A number of our Kickstarter backers have naturally asked us about ongoing support for Primeval Thule after we publish our campaign setting book. We’ve been pretty cagey about answering that question because we’re naturally focused on our Kickstarter and creating the best damned campaign setting book anybody ever wrote. But now that we’re getting close the end of the Kickstarter, we feel like we can at least say a few a little bit about where Thule goes next.
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As you might expect, we’ve been paying attention to a dozen different message forums and blog chatter about our Primeval Thule Campaign Setting Kickstarter. One of the themes that’s come up in a few different places is the question of just how much D&D needs to bend in order to be faithful to the expectations of the sword-and-sorcery genre, or vice versa. The short answer is that we’re aiming for something that falls in between. It’s more D&D-ish than Conan, and less fantastic than most full-on D&D worlds. In other words, we see Thule as basically a D&D world that is no longer right down the middle of the fairway, but leans hard toward sword-and-sorcery tropes.
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There are myriad gods in Thule: Protectors of cities, patrons of merchants, spirits of forests or beasts, and dark things remembered only by a few savage tribes or vile cults. This is a superstitious age, and humankind is surrounded by mysterious powers. In such a world, people naturally seek to understand the forces around them by giving them names and seeking to win their favor or avert their displeasure. Whether the gods take note of such things or not, few indeed could say, for the gods of Thule are inscrutable.
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Every character has a story. Character race describes your natural gifts and your roots from early childhood, while character class describes your skills, talents, and pure fighting ability—but neither of these truly describe what you do with your talents and gifts. That’s where character narrative comes into play.
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Every fantasy setting has its own basic conceit about where and when it exists in the multiverse of possibility. Krynn and Athas are simply other worlds. Toril is another world, but one that long ago was tenuously linked to our own Earth through magical gates (or similar contrivances) in such a way that the fantastic creatures and magic of the Forgotten Realms provided us with many of our own legends of these things. Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria are simply “Earth of long ago,” a time many millennia before the dawn of recorded history in which now-lost lands and kingdoms existed. This is the conceit that the Primeval Thule setting shares: Thule once existed on Earth, but now is lost.
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Sword-and-sorcery settings like Primeval Thule are generally low-magic, human-centered worlds. So why do we make a place for elves, dwarves, and all the rest of the high fantasy baggage of D&D? Continue reading →