Review of Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue by Wizards of the Coast

Blackwarder · Sep 16, 2012

Evenglare said:
I'm not against system neutral books, I LOVE them. My point is that once 5th edition comes around you will never see another system neutral book until they start gearing up for 6th edition. That's what infuriates me the most. If this book had come out and 5th edition was already release you bet your ass this would have been a 5th edition book.

I wouldn't be that sure, granted it might happen but right now, with the why DnDNext is shaping up, they might have problems of writing a 5e system book considering all the modules. What I do believe we might see are books with rules modules in them, just like the Menzoberanzen book got the system to track your standing in the drop city.

Warder

Sylrae · Oct 12, 2012

brewdus said:
The point of system neutral is so you can tailor it to your system of choice.

Personally I'm happy they're putting out a system neutral book. I have a bunch of the other setting books they released for various editions, and in 3e, and the other 4e setting books I've read, there's far too much crunch for the pagecount.

Its a setting book, not an options book. I want it to be almost entirely setting. That's why I didn't end up picking up Neverwinter.

The pagecount is atrociously short though, it should have been about 100 pages longer, and like 5$ more expensive. That, or it should have been like 8$ cheaper.

As someone who owns this, DotU, the 1990's Menzo boxed set, and 3e Underdark, I think its quite useful. It's a book I've been waiting for for a while.

1. It brings much of the info needed to do a quality drow game to one place.
2. It includes GM advice for running that sort of game.
3. It includes Player advice for playing that sort of game.
4. It gives history of Menzoberranzan outside the 2e timescale. (though annoyingly, virtually no info from 1372-1385DR - which is the time period I was most interested in)

If it had been filled with 4e crunch, I would not have bought it. It gets them sales outside the 4e crowd. Some people didn't find 4e to be the game they wanted to play.

Its a setting book. I wish my 3e setting books were this useful with 4e, or 5e. It's also not a player book, it's a GM book. Put the character options on DDI, in Dragon Magazine Articles. Its all you really need. Players will get access to the options through DDI, and the GM can buy the hardcover book.

I wish all settings were written like this, or "Return to the Road of Kings", or Kingdoms of Kalamar Campaign Guide.

They shouldn't only do this when switching editions though. They should do ALL the setting books this way. I'd buy more setting books. Maybe even just to read.

And I find the fact that it's written in "Align-Left" instead of "Left Justify" to be very odd for an RPG book, but that may be something WotC has been doing for a while that I just missed.

S'mon · Oct 12, 2012

All the other reviews of this book have been pretty negative, so I'm a bit unconvinced by the OP, although his love of WoTC is clear.

Sylrae · Oct 12, 2012

S'mon said:
All the other reviews of this book have been pretty negative, so I'm a bit unconvinced by the OP, although his love of WoTC is clear.

I picked it up largely because of this review.

I think it is a very useful book for running a drow campaign, though it does have some overlap with both Drow of the Underdark 3e and Menzoberranzan 2e. It has fairly little overlap with Underdark 3e (and I haven't read the 4e underdark book).

If you know alot about drow and have read those other books, perhaps you could have gotten by without it, but it's likely that not everyone in your group has read these things, and there are a couple sections that would make an excellent primer for the players who are less familiar with the subject matter.

I think the book will be useful to me.

Could I have done without it? - It would have taken some more work to prep for the campaign and find the information I needed, but yes I could have.

However, I have & have read Drow of the Underdark 3e, Menzoberranzan 2e, Races of Faerun 3e, FRCS 3e, Grand History of the Realms, Cormanthyr Empire of the Elves, Players guide to Faerun 3e, Underdark 3e, City of the Spider Queen 3e, and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits 3e, and Dragon Magazine #298 in my RPG Book collection, and I have & have read War of the Spider Queen, Lady Penitent, Starlight & Shadows, and the Dark Elf Trilogy; as well as the Last Mythal series (which has a little bit of information on pre-descent drow worked in).

Realistically, all of my players have not read those ~5000+ pages of text.

I think I could do a decent 3.x/pathfinder based Menzoberranzan game, using nothing but Drow of the Underdark 3e and Menzoberranzan City of Intrigue. If I was doing it in 4e, I would probably use the 4e underdark book instead of DotU3e.