What is Ptolus anyway?

[Tharen the Damned]

Wow Mythusmage,

you are as deep in love with the big book as I am.
That description of Ptolus was the best I have read so far.

 

[Celeblas]

Can anyone tell me how portable Ptolus as a city is? I'm playing with the idea of putting it into my campaign world without using the Empire and the surroundings of the Ptolus setting. I also plan not to use the church of Lothian but the core gods.
So do you think this is a viable idea or would it be too mch work to adapt Ptolus?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Can anyone tell me how portable Ptolus as a city is? I'm playing with the idea of putting it into my campaign world without using the Empire and the surroundings of the Ptolus setting. I also plan not to use the church of Lothian but the core gods.
So do you think this is a viable idea or would it be too mch work to adapt Ptolus?

Well, just use another large kingdom currently going through hard times, as well as a politically influential church with lawful and non-evil leanings instead. That should work...

 

[Tharen the Damned]

Can anyone tell me how portable Ptolus as a city is? I'm playing with the idea of putting it into my campaign world without using the Empire and the surroundings of the Ptolus setting. I also plan not to use the church of Lothian but the core gods.
So do you think this is a viable idea or would it be too mch work to adapt Ptolus?

Without giving too much away: The History of Ptolus is tied to a very specific cosmology.
The VBVBVEGs (very Big, very Bad etc) of this cosmology are Chtuluesque beings.
You could use your run of the mill core gods or homebrew pantheon without any problems, but you should have a way to implant the evil beings into it too.

An idea I have from "Book of the Righteous" (Green Ronin): Instead of Church of Lothian use "The Great Church". In this Church all Gods of the Pantheon are revered equally. All Priests of this Church revere the whole Pantheon and not a single god.

 

[Odhanan]

Can anyone tell me how portable Ptolus as a city is? I'm playing with the idea of putting it into my campaign world without using the Empire and the surroundings of the Ptolus setting. I also plan not to use the church of Lothian but the core gods.
So do you think this is a viable idea or would it be too mch work to adapt Ptolus?

Ptolus is extremely portable. Finding a reason to justify some pieces of background like the one Tharen just talked about isn't harder than say... placing the World's Largest Dungeon in your homebrew. No worries there: you can use Ptolus without the Empire and surrounding areas. You adapt a few of the NPCs' backgrounds (really a few as in... you can count them with the fingers of one hand) and you're set. You can also use any and all of the gods you'd need for your campaign. You can discard completely Lothian's religion (and interestingly enough, the NPCs touched by such a modification are more or less the same people as the ones concerned by the Empire around, like Rehoboth, the Emperor of the Church of Lothian).

Really, you shouldn't have too much trouble getting what you're searching for out of Ptolus.

 

[tzor]

Ptolus is the first campaign world that I would deliberately leave on my living room coffee table to impress people who stopped by. The book itself, with those three cloth ribbons in it is that impressive.

Given that fact it is important to stress that I love the book for what's inside more than I love the book for what's on the outside. Ptolus raises the bar for campaign worlds, in terms of context, artwork, crunch and fluf so high that clearly no one is going to even come close for the next 20 years and few will even consider the attempt worthwhile.

And if you are an old Lankhmar lover who always wondered what Lankhmar would be like if it were bigger but didn't mess up the magic system to make it work, Ptolus is it!

 

[Mr Baron]

Its really impressive

I was one of the folks that did the pre-order thing. IMHO, its worth $200.

I have read all the posts about this being a $100 book, and I know that $100 is a bunch of money, if you are use to spending only $20-$30 for a book. If you can get past that part, it really is a beautiful book. It is probably the most impressive supplement/adventure book I have bought. The cool thing is that there is a bunch of support material that fits right in. Basically Monte's entire product line supports this product. Since it is a city, you can drop it in anywhere. It can be a the entire campaign, it can be a side trek, it can be a city that the PC's stop over enroute to somewhere else, or is can be a home base for characters to recoup inbetween campaigns.

I think everyone has commented that it is very well put together. The physically quality of the book along with the quality of the material inside is amazing. The art work is some of the best I have seen. You could put this thing on your coffee table.

There are several things that I really like about this book. The sidebars, the DM notes and the cross reference stuff is top notch, and I hope that other books adapt a similar format.

Anyway, I am a big fan of the book. I am planning on starting a campaign in September and I had something planned out. Now that I have recieved my big book, I will probably scrap my old idea, and use this.

Let me end on this note. This is clearly Monte's baby, and it shows. He really pulled out all the stops to make a top notch product. We can argue about cost, and value, and does it fit into a certain campaign, and the overall writting style. But, I think at the end of the day, we have to say that Monte put together a solid product. You can just tell, he really put his soul into this one. It might not be your cup of tea, but I think you have to tip your hat to what he did with this.

 

[Archade]

Yes! This does feel like Lankhmar. It also feels to me like Black Company, Warhammer Fantasy, (a tiny bit of Harn), and other dark fantasy books I've read.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

The first setting for years that has inspired me to want to both play and DM... Yes, it's that good

 

[Celeblas]

@Jürgen, Tharen and Odhanan
Thanks for the information. My friendly (not so) local games store was happy when I ordered it form them online, my bank account wont't be so happy but... nevermind .

Concering the price discussion. Have you guys ever bought scientific literature? The prices are comparable to Ptolus but the books usually don't have so nice illustrations .