Primeval Season 4 720p Dimensions
Mina Spartin
Goto [ Index ]Saying Sasquatch Game Studio's Primeval Thule Campaign Setting (hereafter Thule) is sword and sorcery is akin to describing New York Fries as an Indian restaurant because they serve butter chicken poutine. Don't get me wrong, it's got a lot going for it: an imaginative setting with inspiring locations and evocative prose. It's just not sword and sorcery, despite the authors claiming Howard, Leiber, Burroughs and Smith (the progenitors of that fantasy sub-genre) as their inspiration for the book (7). Likewise, rest assured this critique is not some show-me-on-the-doll-where-Mr. Baker-touched-you catharsis owing to poor experiences with other products from Thule's authors. Heck, speaking of Baker, I convert everything to Alternity and count Dark Sun and Birthright as my two favourite D&D settings. No, this critique is based solely on the book's failure to live up to being a sword and sorcery setting. I'll talk about that failure with regard to the following common sword and sorcery tropes: monsters are unique; no non-human sentients (a thinking, talking thing that isn't human is monstrous in sword and sorcery), and; true magic doesn't come from the gods, is rare, and scary. I hold these sword and sorcery tropes to be self-evident, having been exhaustively identified and discussed in both lay and academic works; as a result, I won't be going through any contortions trying to justify them here. I'll wrap up by discussing tone; specifically, how certain contradictions and writing choices in the text undermine the overall attempt at a swords and sorcery feel.
Sword and sorcery monstrous antagonists are unnatural by virtue of being atavisms or outside the natural order and are therefore one-offs, or, if encountered as a group, isolated and few. Thule, unfortunately, sticks to the high fantasy rpg rule of making sure monsters are a predictable, known quantity. Not only are they the brand name usual suspects you'd find in the Monster Manual, but their appearance hardly seems noteworthy. Lycanthropes (the text doesn't even care to identify the type) are flippantly noted as "picking off" (129) lumberjacks, with the fact itself being of less interest than who is employing them (as if monsters are so common it's natural to ask who recruited them). Speaking of common, Katagia is parenthetically identified as having trained wyverns (106); a fact casually offered in a broader description of a temple. Sahuagin raids on one town are described as a "perpetual problem" (78) while treants (yes, talking trees) "regularly" attack another (94), as if the text were discussing bed bug infestations or flu season. At least these settlements have humans in them, as opposed to the village of devils (97) and another of fairies (101). Heck, monsters aren't scary, they're just regular folk: in Ikath, serpentmen "openly walk... the streets of their own district and sometimes beyond" (86), regarded as no more than "merely strange neighbours" (87). While clearly not as interested in fantasy monster integration, the rakshasa are to be admired for being the pinnacle of Thulean civilization: while humans have plateaued with the city-state, the rakshasa have their own nation, Jhi Anool, and are accustomed enough to human visitors that they feel comfortable engaging them in dialogue (98). Such prosaic "monsters" pestering humans with predictable regularity, living cheek-by-jowl with them, or merely co-existing on the same political landscape, are hardly the stuff of Howard, Leiber, Burroughs or Smith.
Sword and sorcery does not offer up sympathetic, non-human protagonist races simply because something that acts like a human, but isn't, is an abomination that has outlived its welcome in this epoch or has seeped down from the stars. Yes, Moorcock's Elric is decidedly non-human, but consider this is a late addition to the genre and that the author was purposely crafting an anti-Conan to counter the deluge of Howard pastiches of the day. Thule, however, not only offers the usual fare of elves, dwarves, and halflings, but even (incomprehensibly) encourages players to create characters from other high fantasy rpg races (42) even though they clearly have no place in the setting or genre.
Well, okay, so there are elves, dwarves and halflings. One would at least hope they would be radical departures from their D&D-derived stock, geographically isolated, and regarded with superstitious fear and loathing by the barbaric Thuleans, right? Wrong.
The "cruel, capricious, dissolute" (76) elves of Imystrahl seem quite distinct at first, but other than their substance abuse problem (76) (the blame for which is laid squarely at the feet of cultists) the reader is left wondering how they earned these adjectives. This is a classic example of an often-uttered article of writing advice: show me, don't tell me. Elves are not isolated to Imystrahl, and live in at least two other settlements (108, 127) on Thule proper and have a presence on Hellumar as well (95). Far from being the objects of suspicion or revulsion, Thuleans are so comfortable with elves that even a barbaric tribe like the Narthan have a few half-elven families (103). On the same note, returning to Imystrahl, I had to laugh when the text noted that humans were admitted only as slaves or "untouchables" (76). Given that the entire city guard is half-elven, somebody had to have been doing some touching at some point. I guess elves are just sexually liberated no matter what the setting: witness the polygamous human-on-human-on-elf marriage of Valebel, elven bar matron of Quodeth (179).
Mercifully, Thule is unafflicted with half-dwarves or three-quarterlings. That said, neither dwarves nor halflings in the setting have any distinctive characteristics to set them apart from their prototypes, unless the broad division of dwarven settlements into civilized Kal-Zinan (41) and the barbaric tribe of the Long Teeth (135) are intended to serve this function. Wide-ranging, "dwarven merchants frequently travel to larger and wealthier cities or barbarian tribes" (41), serve abroad as mercenaries (41), and even live in human communities, be they smithing for barbarian tribes (91) or running wholesale ale warehouses for Nimothans (134). Even the halflings get around, having and entire town in Hellumar (97) and (unaccountably) a prominent clan in Thran (90), untroubled by life in a city dominated by dark human wizards. Bad enough to see elves, dwarves, and halflings in a setting inspired by Howard, Leiber, Burroughs, and Smith, but to have them inhabit the landscape as they would any run-of-the-mill high fantasy rpg world is artless at best.
While D&D and its progeny subscribe to the bloated, overpowered, Vancian, magic-magic-everywhere model in which magic is so mundane it is used to accomplish everyday tasks in place of technology, true magic in swords and sorcery is as dangerous as it is rare. In addition, true magic is solely of the arcane variety; the swords and sorcery model of faith runs something like, "cults, not religions; idols, not gods". If a cult's high priest does something magical, it means he's faking it with drugs and/or mesmerism, or has studied sorcery.
While Thule ignores the complete absence of clerical magic in the genre, at least it seems to be on the same page regarding arcane magic, stating, "Arcane magic is rare and perilous in Thule" (69). Great, but then why retain the aforementioned bloated, overpowered, Vancian, magic-magic-everywhere model without deletion or alteration? In a world where magic is rare, we have Thran; a city ruled by powerful mages, administered by second-stringer wizards, and overseen by enforcers with magical abilities (89). In a world where magic is rare we have a merchant who is "accomplished in weather magic" 106) and a pirate who "commands sorcerer abilities" 126); no context or explanation is provided as to how or why a businessman and a klepto sailor plumbed the secrets of the arcane arts, but rather are mentioned casually, as if their situations were perfectly normal. In a world where magic is rare we have a town populated entirely by "immensely powerful, sorcerous children" (131). In a world where magic is rare, "the temples of the city-states work hard to maintain a monopoly on magical power... and suppressing unapproved studies of arcane lore" (43). This last quote is a doozy. Not only is magic readily quantifiable, but has been identified and commoditized as a currency of power. The suppression of unapproved studies of arcane lore denotes that such study is not only an acknowledged phenomenon, but is so commonly encountered as to be divided into acceptable and unacceptable categories. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise the temples regard magic as a commodity; after all, they're contracted to provide healing at gladiatorial arenas (107) and summon water elementals as a supernatural fire brigade (131).
Even magic items are on the table, despite Thule's protests to the contrary, as evidenced by the trading priorities of a certain savage headhunter tribe which is "always interested in magic weapons and tools" (86). Really? They're so common that savages are on the lookout for good buys? If most Thuleans "would likely fear and shun anyone they knew to possess" (7) a magic item, why is such an obvious and unlikely exception not contextualized?
Magic, then, isn't rare; but surely it's dangerous? Having made the claim, surely the writers included a mechanic similar to that of the AD&D Dark Sun setting's treatment of defiling magic, or perhaps the corrupting, taint-haunted magic of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG? Nope. Given that Thule included a madness mechanic, you'd think that at least magic associated with the Old Ones, such as that practiced by the star-lore adept, would carry sanity-blasting consequences. Nope again. Yeah, magic is rare and perilous, just like it usually is in D&D, Pathfinder, and 13th Age; which is to say, not at all.
Okay, so Thule isn't really a sword and sorcery setting because it alternately ignores or mishandles the tropes discussed above, largely due to pandering to its high fantasy rpg roots. So you can't have orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, and god-busting magic that's available at the corner 7-11 with a swords and sorcery feel? Not at all. Consider the following excerpt from the Player's Guide to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy:
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