Ptolus, where's the grab?

[Hawkshere]

The Ptolus grab (for me) is that it's essentially a campaign in a box.

Important requirements for my next campaign setting include:

- Plenty of adventure material, fully developed with keyed maps, etc., because I am time-starved.

- Actionable underlying plotlines that the characters can influence and make their presence felt without excessive railroading.

- A realized sandbox setting with recurring NPCs, where the players can achieve a sense of verisimilitude and feel free to interact with it spontaneously, seemly unscripted.

The last campaign I ran that really gave me all these tools was a long-running Shadowrun game, and I was searching for a way to re-create that same vibe with D&D. Ptolus was the answer to my problem.

The adventure material in the box (Chapter 33, Night of Dissolution, etc.) and Ptolus related adventures (Queen of Lies, etc.) is a strong pregenerated foundation of adventure material. Adapt some supplemental material from Dungeon, Rappan Athuk Reloaded, and similar sources; PLUS some hand-converted scenarios from my surplus Shadowrun adventure collection; PLUS the spontaneous, player-driven encounter activities a good sandbox game will auto-generate; EQUALS no lack of player or DM choice of direction or materials.

The included adventures, campaign guide, and the game journals from Monty and Sue provide plenty of plot devices and enough 'future history' to give me a feeling of ownership over the setting. The level of detail that makes up most of the book allows the city to practically run itself, freeing me to focus on the players and their interactions with the setting. Basically, Monty took the near entirety of his 3E homebrew, and repackaged it in the most DM-friendly possible way, with notes and advice, and offered it for sale. Campaign in a box.

Cha-ching!

The maximum value of this product is for a DM who intends to run this campaign in whole cloth, with all its assumptions and quirks. As you carve it up and part it out, it still retains value, but loses some of the synchronicity that makes the book really great.

Ultimately, if the setting fiction doesn't float your boat, no amount of design excellence can make a product much more than a curiosity or collector's item; but that holds true for all setting products.

 

[MojoGM]

The Ptolus grab (for me) is that it's essentially a campaign in a box.

Same here. And I'm really looking forward to fully fleshing out the denizens of the city and having a "living atmosphere" so the players can do whatever they want and I'll be able to handle it.

For the record, I'm a big fan of Eberron as well, so the two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[johnnype]

The concept is intriguing... too bad about the rules.

Care to expand on that? I've been curious about Chaositech as well but haven't had time to dive into the pdf provided. Didn't it come out before 3.5?

 

[Mr Baron]

The detail was the grab for me

I have put Ptolus in the FR setting, and it is working out great. The party has not left the city (yet), but there is more than enough to do to keep them there. I like the fact that it is generic, which makes it really easy to add my own flavor to it, and drop it into the FR setting. The players really like the level of detail, and the extra things that I have been able to drop into the sessions. There is a ton of support material available, and I am trying to use as much as I can. I think this makes a smoother running campaign, as there are not the big transitions between the different adventure scenarios. I can flow from one to the next, and I can easily set up plot hooks for future scenarios.

 

[Psion]

Care to expand on that? I've been curious about Chaositech as well but haven't had time to dive into the pdf provided. Didn't it come out before 3.5?

The rules use the craft rules... but the items are very expensive. Meaning they take time to make. Which is well and good. But they also cause wisdom drain as you craft. Given the length of time it takes to craft these things, skilled chaostechnicians would be hard to come by, and it seems like no project of any size would ever be finished before you descend to an effective 0 wisom, becoming effectively useless.

Though I don't see many PCs making the items, the rules don't do a very good job explaining how Choastech equipped cultists could evolved to be a threat. I felt compelled to house rule it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The rules use the craft rules... but the items are very expensive. Meaning they take time to make. Which is well and good. But they also cause wisdom drain as you craft. Given the length of time it takes to craft these things, skilled chaostechnicians would be hard to come by, and it seems like no project of any size would ever be finished before you descend to an effective 0 wisom, becoming effectively useless.

Though I don't see many PCs making the items, the rules don't do a very good job explaining how Choastech equipped cultists could evolved to be a threat. I felt compelled to house rule it.

It was my understanding from the Big Book that very little chaositech is made by the cultists. Instead, they mostly unearth caches built by Galchutt and such long ago.

 

[Psion]

It was my understanding from the Big Book that very little chaositech is made by the cultists. Instead, they mostly unearth caches built by Galchutt and such long ago.

That would seem strange for me for 2 reasons:
1) The existence of a prestige class that is designed for making chaositech (but is still pretty pitiful at it)
2) One of the main mechanics behind chaostech is "stops working on a 1". It seems like their stores would be out soon.

 

[johnnype]

I felt compelled to house rule it.

Interesting. So how did you houserule it?

 

[Psion]

Interesting. So how did you houserule it?

Sadly, that's not an experiment that ever was completed to my satisfaction, and my River of Worlds game (which featured Chaos Hordes as a major enemy) concluded before I really needed it. But I worked up some rules that made craft skill make a bigger impact on craft time, and pulled in some of the madness rules from lords of the night: liches and gave characters derangements instead of straight up wisdom loss, meaning they could operate longer before becoming non-functional.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That would seem strange for me for 2 reasons:
1) The existence of a prestige class that is designed for making chaositech (but is still pretty pitiful at it)
2) One of the main mechanics behind chaostech is "stops working on a 1". It seems like their stores would be out soon.

Time also passed between publishing the two books. Monte may have changed his mind on some things, maybe even because this issue was brought up.

My players had one encounter with chaositech and are unlikely to grab at it in the future, I think, so I haven't given the crafting rules a thorough examination myself.