City Sourcebook Vol I (d20)

[Crothian]

NPCs for the revised rules! The rules are thick and time is precious! You know you want them and you know your going to need them! NPCs. This book is easy to use, costs little, and is a utility that any and all d20 players and game masters must have and will use! You’ve been there before. Your players are in town and their needs are legion! They’re going to need supplies. They’re going to need information. They’re going to need a bar room brawl and an adventure! The complex rules of 3.5 don’t allow the DM time enough to create NPCs on the fly . . . this book alleviates all those worries! A city peopled with over 72 fighter, rogue, expert and commoner non-player characters, NPCs Vol I is the inexpensive tool you are going to use over and over again. Each NPC comes complete with all the information your going to need including name and description!

NPCs VOL. I includes The City of Sorrow adventure! Scaled for any level, the City of Sorrow places all 72 NPCs in an easily adaptable setting!

The City of Sorrow: Beyond the world of your waking linger shadows of past deeds. “Memories, these shades are little more than memories.” The people of Chalysandrum stoop beneath the weight of their own past, bound by the crimes of the forebearers. At the heart of their tortured soul lies the Cabal’s dark sorceries and evil machinations. Only the brave and foolhardy can overcome the ghost-like memories of these foul wizards and free the town from its ancient curse.

About Phil Thompson: Phil has Produced, wrote and/or edited 32 adventure modules for the RPGA; Co-wrote Loona: Port of Intrigue with legendary author Ed Greenwood; Co-authored House Red Star with Silent Death author Extrodinare Leeland Erickson. House Red Star is in editing at Iron Crown Enterprises

TLG 1903, $11.95, 48 pages, ISBN 1-931275-35-1.

 

[Crothian]

City Sourcebook 1 NPCs

City Sourcebook 1 NPCs

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Three years I have been an ENnie Judge. In those years we see lots of books and do a lot of hard reading. We nominate the very best for the categories but there are always some good books that just are not quite good enough. Luckily I can get the chance to talk about some of them in forms of reviews like this one.

City Sourcebooks 1 NPCs is a book by Troll Lords. Troll Lords have done a nice job in the d20 industry with some good adventures, with some nice books written in part by Gary Gygax, and their newest game Castles and Crusades which has really hit on with many gamers. This City Sourcebook is written by Phil Thompson. The softbound book is forty eight pages, black and white, and it has a nice lay out.

The book starts off on the right note for me with a little insight into how the book came about. It mentions how the original manuscript was a bit too small and when Phil was asked to flesh it out he really did a good job on the NPCs. And that is very true as the NPCs are one of the high lights in the book. There is also an adventure in here that is well done, but the NPCs are a great resource for any DM. There are over sixty of them all written up in short stat blocks and with a nice description of who the character is. The characters are NPCs and most of them have the NPC classes of Commoner and Expert. The NPCs are the primary reason that this book immediately went on my Campaign Pile. There are a few really useful books that I set aside to make sure I use them when I run my game. The NPCs here are more of the common sort. They are great for rounding out a town or when the PCs choose to go talk to that one NPC the DM has not really defined.

The other part of the book is the adventure. There is not a lot written about the adventure but there is a lot there. This is more then the average dungeon crawl adventure. This one has plots and details that are usually not dealt with in most adventures. For instance the adventure has the sun rise and sunset and weather over a three week period all written up and detailed. It is just one of those great little detailed that can really help the DM bring a place and adventure alive.

City Sourcebook One starts with e NPCs and delivers on the adventure. The adventure is nice and scalable, but it might need a little help from the DM to make it work with all that is going on. It will depend on the DM and the game that is being run. The NPCs though are really something that will be useful. Not since Everyone Everywhere have I seen such a useful collection of NPCs in one place. They are a bit lower level and use the NPC classes, so for the lowered powered games they will be even more useful. This will be a useful book t o a lot of DMs I imagine for the NPCs and for the adventure.