Ptolus: City by the Spire Review (D&D)

[Cynical Cat]

Back in April, the wonderful human beings who I am fortunate enough to call my friends did a preorder of the massive Ptolus sourcebook. It has arrived. Without further ado, here is my review.

What is it about?: Ptolus is a city located on the outskirts of a decaying empire. Ptolus is a city built around the Spire, a great and unnatural outcropping of rock thrust high into the sky. Due to the city's history it is the dungeon and adventurer capital of the world. Needless to say, dark powers are also afoot and conspire to awaken world destroying ancient evil and Ptolus, for several reasons, is also ground zero for that as well.

The Package: A mammoth and gorgeous 668 page book with maps, handouts, and a CD. The CD has the first issue of the Ptolus comic, 3 adventures/campaign supplements, a conversion so you can drop Ptolus in the Diamond Throne setting, and a few other goodies. The handouts range from randon encouter charts (which range to children playing with a cat, to injured dog, to gang thugs, to monsters), a tavern menu, a firearms permit, and maps. I also recieved the soft back adventure The Night of Dissolution as well.

Art: Gorgeous. Almost all of it is really good and the majority is full colour.

Presentation: Well organized and good looking. Important points in the text are bolded. Side bars expand upon bolded points or give page numbers where more information can be found. Glossary, index, the full works. It is really user friendly.

Content: There's a lot of it and most of it is really good. The book is written for use with just the core books for 3.5, although it does briefly address how to incorporate the Books of Eldritch Magic. It is full of detail, but it leaves enough blank for a DM to put his own stamp on things. Several dungeons are described in detail and several adventures are incoporated in the book, ranging from the highest to the lowest level. A signifigant portion of the books is spent on describing who the average person lives as well as cultural and political details. The ludicrous D&D economic system is even partially rationalized. In short, excellent.

Feel: Ptolus is an unusual city in its world. The concentration of dungeons, mages, and adventurers as well a sinister cults makes it an anomaly in its world where such things are generally exceptional. Its citizens are used to seeing unusual things in the street and generally try to go about their ordinary lives. The collapse of the Empire of Tarsis and the presence of one of the claimants to the Lion Guarded Throne makes the city politically volitile to boot. If you are interested in picking up a city based campaign for D&D, this is for you.