Shackled City: In My Hands

[GlassJaw]

SPOILER ALERT!


Toward the end of the series, the lake at the center of the volcano starts to overflow the city. It is pretty important to the story, so if you move it, you need to keep a large body of water in the center that will overflow for some reason. The PCs are expected to use wands of control water to keep the flow back. If you can deal with that, everything else should be easy to place somewhere else.

This actually happens in the 2nd module. To update my previous post, there is a chance that the volcano erupts. In any case, that the city is in a volcano features prominently throughout the AP. You could even consider it one of the major NPC's (and a very cool one at that), right alongside everyone else.

 

[TimSmith]

Well, if you were really desperate to avoid a volcano, I suppose the catastrophe that the bad guys trigger could be an earthquake or something- you'd have to do a little tweaking but it shouldn't be impossible.

Same goes for the wands of control water to keep the lake down- perhaps they could be changed to control weather and have the problem being a drought affecting the crops around the city rather than a flood in the lake or something similar. Of course, if you did this, you would have to tweak the consequences of delay/failure in obtaining the wands and invent chunks yourself whilst abandoning some of the published material.

As others have said, since the whole campaign is provided I wouldn't bother with this myself, but I don't see why you couldn't replace some material as long as you take care to be consistent later on as regards knock on effects.

Now, having just received my copy in the post yesterday, I am off to greedily unwrap it!

 

[Captain Howdy]

Got my copy in the mail today and I am very impressed with it. I never ran any of the adventures when they were in Dungeon, so now I am gonna run the whole campaign starting in a few weeks... I can't wait.
Did anyone else get a signed/numbered copy in the mail? It was kinda weird... Mine came on time, but included a letter of apology about some delay with the printing people or something. To make up for it, it was signed and numbered (mine is 161 of 300). I didn't notice a delay, but I'm not about to complain.
I just thought that was pretty cool... Actually now that I think about it, it did come like 1 day late. I just figured it was the post office!

Well, I'm off to go read more...

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

So why would you build a city in a caldera, even an extinct one? It seems pretty inconvenient.

Is the soil just that good? or the surrounding lands just that hostile? Is the water in the lake the only good water around?

Is it, by some means I cannot imagine, on a major trade route? What's the issue and the history?

 

[hexgrid]

Mine came on time, but included a letter of apology about some delay with the printing people or something.

I got one of those, too...

For pre-orders, "on time" would have been the 27th.

 

[Simplicity]

So why would you build a city in a caldera, even an extinct one? It seems pretty inconvenient.

Is the soil just that good? or the surrounding lands just that hostile? Is the water in the lake the only good water around?

Is it, by some means I cannot imagine, on a major trade route? What's the issue and the history?

Well, the history is that the surrounding area used to be filled with a number of demons and was pretty hostile. The city was founded by a powerful earth mage who tamed the volcano so that building the city would be safe. It also happened to be extremely defensible, since it's at the top of a mountain, and pre-walled. The fact that walls were added around the caldera make it even better for defense.

There was another city founded by a friend of the earth mage that WASN'T built inside a volcano. The friend was a necromancer, so the city was to be defended by the undead... That didn't go so well, however, and it became the "Haunted Village". Oops.

 

[KenM]

Does the hardback give more details of the area surounding the city? I don't have all the issues with the adventures so i'll pick it up. But I'd like to know how of the area around the city is deatialed. Since I'm short on time, can i use the whole thing as a campign?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

When will this be available from other distribution channels?

--fje

 

[Simplicity]

Does the hardback give more details of the area surounding the city? I don't have all the issues with the adventures so i'll pick it up. But I'd like to know how of the area around the city is deatialed. Since I'm short on time, can i use the whole thing as a campign?

The immediate area around the city is detailed (a little more than in the Flood Season adventure, but not much more). There's some neighboring villages, a well-known dragon's lair, a demonspawning chasm, jungles, some yuan-ti ruins, etc. They tried not to describe a whole world around Cauldron so that it could be fit into any world that the DM may choose (Greyhawk is the easiest, FR, and Ebberron also work fine). Could you use it entirely on it's own? Sure. The city's in Greyhawk, but it's so remote from all of the other known areas that Greyhawk history/world details hardly matter.

 

[Simplicity]

I'm only about 2/3rds of the way through, but here's what I noticed so far. New items I noticed in the hardcover as opposed to the magazine (spoilers):

1) Drakthar's Way. Obviously, there's an entirely new adventure in here!
2) Flood Festival Events. A drinking contest. The current champion? Lord Vhalantru, of course! Isn't it odd how he never loses?
3) A masquerade ball depicting the war between Sundabar and the demons.
4) MUCH more detail about Nidrama, Sundabar, and Nabatharon (sp?).
5) More info about Celeste. She may help the PCs in Lords of Oblivion now.
6) A chance to meet Vhalantru and other nobles at the Cusp of the Sunrise.
7) The Blue Duke takes center stage. The leader of the half-orc mercenaries comes into much greater focus in the hardcover.
8) Additional Ebon Triad members. Their relationships with the Cagewrights clarified.
9) Thirifane also takes a more active role... And she also gets a lovely beholder graft... ugh. Was that in the magazine? I don't remember...
10) Much more art. Virtually every NPC has a detailed face picture.
11) Web expansions are in. Tilt-a-pits and Stormblades...
12) Explanation as to why the players run into so many dragons in Zenith Trajectory (the red and the black have been fighting over territory).
13) Now with more tax penalties to emphasize that the players should stick it to the man.
14) A map of Cauldron post campaign. I love it.
15) Character creation help.
16) "Traits" for the Cauldron region including the possibility of one of the PCs being Shackleborn (though I can't see how this could possibly turn out well).