
All deities have a place of power, their home plane. There is a chapter that discusses how to create interesting home planes for the deities in a campaign world that reflect their nature and their power. Not all deities may have them, but a home plane is the place where a god is most potent, and where they go to heal and regenerate their primal energies. How do the domains of power of a deity influence their home plane? These are some of the things that the chapter on planes discusses. But this chapter has a greater utility than just creating homes for your deities. You can just as easily use these rules to flesh out any extradimensional plane that player characters might visit.
In some ways, The Primal Order is rooted in the game design concepts of the 90s, but in other ways the material is very forward looking, to the point that the book would still be useful for gamers running games today. If you want to run a game where the characters interact with deities, or if the campaign world has an active contingent of deities that are involved with it, The Primal Order is a book that you should have on your shelves. There is a lot of really good guidance for creating deities that have character, and using that character to help define the world that they are a part of (or that they created).
One flaw with the book is a physical one. After having picked up a number of print on demand books from the OneBookShelf sites with excellent physical quality. The copy of The Primal Order that I received wasn't as well done. The printing in the book had uneven ink coverage, and a number of pages had that shininess that comes from a poorly maintained photocopier. After having received so many high quality print on demand books from the sites, this was a major disappointment. The printer could have stood to make a closer quality inspection of the book before sending it out.
