Primeval Thule Kickstarter

I'm still invested in Primeval Thule even though it has not quite reached its goals.  The campaign has four days left and about a third left of its goal (about $20,000).  That's a long way to go, but I've watched James Raggi do it before, although he may have access to forbidden Finnish magic.  The jury's still out on that one.

Anyway, Primeval Thule is a pulp genre mash-up setting that draws heavily on the traditions of Robert E. Howard — savage sword-and-sorcery action with the threat of big, nasty Lovecraftian horror in the background.    Primeval Thule uses the core conceit of Forgotten Realms (mythic Earth) cross-pollinated with the Hyperborean Age or Middle-earth (prehistoric Earth) — Thule was the mythic Thule of the Greeks, the fabled northern continent, but has since become a lost land.  Humanity is a young race, having arisen in a savage wilderness with aspects of ancient cultures and creatures.

As is the way of sword-and-sorcery, Thule is predominantly human, although demihumans do occur.  They are, however, rare; there is probably just one city of elves, one city of dwarves, and so forth.  These demihuman enclaves are small and hard-to-find.  (The game will also note the possibility of using the demihuman races, but just making them cultural variants of humanity.)

Likely the best way to experience Thule is through Sasquatch Game Studio's website.  They have a post describing Thule in seven sentences, as well as a post talking about adventure design in Thule.  The news feed is also a good place to look: it features articles describing the lost continent of Thule, a sample star-spawned danger of Thule (with Pathfinder statistics), twenty-five adventure seeds, and how demihumans will fit into Thule, among other information.

The Primeval Thule Kickstarter ends August 1.  Primeval Thule is compatible with Pathfinder, D&D 4e, 13th Age, and Call of Cthulhu.

Campaign Updates

Things continue to be slow on the things-to-post-on-the-hobby-blog front.

But, I continue to run and organize campaigns, so that's good, right?

If you want to read about my D&D 4e game that's been running for two years (we play infrequently, unfortunately), check out Crux of Eternity.

If you want to read about my comparatively more recent AD&D 2e Spelljammer game, check out Can't Take the Sky.  We also play infrequently, although we're scheduled to play this weekend.  I'm not convinced that will work out.

Pulp Era Kickstarters

I've come across two current campaigns to start kicks, and I bring them to your attention.

Exile Game Studio's Revelations of Mars is an expansion to the award-winning Hollow Earth Expedition role-playing game.  For those not in the know, Hollow Earth Expedition is a 1930s pulp adventure game wherein characters are adventurers and explorers in the Hollow Earth.  Previous expansions added further detail to Hollow Earth and also detailed the pulp weirdness happening on earth's surface; Revelations of Mars expands the action to encompass Mars, providing rules for a not-quite-Barsoom world of weird science fantasy.  Revelations of Mars has already hit its funding, but it's a good opportunity to pre-order the book or round out your Hollow Earth Expedition collection.  The Revelation of Mars Kickstarter ends on July 31.

Sasquatch Game Studio's Primeval Thule is a savage sword-and-sorcery pulp fantasy setting for Pathfinder, D&D 4e, and 13th Age.  It's a little Robert E. Howard, a little H. P. Lovecraft, and a little Edgar Rice Burroughs.  (On the H. P. Lovecraft front, they're also going to provide a conversion document for Call of Cthulhu, and one of the adventures is designed to be used with the miniatures from Cthulhu Wars.)  With an awesome horror pulp setting (like Dark Sun but with more than one biome) and industry veterans like Rich Baker and Todd Lockwood, I'm particularly excited about this project.  It has not yet reached its funding, but is nearly halfway there with roughly 17 days to go.  (Basically, support the project, because I want to get a copy.)  The Primeval Thule Kickstarter ends on August 1.

Good News and Bad News

This week I was introduced to two videos about Dungeons & Dragons.  The first details a fundamentalist Christian take on D&D suggesting that it's actually a cult activity:

I never get to be Lord of the Little People.

The second video is an interview with Vin Diesel in which he discusses playing D&D.  The part where he talks about a player's demeanor changing about two hours in?  That's right on target:

Deadlands, Part XL

When last we left our heroes, the group boarded a train to Albuquerque, from there hoping to travel to Garrison Wells by way of Amarillo.  While en route, the group exorcised the creature from Ruby and Father Seward, acting under the influence of the spirit inside him, stabbed Rufina and kicked her out of the train.

Father Seward gives a cockeyed grin and raises his hands in the air.  Rex draws his gatling pistols and puts several rounds in Seward's chest.

Once Seward is immobile, Rex takes his gun and asks what must be done with him.  As Ollie is still in the corner, and Ruby is curled in the fetal position on the floor, Rex's conversation is largely with David.  David says that he thinks Father Seward should be left alive.  Rex disagrees, saying that puts the whole party at risk.  David says that if Seward is going to save the world and close the Hellgate, it's worth the risk to the party.

Seward is to be left alive.  Rex and David use David's belt to secure his arms.  Then, they sit and await Albuquerque.

About an hour later, Father Seward starts to awaken.  Despite having been overtaken by the demon inside him, he recalls everything.  He tells Rex he's a bad shot, and then rolls off the side of the train.  Rex, unprepared, doesn't grab him in time, but he draws his gatling pistols and starts aiming for Seward's head.  Several rounds are discharged before a blast of scarlet paints the desert and Seward's body slumps to the ground, lifeless.

**************************************

Since Father Seward was apparently integral to the Devil's plan, our GM called game there.  Deadlands is finished for now.

So, apparently, Cobb's plan involved becoming mortal and being forgiven so that he could enter Heaven and storm the gates.  He gathered certain people to aid in these affairs: David Hood and Ruby O'Flahertie owned the land surrounding the Hellgate, Father Seward was empowered by God and could actually forgive the Devil of his sins, and Jake was going to take the Devil's place as the new ruler of Hell.  However, the Devil ran into a little snag: as a mortal, he was subject to mortal emotions, and ended up falling in love with Seward's daughter.  When the Indians' ritual involving Seward's daughter didn't work, they savaged her and started carrying her with them as they traveled.  Cobb encountered her again years later and fell in love, taking her from the Indians, raising her as his daughter (and also keeping her around as his lover).  As such, he had developed a genuine interest in saving the world from the growing Hellgate.  Whoopsie daisy.

(Of course, the Devil being the Devil, when given the choice between staying with his lover and declaring war on Heaven, guess which one he'd take.)

Anybody who is interested can go ahead and read Father Seward's backstory.  For the record, he was heavily inspired by Jack Crabb from Little Big Man, and the Preacher from Pale Rider.

Art Evolution

The other day, I came across this cool thing: writer Scott Taylor managed to contact a bunch of classic role-playing game artists and each get them to illustrate a character.  In this case, Taylor picked an old character of his, asking each artist to illustrate "a female wizard named Lyssa, who always wears white trimmed in gold and has raven-black hair."

Over the course of the project, he manages to get artists such as Jeff Laubenstein, Jeff Dee, Tony DiTerlizzi, Larry Elmore, and Liz Danforth.

Check it out here.

The Decamer Campaign

Hot on the heels of my Fiend Folio campaign setting, I came across this Gnome Stew article describing a campaign in which you take whichever ten D&D monsters you think are the dumbest and write a campaign featuring them.  (Basically like Jeff Rients' proscriptive campaign creation or noisms' 2d6 random creatures as the core of a campaign setting, except a trifle more silly in conception.  Also a good time to note noisms list of his ten favorite monsters.)

You should go read it.