D&D 5E City of Arches-Perfect 5e Setting

Arilyn said:

Sly Flourish's City of Arches, by Mike Shea recently arrived on my doorstep. I think it's a near perfect setting for the current take on modern D&D.

The City of Arches is connected to the multiverse via arches scattered throughout the city. Upon entry, arrivals have little memory of their original homewolds or backgrounds. This allows your players to go wild with all the 3rd party releases: Valda's Spire, Humblewood, Eberron, dinosaur books, etc.

This is not a planar adventure setting, however, unless you want it to be. The city, the reaches below and the outside environs are fully detailed with a ton of adventure seeds and hooks. There are also several framework suggestions for adventure arcs. The book is also brimming with NPCs and factions, all of which come with potential hooks.

There's plenty here to help GMs and players weave great stories. Is the evil builder of the city, The Nameless King about to return? Can the players find keys to long dormant Arches? Do the players want to comb the depths looking for loot, or are they true archaeologists?

It's easy to adjust the setting to be as dark or as light as your table wishes. It's primarily a setting book, so can be used fairly easily with any fantasy TTRPG. The players in my group are playing with material from Level Up, 5e, Kobold Press, Valda's Spire and Dr Dhrolin's Book of Dinosaurs.

If you are looking at 5e/24 art and thinking how are all these species together, making any kind of sense, look to City of Arches. Honestly, I think it makes for a way better sample setting than Greyhawk or Borderlands.

Click to expand...

SlyFlourish said:

Some other folks here mentioned they dig the idea but aren't playing 5e – while the book was written around 5e as the most likely system to run it with, the book itself is highly system agnostic. I definitely had systems like Shadowdark in mind as well. There's very little 5e mechanics in the book – no extra subclasses, only three monster stat blocks (big beefy ones), only one highly-reskinnable background. I'd say the book is 95% system agnostic and easily converted to other fantasy RPGs. Again, take a look at the sample and see for yourself.

Click to expand...