Sarthel: City of Silver (aka first look at the Nerath map)

[Klaus]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Sarthel, City of Silver)

The first article in the Nerathi Legends series, this one details Sarthel, a large city that survived the death of Nerath relatively unscathed.

There's a look at the Conquest of Nerath map, but it's very blurry. Nentir Vale seems to be on the Northwestern corner of the map, with Sarthel just to the South of it.

The article has a few ties to the Reavers of Harkenwold.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Sarthel, City of Silver)

The first article in the Nerathi Legends series, this one details Sarthel, a large city that survived the death of Nerath relatively unscathed.

There's a look at the Conquest of Nerath map, but it's very blurry. Nentir Vale seems to be on the Northwestern corner of the map, with Sarthel just to the South of it.

The article has a few ties to the Reavers of Harkenwold.

Pay--SMACK!!

 

[Klaus]

Here's a look at the map from the Product Catalog:

Nentir Vale is on the Northwestern corner. There's a small, red-bordered region there, which is where Sarthel is. The article says that the region barely 100 miles to the east of Sarthel is the Dragondown Coast, and that Sarthel was originally a provicial capital for Bael Turath, 2000 years ago. That gives us a rough estimate of when the Arkhosia/Bael Turath war happened. It was "centuries" until the fledgling Nerath claimed the city.

The large region full of red figures to the South is controlled by the Iron Circle (the bad guys from Reavers of Harkenwold).

The Northeastern landmass is labeled Karkoth.

The Southeastern landmass is labeled Vailin.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It's neat to finally get a look at a larger map, but in a way it takes some of the appeal away from the Nentir Vale. *shrug*

 

[Klaus]

It's neat to finally get a look at a larger map, but in a way it takes some of the appeal away from the Nentir Vale. *shrug*

For all I like the Nentir Vale (and I do like it a lot), I missed having a large city (Sarthel fits this), a coast (with all the pirates that entail) and other stuff.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

For all I like the Nentir Vale (and I do like it a lot), I missed having a large city (Sarthel fits this), a coast (with all the pirates that entail) and other stuff.

Yeah, that's definitely a plus for a campaign set there.

It does make it harder for me to mentally just plunk the 'Vale down in another campaign world now though, knowing that there is all this other stuff it's connected to now.

It also kind of shatters the 'Points of Light' immersion for me. I liked not knowing where and how many Points there actually were. The inevitability of it is that as time goes on, more and more of the space between the points is going to be filled in, and eventually, there will be more 'light' than 'dark space between the points,' which, to me, is really what a PoL setting is about.

I still think it's cool, but it was a double-edged sword for me.

EDIT: Just re-read the parts that tie into Reavers of Harkenwold - fantastic!! The stuff in there would make an excellent Heroic Tier capstone adventure for players that got their start with the Reavers module. Love it.

 

[Scribble]

Yeah... I always hoped they would release the PoL as like Gazetteers each describing a PoL but not really giving any concrete info on where it is in relation to the other Points, so the DM could use it as he/she saw fit.

 

[Klaus]

Yeah... I always hoped they would release the PoL as like Gazetteers each describing a PoL but not really giving any concrete info on where it is in relation to the other Points, so the DM could use it as he/she saw fit.

That would've been my preference, as well: differently flavored "sandboxes" (like the Nentir Vale), which you could mix-n-match to your liking.

 

[Dice4Hire]

The death of a sandbox is never pretty.

I, too, would prefer it staying isolated. Too much detail of areas outside of a sandbox ruins a snadbox, I have found.

Plus, will these other areas ever get any detail? I cannot see it.

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

Plus, will these other areas ever get any detail? I cannot see it.

I think we will see more of these areas. News about the development was that they had written detail about each region for the boardgame, so we're likely to see more in this article series in coming months. I just wish they were coming out faster.

And the scale on that map is big enough that there's still plenty of room for DMs to insert there own areas if they use the PoL setting already. But for those that have already detailed a lot of their PoL I think they're going to be disappointed. I specifically left my details vague and kept the players close to the Nentir Vale because I knew this map was coming after it was announced at last GenCon.