John Cooper
Explorer
CITY SUPPLEMENT 2: AERIE
By Justin Alexander
Dream Machine Productions product number CS 0002
19-page PDF, $2.00
City Supplement 2: Aerie is the second in Dream Machine Productions' line of fantasy cities, and this one is a vast improvement over the first. For one thing, Justin decides to drop the d20 stats entirely, which has the dual benefits of completely eliminating all stat block errors in the product (as it's pretty difficult to have stat block errors without stat blocks) and making it an equally useful product for any fantasy RPG, regardless of the game mechanics you're using.
The cover artwork is credited to Caspar David Friedrich - Der Watzman, and it's a generic painting of a series of mountains. This is apparently artwork that was appropriated for use with the PDF, as opposed to being commissioned for the product, as there's no real sign of the city itself. It's also a very narrow vertical strip of color surrounded by ink-gobbling black on both sides and top, a design choice that makes the product stand out but probably will discourage most purchasers from printing out the covers. (The back cover is an even worse offender, being an almost entirely black page with the title at the top and the d20 logo on the bottom.)
The only interior artwork is some heraldry and symbols of various factions in the city, all done up in black and white by Margaret Frazer. There are also 3 pages of maps, which Justin handles himself. They're nicely done, with a "one inch = 700 feet" scale marker on the bottom rather than a gridwork of squares.
Aerie, as you might expect, is a mountain-based city famed for its griffon-riding order of knights, called, naturally, the Griffon Knights. The city was founded after the fall of their original kingdom, Aerioch - and worse yet, it was one of the Knights responsible for the kingdom's fall, as he lured the rest of the Griffon Knights far away and then staged a coup with his own forces. The Knights tried fighting back, but they were outmatched, and they flew away to lick their wounds and eventually created their own kingdom in Mount Auroch. The city they founded, Aerie, is carved from a giant cave in the mountain (called, naturally, Griffon Cave - these Knights aren't particularly imaginative when it comes to names). Over the centuries, the Griffon Knights became the Griffon Riders, and they became an important merchant class, capable of transporting the city's goods down from the mountain to trade with others.
As a city, Aerie has an appropriately "fantasy" feel about it, being basically carved inside the heart of a mountain; while this is a human city, it could easily be put to equal use as a city of mountain dwarves. Justin provides the DM with several organizations in Aerie: besides the Griffon Riders, there's also the Merchant Guild, the Tower Guard, and the Mercenary Guild. He describes the four main seasonal festivals celebrated in Aerie, a whole page of "masterpieces of Sarafina" (she was a painter, sculptor, and alchemist who created masterwork portraits and intricate clockworks, as well as a powerful artifact with healing powers), four adventure seeds, and various suggestions on how to fit Aerie into your own campaign. All in all, it's a pretty well thought-out work, and if I had to point to a weakness, it would probably be the very "generic" sounding names. "Aerioch" is only one letter away from "Arioch," a demon lord who featured fairly prominent in the Elric of Melniboné series of novels by Michael Moorcock; the dwarven nation of Westerdeep (whose caverns lie in the roots of Mt. Auroch) rings a bit too close to the Forgotten Realms' city of Waterdeep; "Mt. Auroch" isn't very different from "Aerioch" (and an auroch is just a type of bovine in any case); even the four festivals are given the rather bland names of "Feats of Arms," "Feats of Song," "Feats of Magic," and "Feats of Dance." You might want to spice up some of the names for your own campaign, as these may be just a bit too "vanilla" for your tastes.
Still, City Supplement 2: Aerie does deliver a useful mountaintop city which could very well be useful to many fantasy campaigns. Justin's got a fairly well-detailed city (it's got an "upper city" and "lower city" even), and he went the extra mile to provide two copies of each map: one for the DM (with specific areas marked off by number) and one for the players (without such annotations). Aerie's history is such that it can be placed nearly anywhere in your campaign, and heck, you can even ignore the stated history and do whatever you want with it. (I imagine many people buying a city supplement for a fantasy campaign are mostly interested in the maps anyway.)
I give City Supplement 2: Aerie a rating of "4 (Good)" (on the old 5-point scale, which was still the default when this review was written), and look forward to seeing more in this line. (Heck, if Justin continues with the "no stats" concept, this line will fit seamlessly into 4E with no problems. And if "points of light" is the new status quo, 4E DMs are going to be looking for the next "point of light" that needs some adventurers to keep the baddies away....)
By Justin Alexander
Dream Machine Productions product number CS 0002
19-page PDF, $2.00
City Supplement 2: Aerie is the second in Dream Machine Productions' line of fantasy cities, and this one is a vast improvement over the first. For one thing, Justin decides to drop the d20 stats entirely, which has the dual benefits of completely eliminating all stat block errors in the product (as it's pretty difficult to have stat block errors without stat blocks) and making it an equally useful product for any fantasy RPG, regardless of the game mechanics you're using.
The cover artwork is credited to Caspar David Friedrich - Der Watzman, and it's a generic painting of a series of mountains. This is apparently artwork that was appropriated for use with the PDF, as opposed to being commissioned for the product, as there's no real sign of the city itself. It's also a very narrow vertical strip of color surrounded by ink-gobbling black on both sides and top, a design choice that makes the product stand out but probably will discourage most purchasers from printing out the covers. (The back cover is an even worse offender, being an almost entirely black page with the title at the top and the d20 logo on the bottom.)
The only interior artwork is some heraldry and symbols of various factions in the city, all done up in black and white by Margaret Frazer. There are also 3 pages of maps, which Justin handles himself. They're nicely done, with a "one inch = 700 feet" scale marker on the bottom rather than a gridwork of squares.
Aerie, as you might expect, is a mountain-based city famed for its griffon-riding order of knights, called, naturally, the Griffon Knights. The city was founded after the fall of their original kingdom, Aerioch - and worse yet, it was one of the Knights responsible for the kingdom's fall, as he lured the rest of the Griffon Knights far away and then staged a coup with his own forces. The Knights tried fighting back, but they were outmatched, and they flew away to lick their wounds and eventually created their own kingdom in Mount Auroch. The city they founded, Aerie, is carved from a giant cave in the mountain (called, naturally, Griffon Cave - these Knights aren't particularly imaginative when it comes to names). Over the centuries, the Griffon Knights became the Griffon Riders, and they became an important merchant class, capable of transporting the city's goods down from the mountain to trade with others.
As a city, Aerie has an appropriately "fantasy" feel about it, being basically carved inside the heart of a mountain; while this is a human city, it could easily be put to equal use as a city of mountain dwarves. Justin provides the DM with several organizations in Aerie: besides the Griffon Riders, there's also the Merchant Guild, the Tower Guard, and the Mercenary Guild. He describes the four main seasonal festivals celebrated in Aerie, a whole page of "masterpieces of Sarafina" (she was a painter, sculptor, and alchemist who created masterwork portraits and intricate clockworks, as well as a powerful artifact with healing powers), four adventure seeds, and various suggestions on how to fit Aerie into your own campaign. All in all, it's a pretty well thought-out work, and if I had to point to a weakness, it would probably be the very "generic" sounding names. "Aerioch" is only one letter away from "Arioch," a demon lord who featured fairly prominent in the Elric of Melniboné series of novels by Michael Moorcock; the dwarven nation of Westerdeep (whose caverns lie in the roots of Mt. Auroch) rings a bit too close to the Forgotten Realms' city of Waterdeep; "Mt. Auroch" isn't very different from "Aerioch" (and an auroch is just a type of bovine in any case); even the four festivals are given the rather bland names of "Feats of Arms," "Feats of Song," "Feats of Magic," and "Feats of Dance." You might want to spice up some of the names for your own campaign, as these may be just a bit too "vanilla" for your tastes.
Still, City Supplement 2: Aerie does deliver a useful mountaintop city which could very well be useful to many fantasy campaigns. Justin's got a fairly well-detailed city (it's got an "upper city" and "lower city" even), and he went the extra mile to provide two copies of each map: one for the DM (with specific areas marked off by number) and one for the players (without such annotations). Aerie's history is such that it can be placed nearly anywhere in your campaign, and heck, you can even ignore the stated history and do whatever you want with it. (I imagine many people buying a city supplement for a fantasy campaign are mostly interested in the maps anyway.)
I give City Supplement 2: Aerie a rating of "4 (Good)" (on the old 5-point scale, which was still the default when this review was written), and look forward to seeing more in this line. (Heck, if Justin continues with the "no stats" concept, this line will fit seamlessly into 4E with no problems. And if "points of light" is the new status quo, 4E DMs are going to be looking for the next "point of light" that needs some adventurers to keep the baddies away....)
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