The above is an interesting post-mortem on the 5E version of Primeval Thule and 5E. Please watch this good video that covers history and research into the setting.
Did the setting fail because of D&D?
Can you design a setting and say:
- Low magic!
- No heavy armor!
- Scarce magic items!
And then, by levels 6-8, the martial classes suck even harder than they do without plate mail and a +2 sword, and nothing was done to address the fact that every caster turns into a superhero? You can scream "This is Conan." at the top of your lungs all day, but when the magic characters fly in like Iron Man and begin warping reality, where do you go from there?
Stand back, Conan; let the real heroes handle this!
The mages fly in and start blasting everything in sight while the martial characters struggle to make do with bone swords. Then, we get the 30-minute end to every DC & Marvel movie of visual vomit and videogame excess, where we can see what the tears, crunch time, and sleeping under the desks of VFX teams can do in Hollywood. The big battle against robots, aliens, or any other "can't be violent if we kill them" sort of drone soldier with the impossible camera zooming through the scene like a VFX supervisor zooming around with a viewport to check everything.
I have two feelings about this.
One, VFX sucks.
Two, Thule can't be played with any high-magic version of 5E: D&D, Tales of the Valiant, or Level Up Advanced 5E. I wonder if low fantasy can be played with these games, other than the books just "saying you can do it." Of this group, Level Up A5E is likely the best of the bunch, just because the martial moves give fighting classes something - but you are still taking away heavy armor and most martial magic items - so you are back to square one with the superheroes.
Saying you support low fantasy campaigns as a bullet point does not make it so.
Your game may have massive structural imbalances favoring one type of class than others. You can't say, "We support low fantasy," and sit there smiling, giving magic characters platefuls of cake and ice cream regarding powers and fantastic abilities. When a martial character hears the words "low fantasy 5E," they know they are being made even worse than they already are and will bear the brunt of the "realism" and "grit" while the magic characters fly around like laser-armed pixies on crack.
"My bone sword broke! Is it too late for me to multiclass a caster level or two?"
And the designers who make these games fear taking powers away from the entitled caster classes because they know they will get 1-star reviews. This is the "happily ever after" problem of romance novels, take away caster power in D&D and you are getting those one-stars. Take away a happily ever after ending to a romance novel and you get the same.
The only version of 5E that could do this setting justice is the excellent Low Fantasy Gaming, a version of 5E rebuilt to support gritty, low-magic games. In fact, Primeval Thule is mentioned in the back of Low Fantasy Gaming as a possible setting for use with the game...
Oh.
Now I get it. LFG was written to fix Thule's problems and the problems of low fantasy in 5E in general. I feel that 5E is not as much of a "universal fantasy system" as the fans say it is. 5E is stuck in super-heroic fantasy. To get low fantasy, it is best to switch games.
Thule is sort of the "first stab" at low magic setting for 5E, and it blew up because D&D, as written, sucks for low-fantasy games. Thus, the Low Fantasy 5E movement was started, and a 5E fork was created for a few games, including the OSR-like 5B.
Low Fantasy Gaming feels like the best option for playing this, though better options from the same team may come very soon, as in February 2024...and we have a new version of Open 5E coming soon.
We will see where this goes. As for right now, my low-fantasy system of choice is Dungeon Fantasy. I play solo, so I like the character detail. I can put any price I want on magic. I can make caster classes as rare as I would like.
This is one thing many gamers today just do not understand. A complicated system that does whatever you want is an order of magnitude easier than fighting a more straightforward system that just can't do something. Too much is built into mainstream 5E for it to ever do low magic effectively; there are too many subclasses that grant special powers, too many classes that must have these spells and powers to be viable, and too many options that grant powers like handing out candy. No matter what you do, introduce spell points, or use some resource-limiting resting option, another part of the game will create more work for you.
Got to fix this. Got to fix that. Did not consider this. Oh, that subclass totally breaks my change. What about wands and scrolls? If I change resting, that may hurt Martials more. I did not see that coming; I need another fix. What about druids? Bards? Clerics? Magic pets? Monsters? Magic items with spell-like effects?
It goes on and on.
In software, this is like backporting a significant change to a codebase created 10 years ago, and it would be easier to build a new system than dealing with all the code breaks one change would introduce.
When I want to create a specific experience, it is far easier for me to use an "RPG creation tool" like GURPS than it is to waste hundreds of dollars on games looking for one that does half of what I want it to do or waste hundreds of hours trying to make a system that can't do something do what I want it to do.
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