[13][/13]I missed the kickstarter for this and bought the 4th ed PDF version after being sold on the idea and hunting it down... to find it didn't come in DnD Next flavour. I bought the closest version I could (4th *shudder*) off drive thru rpg and have read it in some detail, over 2 weeks. Actual play will occur at some point, at which I will come back and annotate this review.
Initial Concepts
The ideas behind Primeval Thule are strong. There is no doubt that the outline of flavour is great, the world well described in broad strokes. This may be the best executed part of the setting, in fact. Perhaps because it was used to spark the kickstarter, it comes across as the most polished. It appeals to me more than the Eberron outline, for example.
I like the combination- sort of conan and cthulu rolled together. More fafhrd and the grey mouser than dragonlance. This does appeal to me, being a big Robert E Howard and Fritz Lieber fan.
The ultimate big bad in this setting is probably a tie between elder gods that you probably won’t meet and an ice age that you probably can’t stop in the next couple of generations.
The setting states that it is not about heroism. The 6th sentence about the setting, however, is “Ancient evils threaten mankind” and some of the character narratives are specifically to support the war against the elder gods. A bit like the “cerulean sign” prestige class in 3rd ed dnd. I think it certainly could be about stopping aberrations. The point the setting is making though, is that most people will be too pre-occupied with struggling to survive or acquiring wealth to help. There is no grand church of st cuthbert bankrolling your horse and tackle to quest against Iuz etc.
What you get
History
On the whole the history is good. The monsters, climate, mythos and races mesh well into a history. The narratives naturally extend out of the history and background and in general work very well together as a result.
I think the whole setting is a bit hampered by the fact that the continent detailed as possibly an island on an existing world- presumably the GM’s existing campaign world. The style and texture of the world and game are such that I would assume people would start a new game, based on the narrative provided. Your existing paladin will not fit well here. Surely you would be creating new characters.
And the elder gods, rakshasa, serpent race shtick seems to be a worldwide series of epic events, not just something that would happen locally. In fact, it is described as being earth before the last Ice Age.
That said, if you were to introduce the setting as an island, it would work fine as a mid to high level “zone”. And I might actually do that, sort like a "Super Isle of Dread"
Magic and Astronomy
It's pre-roman so no month of March, yep , got it. Magic and a calendar are detailed. 5 sources of spells are laid out. Reminds me of the rolemaster channeling, essence, mentalism divisions or the sort of rules I build in the background for magic in my games.
I think it is fine, but the approach the setting takes with magical items is much better. They are grouped by race or origin, given descriptions on how they would look, why they would be made, who might have them and what sort of powers they would have. I think this should be done with spells/powers. Re-skin or omit where in-appropriate. No hard and fast rules, just heaps of flavour hitting the horror of mundane magicla items on the head. Which is awesome. With powers or spells, I don’t see it as any different to saying “no you can’t have platemail” in this setting, which you can’t by the way. (well if would effectively be an artifact based on my reading of the setting) The treatment of dwarves as iron workers in this setting, by the way, is great. It reminds me of trolls in ElfQuest. You remember zexy elf quest no?
Races and Geography
The only criticism I would have of the dwarves is that they carry too much of the core dnd dwarven baggage. I think they could have gone further. They certainly need myths of their craftsmanship being abused and some sort of external threat specific to them. I do like the Persian style of the dwarf art. Noice. The halflings could have been left out, as always. The elves are great- if you like michael moorcock’s storm bringer series. I'm stating up something like a "scimitar of lassitude" right now as a result..
One thing I miss is Orcs or half orcs. Especially after seeing the Warlords of Draenor intro movies. I might nudge the recommended NPC beastmen off a cliff and substitute *cough*Orcs*cough*. Other stuff like Pathfinder goblins, Aasaimar etc are cool, and normally a staple for me, but I can see them not fitting in. And gnomes are justly burning eternally in frozen flame of an unreachable hell.
The text of the atlas section is full of adventure sites and hooks. Great stuff, there must be thousands of hooks there. My only complaint is that the maps in my paid for and downloaded PDF are low resolution- so compressed that half the city names are illegible. Printing it from the PDF wouldn't help- I need a new version- preferably a vector image.
There is some good location art and site maps. The geography doesn't come across as awesome, from a map perspective, as middle earth, but it serves it’s purpose as a container for a horde of adventure sites.
Narratives
I love the narratives. The idea is that you have a template that describes your role. 5th edition D&D does this as standard now, calling it a background. Obviously the narratives//backgrounds in the wizards of the coast dnd next players handbook are fairly generic.The most specific are things like “guild member” which gives a early renaissance feel to some games, especially in the forgotten realms. These are at the other end of the spectrum. With the exception of the jungle related narratives I think they are really well done. The jungle trader and dhari hunter narratives are missed opportunities I think. They skim the awesome possibilities of African based myth for a cut down “jungle folks” view, which is a pity. I'd link an old dragon magazine reference full of great African stuff but I'm a noob here and it's Verboten.
I would probably also re-name the occult-scientist “power magus” or “arcane philosopher” something similar. Occult is a recent term and reason doesn't mean science.
Quodethi Thief and Katagian Pitfighter seem a bit narrow- I’d call them Guild Thief and Gladiator. It’s not until you get into the “personalised” section around page 60 that you see them fleshed out a bit. It does give you an example of where they would come from. Makes me want to scribe [but could be from any of the following locations and races] in Biro next to the titles…
Value
Is it worth the price of admission? Yes +
I paid 20 dollars for it in PDF which is great value, even with the over compressed maps. The sheer brobdingnagian volume of adventure hooks shoe horned into one fairly coherent package sells it for me. The narratives are crunchy TASERs to flavour your PCs with, and tellingly are very similar to DnD next backgrounds, printed nary 12 months later.
Does it do what it says on the box? Yes ++
Well I bought the 4th ed one, never intending to play 4th ed DnD again and I will use it very easily in my 5th ed DnD games in the future. I think they could have even made it “genre” neutral entirely and just given out 5 or 6 gaming systems worth of monster stats, but I’ll use my MERP modules in Traveler so I might not be a good judge.
Is it compatible with XYZRPG.indie? Easy
It will take me longer to generate names for a session than it would to adapt this to dnd 1st, 2nd or Next. Other systems? depends if you can bolt a background or narrative over the top of a class easily in that system.
I’ll buy from Sasquatch again, based on this. Unless it adds gnomes...
More to follow as the setting blends into my current game (shh, don't tell my players yet)
Initial Concepts
The ideas behind Primeval Thule are strong. There is no doubt that the outline of flavour is great, the world well described in broad strokes. This may be the best executed part of the setting, in fact. Perhaps because it was used to spark the kickstarter, it comes across as the most polished. It appeals to me more than the Eberron outline, for example.
I like the combination- sort of conan and cthulu rolled together. More fafhrd and the grey mouser than dragonlance. This does appeal to me, being a big Robert E Howard and Fritz Lieber fan.
The ultimate big bad in this setting is probably a tie between elder gods that you probably won’t meet and an ice age that you probably can’t stop in the next couple of generations.
The setting states that it is not about heroism. The 6th sentence about the setting, however, is “Ancient evils threaten mankind” and some of the character narratives are specifically to support the war against the elder gods. A bit like the “cerulean sign” prestige class in 3rd ed dnd. I think it certainly could be about stopping aberrations. The point the setting is making though, is that most people will be too pre-occupied with struggling to survive or acquiring wealth to help. There is no grand church of st cuthbert bankrolling your horse and tackle to quest against Iuz etc.
What you get
History
On the whole the history is good. The monsters, climate, mythos and races mesh well into a history. The narratives naturally extend out of the history and background and in general work very well together as a result.
I think the whole setting is a bit hampered by the fact that the continent detailed as possibly an island on an existing world- presumably the GM’s existing campaign world. The style and texture of the world and game are such that I would assume people would start a new game, based on the narrative provided. Your existing paladin will not fit well here. Surely you would be creating new characters.
And the elder gods, rakshasa, serpent race shtick seems to be a worldwide series of epic events, not just something that would happen locally. In fact, it is described as being earth before the last Ice Age.
That said, if you were to introduce the setting as an island, it would work fine as a mid to high level “zone”. And I might actually do that, sort like a "Super Isle of Dread"
Magic and Astronomy
It's pre-roman so no month of March, yep , got it. Magic and a calendar are detailed. 5 sources of spells are laid out. Reminds me of the rolemaster channeling, essence, mentalism divisions or the sort of rules I build in the background for magic in my games.
I think it is fine, but the approach the setting takes with magical items is much better. They are grouped by race or origin, given descriptions on how they would look, why they would be made, who might have them and what sort of powers they would have. I think this should be done with spells/powers. Re-skin or omit where in-appropriate. No hard and fast rules, just heaps of flavour hitting the horror of mundane magicla items on the head. Which is awesome. With powers or spells, I don’t see it as any different to saying “no you can’t have platemail” in this setting, which you can’t by the way. (well if would effectively be an artifact based on my reading of the setting) The treatment of dwarves as iron workers in this setting, by the way, is great. It reminds me of trolls in ElfQuest. You remember zexy elf quest no?
Races and Geography
The only criticism I would have of the dwarves is that they carry too much of the core dnd dwarven baggage. I think they could have gone further. They certainly need myths of their craftsmanship being abused and some sort of external threat specific to them. I do like the Persian style of the dwarf art. Noice. The halflings could have been left out, as always. The elves are great- if you like michael moorcock’s storm bringer series. I'm stating up something like a "scimitar of lassitude" right now as a result..
One thing I miss is Orcs or half orcs. Especially after seeing the Warlords of Draenor intro movies. I might nudge the recommended NPC beastmen off a cliff and substitute *cough*Orcs*cough*. Other stuff like Pathfinder goblins, Aasaimar etc are cool, and normally a staple for me, but I can see them not fitting in. And gnomes are justly burning eternally in frozen flame of an unreachable hell.
The text of the atlas section is full of adventure sites and hooks. Great stuff, there must be thousands of hooks there. My only complaint is that the maps in my paid for and downloaded PDF are low resolution- so compressed that half the city names are illegible. Printing it from the PDF wouldn't help- I need a new version- preferably a vector image.
There is some good location art and site maps. The geography doesn't come across as awesome, from a map perspective, as middle earth, but it serves it’s purpose as a container for a horde of adventure sites.
Narratives
I love the narratives. The idea is that you have a template that describes your role. 5th edition D&D does this as standard now, calling it a background. Obviously the narratives//backgrounds in the wizards of the coast dnd next players handbook are fairly generic.The most specific are things like “guild member” which gives a early renaissance feel to some games, especially in the forgotten realms. These are at the other end of the spectrum. With the exception of the jungle related narratives I think they are really well done. The jungle trader and dhari hunter narratives are missed opportunities I think. They skim the awesome possibilities of African based myth for a cut down “jungle folks” view, which is a pity. I'd link an old dragon magazine reference full of great African stuff but I'm a noob here and it's Verboten.
I would probably also re-name the occult-scientist “power magus” or “arcane philosopher” something similar. Occult is a recent term and reason doesn't mean science.
Quodethi Thief and Katagian Pitfighter seem a bit narrow- I’d call them Guild Thief and Gladiator. It’s not until you get into the “personalised” section around page 60 that you see them fleshed out a bit. It does give you an example of where they would come from. Makes me want to scribe [but could be from any of the following locations and races] in Biro next to the titles…
Value
Is it worth the price of admission? Yes +
I paid 20 dollars for it in PDF which is great value, even with the over compressed maps. The sheer brobdingnagian volume of adventure hooks shoe horned into one fairly coherent package sells it for me. The narratives are crunchy TASERs to flavour your PCs with, and tellingly are very similar to DnD next backgrounds, printed nary 12 months later.
Does it do what it says on the box? Yes ++
Well I bought the 4th ed one, never intending to play 4th ed DnD again and I will use it very easily in my 5th ed DnD games in the future. I think they could have even made it “genre” neutral entirely and just given out 5 or 6 gaming systems worth of monster stats, but I’ll use my MERP modules in Traveler so I might not be a good judge.
Is it compatible with XYZRPG.indie? Easy
It will take me longer to generate names for a session than it would to adapt this to dnd 1st, 2nd or Next. Other systems? depends if you can bolt a background or narrative over the top of a class easily in that system.
I’ll buy from Sasquatch again, based on this. Unless it adds gnomes...
More to follow as the setting blends into my current game (shh, don't tell my players yet)
Last edited:
