(un)reason
Legend
Dragon annual 2001
part 6/7
Firearms in freeport: Ah yes, Chris Pramas. Another WotC alumni that founded his own company, and enjoyed a fairly substantial amount of success over the years, with stuff like Blue Rose, Mutants & Masterminds and True20 taking the d20 system in quite an interesting, slightly rules-lighter direction. But he started off with a relatively generic adventure series, that gradually evolved into a full setting of it's own. The aptly named Freeport, a rough and tumble seaside city full of opportunities for you to make your fortune or die trying. You can easily plonk it in your campaign world, and introduce elements from any culture by saying a trading ship has just come in and their goods are the next new hot thing.
So anyway, enough exposition, let's look at guns in Freeport. Not too surprisingly, it's all a gnome's fault. And equally unsurprisingly, he wound up in freeport because the established power blocs in his old country were not amused by this destabilising new idea. So far, so cliche. Thankfully, it manages to transcend that with a rather good implementation, making firearms more powerful than regular weapons, but also requiring a exotic weapon proficiency to use, and a very real possibility of amusing misfires. On top of that, he also stats out their creator, gives the individual guns amusing names, and details their forge in a way that makes it a decent adventure location, making it less generic while not removing it's ability to be dropped into other worlds. So it looks like this is his attempt to follow in the Forgotten Realm's footsteps, creating material that can be used by anyone, but also makes a setting of it's own, with the big difference being in the personality of the writers. It's an idea that was immensely popular once, and now anyone can try it. In hands like this, we'll get good material. In not so talented hands, we'll just get people telling us about their own characters. Just got to keep our ears to the ground to figure out who's delivering the goods.
part 6/7
Firearms in freeport: Ah yes, Chris Pramas. Another WotC alumni that founded his own company, and enjoyed a fairly substantial amount of success over the years, with stuff like Blue Rose, Mutants & Masterminds and True20 taking the d20 system in quite an interesting, slightly rules-lighter direction. But he started off with a relatively generic adventure series, that gradually evolved into a full setting of it's own. The aptly named Freeport, a rough and tumble seaside city full of opportunities for you to make your fortune or die trying. You can easily plonk it in your campaign world, and introduce elements from any culture by saying a trading ship has just come in and their goods are the next new hot thing.
So anyway, enough exposition, let's look at guns in Freeport. Not too surprisingly, it's all a gnome's fault. And equally unsurprisingly, he wound up in freeport because the established power blocs in his old country were not amused by this destabilising new idea. So far, so cliche. Thankfully, it manages to transcend that with a rather good implementation, making firearms more powerful than regular weapons, but also requiring a exotic weapon proficiency to use, and a very real possibility of amusing misfires. On top of that, he also stats out their creator, gives the individual guns amusing names, and details their forge in a way that makes it a decent adventure location, making it less generic while not removing it's ability to be dropped into other worlds. So it looks like this is his attempt to follow in the Forgotten Realm's footsteps, creating material that can be used by anyone, but also makes a setting of it's own, with the big difference being in the personality of the writers. It's an idea that was immensely popular once, and now anyone can try it. In hands like this, we'll get good material. In not so talented hands, we'll just get people telling us about their own characters. Just got to keep our ears to the ground to figure out who's delivering the goods.