Rich Baker's page

Happy Birthday, Wolf! Seems like a long time since Lake Geneva, doesn't it?

Icons! That was it. I quite like them. Cheers.

As you say, for 5E it won't really matter which ruleset I get.

For our "icons," take a look at Patrons and Enemies, page 71-73. We figured that the basic idea works just fine whether you're playing 13th Age, 4th Edition, or Pathfinder, and the same forces/individuals should be spotlighted regardless of which rules set you like.

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:

So what is a "heroic narrative"? Sounds like a 4e "theme".

Is it possible to overlay a heroic narrative over any class?

Any answers folks?

Hi there, Wolf -- Rich Baker here. Sorry we missed your question before! Yes, a heroic narrative is a lot like a 4e theme, or even a 2e character kit. Some may be odd fits for some classes--for example, I don't think that you would see many barbarians who become occult scientists or star-lore adepts. But if you can come up with a good story for the odd fit and you're not trying to optimize, then sure, it'll work.

We like Savage Worlds too, but we've got enough systems to wrangle right up front. Maybe we'll look at that after we get great Pathfinder, 4e, and 13th Age versions knocked out.

And you are correct, the $60 pledge level does not include the PDFs (but the deluxe print edition and all higher pledge levels do).

Sounds intriguing! I saw the io9 article. I wish Savage Worlds was one of the supported systems.... only skimmed, but the base hardcover does *not* include the PDF? Just wanted to check.

There are basically two target-setting strategies for Kickstarter: Either you just come out and say what you need to make the product you want to make, or you lowball it and ask for an amount that *won't* cover the product you *want* to make, but could cover a minimal product if that's all you received. Primeval Thule is an example of the former, while something like Cthulhu Wars is a good example of the latter.

Me, Dave, and Steve are pretty straightforward guys, so we set our sights on the book we wanted to produce: A high-quality, fully illustrated, written by top names hardcover book for about $50. (Yes, we ask $60, but that's because shipping is a bear, and that's included in the price.) And yeah, $60k is about what it's going to cost to buy something like 100 color illustrations, a couple of poster maps, typesetting and page design, a cover painting, all that stuff, then print and ship that book. The Sasquatches don't pocket very much of that money at all.

In retrospect, the PDFs are steep -- but I'll point out you're not just getting the campaign setting PDF, you're also getting three additional adventures too. If you value those additional adventures at $5 or $10 apiece, the campaign setting PDF cost is a better value than it first appears to be.

I do want to take this opportunity to say "Thank You!" for your interest and kind attention, even if you decide it's not for you. We're doing what we love, and we're delighted to have a chance to share it with you. And if you're on the fence, well... it's going to be a darned good book!

(Come on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/809579963/primeval-thule to check us out again, if you haven't looked in a while. And tell your friends! We need all the visibility we can get.)

Rich Baker
Sasquatch Game Studio

Thanks for the support, Creighton and Tom!

RE: deities and divine healing, you can make a good argument that nothing like the cleric class really belongs in a faithful pulp fantasy world... but that's really messing with the machine code of Pathfinder or any D&D variant. We're including a pantheon that is generally drawn from the ancient world, with figures such as Ishtar and Set.

We plan to include some discussion of the role and nature of deities in the world, especially since this is a world where the Great Old Ones also exist. My very tentative thinking on this is that we might regard clerical magic as something of a "mystery cult," not conventional channeling of divine energy. To put it another way, once a priestess of Ishtar is initiated into the secrets of Ishtar's priesthood and invested with power, she gains the ability to use the spells you'd expect her to have--sort of an imbue with spell ability on steroids. It's her faith that is the source of power, not a divine agency. What she does with those powers after that point is up to her.

This approach lets us create much more fallible, flexible, and corruptible priests, while preserving the mechanical healing functions the game really needs. It feels a little more low-fantasy and sword-and-sorcery-ish, and also works well for integrating clergies or cults of Great Old Ones into the setting. Hmm, maybe I just need to write this up and add it to our Sasquatch blog.

Rich

Hej Rich!

Thanks for the quick reply! I have to think a bit about the ramifications of what you posted. I understand that the racist attitudes of days gone by are not suitable for most of nowadays audience.

What about deities/divine healing? Madness?

And what about alignment? Xoth Publishing, for example, eliminated all alignments essentially in favor of being "normal" and tainted by cosmic evil.

Yes, we're sticking to PG-13. We asked ourselves some tough questions right up front about whether we could tolerate nudity in the art, and we decided that we wanted to keep things suitable for prime time TV. We're going to show a lot more skin than you see in most Pathfinder art and take some real liberties about just how much armor someone needs to wear to say they're wearing armor, but all the naughty bits are going to be covered up. It'll be equal-opportunity sexiness, too; no fair showing the ladies half-dressed if you don't do the same for the men.

Slavery is definitely a feature of many Thulean civilizations, since cities are generally wicked and corrupt places. We're not going to portray it in a good light; it's something that heroic characters often fight against or strive to escape. Likewise, exotic lotus essences or strange opiates are often featured in sword & sorcery stories, and when it makes sense in specific adventures or storylines, we'll note the presence of drugs.

Racism is right out; Burroughs and Howard are great reads, but we don't need to follow them there.

BTW, we have an interesting new blog posts up at:

http://www.sasquatchgamestudio.com/pathfinder-preview-stranglers-of-nheb/

Free monster! Come and get it!

Rich Baker

I'm a huge fan of Sword & Sorcery, so I'll address the elephant in the room:

Will this be PG-13? To me, the genre is about drugs, sex and some racist and controversial themes: Slavery, conduct with tentacled things, vile rites, drugs etc.

I like your approach to demi-humans. (Are they degenerate offshoots or not? Neat!)

How will you address magic/madness etc.? What about deities? As used in mainstream PFRPG, they'd represent a serious break of the mood with so much healing available.

I don't require things to be explicit, but I'd really be interested in how you'll address these concerns since I'm rather tempted and want this to succeed.

Hi, everybody --

Thanks for the great questions! We can't get to all of these, but we're certainly going to start with a selection of the best or most straightforward questions you suggested.

Next time, if you could keep the questions to maybe three or four specific related suggestions per post, that would be great. You guys wandered pretty far afield with a lot of these!

You'll be seeing a few of these again soon in a dev blog post coming to your neighborhood!

Rich Baker
Goblinworks Writer/Developer

Hi, everybody!

For next week's Goblinworks development blog, we would like to collect a selection of FAQs and provide answers. We're looking for the sort of things new posters bring up over and over, as well as subjects that there's simply a lot of speculation about.

We'd prefer questions that we could handle with reasonable 1-paragraph answers. "Provide an overview of the crafting system" or "tell us all the monsters that will appear in the game" aren't the type of questions we can really deal with in a clear, brief, to-the-point response. To put it another way, we really want to focus on dispelling any confusion you've noticed clinging to the forum discussions.

So, if you would be so kind as to suggest some FAQs we ought to include in next week's blog, we'd sure appreciate it. Fire away!

Rich Baker
Goblinworks writer/developer

The weather is probably Temperate Continental, like Ukraine or the American Midwest. Despite being next to a huge freshwater lake, my hometown still has the cold dry winters and the hot humid summers of continental.

That's certainly how I view it, Stormweaver. I lived in Wisconsin for a few years, and I figured that relatively flat land near a major river system might not be all that different from the terrain around the Mississippi River bottomlands. Since the area is a long way from any moderating ocean, I figure that you'd have hot, humid summers and cold, snowy winters (could be serious lake effect, after all).

So, more like St. Louis or Cincinnati than northern Germany, but maybe with more snow.

Rich Baker
Writer/Developer, Goblinworks

Oh, and by the way -- thanks for the suggestions!

We're looking hard at our list of topics and trying to decide which ones we feel like we're ready to talk about.

Rich Baker
Goblinworks

Rich Baker wrote:

We'd love to see some suggestions for future blog topics...

Rich Baker
Goblinworks

Ideas:

Zero Point sequel
Alternity Online

(ok..maybe a little bit off-topic)

Hey, somebody remembers Alternity! Thanks, Rafkin!

Sorry to say I don't have any plans to follow up on Zero Point, but I'm glad that you liked it enough to want more!

Rich Baker
Goblinworks

Predict a topic in the next GW blog...

I'll start.

Settlements.

We'd love to see some suggestions for future blog topics. Let us know what you're specifically interested in learning more about, and we'll put it in the blog topic rotation.

Sometimes we might not be ready to discuss a topic quite as soon as you'd like to hear about it, but we can certainly try to take steps in that direction when we see there's a demand for info.

Rich Baker
Goblinworks