Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009021" data-attributes="member: 172">Bluffside: City on the EdgeAs with nautical supplements, portable city setting supplements seems to be a hotly contested niche in the d20 market. Green Ronin recently released their Freeport setting book, Affinity Games' flagship product is their Windhaven setting, and Mongoose has a series of small city supplements in their Cities of Fantasy Series. One strong contender in this category is the long awaited Bluffside city setting by Thunderhead Games.A First LookBluffside: City on the Edge is a 144 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $22.95, packaged with a black-and-white fold-out map. This is fairly inexpensive for the content.The cover of the book is color, with a deep blue background. The front has a picture giving an angled view showing the various components of the city of Bluffside nestled in the mountains, in a cliff over a bay.The interior art features artists such as Storn Cook, Brandt Peters, Ben McSweeny, Brannon Hall, Shane Coppage, Steve Redinger, Steve Cook, Neal Webb, and V. Shane. The character depictions are rather good, though much of the art is rather small.The cartography has two different approaches. The area maps are nicely done, but obviously Campaign Cartographer 2 maps. The city maps are black and white and rather small; in addition to the fold out map, there are maps of each section included in the book that point out keyed areas of interest. I think that it would have been very helpful if the maps were larger; as it is, it seems as if the GM would have problems quickly denoting and defining locales in his game on the small maps.The interior layout uses a dense body text font and an even denser font for the NPC statistics in the back. The layout is a little uncomfortable, but is rather compact and efficient. The border uses a collage of gears, runes, and a pair of hands casting a spell. There is one place in the book where the gears are used as a backdrop to white text, which really doesn't work since there are white parts to the gears that make the white text difficult to read.A Deeper LookBluffside is a ready to use city setting for fantasy campaigns. Bluffside: City on the Edge city book is divided into 12 chapters and 10 appendices. Some of the chapters are rather small, occupying a page or less.Bluffside itself is a city situated atop some seaside cliffs nestled in the mountains. It is sort of a "boom town": the major point of commerce for Bluffside is the mining and trade of Adamantine mined in the surrounding mountains.In addition to its major focus as a mining town, Bluffside is also an archeological site of sorts. There are ruins and strange artifacts, such as a huge obsidian tower that repels sorcerers, and an ancient palace that still has unexplored passages warded by ancient magic. In the middle of the town are the ruins of an ancient civilization.In fact, Bluffside started as sort of an archeological site. Millennia ago, the location of Bluffside was a city called Sem La Vah, belonging to a race of being called Barrokks. The Barrokks fossils reveal that they where physically larger than humans, but no fossils of immature Barrokks have been found. The city was wiped out by an asteroid impact that started an ice age and caused massive migrations. Bluffside was rediscovered after recent returning to the region by these other races, and the asteroid strike left the surrounding mountains rich with adamantium. It is uncertain how the ruins of Sem La Vah survived at all.Bluffside moves cargo to and from the bay below by means of water-wheel powered elevators built by a race of gnomes native to the region called steam gnomes. There is a second city in the harbor called Sordadon that acts as Bluffside's port.Bluffside is divided into a number of sections or districts:- Old City: The Old City grew up around the archeological sites in the palace and the ruins of Sem La Vah. The palace eventually became a center of government, and the old city became home to several other important governmental buildings such as embassies and the courts.- The Mining District: The mining district is flush against the nearest mountains, and is the center of mining and smelting activity in Bluffside.- Temple District: The temple district is the home to various religions in Bluffside. The temple district was one of the last districts to spring up; houses of worship sprung up in here after the rest of the space in the valley were occupied. No one else wanted this particular tract of land due to the many crevasses in it. Though most of the keyed locations are houses of worship, there are some other interesting sites such as the Dine Divine, where religious arguments are settled in a ring, and the Street of Sorrows that is full of street preachers and various other loons.- The Wizard District: The obsidian tower that is located here became an object of fascination for many curious wizards. Soon they became a power in Bluffside and a district dominated by wizards sprung up around it. However, sorcerers are technically barred from the district; the tower's magical effects on sorcerers only encouraged wizards to formalize their disdain for sorcerers and made it into law.- New City: The New City is built over the tunnels that eventually lead down to the docks in the bay below. As Bluffside became more commerce oriented, this district became more important. The New City is possibly the most mercantile of the districts of Bluffside.- The Ruins: Right in the middle of the city is a section of haunted ruins that have never been totally excavated or explored. This should serve as ripe material for would-be adventurers.- The Undercity: In addition to the various districts of the city, there is an extensive tunnel system that exists underneath the outer portions of the city (beneath all the above sections but the old city and the ruins. The undercity has its own sections, including the sewers, the warehouse district near the docks, a seedy marketplace, a secret arena, mines, and the dwarven halls.- Sordadon: Sordadon is a floating city in the bay, and has districts all its own. It was originally built around shipwrecks of ships that had been smashed against the reefs, but eventually grew into a whole floating city.The majority of the first half of the book is consumed describing these districts and certain points of interest therein. There are over 100 points of interest all told. Each point of interest is keyed on a GMs version of the map in the book, and has details on the establishment, its owner and regular visitors, as well as 1 or 2 plot seeds for each location.The NPCs referenced in the front have full d20 system stat blocks in the appendices. Appendix 1 has statistics for named NPCs and appendix 3 contains statistics for guards.The plot seeds are worded as adventure ideas that concern the establishment and not really hooks. For many of the adventure seeds, the GM will have to come up with the reason that the characters would get involved. Most of the seeds are pretty good, though some of them got re-used a bit. For example, there are lots of plot seeds involving the PCs getting in trouble with the guards in the mining district when for some reason or another they get caught with adamantine on them.In addition to various locales that make up the city, the first half of the book discusses such things as the power groups and guilds in Bluffside. The government in Bluffside is by a council called The Five. The five are a group of nobles with conflicting motives. Their motives are described in enough depth that the GM can use it to start adventures portraying the power struggles of these individuals.In addition to the Five, there are also other power groups. The Adamantine Security Council is a covert organization that works on detecting and averting threats to the adamantine trade. The Wizard Council is an insular group that typically doesn't care too much what happens so long as it doesn't concern them. The Vault is the authority over the adamantine trade. Religion and adventurer groups are also mentioned as being influential.Brief sections in the first part of the book describe areas surrounding Bluffside as the deities of Bluffside. The deities are rather generic in nature, having no listed alignment and generic names like "the teacher." It should be fairly straightforward to substitute deities from your own campaign world if that is what you desire.The last part of the book is almost entirely rules material. As already mentioned, the first and third appendix contains detailed stat blocks for characters that the PCs are likely to run up against.The second appendix introduces some new creatures one might encounter in and around Bluffside. Examples include the adamantine golem and the giant cave spider.Appendix 4 contains new character races. The new races include:- Dragori: A humanoid reptilian race occupying the sands to the south of Bluffside.- Nevae: A race that is essentially a crossbreed between surface and drow elves, with a few of the drow elf racial traits.- Sel'varahn: A race of naturally inquisitive aquatic humanoids.- Sixam Iuena: An aloof race of winged humanoids. A troupe of sixams permanently watches over Bluffside as repayment for a founder of the city who saved the life of a sixam.- Steam Gnome: A gnome subrace that resides in the steam tunnels below Bluffside.Appendix 5 contains new prestige classes:- Bluffside mountain ranger (10 levels): The Bluffside mountain ranger is specialized in defense in the mountainous regions surrounding Bluffside. Bluffside was once raided by a horde of goblinoids; the Bluffside mountain rangers exist to ensure that does not happen again.- Cat burglar (5 levels): A city going thief, specializing in getting around and breaking and entering.- Explorer (10 levels): This prestige class is specialized in the discovery of new lands and new peoples. Class abilities include interfacing with new peoples and withstanding the elements.- Tunnel Fighters (10 levels): Tunnel fighters are specialized in confronting threats in the tunnels and caverns beneath Bluffside.Appendix 6 contains new spells. Many of the new spells pertain to new domains introduced in the book, like detect precious ore (part of the mining domain) and improved discern location (part of the history domain.)Appendix 7 contains new conventional items that can be had in Bluffside. This includes items such as Nevae glasses (protect wearer from bright light) and stethoscopes.Appendix 8 contains new magic items. Included items include the gauntlet of ice (protects wearer from cold and casts cone of cold) and the daemonforge (a supernatural furnace linked to the elemental plane of fire.)Appendix 9 contains new feats. New feats include intuitive knowledge (each time you take it, you get 4 skill points) and spellmarking (another variant of a magic tattoo inscribing feat.)Appendix 10 contains new domains used by deities herein. The new domains are: Affliction, combat, emotion, entropy, flight, history, ice, invention, mining, nature, peace, shadow, skullduggery, undeath, and weather. While many of these are decent, I question the existence of some that closely parallel existing domains in the PH such as combat and nature. Also, the domain ability for the entropy domain is outright missing.ConclusionOverall, Bluffside looks like a very interesting city to play a game in. In a way, it reminds me of the games of my youth. We had a city on a cliff (called Weyrcliff, which we liberally robbed from Fantasy Hero) next to a sea with a chain of islands created by an ancient asteroid strike. Nostalgia aside, the book has plenty of useful and interesting locations, many opportunities for adventures, accompanied by a rich cache of NPCs that would be a boon to any city campaign. This is all accompanied by a useful selection of rules material that helps support the unique aspects of the city. My main detractions of the book are the editorial mistakes and the maps. There were a few telling glitches like some NPCs that don't have all of their class levels accounted for and the missing domain description for entropy could be a hindrance to someone who wants to use the provided deities. I also felt the maps needed to be larger so the GM could make out more details.Overall, if you are shopping for a new city to add to your campaign, Bluffside should be a strong contender.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification