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[Spoilers: This review contains huge SPOILERS. I discuss specific plot points and large scale plot arcs. Avert ye eyes, scurvy PCs.]
Tales of Freeport is a hefty 96 pages of new (or newish) material for the Freeport city setting. The core of the book is a collection of four modules, though it also contains a couple pages each of new rules and plot ideas.
Now, I've run Death In Freeport and Terror in Freeport and so I came to Tales of Freeport looking for more material to run in the setting, especially something quick to run in the little gap between finishing Terror at 3rd level and starting Madness at 4th. That's my bias, so with that out in the open, lets get down to what I found:
Soul of the Serpent: 36 pages, for 5th to 7th level characters. This adventure is the big one, with a third of the book devoted to it. The basic plot is that a merchant's daughter has gone missing, and the PCs will come to investigate. When they do, they'll find that the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign isn't as dead as they hoped after the events of Madness.
Unfortunately, this is probably the weakest of the adventures in the book. My problems with it range from the small all the way up the scale to the large. On the small end, why would there be a previously undiscovered Brotherhood cultist still in Freeport who had no connection with any of the previous adventures despite being of the highest character level yet seen? On the medium end, poor K'Stallo is pushed into the rather thankless role of being a red-herring for PCs who are new to Freeport. This leaves Freeport-friendly PCs glossing over pages and pages of the adventure, while non-Freeport PCs probably fight through a major location to be presented with one of the many large problems that plague the module. In a savage bit of railroading, K'Stallo is wearing armor that makes him all but invulnerable to all forms of physical or magical attack. Wow. I suppose you could just write "Important NPC, talk yes, fight no!" in tatoo form on K'Stallo's head, but this invulnerable armor is a slightly more elegant solution. Slightly. Railroading is part of every major section of the adventure, making it a chore for the DM. Here are two examples of the sort of text a DM hates to see: "No cultist encounters are scripted here; it is left to the GM to stage an attack whenever the PCs are vulnerable, complacent, or simply moving to slowly," which follows an acknowledgement that the module probably leads the PCs into a dead end and they will have to be moved along somehow; and, "It is clearly impossible to free the prisoners in the midst of this frenzied mob, which numbers several hundred...", which occurs when the prisoners are inexplicably shown to the PCs but the module is not yet ready for them to be rescued. Gah.
Freeport fans can scavenge this adventure for interesting ideas, including some good background on Yig, but overall this suffers from too many problems to be more than a salvage errand for the DM. Two stars only.
The Last Resort: 10 pages, 3rd-6th level, though easily scalable. Eight different plots that all take place in a single night at an inn called The Last Resort.
Now, this adventure rocks. There's a ton of stuff to do, and if you think your players (or your DM!) can't keep track of eight separate threads at the same time, there's nothing to keep you from breaking it up into 2 sets of 4 events or even 8 sets of single events. Five stars without reservation.
Cut-Throat's Gold: 10 pages, 4th-7th level. The PCs come across a map leading to hidden pirate treasure. Say arrrr mateys! Out into the wilds of the Isles they go to eventually reach a ruined city filled with enemies both obvious and not at all obvious.
There are some fine ideas here, though the presentation is a bit slap-dash. (This is a problem also with Soul of the Serpent btw.) For example, there are a handful paragraphs of how to get the PCs the map and then a handful more on complications which the DM can develop. In a module that was more than 10 pages, the author would be fleshing out details here instead of handing it off to the DM under the fig-leaf cover that the DM knows the group's "preferred playstyle". Huh. Similarly, there are fundamentally three locations in the module, only one of which I consider fully fleshed out. There's plenty of interesting things that could happen, but when the Swamp Random Encounters Table has as much text devoted to it as the important locations you know you are not getting a complete treatment. Three stars, because I can scavenge ideas and the Swamp Table; or with a bit of work I can flesh it out myself and run it as a module.
Fair Salvage: 6 pages, 7th-9th. Rumors of unnatural happenings flood Freeport. It's all just talk until people start turning up burnt and mutilated.
This baby is not my cup of tea at all, I hated the quasi-magical seige engine guns in Freeport-City of Adventure and so I am not disposed to like any plot that involves them in any significant way. So, I wont review the plot, but I will say that the module has the same problems that bring Soul of the Serpent down. (Although a lot less of them in only 6 pages. ;-) Again, the railroading is quite savage at places - "If the PCs try to run, shots will be placed in front of them with impressive accuracy, whichever way they turn; they should quickly get the idea that flight is impractical." This whole sequence is quite likely to cause the veins in your players foreheads to begin bulging ominously. There's other stuff that just doesn't make sense to me, like the motivations of the new faction - they burn two people to death, they assault the city and then inexplicably retreat to a hidden place. Then they ask for stuff when the PCs find them. Hello? Is this a brilliant interpretation of a mind so alien that we mortals can't understand it or is it just the scenario designer being lazy. Two stars.
Plots and Places: 10 pages. About a dozen short treatments of various potential plots. This I like. It does exactly what it intends, it gives several ideas that the DM can develop into full-fledged encounters on his own. Very similar to Plots and Places in the Freeport City book. It also contains reprints of two locations which were originally published on the website. Four stars, despite reusing material I already have.
Rules you can Use: 6 pages. I bought this for the modules, not the crunchy stuff, so I am going to pass here. No effect on scoring.
Sum it Up[/i]
So lets wrap this thing up. Using a purely mathematical model to score this we get (4/7* 2 stars) + (1/7 * 5 stars) + (1/7 * 3 stars) + (1/7 * 4 stars) = 2.85 stars. That agrees with what my gut is telling me, it's around a 3 star product. Less if you aren't DMing Freeport, and more if you are looking for another serving of Freeport material.
Tales of Freeport is a hefty 96 pages of new (or newish) material for the Freeport city setting. The core of the book is a collection of four modules, though it also contains a couple pages each of new rules and plot ideas.
Now, I've run Death In Freeport and Terror in Freeport and so I came to Tales of Freeport looking for more material to run in the setting, especially something quick to run in the little gap between finishing Terror at 3rd level and starting Madness at 4th. That's my bias, so with that out in the open, lets get down to what I found:
Soul of the Serpent: 36 pages, for 5th to 7th level characters. This adventure is the big one, with a third of the book devoted to it. The basic plot is that a merchant's daughter has gone missing, and the PCs will come to investigate. When they do, they'll find that the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign isn't as dead as they hoped after the events of Madness.
Unfortunately, this is probably the weakest of the adventures in the book. My problems with it range from the small all the way up the scale to the large. On the small end, why would there be a previously undiscovered Brotherhood cultist still in Freeport who had no connection with any of the previous adventures despite being of the highest character level yet seen? On the medium end, poor K'Stallo is pushed into the rather thankless role of being a red-herring for PCs who are new to Freeport. This leaves Freeport-friendly PCs glossing over pages and pages of the adventure, while non-Freeport PCs probably fight through a major location to be presented with one of the many large problems that plague the module. In a savage bit of railroading, K'Stallo is wearing armor that makes him all but invulnerable to all forms of physical or magical attack. Wow. I suppose you could just write "Important NPC, talk yes, fight no!" in tatoo form on K'Stallo's head, but this invulnerable armor is a slightly more elegant solution. Slightly. Railroading is part of every major section of the adventure, making it a chore for the DM. Here are two examples of the sort of text a DM hates to see: "No cultist encounters are scripted here; it is left to the GM to stage an attack whenever the PCs are vulnerable, complacent, or simply moving to slowly," which follows an acknowledgement that the module probably leads the PCs into a dead end and they will have to be moved along somehow; and, "It is clearly impossible to free the prisoners in the midst of this frenzied mob, which numbers several hundred...", which occurs when the prisoners are inexplicably shown to the PCs but the module is not yet ready for them to be rescued. Gah.
Freeport fans can scavenge this adventure for interesting ideas, including some good background on Yig, but overall this suffers from too many problems to be more than a salvage errand for the DM. Two stars only.
The Last Resort: 10 pages, 3rd-6th level, though easily scalable. Eight different plots that all take place in a single night at an inn called The Last Resort.
Now, this adventure rocks. There's a ton of stuff to do, and if you think your players (or your DM!) can't keep track of eight separate threads at the same time, there's nothing to keep you from breaking it up into 2 sets of 4 events or even 8 sets of single events. Five stars without reservation.
Cut-Throat's Gold: 10 pages, 4th-7th level. The PCs come across a map leading to hidden pirate treasure. Say arrrr mateys! Out into the wilds of the Isles they go to eventually reach a ruined city filled with enemies both obvious and not at all obvious.
There are some fine ideas here, though the presentation is a bit slap-dash. (This is a problem also with Soul of the Serpent btw.) For example, there are a handful paragraphs of how to get the PCs the map and then a handful more on complications which the DM can develop. In a module that was more than 10 pages, the author would be fleshing out details here instead of handing it off to the DM under the fig-leaf cover that the DM knows the group's "preferred playstyle". Huh. Similarly, there are fundamentally three locations in the module, only one of which I consider fully fleshed out. There's plenty of interesting things that could happen, but when the Swamp Random Encounters Table has as much text devoted to it as the important locations you know you are not getting a complete treatment. Three stars, because I can scavenge ideas and the Swamp Table; or with a bit of work I can flesh it out myself and run it as a module.
Fair Salvage: 6 pages, 7th-9th. Rumors of unnatural happenings flood Freeport. It's all just talk until people start turning up burnt and mutilated.
This baby is not my cup of tea at all, I hated the quasi-magical seige engine guns in Freeport-City of Adventure and so I am not disposed to like any plot that involves them in any significant way. So, I wont review the plot, but I will say that the module has the same problems that bring Soul of the Serpent down. (Although a lot less of them in only 6 pages. ;-) Again, the railroading is quite savage at places - "If the PCs try to run, shots will be placed in front of them with impressive accuracy, whichever way they turn; they should quickly get the idea that flight is impractical." This whole sequence is quite likely to cause the veins in your players foreheads to begin bulging ominously. There's other stuff that just doesn't make sense to me, like the motivations of the new faction - they burn two people to death, they assault the city and then inexplicably retreat to a hidden place. Then they ask for stuff when the PCs find them. Hello? Is this a brilliant interpretation of a mind so alien that we mortals can't understand it or is it just the scenario designer being lazy. Two stars.
Plots and Places: 10 pages. About a dozen short treatments of various potential plots. This I like. It does exactly what it intends, it gives several ideas that the DM can develop into full-fledged encounters on his own. Very similar to Plots and Places in the Freeport City book. It also contains reprints of two locations which were originally published on the website. Four stars, despite reusing material I already have.
Rules you can Use: 6 pages. I bought this for the modules, not the crunchy stuff, so I am going to pass here. No effect on scoring.
Sum it Up[/i]
So lets wrap this thing up. Using a purely mathematical model to score this we get (4/7* 2 stars) + (1/7 * 5 stars) + (1/7 * 3 stars) + (1/7 * 4 stars) = 2.85 stars. That agrees with what my gut is telling me, it's around a 3 star product. Less if you aren't DMing Freeport, and more if you are looking for another serving of Freeport material.
