Powers That Be: City Council
Written by: Fred Wolke
Illustrated by: Hannah M.G. Shapero
Page Count: 77 pages + 8 Character Cards
3 pdfs – cover page, background book, and character cards
Price as of July 21, 2005: $7.95
Introduction: This is a playtest review and as such I will go into pretty heavy detail about the parts we used in our game. However, I have included a capsule summary as a conclusion for those who wish to quickly know my overall impressions of the product.
This supplement is something I will use in my campaign. That is pretty high praise from me because I seldom use many supplements outside of the core rules. The file comes with a background book and eight full color non-player character cards. The first section covers the eight personalities that make up the city council. The second section covers every detail about the palace, which serves as the governmental seat of the city. The next parts are one and two page thumbnail outlines of ideas about the city, enemies and allies, adventure seeds, campaign uses, political plots, and finally there is a large section covering OGC rules and new rules.
Zandyrium is the main homebase city of my campaign and I have nearly every detail sketched out for that city. The two years of our campaign have added to the richness and vitality of the city. But, wouldn’t you know it; recently the PCs are spending more time in another city, Thray. My description of Thray is about a page in my campaign notebook. I have a general feel for the city but not much more. In steps Powers That Be: City Council a vibrant city government, a seat of power, and oodles of intrigue to keep my PCs busy for months to come. I read the supplement with considerable excitement as I considered its possible utility for my campaign.
Preparation – Any homebrew DM knows that a published adventure or supplement will need some work to fit into the campaign. My measure of game supplements turns on the product’s cool ideas and almost as importantly, its portability to my milieu. The city council NPCs are definitely the strength of Powers That Be. Each council member’s entry includes a very fine illustration of the NPC, their background, a sketch of their relationship to the other council members, ideas for how to portray the NPC during game sessions, and minor NPCs that are connected to the council member. The layout is very readable and useable. I print such things out, but the pdf is well bookmarked that I am certain would make using it on a laptop a breeze.
These descriptions work in tandem with the full color game aid cards. There are two NPCs per page and the author suggests printing them out on sturdy card and then folding each card in half. One side is intended for the DM while the color illustration serves to remind the PCs whom they are interacting with. The DM can simply hang the card on his screen so the players can see the illustration and the reference material is handy for the DM.
The presentation of these NPCs reminds me of the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Enemy Within Campaign NPC sketches. Even the illustrations of pseudo renaissance characters are reminiscent of this style. That is all a very big plus from my perspective, and the art in this product is plentiful, appropriate, and excellently done. The presentation lends itself to easy characterization of the NPCs and loads of political intrigue. Exactly what I was looking for from the product.
As is by now obvious, the council is well done and ported easily into my campaign. I wish there were more NPCs like these.
The palace section is a large part of the product. 28 of the 77 pages in Powers That Be are devoted to the palace. There are maps of the various levels of the palace that are well done. I may very well steal them for an adventure in the future. Every area of the palace is described in detail and I made some adjustments to it for my campaign. Sadly, the PCs did not explore the palace much, but I am prepared if they ever do. The detailed descriptions are a bit of overkill, but it is overkill in the right direction. It is much better to overly describe an area than leave the hapless DM with more work to do on details they view as important.
The author warns readers in the next section about some basic assumptions about the city. The short version is the city is designed to human-centric with a lot of trading. If your campaign world does not reflect this you have a lot of work to do. This might be a strike for some DMs, but reflects my personal campaign world and thus this did not put me off at all.
The Adventure seeds are fair. Unfortunately I was hoping for inspiration and it just is not there. The vast majority of them are ideas most DMs have run or are a little too generic to be useful. This was by far my largest disappointment in the book, but as it only takes up a couple pages of the book, it is a minor criticism. The campaign idea section, by contrast, is very well done. I may very well run it at some point in the future.
A small section is devoted to intrigues within the city. These are plot events that happen in the background of the city that the PCs may or may not get involved in. I wish there were a whole lot more of these. I consider these fun and valuable and an excellent way to make the city come alive.
The OGC rules section gives ideas for new ways to use the skills in d20. Most of the ideas have to do with quantifying various aspects of political, mercantile, and social interactions in terms of mechanics and appropriate DCs. One area of d20 I admittedly do not like as much is rolling for reactions instead of roleplaying them out. I understand why it’s done and I do use Diplomacy and other social skill checks like everyone else, but I just do not want to add to this system. More crunchy DMs may enjoy these rules. For similar reasons I could do without the new feats and prestige classes – nothing wrong with them, just not my cup of tea.
The rules for running a vote on an issue before the city council were most interesting. The system envisions the PCs needing a vote one way and not quite having enough votes to get it done immediately. The attitude, shift resistance, and leverage points is then determined for each of those council voters. Note that this has already been done for the council members detailed in the book. As I prepared for my game it looked like this mechanic might work very well, but would require a bit of work on my part.
The last section details an evil cult devoted to a new Devil Prince. A very short synopsis of some cult goals and cultist powers are spelled out. This is another section I did not have use for, but there was nothing wrong with it. I have enough infernal influence running around my campaign, and would substitute one of those cults where appropriate.
The Game – We were playing a long session and at some point I was going to have the PCs called before the council to discuss the tensions between the PCs’ home city of Zandyrium and the council’s own Thray.
Keep in mind my players are mostly in their late 30’s and early 40’s and they have dozens of props thrown at them every week. I paint tons of miniatures, we use mastermaze and I construct Hirst Arts dungeon pieces, they receive handouts, and receive hand crafted maps – in short they are grizzled bunch who are tough to impress. When I put the first member of the council up for them to check out on my screen their reaction was universal:
”Wow! Where did you get that!”
If you are a veteran game master you know that reaction is exactly what you want. Their reactions continued to be positive and at the end of the session several of them commented on how cool the cards were. Needless to say, these props are going to see continued use in my campaign.
If I had just read through this product I might have given it a 4, but in light of its positive impact at the table it pushes it to the rare 5 for me. The playtest experience brought home just how neat this product is in a way one would not suspect from just reading or looking at it.
Capsule Review – This is a very solid supplement that I will use in my own campaign. It gives excellently detailed NPCs that form a city council. The city’s seat of power, called the palace, is given in great detail. The layout and art are excellent and the game aids (color illustration cards) are very well done. My players reacted very favorably to its introduction into the campaign.
The only drawbacks to the product are the lack of creative adventure seeds, and if DMs do not run human-centric campaigns with lots of trading, it will require some legwork to use. These very slight flaws cannot cause me to rate this product less than a 5 out of 5. It’s not perfect, but it is a great boon for my campaign. Powers That Be is an excellent value for the money overall.
July 24, 2005
Keith Pogue (AKA pogre)
