Is Ptolus living up to the hype?

amaril said:
The two settings under consideration were Ptolus, which was not yet released, and Eberron, of which I had almost every book released so far and with which I was already somewhat familiar.
FWIW, I recall that someone posted here (or maybe on RPG.net) about how he inserted the city of Ptolus into his Eberron campaign. So you do have the option of using both settings at once. :D
 

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Siobharek said:
But there was also one or two free adventures over at Wizards' that smack of Ptolus. Lemmesee...
  • The Ministry of Winds could be an obscure edifice in Oldtown, or the Temple District.
  • An Eye for an Eye - makes good sense to have it in Ptolus.
  • Black Rain - the quintessential Ptolus adventure, IMHO. It could certainly prove as some kind of omen for the final results of the Night of Dissolution, play as a backdrop for that event if your PCs are too high level for that adventure, or even be some side effect of the appearance of the Vallis Moon on the anniversary of the actual event.
Wow, those are good catches, especially the Ministry of Winds. With an Eye for an Eye, I'd sub in the "ethical" assassins from Ptolus, whose names completely escape me at the moment.
 

Ciaran said:
FWIW, I recall that someone posted here (or maybe on RPG.net) about how he inserted the city of Ptolus into his Eberron campaign. So you do have the option of using both settings at once. :D

There are a few discussions about inserting Ptolus into other settings

here's a collection of Ptolus Threads

The Wilderlands' thread needs some posts. (and though it is on my wish list, I can't help him cause I don't own any.)
 
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I have the Ptolus book ( I didnt preorder it unfortunately, I somehow didnt hear about it till about right after it was too late to preorder ) and have read all the way through it.

I like it very much, I'm about to start two campaigns set it in soon. The only problem with it I have is that its a bit daunting to try and absorb all this material such that I'll be able to run a game, but trankfully it has some basic 1-4th lvl adventures in it that will help me get my feet wet. Its better than any WotC book I've got by far(disclaimer: i dont have an eberron stuff). I think I noticed, less than ten typos in the whole book,a and even those were some minor things, like a comma instead of a period. The sidebar indexing is awesome for figuring out just who the heck this person is, or what this item is, etc.

And I wouldnt classify it as an urban campaign with a little dungeoning, there's plenty underneath the city to only bother coming up to bathe and sell loot(and even then you dont have to come up to the full surface), although whats underneath isnt as detailed, any mildly creative DM could crank out plenty of dungeoncrawling adventures. And you could also just ignore whatever under the city and do everything up top, I like that it has that easy to change from urban RP'ing to dungeon bash-some-skulls and back again.

And certainly you dont have to read the whole thing to run a game, since its got details about the top of the spire and stuff like that that you wont send characters to till they're much higher level.

( Double Disclaimer, this is my first monte product so no fanboy ravings to be found )
 

I have been running a Ptolus game for a few weeks now, the players are about mid 3rd level and are about to start getting introduced to elements from the Night of Dissolution mega adventure. I have used the "haunted house" segement from the Ptolus book and am going to use the Temple of the Rat God soon as well.

I have briefly played a game set in Sharn and liked it, and honestly if the Sharn book had been as detailed as the Ptolus book I would have likely prefered it because I kind of like the technomagic feel. As it is I plan on running Ptolus until at least 10th level and likely beyond, or until the starting PCs all die off. If the PCs do die then I will likely start a new campaign set in Pramael that wil lead back to Ptolus. Any urban or dungeon adventure can be made to fit the setting with ease, and I believe many planar ones can as well. The Ethereal Sea allows for the possibility of small "islands" that should allow enough planar variety for my players if their PCs survive past 10th level. Wilderness is a little more difficult, at least remote wilderness, but forays for a few days or weeks outside of Ptolus are certainly possible.

I do think that in any urban campaign setting the players can quickly get in over their heads if they are not careful. This is due to the existance of high level opponents in close proximety to low level characters. Mine have already started making powerful enemies, and allies. They have to be reminded that there are powerful beings about, and that some plans are long term.

Overall, does it live up to the hype? Couldn't tell you, hype comes from a lot of different sources. Am I very please with my purchase and do my players (one of whom is my wife and thus helped pay for the book) seem equally pleased? Yes. I do think it was well worth the 3-4 other game books it was the monetary equivalent of.
 


I was still considered buying Ptolus at one point myself (initially i was dead set against it) though I didnt really need another city supplement, even if it is extremely detailed. The thing that kills it for me is that Monte is out of the future support thing.
Thats kind of like Ed Greenwood releasing the FRCS and never going on with anymore FR stuff. If im interested in a new setting thats that deluxe as well as expensive, id like to see future support from its creators before I dive into it. Sure someone else can make a "Ptolus" licensed product, Id just hope it was on par with the quality and theme of the flagship product.
Ill wait and see what happens regardless, if other folks like Bruce Cordell do a few ptolus products itll be in good hands.
 

Well, it's like Ed Greenwood releasing three books under one cover, and including two large modules on an enclosed CD-ROM, which also features a healthy-sized supplemental sourcebook.

And remember that the basic book, conservatively, has enough for two full 1-20 campaigns, and I think most people could get a third street-level one out of the campaign without much effort.

And then there's previously published adventures like Queen of Lies (now re-Ptolusized) that go along with the product.

In this case, most of the support for the product predates the product itself. The Complete Book of Eldritch Might, for instances, is 99 percent Ptolus-ready, as are Righteous Might and a number of other Malhavoc works.

And that's not even including grabbing up Arcana Unearthed material for use in Praemal. A lot of Ptolus ideas leaked into that product, like the Charad titans and litorians, which opens up monster books, a setting book for another part of the world, adventures and so on.
 

Sunderstone said:
I was still considered buying Ptolus at one point myself (initially i was dead set against it) though I didnt really need another city supplement, even if it is extremely detailed. The thing that kills it for me is that Monte is out of the future support thing.
Thats kind of like Ed Greenwood releasing the FRCS and never going on with anymore FR stuff. If im interested in a new setting thats that deluxe as well as expensive, id like to see future support from its creators before I dive into it. Sure someone else can make a "Ptolus" licensed product, Id just hope it was on par with the quality and theme of the flagship product.
Ill wait and see what happens regardless, if other folks like Bruce Cordell do a few ptolus products itll be in good hands.

I don't get it.

What's to support?

There's adventures to take you from levels 1-20+, and/or enough background info to create your own stuff if you don't want to use the adventures. SkeletonKey Games is releasing a boatload of tactical map tiles and fiery dragon has enough support products to massively enhance the experience.

The only thing that might be missing is epic-level support, but considering that the amount of epic level D&D/d20 material is so sparse anyway, I don't see this as a valid critique.



The rest of the world (if you want to use it) is bland enough to fit in any of the hundreds of d20 products already out there.
 

DaveMage said:
I don't get it.

What's to support?

There's adventures to take you from levels 1-20+, and/or enough background info to create your own stuff if you don't want to use the adventures. SkeletonKey Games is releasing a boatload of tactical map tiles and fiery dragon has enough support products to massively enhance the experience.

The only thing that might be missing is epic-level support, but considering that the amount of epic level D&D/d20 material is so sparse anyway, I don't see this as a valid critique.



The rest of the world (if you want to use it) is bland enough to fit in any of the hundreds of d20 products already out there.
That's the general vibe I got from Ptolus, too. I was worried about future support during he preorder phase because I hadn't heard anything about future products, but then I learned the idea of Ptolus was that it was to be a complete product that didn't need additional support. Any support developed afterward would be nice, but not needed.

I think I might start buying the PDFs one at a time for future use. The PDFs add another level of DM functionality in that I can search across all of them at once as well as print of any materials I might want to reference in print format at a game table. Being able to easily copy and paste is nice, too.

By the way, Dave, I noticed you live in Gainesville, too. :)
 

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