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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2010517" data-attributes="member: 9860">This is not a playtest review.Beware! This review contains spoilers.Tales Of Freeport contains four adventures, some new locations and adventure ideas, and a few new rules for Green Ronin's pirate city setting, Freeport.Tales Of Freeport is a 96-page mono softcover product costing $18.95. The layout is easy on the eye, with little wasted space and different types of information are clearly delineated. The high-quality artwork captures the feel of the adventures and the city, and is appropriate to the text. Maps are clear, scaled (to 5 feet indoors) and have compass direction. Writing style is evocative and engaging and editing is good.The adventures in Tales of Freeport are set after the first four Freeport adventures and are designed to be used independently of each other.The Soul Of The Serpent is the largest section of the book, taking up nearly half of it. It is designed for characters of 5th-7th level and dovetails quite well with the original trilogy. Whilst some serpent folk seek to redeem their degenerate brethren, the fractured Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign continues to seek ways to bring the Unspeakable One to Freeport. An ancient set of religious tablets is discovered that threatens to tear apart the serpent folk redemption from the inside. Soul of the Serpent allows the PCs to interact with a number of NPCs and explore various locations described in Freeport:COA on their way to solving this mystery-based adventure. However, a new location, the Temple of Yig, which lies beneath the sewers, is described in detail and a high-level cultist introduced as a new nemesis for the PCs.The Last Resort is designed for characters of 3rd-6th level. It is an event-based adventure, taking place within the Last Resort hotel, with an interesting layout. First, eight short plot lines are described, followed by a night packed full of incidents related to the plots running along a timeline. The GM is given the choice to use them all at once or spread them out over several of the PCs visits. There are then some ideas for continuing the adventure, and the section concludes with stats for the NPCs and monsters.Cut-Throat's Gold is designed for characters of levels 4-7. Freeport wouldn't be Freeport without pirates, and the epitome of pirate legends is the pirate's treasure map. In Cut-Throat's Gold, the PCs find that archetypal pirate's treasure map. After an action-packed journey to the map's goal, the PCs discover a ruined Valossan city inhabited by degenerate ancestor-worshipping serpent folk and must deal with the clever twist to the tale that ends this short adventure.Fair Salvage is designed for characters of levels 7-9 and deals with the appearance of a mysterious ship in the waters of the Pirate Isles. The crux of the adventure centres around Freeport's cannons, now on the city wall, which were recovered from a wreck two centuries before. The owners of the cannons have come to retrieve them, by fair means or foul, and the PCs must find some sort of resolution. We are introduced to a new creature, the Stranger, an outsider with an impressive array of powers such as Force Storm, Telepathy, and membranous wings. They wield a new weapon, the Flamelance, which relies on the life force of the wielder to create small grenade-like fireballs.Plots & Places provides some short adventure outlines and a couple of new locations in the style of Freeport:COA. The plotlines include a vampire war, a mystery involving a corpse missing its legs, as well as an interesting side plot, which could be used in the Soul of the Serpent adventure, involving the yuan-ti.Rules You Can Use offers the new skill of Shadowing (following someone without being noticed) as well as a couple of new Knowledge and Profession skills. There is a new feat related to gambling, some new firearms rules for wet powder and clubbing firearms, and three new 10-level prestige classes - the Freeport Merchant (an NPC prestige class), Ship's Captain (with enhanced leadership and intimidation abilities), and Gambler. There is a page of errata for Freeport: COA (most importantly, revised stats for Serpent People). A rough double-page map indicating the new locations described in the book is given, there are some handouts for the adventures, and a page of reference tables for the new prestige classes.High Points: The adventures bring a good mix of the familiar and the new - PCs can interact with some of the material seen in Freeport: COA, but there are plenty of surprises along the way and an interesting event-based layout in The Last Resort adventure. The main adventure, Soul of the Serpent, should delight those who enjoyed the original trilogy. Probably the best aspect of the adventures is the amount of advice for the GM in running each adventure, with plenty of options for dealing with players/PCs choices, particularly in Soul of the Serpent.Low Points: A quick perusal of the stat blocks revealed a few minor errors (such as treating the Knowledge (Anatomy) skill as a class skill for sorcerers). The Prestige Classes filled out the feel of Freeport by introducing the ship's captain, the gambler, and the Freeport merchant, but all three concepts could be reasonably represented using the NPC Expert class, and felt a little redundant.Conclusion: There is plenty of material to expand and develop a Freeport campaign in Tales of Freeport and the adventures are presented with panache, good advice, and a heady feel for the unique aspects of Freeport. The additional game rule material I felt to be a little redundant and to my mind would have been better spent on another of the decent adventures presented in the rest of the book.</blockquote>

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