Is Ptolus living up to the hype?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Please stop trying to pick a fight.

Sorry, I saw myself described as a fanatic and felt attacked.

 

[sckeener]

I do think it lives of to the hype. I'm still working my way through it (due to the sheer volume of material) but so far I am very pleased.

agreed. I'm only up to the Noble's district in my reading, but I am very pleased. I'm still trying to grasp that even after I finish the 700 pages I can look forward to another 400 on the CD.

I'm a WotC collector and I subscribe to Dragon and Dungeon. If I had to make one purchase during a year, Ptolus is it. It is an instant classic. I can see myself even using Ptolus in other gaming systems or earlier / later versions of D&D.

In my opinion it was well worth the money. I only wish that Monte wasn't leaving the industry so he could do some follow-up products.

...In fact, this is the first Monte Cook product I've ever purchased.

This isn't my frist Monte purchase, but I haven't bought many. Ptolus is a stellar book and Monte has left the industry on a high. It would be nice if Ptolus was a financial success, but I think leaving other game designers in awe is enough. I wish Monte wasn't leaving and I hope he has success in everything he touches.

so far Ptolus is the single most impressive d20/D&D product out there (IMO).

The page references on the sidebars are a great addition and should be a standard in all RPG books.

Agreed. In addition, I think the feel of the book needs to be in all other setting books. The travel book format isn't new and it very useful for DMs.

One thing that has been said before in other Ptolus threads is Ptolus is a DM resource. The detail, ideas, glossary, index, etc. make Ptolus easy to use.

It is fun to read too. I expect to still be using it years from now.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

From what I'm gathering so far, Ptolus seems to be on par with an very detailed city book such as Sharn: City of Towers, which many agree could have been a setting book in and of itself as is and even more so had it a higher page count and more details instead of one or two paragraph descriptions of its various districts.

As has been said, it's got a lot more than one or two paragraphs on each district, typically more like a dozen pages or more. In additional to supplemental crunch (spells, PrCs, monsters, etc.), it's also got enough other information to be its own book: Fully detailed adventure areas, including one of approximately epic level, long chapters on urban adventuring and so on.

I'm going to be running a pbp adventure in the Docks district of Ptolus here soon. In addition to the 10 or so pages on the docks, there's probably 40 or 50 more pages that apply to the area in some fashion.

And despite there being 10 pages on one of the more lightly detailed districts -- including useful items like "here's a typical NPC to drop in when the PCs stop someone to ask questions" -- it's still got plenty of undetailed buildings to allow me to put in something of my own creation or to plunder Flying Buffalo's Citybooks or whatever.

Although they're intended as very different products, so no NG fans take this as a bash, there's probably more detail about one district of Ptolus than there is of all of Everhome in Lost City of Barakus, which some people use as the home base for entire campaigns. In fact, the Midtown district of Ptolus serves roughly the same purpose (the dungeoncrawling home base) and has a lot more meat to it, along with a wacky sidebar area. (Well, if Vock Row is there and not in Oldtown. I can never keep its location straight.)

 

[Voadam]

My only regret is that Monte's stepping out of the rpg game for now and can't oversee all of his previous Ptolus adventures (which were genericized) brought up to 3.5 and re-Ptolusized.

What modules? Banewarrens is already explicitly in Ptolus. Demon God's Fane while it has Gaen as a god is set in a backwater area of the empire next to a lake, not an urban area. FD's Queen of lies was re-ptolusized already. His Black Dragon Atlas Games module? Again I think that is set away from an urban center. RttTEE he couldn't do anything official with and I don't see it as being particularly city oriented.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd like to see the Atlas module and Demon God's Fane re-Ptolusized, yes. I'd also like to see other Ptolus material gathered from elsewhere (I think it's a shame there's no official hard copy of the Delver's Guild material planned, for instance) into a Ptolus Companion, even if it's 100 percent reprints.

Of course, I also wish there were more Year's Best D20 books coming out (my only non-Ptolus-related Malhavoc purchase), so I'm goofy that way.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

In my opinion, Ptolus is way better than the Sharn book, mostly because it has a comprehensive, detailed map, something that the Sharn book lacks.

I really can't emphasize enough how much the fact that Ptolus is completely mapped adds to its value as a product to me.

Ken

From what I'm gathering so far, Ptolus seems to be on par with an very detailed city book such as Sharn: City of Towers, which many agree could have been a setting book in and of itself as is and even more so had it a higher page count and more details instead of one or two paragraph descriptions of its various districts.

(And please keep the thread on topic and stop padding posts. It's a waste of server storage and bandwidth consumption. Sometimes I wish forums never had postcounts at all.)

 

[Kristian Serrano]

Another question: Does Ptolus seem confining such that the entire campaign is bound to the city? Is it mostly an urban setting with opportunities for dungeon crawls? How culturally diverse is it? Does the limited domain enhance the setting with its narrow and detailed focus rather than hurt the setting?

 

[sckeener]

Another question: Does Ptolus seem confining such that the entire campaign is bound to the city? Is it mostly an urban setting with opportunities for dungeon crawls? How culturally diverse is it? Does the limited domain enhance the setting with its narrow and detailed focus rather than hurt the setting?

The only part that I find confining is the 'trap' aspect. No planar travel.

Excluding the planes, there is plenty of cultural diversity.
At the international / national level there are plenty of diverse places to hail from....Tons of nations, former nations, and places left off the map.
at a smaller level there are even the typical localities (woods, mountains, mysterious lands across the seas, districts of the city, etc.) listed and
at the individual level in typical Monte, there are a ton of organizations for the players to identify with from the city, below the city, outside the city, etc....

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I got interested in the Ptolus book because of the larger world, which I think is great, and encompasses everything from Arabian Nights to fall of Rome stuff. Heck, you could even file the name off of Nyambe and insert it into Praemal (there's a part of the Distant South that seems African).

The planar stuff is an issue, I agree, but Monte already stretches it in the Big Book with demiplanes reachable from Ptolus, the Ethereal Plane/Sea and even the Plane of Shadow. You just can't go out from there into the rest of the multiverse. That said, his campaign diaries lay out exactly how to knock down that wall and quite a bit of the book focuses on various in-the-know bad guys working on escaping Ptolus.

The creator god has also made at least one exception in the past, so it's not like there's NO way out of Praemal, it's just very, very difficult.

The planar thing was the one thing that made me consider not using the world for my campaign, but in the end, I decided that the Plane of Mirrors (which I really wanted to use) would fit in just fine, I just wouldn't create any mirror sets that had connections outside of Praemal, making it an extradimensional tunnel through the world and not much of a different plane, in effect.

Within Ptolus itself, there's a pretty good cultural diversity, since this is a Sanctuary-type city at the edge of a (falling) empire, full of people who don't fit in with everyone else, either because they're the loser in a political struggle, or they're criminals, or they're non-humans, or because they're Evil or Good and attracted to the badness in and around the Banewarrens.

There's even a mechanism in the game to allow "good" monstrous humanoid characters, although that doesn't necessarily ensure the characters won't get a lot of grief (including not being protected by many Imperial laws) until they're recognizable celebrities. (If I were to play a kobold in Ptolus, I'd likely want to take a lot of ranks in Disguise.)

 

[Siobharek]

I'd like to see the Atlas module and Demon God's Fane re-Ptolusized, yes. ...

Over at his own board, Monte said that Demon God's Fane wasn't a Ptolus adventure per se. He gave an idea as to where it could be situated, but that was pretty much it. That said, I can't think of a single reason why the statue couldn't appear in the big subterranean lake near the Giants' Staircase.

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.