Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2556073" data-attributes="member: 172">[imager]http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO1000_180.jpeg[/imager]Shackled City is a campaign-style adventure anthology by Paizo Publishing, the publisher of Dragon magazine and Dugneon magazine. Like those magazines, Shackled City is a D&D licensed book, and its content is largely a repackaging and revamping of the Shackled City “adventure path” that appeared in various issues of Dungeon magazine, noteworthy for being the first adventure series for 3.5 games, though there is some additional material introduced here.The book credits writing to Jesse Decker, James Jacobs, Tito Leati, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins, and Chris Thomasson.A First LookShackled City is a 416 page hardcover book available for $59.95. The book also has a fold-out poster map (featuring the city of Cauldron and surrounding area) and a map booklet for the adventures.The cover of the book, illustrated by Matt Cavotta, features a warrior facing off with a demonic creature. Outside of this nicely done plate, the book has a reddish-orange textured hue.The interior is full color on slick paper. Much of the art is drawn from the pages of Dungeon magazine where they adorned the original adventures, but new pieces were features and some existing art was displayed larger and/or without adornment, making the book a visual treat. The list of talented artists contributing to the book includes Attila Adorjany, Tom Baxa, Peter Bergetting, Matt Cavotta, Jeff Carlisle, Christine Choi, Stephen Daniele, Omar Dogon, Tom Fowler, Andrew Hou, Ben Huen, Eric Kim, Chuck Lukacs, Val Mayerick, Mark Nelson, Ramón Pérez, Chris Stevens, and Jim Zubkavich. Overall, this is one of the highest production quality, best illustrated books of the year.Though Paizo is publishing on behalf of Wizards of the Coast (the whole thing is still (c) Wizards ), the fact that they are not part of the same company lets them march to the beat of their own drum in many aspects. The most immediately noticeable is that they don’t share many of the graphical elements that are rote for Wizards’ Dungeons & Dragons book. Shackled City lacks the dull “rusty metal” border design of WotC books. In its stead, the book has a nice, thematic border design featuring a webwork of chains, with the chapter number on a plaque hanging from some chains, and the chapter title and page number in a ring linking the chains together. Further, here’s a nifty little tidbit you might not notice: in the border illustrations, the chains in the border begin to break and fall away in later portions of the book, as the situation deteriorates in Cauldron. That clever little tidbit alone should earn the art and layout team a gold star. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The cartography, by Chris West, is full color and high quality. The fold out poster map has eight panels and includes both overhead colored map views and a perspective illustration. The map is two sided, with a keyed version for the DM and an unkeyed version suitable for displaying to players to allow them to get a feel for the city.The pull-out map book has 24 pages, enough for two pages for each adventure. Maps therein include dungeon maps, a small overhead of the city, detailed overland maps, town sections, and establishments that appear in the various adventures.Editorially, the book is pretty well polished. Some mistakes crept through (including some that were in the original published adventures), but overall, the mistakes are at a tolerably low level, primarily limited to save DCs a point off or NPC capabilities that don’t directly affect play.A Deeper Look(Warning: There are spoilers in this section. If you are going to be playing in the Shackled City adventure path, you might spoil some of the surprise in the adventure if you continue.)The Shackled City book is a campaign sized series of adventures. In theory, if a party starts the first adventure at 1st level, they will be 20th level after finishing the final adventure. The adventures concern the players becoming entangled with the machinions of a cabal that seek to open a planar gateway to Carceri whose attentions center on the city of Cauldron both because of its unusual local in the throat of a dormant volcano, and the presence of a number of planetouched descendants in the city. But this is really a simplification of the motivating force at its core; this cabal is really being manipulated by a more powerful, ancient force.This cabal, the Cagewrights, are a curious mix of individuals. In a way, they hearken back to the slavelords of the classic module series of that name.The book is organized into twelve chapters plus an unnumbered introduction “chapter” and 6 appendices. The chapters each contain one of the component adventures of the campaign. That said, there is a significant amount of additional material regarding the backstory of the campaign and the city of Cauldron and its inhabitants and locales. That being the case, you will find a fair chunk of material outside of the numbered chapters. The introduction “chapter” is fairly meaty in its own right, and the appendices are numerous.Astute readers who followed the Shackled City adventure path will note that there are twelve chapters here instead of the eleven adventures that appeared in the pages of the Dungeon magazine. An additional adventure appears in the pages of this book. The second chapter, “Drakthar’s Way” is an adventure for characters starting at third level. The adventure fits between “Life’s Bazaar” and “Flood Season”, though the book advises that if the players are having difficulties in the late stages of the first adventure, you may want to take a break and run sections of Drakthar’s Way first.The introduction chapter contains: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The backstory of the demon lord Adimarchus and the plans of the Cagewrights</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A (stat-free) dramatis personae for quick reference.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Knowledge check DCs and results for when the players begin to research their villains.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">An overview of the city of Cauldron, including rumors, history, major locations, and major groups.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">An overview of sites and encounter tables for the surrounding region.</li> </ul>All told, it’s a fairly brief yet packed summary.The adventure path is not specifically linked to any official campaign setting. That said, the fact that the “core” deities are used and used frequently makes it such that Greyhawk is the easiest fit. In addition to finding an out of the way place to put the city of Cauldron, adapting the clerics and churches herein to fit the details of deities in your game would probably be the most daunting task of adapting the adventure to a different campaign world.Each of the twelve following chapters details one adventure. Each adventure builds on the activity of previous adventures. Troubleshooting notes if the prior adventure goes off the tracks are minimal, but there is a brief sidebar in each chapter summarizing what should have been accomplished and where the PCs stand, which should serve as a serviceable guidepost in the hands of a competent DM.The adventures contain minimal mechanical details such as task DCs, material descriptions, and tables, but for most of the opposition (and friendly) statistic blocks, the reader is referred to an appendix or the Monster Manual, as appropriate.The adventures vary in approach, but most contain a summary of the condition and mood in Cauldron and progress of the Cagewrights’ plans. The adventures are typically triggered by events, but often the events involve players in site-based expeditions. NPC interactions are handled adroitly, providing a number responses to likely questions that the players may ask. “Development” notes explore further possibilities that may arise from some encounters, including gaining allies and other benefits the PCs may reap if they play their cards right.Not all of the adventures are dungeon crawls. A good amount of the adventure is city born and relies on NPCs interaction. And no, not all of the NPCs are designed to be killed. I found it both amusing and refreshing that one NPC’s tactics includes screaming, and a baby is provided with strength checks to worsen its precarious situation. I guess the fact that I found this amusing and surprising shows how stuck in the rut some D&D/d20 adventures are.I was somewhat curious how these adventures had been changed from their original incarnation. One fact that has been revealed by the Paizo staff is that large sections were cut from the adventures when originally printed, and entire sections of maps that were necessarily left empty are now populated. In addition, Paizo resorted to their fan base who had run these adventures to work some kinks out of the campaign, such as logical inconsistences that had been noted. For example, one character in one of the early adventures casts an illusion spell, but later in the series, it is learned that character cannot cast illusion spells.The appendices are: <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Monsters - the afore alluded to demon lord’s statistics appear here, as well as the crystal snake, draconic fingerling swarm, lichfiend template, mob template, smoking eye template, thunder beast (lower planar herd animal), and Tarterian creature template.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Feats, items, and spells (including some artifacts central to the adventure.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Prestige classes - High handcrafter and pathwarden.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Creature statistics - NPCs and specific monsters, listed alphabetically. Creatures that appear in optional or outdated books such as the Fiend Folio are provided with 3.5 statistics blocks here. At the end of this section is a section on recurring NPCs that advance during the campaign. Instead of a single (or multiple) statistics block(s), these recurring NPCs are given level progression tables describing their capabilities and possessions at different junctures.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Character creation - this appendix is probably my favorite innovation in the book. It provides advice for creating characters, coming from both the angle of ensuring the characters are ready for challenges they are to face (skill choices, etc.) as well as campaign possibilities for the characters. The latter includes a short list of random traits, using the mechanic from WotC’s Unearthed Arcana. Traits are not my favorite mechanic, but I rather like their use here; they are used to connect character’s meaningfully to the history of Cauldron and the happenings of the campaign.</li> </ol>ConclusionsIn concluding this review, I feel as if I have not given the individual adventures enough attention. Such a task would be daunting, and perhaps given time I can add some more details later. There is so much detail in there that any words I could say in the scope of a credibly sized review would be scant. For the time being, I hope I can answer the basic question: is this campaign for you, the reader.If you own all the Dungeon magazines that go into this, you probably already have an opinion as to the merit of these adventures. If you like what you saw, but are interested in a presentation of the adventures that is perhaps more convenient and ties things up more neatly, this is it. The character creation guidelines, little brush ups on continuity and mechanics, additional adventure, as well as the smashing presentation, could make it worth their while.Being a long time Dungeon subscriber, I was of the belief that many folks out there would already have most of the adventures that make this book up. Alas, a recent effort to run and comment on a single adventure on the ENWorld boards showed me that quite a few people don’t follow Dungeon or don’t follow it regularly, and might have trouble finding all the back issues that make up the adventure. I understand that it was the fact that people were having trouble finding back issues so that they could run the whole series that inspired the idea of a collection. It’s an excellent idea and I hope that they can do it again with Age of Worms; in some ways, I feel as if this is the sort of product Wizards should be delivering. I was sorely disappointed that Wizards of the Coast did not offer a fold-out city map with Sharn, so seeing one here pleased me. This is perhaps a byproduct of Paizo's position not reporting directly to the Hasbro stockholders, it lets them deliver us, the customer, a high quality product untainted by the "squeeze every cent out of a publication" mentality that appears to be adversely affecting some WotC titles.Weighing in at nearly $60 US, the book is a substantial investment. However, I don’t think it is a bad one. When I acquired World’s Largest Dungeon I knew that I would never run the entire thing at once. Indeed, I have already heard many tales of people dropping out of it. Similarly, I have heard tales of people dissatisfied with their experiences with adventures like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, turning into a grind of a dungeon crawl with very few options.I am part of a subset of D&D players - more substantial than some make it out to be - that happens to believe that there is more to the quintessential D&D experience than dungeon crawls. Given that, the flurry of mega-dungeons that have appeared have failed to scratch my itch, as it were. But an extensive campaign with NPC interaction, investigation, evil plots, and epic exploits - and a few dungeon crawls (of limited length) is just what the doctor ordered. That being the case, I find that Shackled City is a campaign length book written the way I like to run the game.It’s my normal routine to mention the drawbacks of a product. Shackled City has mercifully few. As mentioned, it is a pretty substantial investment, but I consider that you are more likely to get a whole campaign out of it that other “mega-dungeon” products. A few more notes on troubleshooting and a better outline would have been useful tools in managing the campaign.Overall Grade: A -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification