JoeGKushner
Adventurer
To quote the back cover, “Cityworks is the definitive d20 System (3.0 folks) resource for designing and running exciting adventures and campaigns in fantasy cities.” Now anyone whose read any of my reviews of an adventure knows that I love city based adventures and grew tired long ago of small villages and hamlets in need of adventurers.
With that, perhaps I'm not the best person to review this book. I cut my teeth on books like Tulan, Carse, Thieves World, Cities, and other oldies but goodies. I've used Waterdeep, Greyhawk, the City State of the Invincible Overlord and other classics. I've seen adventures with massive flowcharts that help the GM keep pace of where the characters are and what they do. I've utilized Buffalo Games book of maps, Cities, their City Books,and numerous Atlas products ranging from Seven Cities and Backdrops. In my mind, I have probably built up an unrealistic expectation of what “the definitive d20 System resource” is going to bring to the table.
I was a little worried about the book from the start. The Welcome page talks about, “variant core classes, new prestige classes, feats and spells uniquely suited to dungeon environment.” That's an editing error right off the bat. Down the same page, “concludes the book with a many tables.” Uh, not good.
Chapter One starts off with Characters in the City, and breaks down each class by what their background is, what skills are good, and something for the character to do. Maybe it's just me but some of the material struck me as blindingly obvious and didn't go into any detail. As the book itself notes, “Hide and Move Silently are obvious choices for stealth.” Yeah they are. The section on feats didn't do anything for me either, being more obvious observations without getting any good ones like using Power Attack to quickly shatter stationary objects. What would've probably been better, instead of a class breakdown, a skill breakdown with appropriate notes for which classes can best use them.
More impressive were the Urban Character Classes, all three of which I thought filled some niches and gave the game a more gritty optional feel. While the Acrobat certainly isn't grim or gritty, he's a useful fellow to have around to walk the tightrope and move about without being seen on the rooftops in addition to having a quickness about him that provides an armor class bonus. No, or more serious intent, the assassin and pit fighter are more dangerous and suited to the job of killing. This assassin is a non-spellcasting version that's very competent with a single weapon and is more robust than standard assassins, while the pit fighter uses low cunning to augment his defense in addition to knowing how to move about the ring. Those two core classes gave me Warhammer FRPG flashbacks. Now none of these struck me as original mind you, but they all brought something different than previous versions.
The PrCs are a mixed lot. Some of them, like the Kingpin, we've seen similar concepts before in say, Freeport. Others like the Street Stalker made me think of advanced thugs from FFG's Traps & Treachery book. The only one I thought interesting was the Speaker of the City, a druid that advocates the city as a living entity of it's own right with it's own ecosystem.
The feats were brief, more about getting along in the city than advancing through the ranks. Face in the Crowd, Innocent Posture, Innocent Smile, stuff that lets you move about without being noticed. Spells were pretty similar with low utility but interesting concept of Prestige Spells, not quite a Prestige Domain, but interesting. Many of these focused on summoning a City Elemental which is similar to an earth elemental but gains a bonus on attack and damage rolls, as well as hit point,s while in the city.
City Basics is another basic set up. It doesn't go into a lot of detail about what makes a city a city as opposed to a large town. It's broken up into how cities are started, how to write out their history, what archetypes are standard, what types of governments and law enforcement's can be found in the cities as well as the vital elements of economics and religion. The problem is that these are broad topics and each is only given a few pages and sometimes miss critical elements. For example, under archetypes, where is the Capital City? Sure, it's good to see Common, Contested, Outpost, Port, Religious and Ruined notes, and one could use the Common city for the Capital, but in most fantasy settings, a Capital is a book worthy entity in and of itself.
Am I going to turn to this book for material on say law enforcement, or wait for Atlas books to come out with Crime & Punishment? Am I going to look through the section on Religion here, or look through say, the Quintessential Cleric with its various rules for clergy gaining followers? Great concepts but the follow through is too little.
The good news is that if you're not heavily using a lot of resources, then this can give you a lot of ideas on how to craft your own cities. The ideas, not a lot of game mechanics here, are sound even if a little underwhemling.
Chapter Three, City Construction, is rich in ideas. It uses City Precincts to show how cities can evolve and where breaks in common areas, like merchant quarters, thieves quarters, nobles, etc..., can crop up. The tables f can get a GM running up and around in no time. The unique traits and features like cliff cities and subterranean can help the GM craft some truly unusual cities while we all know of at least one city in most fantasy setting that use canals or boast of a necropolis and an undercity.
Chapter Four, City adventures, is useful, but also a little under in terms of use. It mentions things that, perhaps due to my age and length of roleplaying, seem obvious, like using landmarks, tone, NPCs and setting to help set the stage for the adventure. The advice on timelines and flowcharts is also brief.
When it talks about flow charting, perhaps I've just had too much experience with them. If you can dig one up, the Dungeon Master's Design Kit, by Harold Johnson and Aaron Allston, an old 1st edition AD&D book, does some excellent Chase Matrixes for general purpose use that work well as Flowcharts. Flowcharts are very useful tools and there needs to be a product on how to actual use them, what the various symbols mean and hew to 'explode' them.
Another thing the book does well though is using urban environments and events within them like fires, rooftops and crowds to help make your city adventure more than a standard dungeon crawl. Still, some of the material is old hat without a lot of details like sewers and tavern brawl. For example, with sewers, while it's nice to know what DC saves are necessary to avoid falling on the slick wet floor or avoiding the stench of raw sewage, how about finding stuff in there? How about the differences in sewers beneath say the royal palace and the slums?
Chapter Five, City Encounters stands out for it's utility. Numerous charts and tables, while not providing stats, do providing encounters for different parts of the city, making a GM's life much easier. The section on Random NPC creation is another useful tool for GMs to quickly stock their setting with names, alignment, race, personality trait, mannerism and appearance all listed out with other optional tables. The random building generator is another strong point as it allows you to quickly fill up sections of a city that you didn't think that players would go through.
One thing that knocked this book down a grade is the free preview for Sorcery & Steam. This book is 176 pages, like other hardcovers in the series, but the preview isn't an addition to the page count, it cuts 16 pages out of City Works. Nice preview but I'd rather have more material about Cities. For example, while it talks about building interior rooms, with 16 pages cut out, I bet we could've had maps of common areas that players go to like taverns, warehouses, common houses, or taverns. With 16 pages, we could've had some unique, new monsters instead of a short list of monsters that are appropriate
The art is up to FFG's usual standard, high. The layout is also solid, two columns. Editing struck me at first, but was fairly good throughout the rest of the book.
If you're new to role playing and new to the city, and if there are skills you don't know how to use in different environments, this is a solid book. For someone else, this might be a 4 star product. For me, it's a steady 3.
With that, perhaps I'm not the best person to review this book. I cut my teeth on books like Tulan, Carse, Thieves World, Cities, and other oldies but goodies. I've used Waterdeep, Greyhawk, the City State of the Invincible Overlord and other classics. I've seen adventures with massive flowcharts that help the GM keep pace of where the characters are and what they do. I've utilized Buffalo Games book of maps, Cities, their City Books,and numerous Atlas products ranging from Seven Cities and Backdrops. In my mind, I have probably built up an unrealistic expectation of what “the definitive d20 System resource” is going to bring to the table.
I was a little worried about the book from the start. The Welcome page talks about, “variant core classes, new prestige classes, feats and spells uniquely suited to dungeon environment.” That's an editing error right off the bat. Down the same page, “concludes the book with a many tables.” Uh, not good.
Chapter One starts off with Characters in the City, and breaks down each class by what their background is, what skills are good, and something for the character to do. Maybe it's just me but some of the material struck me as blindingly obvious and didn't go into any detail. As the book itself notes, “Hide and Move Silently are obvious choices for stealth.” Yeah they are. The section on feats didn't do anything for me either, being more obvious observations without getting any good ones like using Power Attack to quickly shatter stationary objects. What would've probably been better, instead of a class breakdown, a skill breakdown with appropriate notes for which classes can best use them.
More impressive were the Urban Character Classes, all three of which I thought filled some niches and gave the game a more gritty optional feel. While the Acrobat certainly isn't grim or gritty, he's a useful fellow to have around to walk the tightrope and move about without being seen on the rooftops in addition to having a quickness about him that provides an armor class bonus. No, or more serious intent, the assassin and pit fighter are more dangerous and suited to the job of killing. This assassin is a non-spellcasting version that's very competent with a single weapon and is more robust than standard assassins, while the pit fighter uses low cunning to augment his defense in addition to knowing how to move about the ring. Those two core classes gave me Warhammer FRPG flashbacks. Now none of these struck me as original mind you, but they all brought something different than previous versions.
The PrCs are a mixed lot. Some of them, like the Kingpin, we've seen similar concepts before in say, Freeport. Others like the Street Stalker made me think of advanced thugs from FFG's Traps & Treachery book. The only one I thought interesting was the Speaker of the City, a druid that advocates the city as a living entity of it's own right with it's own ecosystem.
The feats were brief, more about getting along in the city than advancing through the ranks. Face in the Crowd, Innocent Posture, Innocent Smile, stuff that lets you move about without being noticed. Spells were pretty similar with low utility but interesting concept of Prestige Spells, not quite a Prestige Domain, but interesting. Many of these focused on summoning a City Elemental which is similar to an earth elemental but gains a bonus on attack and damage rolls, as well as hit point,s while in the city.
City Basics is another basic set up. It doesn't go into a lot of detail about what makes a city a city as opposed to a large town. It's broken up into how cities are started, how to write out their history, what archetypes are standard, what types of governments and law enforcement's can be found in the cities as well as the vital elements of economics and religion. The problem is that these are broad topics and each is only given a few pages and sometimes miss critical elements. For example, under archetypes, where is the Capital City? Sure, it's good to see Common, Contested, Outpost, Port, Religious and Ruined notes, and one could use the Common city for the Capital, but in most fantasy settings, a Capital is a book worthy entity in and of itself.
Am I going to turn to this book for material on say law enforcement, or wait for Atlas books to come out with Crime & Punishment? Am I going to look through the section on Religion here, or look through say, the Quintessential Cleric with its various rules for clergy gaining followers? Great concepts but the follow through is too little.
The good news is that if you're not heavily using a lot of resources, then this can give you a lot of ideas on how to craft your own cities. The ideas, not a lot of game mechanics here, are sound even if a little underwhemling.
Chapter Three, City Construction, is rich in ideas. It uses City Precincts to show how cities can evolve and where breaks in common areas, like merchant quarters, thieves quarters, nobles, etc..., can crop up. The tables f can get a GM running up and around in no time. The unique traits and features like cliff cities and subterranean can help the GM craft some truly unusual cities while we all know of at least one city in most fantasy setting that use canals or boast of a necropolis and an undercity.
Chapter Four, City adventures, is useful, but also a little under in terms of use. It mentions things that, perhaps due to my age and length of roleplaying, seem obvious, like using landmarks, tone, NPCs and setting to help set the stage for the adventure. The advice on timelines and flowcharts is also brief.
When it talks about flow charting, perhaps I've just had too much experience with them. If you can dig one up, the Dungeon Master's Design Kit, by Harold Johnson and Aaron Allston, an old 1st edition AD&D book, does some excellent Chase Matrixes for general purpose use that work well as Flowcharts. Flowcharts are very useful tools and there needs to be a product on how to actual use them, what the various symbols mean and hew to 'explode' them.
Another thing the book does well though is using urban environments and events within them like fires, rooftops and crowds to help make your city adventure more than a standard dungeon crawl. Still, some of the material is old hat without a lot of details like sewers and tavern brawl. For example, with sewers, while it's nice to know what DC saves are necessary to avoid falling on the slick wet floor or avoiding the stench of raw sewage, how about finding stuff in there? How about the differences in sewers beneath say the royal palace and the slums?
Chapter Five, City Encounters stands out for it's utility. Numerous charts and tables, while not providing stats, do providing encounters for different parts of the city, making a GM's life much easier. The section on Random NPC creation is another useful tool for GMs to quickly stock their setting with names, alignment, race, personality trait, mannerism and appearance all listed out with other optional tables. The random building generator is another strong point as it allows you to quickly fill up sections of a city that you didn't think that players would go through.
One thing that knocked this book down a grade is the free preview for Sorcery & Steam. This book is 176 pages, like other hardcovers in the series, but the preview isn't an addition to the page count, it cuts 16 pages out of City Works. Nice preview but I'd rather have more material about Cities. For example, while it talks about building interior rooms, with 16 pages cut out, I bet we could've had maps of common areas that players go to like taverns, warehouses, common houses, or taverns. With 16 pages, we could've had some unique, new monsters instead of a short list of monsters that are appropriate
The art is up to FFG's usual standard, high. The layout is also solid, two columns. Editing struck me at first, but was fairly good throughout the rest of the book.
If you're new to role playing and new to the city, and if there are skills you don't know how to use in different environments, this is a solid book. For someone else, this might be a 4 star product. For me, it's a steady 3.
