Freeport or Shackled City

[Numion]

Once you finish the "adventure path," Cauldron has much less to offer for a continuing campaign that Freeport. Freeport can keep going much more easily than Cauldron.

::casts dispell confusion::

Shackled City does have suggestions for continued adventures in Cauldron after the campaign It's a fully fleshed out city, so if you have the imagination and time to design adventures in Freeport, you can do the same in Cauldron.

Put the point is that there is a full campaign in Shackled City to begin with.

EDIT: Regarding videogameyness .. Shackled City is a complete campaign with a complete story. Characters level during it as per RAW, but it would be quite impossible to create a campaign for 3E without planning for the PCs to level?

IMHO there isn't much videogameyness in Shackled City, but I guess that wasn't really your point, but rather to get people riled up, because you called their choice a "bad word"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Don't forget the Goodman Games Freeport module or the Freeport content available from RPGNow.

Honestly, I'd go with Freeport. I find too many things about Cauldron to be too implausible, and I'm someone who finds the Freeport cannons to be sort of dorky. (Just make them gunpowder instead of strange mega-wands, please.)

 

[Pramas]

FYI, firearms are in an appendix in the Freeport: City of Adventure hardback and are clearly marked as optional. The 3.5 udpated Freeport Trilogy: 5-Year Anniversary edition just came out last month and that's probably the best starting point for the city right now.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

People who want pirates without gunpowder confuse me.

Since your eyeballs are here, Mr. Pramas, any chance the Freeport PDF stuff, which so far has been of high quality, could get the rights to Print On Demand?

 

[SoulsFury]

FYI, firearms are in an appendix in the Freeport: City of Adventure hardback and are clearly marked as optional. The 3.5 udpated Freeport Trilogy: 5-Year Anniversary edition just came out last month and that's probably the best starting point for the city right now.

I think Freeport is the way I'm gonna go. It will end up being cheaper that way, most likely. I'd have to buy the $50 Shackled City book for that campaign. I already have the Freeport trilogy, Blacksails, and the Freeport Source book. All I need for it is Hell in Freeport. Since your already here looking, Chris, when are we going to get some higher level Freeport adventures?

Nik

 

[GVDammerung]

Shackled City does have suggestions for continued adventures in Cauldron after the campaign It's a fully fleshed out city, so if you have the imagination and time to design adventures in Freeport, you can do the same in Cauldron.

Put the point is that there is a full campaign in Shackled City to begin with.

No argument that there is a full slate of adventures to go with Shackled City. I would hold, however, that a full slate of adventures is not a campaign in the truest sense of the term. I think we have come to use the word "campaign" rather loosely. That's okay 9 out of 10 times, I'd think, the one exception coming when we start to compare two "campaigns."

Freeport (the main book), compared to those portions of Shackled City that describe the city as a locale in which to set adventures, I think, makes the point. Freeport (the main book) offers far more information. Cauldron seems to offer much less. This then is the distinction I would draw between background and backdrop.

Freeport (the main book) takes on a verisimiltude or richness because it is providing background with no other purpose than to allow a DM to create their own adventures set in Freeport (of course the Freeport line also includes a number of premade adventures as well). Cauldron provides information that is largely incidental, backdrop, to/for the main thrust of the adventure path, which then defines Shackled City in a way that Freeport is not so limited in its definitions.

But again, depends on what you are looking for and best suits your needs.

IMO.

 

[Buttercup]

I would recommend Freeport, hands down. I ran a Freeport campaign for over a year, so I'm pretty familiar with all the published product. That city has staying power. There are so many plot hooks that you could easily use Freeport for 5 campaigns.

Then too, as others have said, the fact that it is an island makes it easy to plop it into any setting with little or no tweaking.

 

[Numion]

No argument that there is a full slate of adventures to go with Shackled City. I would hold, however, that a full slate of adventures is not a campaign in the truest sense of the term. I think we have come to use the word "campaign" rather loosely. That's okay 9 out of 10 times, I'd think, the one exception coming when we start to compare two "campaigns."

Interconnected series of adventures is pretty much the definition for campaign in the DMG. SC fits that description 100%. I don't know what you mean that there are mandatory level bumps in SC - it has a given set of encounters in each section of the campaign, and you'll probably gain levels from those. I think it's rather mandatory that a latter part of a campaign takes into account things that have probably happened before XP-wise.

Or tell how the Freeport campaign achieved some other form than the usual recommended levels for each adventure? IIRC it does have levels for each part, just like SC, but I might be wrong.

 

[GVDammerung]

Interconnected series of adventures is pretty much the definition for campaign in the DMG. SC fits that description 100%. I don't know what you mean that there are mandatory level bumps in SC - it has a given set of encounters in each section of the campaign, and you'll probably gain levels from those. I think it's rather mandatory that a latter part of a campaign takes into account things that have probably happened before XP-wise.

Or tell how the Freeport campaign achieved some other form than the usual recommended levels for each adventure? IIRC it does have levels for each part, just like SC, but I might be wrong.

You are missing my point or I am failing to articulate it well. Let me give this another go, as at least IMO I think the distinction is important.

SC is designed around the idea of advancing levels to move through the path of set adventures and works to that end.

Freeport (the main book) is designed around supporting stories, homebrewed or published by Green Ronin and works to that end.

The central focus of each product is vastly different and this is where I contrast background (that is intended to suggest and support adventures - Freeport) with backdrop (that is intended to provide a necessary stage on which the adventure path entries play out - Cauldron).

Put another way. If the adventure path adventures did not exist, how playable would Cauldron be standing alone? If no Freeport adventures existed, how playable would Freeport (the main book) be standing alone.

I propose that without the adventure path adventures, Cauldron barely exists. I propose that without the Freeport adventures, Freeport (the main book) remains a vital setting.

Thus, IMO, SC is a campaign only in that it is a series of linked adventures, the most narrow definition of a campaign. Freeport (the main book) is far more the campaign because it can function just as well without the Freeport adventures.

Again, however, I hasten to add, individual tastes as to what is preferred will vary.

 

[talien]

I have several of the Freeport modules, plus the main book and I also have some of the Dungeon issues with Shackled City and I really like both of them. I want to run one of these two as my next campaign. Which would you use and why? Both of them will be dropped into a homebrew campaign setting.

Nik

I recommend Freeport all the way. To see how it works in the Arcanis setting (which has a Roman feel and is quite different from Freeport), check out my story hour: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=103252