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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010590" data-attributes="member: 172">Tales of FreeportTales of Freeport is an anothology of adventures set in Green Ronin Publishing's Freeport setting. The scenarios are written by Graeme Davis and Chris Pramas.A First LookTales of Freeport is a 96-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $18.95. This is a reasonable price for a d20 System book of this size.The cover of the book is illustrated by Wayne Reynolds, and has a stylish depiction of a man with a mace unvieling a robed serpent folk who doesn't look too happy about the situation.The interior is black and white, with illustrations by David Griffith, Chris Keefe, Marcio Fiorito, Drew Baker, Britt MArtin, and Tom Baxa. The art ranges from acceptable to good quality. In particular, I found Griffith's art to be amongst the best interior work I have seen him do.The interior body text font is conservative. The lines are single spaced but the paragraphs are double spaces. Overall, the text density is reasonable and the layout is clear and readable.A Deeper Look(Spoiler warning: This section contains some details of the plots of the adventures)The book has four major adventures in it. In addition to these, the book has a selection of adventure hooks and locations for additional adventures in Freeport, new rules used elsewhere in the book, maps, handouts, and reference tables.The four major adventures are:- The Soul of the Serpent: In this adventure, the players must uncover a plot by a surviving member of the cult of the yellow sign, who is attempting to implicate and exploit the serpent folk in his plot. This adventure has some excellent investigation and roleplaying potential. The adventure is for 5th-7th level characters.- The Last Resort: This "adventure" is actually a detailed description of the Last Resort hotel in Freeport with mutliple plots associated with the hotel. There are eight plots in all, which are interlinked and designed to play out in a single night. This makes for an interesting and tense scenario, but possibly very demanding of the GM. However, some provision is made to separate the plots out if you think it will be too confusing for your players or too challenging for you. The scenario is designed for characters of 3rd-6th level.- Cut-Throat's Gold: This adventure seems more traditional on the surface: the PCs happen upon a map to a lost city that promises wealth. Of course the city has hazards of it's own, that is to be expected. The curve ball is that the map is actually a lure by a sorcerer who hopes he can use the PCs to take the city from the inhabitants. The adventure is a designed for characters of 4th-7th level, but confesses that it is a difficult adventure and may need to be toned down for characters on the low end of that scale.- Fair Salvage: Amidst rumors of sightings of a huge ship of inexplicible speed, the players must investigate a number of mysterious attacks in freeport. Soon they may find out that the attacks are from a strange race who has come to claim what is rightfully theirs. The adventure is designed for PCs of 7th-9th level.In addition to the normal and necessary content of the adventures, the adventures contain additional information on possible resolutions and follow-on effects of the adventure and/or ways to continue the adventure.The Plots & Places chapter provides a number of additional adventure ideas for use with freeport. Most of this section are adventure ideas, with fairly detailed descriptions of the adventure background. About two such plot seeds are provided per page. This chapter ends with two detailed locations, Falthar's Curios and Salon du Masque, complete with their own brief (one paragraph) adventure hooks and statistics. The later of these uses statistics for Green Ronin's Assassin's Handbook, which I was not exactly enamored with. Fortunately, they provide alternate statistics using the core assassin as well.The final chapter is Rules You Can Use, a selection of new mechanics used elsewhere in this book. The mechanics include a new skill (shadowing), new knowledge and profession skill categories (navigation, gambler, and sailor), firearms rules, and three new prestige classes: freeport merchant, ship's captain, and gambler. Finally, there is a page of errata for the Freeport setting book.Of these, I only found the shadowing skill and the ship's captain prestige class problematic. The ship's captain prestige class has the relatively minor sin of not using standard save advancements. The shadowing skill is more problematic, in that it is arguably redundant with existing skills, and provides no support for integrating the skill with existing classes, making it an example of what NOT to do when it comes to skill proliferation.ConclusionWith the exception of the mechanical foibles mentioned above, I found Tales of Freeport to be a rather compelling collection of adventures. The adventures have enough investigative and roleplaying elements that they do not fall into the dungeon-crawling rut, though there is a fair selection of classic D&D adventuring elements. In particular, I was intrigued by the challenges that The Soul of the Serpent and The Last Resort offered.Overall Grade: B+-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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