Ptolus Ptips? Starting up a campaign...

Sorry for the Ptolus pun. Anyway, starting up a campaign in Ptolus for my usual gang of players. Curious who's dived into the mammoth setting yet, and if they had any tips for a DM. I'll be starting with the adventures from the book, if only just to use what's there and focus my prep time on keeping the organizations and npcs straight, but am curious as to what's working and not working with your Ptolus parties.

I've just started a Ptolus campaign. You can see how it's going by reading my Praemal Tales.

I guess you'd need to be more specific about the kind of advice you're searching for. Is there something in particular that makes you seek advice? An issue on your mind, in particular?

My general advice would be to try to use the substance of Ptolus, to embrace its nature rather than try to reject it. What I mean by the nature/substance of Ptolus is twofold:

First, Ptolus is a setting that doesn't try to impose a playstyle but actually in my opinion succeeds in blending them almost to the perfection. Read the chapters on Running Urban adventures and campaigns in particular, and how to blend investigation, character interaction with dungeon crawling and action. Ptolus has a surface and an underground which have different characteristics with different kinds of appeal as far as playstyle is concerned. To get the most out of Ptolus, I think the best is to play with this in mind and alternate investigation/NPC interaction/surface scenarios with dungeon delving/action scenarios.

Second, Ptolus is D&D through and through. It's a point that is similar to my first idea, yet different enough to consider closer. To get the most of Ptolus, in my opinion, one needs to consider the core D&D experience and try to use the most of it. Ptolus works best in campaign running from 1st to 20th level, for instance. It works best by blending playstyles, again, and by alternating event-based and site-based adventures. By thinking about character builds, class abilities and using them in the game. So on, so forth.

Beyond this general advice, I'd need more specifics about your concerns. Hope this helps so far!

I would sit down and ask your players which sort of campaign they're most interested in. (The campaign chapter in the book talks about the choices.)

Once you know that, the rest will start to fall into place pretty quickly, IMO.

Thanks, folks. Basically, I'm just curious as to which bits of the book are best to use off the bat. There's a ton of material, and I've studied through it like a college text book, but basically, I was looking to see what folks have done so far with the campaign (e.g. use the scenarios from the chapter at the back of the book? come up with their own based on such-and-such organization/locale) that has worked and hasn't.

I recommend starting with the adventures in the book. The low-level scenarios are well done and will help you figure out what kind of adventures you should send them on down the road.

For instance, my party started out indicating they wanted to run a heavy social intrigue campaign. Three sessions into it, it became clear they really just want to Kill Monsters And Take Their Stuff.

The great thing about Ptolus is there's enough material there to run whatever kind of campaign they want to play. Or switch back and forth, for that matter.

-Thrommel, who's happy to stat up as many rat-men as they want to kill.

Thanks, folks. Basically, I'm just curious as to which bits of the book are best to use off the bat. There's a ton of material, and I've studied through it like a college text book, but basically, I was looking to see what folks have done so far with the campaign (e.g. use the scenarios from the chapter at the back of the book? come up with their own based on such-and-such organization/locale) that has worked and hasn't.

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I mostly come up with my own stuff and react to the characters actions.

If you're aiming for a more straightforward campaign, just use Chapter 33 - Adventures and have a great time with them. They are really cool (I particularly love the one where you get to swim under the sea to find a wreckage - trying to avoid spoilers here).

As far as the locations go, try to introduce a few of them at a time. Don't try to describe everything the PCs see while they walk down the street for the first time.

Personally, I purchased the electronic art books from The Forge Studios and use the B&W drawing for some of the main buildings. For the PCs first time in the streets, we went to Delver's Square/Myraeth's Oddities and St. Gustav's Chapel. Then, during the second session, the locations featured were Danbury's, the Ghostly Minstrel, the Siege Tower, the Zar'at and Exposed Street.

One location at a time, to not have the players saturate under the amount of available information. I try to think of my role as DM as being partly the Guide that presents the city to the players. Guides don't try to tell you "everything" at once when you're on a tour; they try to give you a rough idea of the features of the place and how the place came to be what it is today. That's how I proceed through descriptions, drawings and explanations provided by Skill checks and NPCs.

Fwiw, I found the Ghostly Minstrel inn to be a good home base when I ran my first session in Ptolus, yesterday. The depth of the shopkeepers in Delver's Square and the other districts exceeds that of a lot of the city settings I've used before (1e Waterdeep, 3.5e Waterdeep, Sharn). The more I read of the prefab adventures, the more confident I am in them - very thorough, esp. the use of handouts. The hooks are also good enough to prod DMs in the right direction for their own stuff - e.g. the use of ratment - even with no official scenario for defeating the ratmen, there's enough material tht you can prep many evening's worth in just a short time.

Curious to see what's tickling the cookies of other DMs out there.

For a "Dungeon" campaign, it's hard to beat Delver's Square as a home base. I really love that the setting has several supported ways to play in the setting all integrated together, so that groups can shift back and forth as they wish.