Ghostwalk

[IronWolf]

This new setting for the D&D game is an undead city which allows players to interact with and play ghosts as tangible characters, an option which has never before been available to players. Included are rules to play ghosts, new prestige classes specific to the setting, and many new monsters and spells, all of which are portable into any D&D campaign. There are extensive descriptions of the city and its environs, as well as the surrounding kingdom. This product may function as a stand-alone adventure or may be easily intergrated into an ongoing campaign. Three distinct adventure options give DMs a variety of choices on how to introduce their players to the setting.

 

[drow]

Ghostwalk is the type of product which either makes you go "eh", or changes every campaign you will ever DM again. I am definitely in the latter group. Ghostwalk found me at just the right time, and filled a need in my developing campaign that I'd just begun to consider.

The concept, in a nutshell, is that when your character dies, he or she can continue adventuring as a ghost. You can continue to gain experience and advance in one of two ghost classes, eidolon and eidoloncer. The eidolon advances attack and save bonuses, and allows you to take quite a few new ghost feats. Eidoloncers trade rapid accumulation of ghost feats for advacing their spellcasting abilities. Ghost feats are grouped into several paths, representing traditional ghostly powers of corruption, possession, poltergeists, etc. The rules seem well considered and tested, and the ghost path feats simultaneously cover all the traditional ghostly powers while leaving a great deal of room for imaginitive DMs to expand upon.

Some ghost related skill uses, feats, and prestige classes are provided, some original and some drawn from other campaign settings or source material. This isn't the highlight of the book, but serves to illustrate how the rest of the world relates to ghosts. Some may gripe at the significant amount of material duplicated from other sources, but first not all DMs will own all the sources in question, and second its indisputably handy to have the relevant materials in a single volume regardless.

Ghostwalk also presents a campaign setting, the city of Manifest. I haven't delved into this section of the book as much, since I'm not able to use it in my own campaign, but it looks good. The setting makes effective and original use of the ghost concepts and rules, and could likely be dropped into most campaigns readily enough. A map and description of the city itself is provided, as well as descriptions of the surrounding lands and cultures. A map of the region was accidentally dropped from the book, but see Sean K. Reynolds' website. Several short but well developed adventures in Manifest round out the section.

Finally, no setting is complete without a few new monsters.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

That "review" is completely useless. One of the worst I have read actually. There is NOTHING in it that I didn't find out by reading summaries at WotC's website and the back cover of the book at my LGS. In fact there's a lot less that can be found out in this "review" than is available elsewhere. It's nice that you like the product, but if you're going to submit a review, actually review it. Chapter overview, layout, etc. There's plenty of good reviews on this site, and you're not going to get sued for following their format.