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City-States of Adventure

So my only thought regarding Ptolus is if you went back and looked at Monte Cook’s 3e material under Malhavok Press, there is a lot of magitech, chaos magic, and just general cool stuff there and all of it was assumed to have been part of Ptolus since that was his primary setting at the time where he playtested it. The issue is that it’s probably only really useful for the lore at this point because it is 3e and a lot of it hasn’t been updated to 5e.

It's been quite a few years, but I somewhat remember Cook saying that Ptolus was what he felt a setting would look like if a setting were built specifically for the 3rd Edition system and built assuming that the physics engine (for a lack of better words) of 3rd Edition is how the settings world worked.

Loved the book. Didn't get to use it much because 4th Edition D&D released shortly after I bought it. The groups I played with at the time spent the next few years mostly playing 4E.

In regards to what I'm looking for, I'm cool with the magitech and all that stuff, but I would prefer to wholly embrace it if it's going to be there. Alternatively, cut it out and give me something more like Keep on the Borderlands -if it was written by R.E. Howard.
 
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It's been quite a few years, but I somewhat remember Cook saying that Ptolus was what he felt a setting would look like if a setting were built specifically for the 3rd Edition system and built assuming that the physics engine (for a lack of better words) of 3rd Edition is how the settings world worked.

Loved the book. Didn't get to use it much because 4th Edition D&D released shortly after I bought it. The groups I played with at the time spent the next few years mostly playing 4E.

In regards to what I'm looking for, I'm cool with the magitech and all that stuff, but I would prefer to either wholly embrace it if it's going to be there. Alternatively, cut it out and give me something more like Keep on the Borderlands -if it was written by R.E. Howard.
Ptolus has light magitech, but it mostly has failing technology -- each year, fewer people know how to repair the tech, which lets you put as much or little in as you want.

It's a great setting (our campaign has gone from 3E to Castles & Crusades to 5E), but it doesn't sound like what you're looking for.
 

What other systems?

I would be open to Genesys (as it is the underlying engine for games I already play).

If there's something that fills a similar niche as DCC, I'm open to hearing about it. I like that DCC is familiar enough to D&D players so as to not be wholly alien when trying to learn, while also going back to an older mindset for adventure design and power curve. By "older" I don't necessarily mean OSR, but I do like how older adventures were plotted out and paced; I like that it's not built around buckets of HP and constantly looking for the next +N item. Magic feels special; being stabbed in the face usually hurts.

I'd like to steer away from the not-quite-5E games (i.e. Tales of the Valiant).

Something that handles vehicles and mounts well would be nice.
 

If there's something that fills a similar niche as DCC, I'm open to hearing about it. I like that DCC is familiar enough to D&D players so as to not be wholly alien when trying to learn, while also going back to an older mindset for adventure design and power curve. By "older" I don't necessarily mean OSR, but I do like how older adventures were plotted out and paced; I like that it's not built around buckets of HP and constantly looking for the next +N item. Magic feels special; being stabbed in the face usually hurts.
Shadowdark.
Something that handles vehicles and mounts well would be nice.
Shadowdark with Cursed Scroll #2 (mounts) and #3 (boats).

And the forthcoming Cursed Scroll #6 is a city supplement/adventure/setting zine.
 


Shadowdark.

Shadowdark with Cursed Scroll #2 (mounts) and #3 (boats).

And the forthcoming Cursed Scroll #6 is a city supplement/adventure/setting zine.

I've heard good things about Shadowdark.

I was unsure if it was an off-shoot of 5E (like Tales of the Valiant).

Re: Your post about Ptolus - There are a lot of pieces of the setting that I like. I'm certainly not against using it. I own a physical copy of the D&D 3E version. I would need to convert it to a different system.
 

Shadowdark.

Shadowdark with Cursed Scroll #2 (mounts) and #3 (boats).

And the forthcoming Cursed Scroll #6 is a city supplement/adventure/setting zine.
Second this. While I like DCC, I like Shadowdark even better. More streamlined and no wonky dice. The Arcane Library just did a big Kickstarter for the campaign setting which includes books on specific locations.
 

I don't know if it's up your alley, but I thought the 3e Sharn: City of Towers book was very well done. It eschews the detailed maps you'd get in classic-style city products (e.g. Waterdeep: City of Splendors, either in 2e or 3e form) that maps the city out down to every alley and house, and instead is based on wards and districts. For example, the Lower Central Plateu is a middle-class ward with the character of "artistic and eccentric downtown". Within that ward, you have districts like Boldrei's Hearth (lots of hotels/inns/taverns) or Granite Halls (quirky art district), and some specific locations within these districts are named.

As for magitech, Eberron is not so much a "typical" magitech setting where you basically have magic serving as power for tech stuff, but rather using magic extrapolated as technology. For example, under 3e rules you could make a fairly cheap item that could cast prestidigitation at will, particularly if you limited it to the cleaning aspects and made it large enough to not be easily mobile. So Eberron would have establishments that have a washing stone or what have you, where you can get your clothes cleaned for a low price, without all the backbreaking labor that goes into washing clothes in a world without washing machines. In Sharn specifically, the city is built on a manifest zone to Syrania, the Azure Sky (basically Heaven, but here it's the aerial aspects that are important) which both lets people build massively high towers, and enable certain flying devices within the city. Think Venetian gondolas, but flying.

You also have Dragonmarked Houses, which are conglomerations of associated families with specialized magical abilities which they use to dominate certain markets, both via their own products and services and via control of various guilds. So if you're going to sail somewhere, house Lyrandar can probably get you there faster because they have ships made of special materials, and they can influence the wind's speed and direction, and at the top end they have elemental-powered galleons that have bound elementals that propel them faster than any mundane ship can go. But their services are fairly expensive, so you might want to travel via a completely mundane ship... but even then, the captain and navigator and other positions of leadership are probably trained and licensed by a guild associated with Lyrandar, and abide by standards and prices set by the House. The Houses are basically Cyberpunk-style megacorps, but in fantasy.

Now, Sharn is written for 3e, but I know there are plenty of people using Savage Worlds for their Eberron needs instead, and there's a pretty well done conversion out there somewhere.
 

I've heard good things about Shadowdark.

I was unsure if it was an off-shoot of 5E (like Tales of the Valiant).
Not really. Kelsey Dionne basically built a new OSR game from scratch in 2023, using the best parts available to her. And that meant that some of it, like advantage/disadvantage, comes from 5E, while dropping the power level, boosting the lethality level, and tossing out a lot of the crunch of 5E.

Every 5E player I've introduced to it has instantly got it, just as OSR players have. It stands squarely in the middle, with tech and attitudes from both sides.

The Players and GMs guides are free and have an old school D&D boxed set worth of material, so it's easy to check it out.
 

Not really. Kelsey Dionne basically built a new OSR game from scratch in 2023, using the best parts available to her. And that meant that some of it, like advantage/disadvantage, comes from 5E, while dropping the power level, boosting the lethality level, and tossing out a lot of the crunch of 5E.

Every 5E player I've introduced to it has instantly got it, just as OSR players have. It stands squarely in the middle, with tech and attitudes from both sides.

The Players and GMs guides are free and have an old school D&D boxed set worth of material, so it's easy to check it out.

How difficult is it to add some crunch back in if desired?

I'll look more into the game. I had dismissed it because, admittedly, I misunderstood what the game was meant to be.
 
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