The Lost City

[PosterBoy]

THE LOST CITY is the first fully developed campaign adventure and location sourcebook for the post-apocalyptic role-playing game, DARWINS WORLD. Designed for four to six characters of level 1-3, THE LOST CITY details in full the legendary Sunken City, formerly Bakersfield, California, as described briefly in the DARWINS WORLD Gazetteer, at the foot of the Great Rift Valley.

 

[GameWyrd]

The Darwin's World RPG line goes from strength to strength. What has been one of the champions of the PDF publishers has moved on to paper but the electronic format has not been abandoned and there's now a Darwin's World Complete which bundles the World Rules, Denizens of the Twisted Earth and Artifacts of the Ancients into one. The newest addition to the Darwin's World collection is The Lost City which is a rather good adventure, described as a "campaign adventure" due to its depth, and this too is currently available in electronic format.

I like the Lost City. The first thing I noticed as I opened up the document and quickly scrolled down the pages to get an initial feel from the offering was that the formatting and layout is improved. Previously I've had some minor complains about the formatting techniques used where text was squeezed into too narrow columns down beside tables and pictures but there's none of that here in the Lost City, it's all sensibly done and this really does make the product much easier to read and appreciate. Another previous diatribe I've had was about the sea of text which some PDFs can become, RPG Objects made much progress with this complaint by re-releasing their initial products with their illustrations moved up from a group at the bottom of the download and moved into the main body. The Lost World doesn't have all that many illustrations but easily avoids the sea of text problem by introducing very many colour maps. These maps are great, they're eye candy, they enhance the over all appearance and readability of the download and more importantly they're practical (to the extent of having GM copies and Player copies for important locations) and helpful.

The Lost City really is a lost city. Darwin's World is a post-apocalyptic Earth and the Lost City is what remains of the Californian City of Bakersfield. The ruins are subterranean now, an indication of just how hugely the world has changed, and are inhabited by a wide range of creatures, people and robots. It's this scope of inhabitants and sheer expanse of setting (an entire city) which makes the Lost City into the "campaign adventure" it is.

The Lost City's initial chapters are designed so that a group of 4 to 6 characters of ranges 1 to 3 should be able to deal with them. As the campaign progresses it gets increasingly more tough and so it's a good thing that the core D&D rules are very generous to player advancement as well. It's not as straight forward as a linear progress though. Players are under no compulsion to stay in the area of the Lost City which best suits their current levels or deal with the hazards, people and encounters that are a match to the group's character level either. If the players do stray from the path then they might try their hand at defeating more powerful foes or, on the other hand, hang around in area where their unchallenged. If you're planning to GM the Lost City and that all sounds rather daunting then don't worry since the download comes with handy tables which quickly summarise both the location and suggest character levels required for dealing with inhabitants and this provides a crystal clear gauge of what's going on and where.

I like this set up. I'm a strong believer that a campaign should be an independent location, factions and plot in which the player characters can turn up in and then react to, change and otherwise spin out of control. The Lost City is a nice blend of a non-linear setting with linear bits where they're needed - and simple actions such as exploring an interesting cave complex counts as a linear bit.

One of my few whinges about the Lost City is that it does have rather a lot of these interesting places to explore - dungeon crawls, I suppose. It's not all that bad since any attempt to detail a whole lost city would be sorely remiss if it failed to produce a host of interesting locations. I would have rated the Lost City more highly if it had more of an overarching back plot. Heck, the scope of the campaign is that which might have supported a number of in depth lots of such plots but I suppose even on a PDF there is a finite amount of space.

The campaign setting itself takes up 36 of the 42 pages of the download, the OGL takes up 2 and the rest of the space is put to good use to detail the unique monsters, people and robots found in the City.

I've torn shreds off products which have attempted to sell themselves as an adventure and then try to get away with detailing some sort of buried city, temple or cavern network and little else in the past. There are some important differences between the Lost City and those products though. The price, for example, the Lost City is a third of the cost and that's not the only thing, the creatures in the Lost City and their reactions to one another make sense whereas this hasn't been the case in some of the lost city based adventures written by some famous names I've read. Darwin's World is a setting which lends itself nicely to lost and ancient cities too; your players have a very good reason to explore it and benefit from the resource of its presence whereas in generic fantasy worlds it seems a curious band of adventures would be so enthralled.

Despite all its strengths the Lost City is pretty much little more than a pre-written adventure and that alone will disqualify it from many people's shopping lists. It's not a particularly complex adventure either, lacking subtleties of politics or mysterious beyond "what's around that corner?" The RPG community is fairly clearly divided into those camps of GMs who'll be willing to buy a product like that, those who actively seek them out and those who wouldn't touch one with a lightsabre.

The Lost City isn't perfect but it is very good and it's a great assist for GMs trying their hand in Darwin's World. I'd recommend the download, which weighs in at just over 1,300K (pretty good for so many colour maps) in zipped format, even as a potential first look at Darwin's World since from it you'll be able to get a pretty good idea as to whether you'll want to buy the world rules and other products - if you decide against it then all the locations in the City can easily be converted to other settings.

This GameWyrd review is found here.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

The Lost City is a mini campaign setting/adventure from RPG Objects for the Darwin's World Twisted Earth campaign setting. It caters for 4-6 PCs from 1st to 11th level.

The Lost City weighs in at $5.95 for a 2.54 MB 42-page .pdf file. This is slightly more expensive than competitors equivalents in terms of content volume. Though the front 'cover' makes interesting use of colour and shadow, the sparse internal mono art is poor. Maps, though colourful and clear, lack scale and compass direction, and will use plenty of valuable colour ink (I couldn't find anywhere to turn off maps and images, as I have seen in some other products, for printing purposes). Writing style tends to be somewhat repetitive, verbose and confusing at times - e.g. "Nothing, if anything, bears a resemblance to anything other than complete and utter ruin." Editing seems fairly good.

The Lost City promotes itself as a 'campaign adventure'. In essence, what we actually get is an underground city setting, with a description of each area, and some insights into the hostile inhabitants.

The Lost City has several factions that hold sway over its different areas. At the entrance are weaker factions; the further the PCs go into the city, the tougher the opposition gets. Much like a horizontal dungeon. Each of the factions is given a recommended level that the PCs should be at, ranging from a faction of apemen near the entrance for 1st-3rd level PCs to mongoliants (giant mutants) suitable for PCs of levels 7-11 on the far side of the city (though there is no EL summary given for the various encounter areas, nor any given with the encounter areas themselves).

There is a useful map of the entire city for the GM (there is also an equivalent one for the players though how they would get an overview from the given angle isn't clear). After some interesting plot hooks and some less interesting background history of the original city (the city is actually Bakersfield in California, plunged underground during massive tectonic shifts caused by nuclear weapons), the players are 'treated' to a lengthy railroaded set-up for entrance into the Lost City. The rambling boxed text is a poor follow-on from the excellent adventure hooks and would have been better left for the GM to make up himself. Thankfully, the remainder of the boxed text in the module is more succinct and does not railroad the PCs.

The module recommends that the PCs should be encouraged to explore parts of the city before returning to the surface or another secure site to rest and recover, before once again heading further into the city. Some ideas are given for how the different factions might react to PC incursions, or news from previous raids on other factions, but mainly this is left to the GM to devise.

The setting itself is home to various factions including a group of slavers, mutated plantmen and cannibalistic human mutants called 'ghouls'. Depending on the adventure hook used will depend on the PCs aims in the city, but the hostility of each of the factions is fairly uniform - no-one wants to give any territory away. This makes internal sense and provides a grim atmosphere, but may get a bit monotonous. The PCs must also face various dangers such as radiation 'traps' and are challenged in their use of various skills. However, there is little advice given on roleplaying, nor does there seem to be much call for it.

The remainder of the module is given over to the new creatures introduced in the adventure - albino apemen, mongoliants, and some robots. There are some inconsistencies in the stat blocks which rang a few alarm bells.

Conclusion:
Similarly to other RPG Objects productions, this campaign/adventure brings some interesting ideas and a good atmosphere to the table. But also like previous products, it doesn't completely deliver the goods. After some nice, open plot hooks we are given a lengthy, railroaded introduction. After an interesting set-up of the different factions, there seems little chance for roleplaying or negotiation. There is certainly not enough advice to aid the GM in making decisions about the reactions of certain factions to the demise or rallying of certain other factions (dependent on the PCs' actions). We are given an open 'plot' in the form of the city itself, but all the inhabitants seem to want to kill the PCs.

Finally, I felt very concerned about the level of the protagonists. Despite advice to the contrary, many PCs will attempt to follow the plot hooks through to the bitter end and may refuse to exit the city to rest and recover. Even if they did, there is not enough adventure (effectively only 29 pages is dedicated to the city setting itself) given in this module to raise the PCs from 1st to 7th level, which would be required to deal with some of the EL 11 or more encounters on the far side of the city. There is nothing but the GM and deus ex machina to stop the PCs heading right for the big bad guys, which is what some of the plot hooks implore the PCs to do. Low level PCs are likely to be decimated if they do this.

Another 'good feel, poor execution' accessory from RPG Objects.