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: 2010313" data-attributes="member: 172">Streets of SilverStreets of Silver is a book describing the city of Parma. Parma is a major port and center of commerce in the Northern Empire of the Twin Crowns campaign setting, but bills itself as being usable in any d20 fantasy campaign setting.Streets of Silver cites Harald Henning as the lead developer and there are numerous contributing authors. The book is published by Living Imagination, publisher of the well received Broadsides! naval rules supplement.A First LookLike the Twin Crowns campaign setting book, Streets of Silver is a very thick perfect bound softcover book. Streets of Silver weighs in at 312 pages for $29.95. This is an extremely competitive price for a book of this size.The cover of the book has the same blue marbled tone that other Living Imagination products use. The cover has a nice painting of some buildings in the city surrounding a canal, with gargoyles looking on the citizens below. The cover illustration is by Jhoneil M. Centeno.The interior is black and white, and includes work by Milos Milic, Marcio Fiorito, Jose Rivera Pares, Eric M. Lofgren, Jeff Himmelman, and Owen Kuhn. The quality of the art is a significant improvement over the much less professional and polished looking Twin Crowns.The book has a significant number of maps of the city. There is a large color fold-out map in the back, and several black-and-white maps of different parts of the city embedded in the book. The maps appear to be done in Campaign Cartographer 2 judging by the building features. The maps do look crisp and professional. They look more attractive than those of Bluffside, but are not as attractive as the maps in Geanavue and Freeport. The black-and-white maps don't look quite as attractive as the color map, as the color scheme does not seem to translate well to grayscale.The book uses a stylish but readable header font, and a compact body text font. The text and paragraphs are single spaced. The layout is simple but functional, with a two-column format and clear but conservative chapter headers. The cost, use of space, and presentation make this book a good value based on content density and presenttion.A Deeper LookStreets of Silver has ten sections that can be roughly divided into three sections. The first five chapters are general details about the area: geography, history, organizations, government, and culture. Chapter 6 (mislabeled chapter 4 in the table of contents) contains new rules. Chapters seven through ten comprise a bulk of the book and addresses details of the city. (I notice the authors also state that the book has three sections, but their first section lumps together the sections as I saw them, and their last two sections split my last section between public and GM only information.)The ad copy on the back claims the book is designed for use in any d20 fantasy setting. The city is the psuedo-European sort that pervades most d20 fantasy settings. There is a small section devoted to the two major issues that would come up if trying to port Parma to another setting: deities and the unusual resurrection rule of the setting.The deities of the Twin Crowns setting are fairly generic in nature and it should be fairly straightforward to port them to another typical d20 fantasy setting. The conversion notes provides a guide to areas of influence of the various deities to assist in this effort. The biggest issue will probably be the NPCs. Twin Crowns introduces its own deity-specific domains, as well as introducing the concept of initiated characters in service to the deity, which in turn allows access to a number of powerful specific feats defined in the Twin Crowns setting book.A bigger potential problem is the idea of gifts.  All characters in the Twin Crowns begin play with five gifts; restoring a character to life who has remaining  setting gifts requires that the spirit be present and an initiated character perform a ceremony of hallowed ground. This makes bringing a character back to life significantly easier than in a standard fatasy campaign.As you might imagine, this would have a profound impact on society. Streets of Silver takes this ball and runs with it, integrating this convention into aspects of society such as the legal code. This is great if you are using the Twin Crowns rules, but will require some adaptation if you are not.Parma is a major port city on the Great Inland Sea in the Northern Empire in the Twin Crowns campaign setting. The city is a major center of commerce with a comparatively high standard of living. The city plays host to a major naval base of the Northern Empire.Parma itself is split into two major sections. A major portion of the city, "Parma Vecchio", is on a promontory jutting out from the mainland. Another major section of the city, "Parma Nuovo", is situated on an island in the bay. There are several canals that cris-cross the island portion of the city. Several other islands in the bay have facilities and settlements on them.A large scale illustration of the city that shows the many buildings of Parma clustered on the hillsides by the sea. This illustration, the use of Italian sounding names, and the use of Vennice-like canals give the city a decidedly Mediterranean feel.The text claims the population of Parma to be 90,000. A cursory glance at the map does not seem to reveal enough living space for that many people, so a GM concerned about this sort of detail may have to assume a number of residences that aren't shown, or tweak down this figure.The background sections regarding the city are fairly detailed, painting a picture of a well-to-do city with a colorful history and that parties at the drop of a hat. Social conventions and expectations are well mapped out, and a little easier to digest than the exhaustive social commentary presented in the Kalamar city book Geanavue: Stones of Peace.The New Rules chapter introduces new prestige classes, rituals, creatures, and magic items.The classes have generic names like courtesan, inspector, mendicant, and shifter. Despite the generic names, the inspector and the shifter are rooted in the background of the city. Inspectors are proteges of an inspector named Vitalas Fondaco who combines magic with traditional inspection techniques. Shifters are a select group of performers that moonlight as spies and assassins with many spell like abilities.The classes are generally well laid out and balanced. The only thing I found a bit disconcerting was that the courtesan had a number of spell like and supernatural abilities and no sort of background that would explain these sorts of abilities.Rituals are an aspect of the book that, again, will likely not be too useful to you if you do not use the Twin Crowns setting. Rituals are much like spells, but require special skill checks and components. Rituals were introduced in the Twin Crowns setting book, but you can also find complete rules for them in the recently released Spellbound by Living Imagination.The Neighborhoods chapter is the most significant in the book, taking up half of the book all by itself. A significant portion of the buildings in the city are covered with details on quality, goods, size, occupants, and wares (complete with variations from the standard prices.) The occupants section includes both the normal staff or residents at the location, as well as a likely range of visitors or customers. Each description also includes one or more paragraphs outlining the function and known facts about the place.The Neighborhoods chapter defines more public aspects of the various locales in the city. The three chapters that follow it are more GM information.Chapter 8 is entitled Below the Surface, and details several major plotlines that GMs can use as the basis for adventures. Many of these plotlines reveal secrets about major edifices and institutions in the city, and all include a number of PC Hooks to work the characters into the plotline. The plotlines do not follow any sequence or timeline, but some may be only suitable for specific levels.Chapter 9, Behind the Scenes, defines a number of minor plotlines and secrets associated with specific locales within the city, which adds another level of detail to the already exhaustive details about the city.Chapter 10 provides statistics blocks for major NPCs in the city. Each has a complete stat block, with only a few rules errors that I could spot with a cursory glance (one example is a wizard with a low dex that actually lists a higher flat-footed AC than normal AC.)ConclusionOverall, Streets of Silver is a fantastic city supplement, providing a great level of detail and many good plots, all at a very reasonable price for the size. If you are already following or are interested in the Twin Crowns setting, there is no reason not to look into this book.As a generic city supplement, the book is not quite as generic as Bluffside and Freeport. However, it is more detailed, and the size and price of this book certainly makes it a competitor in this category.Overall Grade: A- (as generic supplement: B+)-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification