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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010088" data-attributes="member: 172">Denizens of FreeportFreeport is the name given to the central city in Green Ronin's well received d20 System adventures. The city was soon expanded on with its own volume, Freeport: City of Adventure. Denizens of Freeport brings would be Freeport DMs a variety of new NPCs for use in their games.Denizens of Freeport's design is headed up by Chris Pramas and Chris Wilkes, with character contributions from Keith Baker, Bret Boyd, Elissa Carey (Swoon*), Jennifer Clarke-Wilkes, Steven Creech, Jesse Decker, Gareth Hanrahan, John Kasab, Brian E. Kirby, Jennifer Kirby, Jim Lai, Todd Miller, Brad Nieder, Patrick O'Duffy, Charles W. Plemons III, Chris Pramas, William Simoni, Robert J. Toth, and Chris Wilkes.* - Forgive me the (dated) RPGnet tangency reference.A First LookDenizens of Freeport is a 96 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $18.95. This is a slightly above average price per page for this price range.The cover of the book is illustrated by Wizards of the Coast alumni artist Wayne Reynolds. The illustration depicts a fight between two citizens of Freeport in a crowded street, with a variety of other interesting characters looking on. As with most of Reynolds work, the cover illustration has good detail and a very active appearance.The interior is black-and-white and is illustrated by artists David Griffith, Drew Baker, Chris Keefe, Marcio Fiorito, Michael Phillippi, Toren "Macbin" Atkinson, James Ryman, Britt Martin, and Chris Martinez. Most of these artists are fairly seasoned RPG artists. The illustrations range from mediocre and "way too sketchy for my tastes" to excellent.The interior body text uses a small but readable font. The header font is stylish yet readable. Most of the entries take up 1-2 pages; many entries begin on a new page, but not all of them, and there is little wasted whitespace. Overall, the presentation is attractive, well organized, and readable.A Deeper Look(This section has some minor spoilers regarding secrets of characters in the book.)Denizens of Freeport is composed almost entirely of various character descriptions. Most character descriptions take up a page, though some are more and a few less, and in some entries, multiple characters are gathered into the same section such as The Blooms, Herbalists and C.Q. Calame and the Shipping News Staff. Each character description follows a similar format, including:-Game statistics block-Background-Personality-Physical Description-HooksThe game statistics appear generally solid; a cursory glance reveals no major problems in the stat blocks. There appear to be no major mangling of the rules. Where new rules elements are introduced, they are set apart in a shaded sidebar in line with the text of the section to which the material pertains.The character concepts are, in most cases, not simply retreads of classical fantasy tropes. The authors fully utilize multiclassing and other techniques in order to realize some unique characters and in most part their use of the rules is sensible.Occasionally, the book does resort to introducing new rules elements. For example, Portha Poorbelly is a huge halfling woman who has been cursed to consume a different meal each day or be consumed by a demonic curse. The book could have simply threw this element in there and it still would have made for a wonderfully compelling NPC. However, Green Ronin goes about handling this sort of detail with care, and fully defines the nature of the special quality resulting from this curse.ConclusionOverall, this is a very good offering. The characters are well-designed, and many of them are very creative.The book is primarily written for the city of Freeport setting. If you don't use the Freeport setting, there are still plenty of useful ideas and statistics that you can take away from this book. However, some characters, and in particular the background and hook sections, depend on the character being in Freeport or a city with very similar elements.The only complaint I might level at the book is that there is no index, table of contents, or any other cross reference (like a race, class, or CR list.) The book is in alphabetical order, but you had better know what you are looking for.Overall score: B-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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