This is the long awaited Freeport sourcebook from Green Ronin. Freeport is pirate city that has been the setting for 4 d20 adventures, including one of the first, Death in Freeport. (I was a big fan of the first 3 Freeport modules, and disliked the 4th, Hell in Freeport, which was also misleading, as it was mostly set in Hell, not Freeport).
It's a hardback book, bound fairly sturdily but the spine kind of sticks out. It might just be a fluke, but I noticed the outside part of the spine on mine is very loose (and when I just picked at it to see how loose, it came off partially. D'oh!). It's priced at $30 (I paid $20.50 for it from a dealer on Ebay, brand new), and is 160 pages (or 156 fluff), so it's fairly pricey for it's size (Compare it to Hollowfaust, which is $20 and 132 pages, softcover. Or Starfarer's Handbook which is about 176 for $28, with 16 color pages). It does come with a color foldout map (4 regular pages, one sided), but quite honestly, the map isn't very good - it was obviously done on a computer, and looks very fake and glossy. The scale of the map seems odd - some buildings are the size of barrels, and I'm not sure what some things are. Many of the buildings either don't look like buildings (more like melted dice), or look like exact clones.
On the plus side, there is almost no white space in the book. Small margins, relatively smallish font, very little spacing between paragraphs. Very very good. Also it's packed with art (by my count, 80 pieces, not including maps), most of which is very good quality, and some make you say, "Wow, that is a nice drawing". Each page has a background graphic, which is a nice and classy touch, but makes the text a bit hard to read. In any event, while the page count is small, they make the most of it. So while it's pricey, in terms of pages, in terms of text/art, it's actually a fairly decent value.
Chapter One is a history of Freeport, and is pretty short, around 8 pages. While Freeport is supposedly useable in any campaign, the history is quite specific. You have to have a Cthulhu-ish style world, or at least one that is very very old (neither of which really fits my own world). This also gives an overview of the previous Freeport modules. Another problem is that the history requires there to be large wars on a main continent (which doesn't really fit my world either). One problem, is that despite it's somewhat small size (see notes on Chapter 3), Freeport is somehow a military power. That doesn't make sense, logically.
Chapter Two describes the islands around Freeport. It's also pretty short, around 7 pages.
Chapter Three is a general description of Freeport. There's a brief overview of the various districts, and then a description of the government, the law, and the military. It's about 18 pages. No precise population size is given, just 'upwards of 10,000', though from elsewhere, it seems 10,000 or so is correct.
Chapter Four is the meat of the book, descriptions of locations inside the city. These follow a general pattern of a numbered location (so you know where it is on the map), then a few to several paragraphs describing the location and the owners and such, then some adventure hooks related to that location. There are 59 of these, which is why this chapter is about 65 pages long. Most of these places are pretty mundane, and range from businesses to homes to government offices.
Chapter Five is on adventures and adventuring in Freeport. It's pretty much just GM advice on how to use Freeport in your campaign, and styles of adventures. 8 pages
Chapter Six is new rules. There are two new prestige classes, the Crimelord and the Freeport Pirate. The Freeport Pirate is good enough, but the Crimelord bugs me for some reason. It's essentially a Rogue with a d8 for hit dice, better saves, and more special powers, so might be a bit overpowered. There's also an NPC class, the Cultist. It's actually probably good enough to be a PC class. It's kind of a cross between Cleric and Rogue. I think it sort of misses the whole point of an NPC class, not just being weaker, but also simpler, but this is presumably a special sort of NPC class, used for opponents, not everyday common people.
There are 13 new feats. Some are mostly just for flavor (being related to various Freeport celebrities), but some are quite novel. For instance, Skill Expertise lets the character use the bonus for Int on a certain skill rather than Dex. And the similar Skill Finesse which lets the character use the bonus for Dex instead of Str on a certain skill. I liked these.
There are 28 new spells. Some seem a bit powerful, like 'Create Healing Spring', which creates a permanent spring whose water cures disease. So it's like a neverending supply of cure disease spells. But most are decent enough. Some spells from past editions seem to have returned, like the Glasteel spell.
There are a lot of new magic items. 6 new armor abilities, though none are great, 11 new weapon abilities, which are much better, and a whopping 65 or so new magic items of various types. Most are sea or ship related. One has my award for the most useless magic item ever. It's a thing for a ship that gives people onboard a swimming bonus. Think about it - if they're onboard the ship, why do they need a swimming bonus? (Might be useful on a huge cruise ship, with a swimming pool on board, I guess. The old Mystara setting did have a version of "The Love Boat", only it flew in the air). It's not completely useless as it does a couple other things, but it's a bit silly.
Appendix 1 is on floor plans, and is 1 page (6 building plans).
Appendix 2 is on Firearms in Freeport. This is largely the same article that appeared in last years Dragon Annual d20 special. 8 pages. Gun damages range from 1d10 to 3d6.
Appendix 3 is on drugs in Freeport. 2 whole drugs. 1 1/2 pages. For some reason, drugs are apparently illegal in Freeport. Why? Because they're bad for you. Ugh. Is this supposed to be a rough and tumble city or Mr. Roger's neighbhorhood?
Lastly there is a two page index. Pretty comprehensive, but not always easy to use. And you can't just look up "Inns" or "Taverns" (not that there are all that many, actually). But feats are listed that way, despite the fact they are all on the same 2 pages.
I have very mixed views on the book. I was anticipating this for a long time, so maybe I got my hopes up too much, but in any event, I was ultimately very disappointed with it.
On the one hand, this book has a ton of content. It's packed with text, and the artwork is very good (for the most part). The number of adventure hooks is astounding, and I really like how they formated that part of the book.
On the other hand,there are a number of problems. Most glaring is that the city of Freeport is somewhat, well, lame. Maybe I made a mistake in re-reading all the Thieves' World novels just before buying this, but I do think they deliver a city that is far more like Branson, Missouri, than what they advertised on the back as "the most larcenous city in fantasy."
For example:
There is a gang of sorts of daughters or rich guild members. Apparently they are bored (we are supposed to believe that unlike every other d20/3e product not from Avalanche Press, women are considered to not be nearly as equal as men), and so to be rebellious, they go out drinking. Wow! Shocking!
There's a beatnik wizard who runs a coffee shop. Complete with beat poetry. Gack! (From the picture of her, she's pretty hot, another problem - beatniks tended to look like Yoko Ono, this one looks like Lucy Liu. Though she has the Lennon style round glasses. Okay, it's somewhat irrational, but just be grateful it wasn't a hippie. I hate hippies far more than I hate beatniks.)
People seem to dress like it's 1700s. I guess they are going for the pirate look, but it looks more like something from the French or American revolutions. I almost expect to see Ben Franklin and the 3 musketeers to make an appearance. This is also not very practical in a climate that averaages 80 degrees or so.
There is a street gang called the "Joyboys". While this is especially funny for Shadowrun players, it's mostly just a really stupid name for a gang.
There is a government X-files-ish team called "The God Squad". Really. I suppose this could be a Simpson's reference, but it was meant to be silly on the Simpsons. (There's also a similarly named "Godshop", which is a shopping mall of sorts of clerics.
There's an awfully contrived insurance agency. It's contrived because they have a magical artifact that keeps people from lying to them. They found the artifact by accident. Just by whim, one of them bought a mysterious crate at an auction. And it just happened to have the key to being an extremely successful insurance company. Okay.
Conversely, there is a huge lack of anything particularly nasty or evil. There are for instance, a total of 3 street gangs. And 1 of those isn't really a gang (see above). In any event, none of the gangs is really particularly scary or even interesting, and all have fairly mundane names (The Buccanneers and the Cuthroats). Even the Crimelord is fairly nice. The Crimelord is a halfling that is suspiciously similar to the halfling crime boss in an old April's Edition of Dragon magazine. Eubeen Had, I think his name was. But while there is a crime lord, of sorts (he mostly seems to be into the protection business in one district), there's no thieves' guild.
Other minor items: The tabloid newspaper run by people with initials instead of first names (C.Q. and T.K.), the Pokemon doll in one of the shop illustrations (Pikachu, I think). Another illustration has what appears to be a playboy bunny (like from their old nightclub, with ears and everything, it's on page 130)
I dunno, maybe I'm being picky, but the tone of the place is almost like a joke. Or campy, like the 60s Batman.
The only really evil things in the book are a cannibal cult, a secret society of Rakashas (and someone almost exactly like it, only for decadent humans), and an orc bar. The first two go out of their way not to intrude on Freeport life. The last is just plain silly. Orcs are treated as being little more than beasts, which is not true. Also, think about it. Why would an orc pirate pay money just for a chance to get drunk (it seems in the bar they have to fight over the beer spout, even when they pay), when one could go to another place and just get a drink? Orcs might be stupid, but they're not that stupid.
There are also a number of logical problems. While it's true that most fantasy settings violate all sorts of laws of physics (as we know them), and sometimes are more a reflection of modern day life than historical life in more technologically primative times, most at least try to make some sense with the basics of logic. But not Freeport, unfortunately.
For one, the city is supposedly really really crowded, because space is at a premium. But it's on an island that seems to be completely empty? Why don't people just live outside the city? All they have to do is cut down the jungle surrounding it! (The book even says it's more or less empty). Actually, as a result, the layout of the city is very very odd when you look at the big map. Why would everyone just decide to stop building in an almost straight line, despite 100s of feet of free land? The shape of the buildings are also very odd. There is actually a reason people don't live in odd polygonal or trapezoidal buildings - they're difficult to build, and they don't maximize space. Yet Freeport is full of them.
Besides that, the economics of Freeport seem screwed up. Only 1 shipyard? In a city devoted to trade? No farmers? Despite the fact there is ample free land outside the city and the city has had food shortages in the past. Well, I could go on and on, but I would really be getting nitpicky. The end result though is that is just doesn't seem like a plausible city, even at a superficial glance. I know many fantasy cities aren't, but this is really glaring.
Although gambling and prostitution are apparently legal, there are no casinos and apparently only 1 brothel (not quite true, they are alluded at, but somewhat vaguely). Now I don't want it to be a like a Ed Greenwood product where every other business is a brothel (er, "Festhall"), or like the old DMG with it's random prostitute table, but c'mon, it's a town aimed at pirates and the relatively corupt. It should be at least on par with Las Vegas. This is more like Branson, Missouri. Did Ned Flanders buy out Green Ronin?
On a related note, the police presence in Freeport is way too heavy. There are 200 police for a city of 10000. In North America, the largest cities have about 7-8 per 1000 people. In Freeport, they have 20 per 1000. That's just way way too many. Especially for a city that back cover calls "the most larcenous city in fantasy.". Oh my. It's actually perhaps the least larcenous city source book I've read, and going through my collection, I probably have 30 or 40 of them, from Lankhmar to Sanctuary (Thieves' World) to various cities in the Forgotten Realms to Bloodshadows to modern day fantasy like Shadowrun (or even space fantasy like Star Wars).
Well, besides the logical errors, this has a lot of failings as an RPG book, which cripple it's useability. I might be in the minority these days in actually using sourcebooks as opposed to just reading them and drooling over the artwork, but since they are meant to be for use in an RPG, they should be as helpful as possible when using the book in an RPG. For instance:
None of the pictures have captions. In some cases they are clearly meant to be pictures of someone, but just who it is isn't clear.
Related to this, the descriptions of NPCs are very vague. Sometimes you get one or two vague adjectives describing what they look like, but most of the time you get nothing. One of the trickier points of running a city full of people is describing them distinctly. So it's great in a city book if they help you do this. Freeport makes you have to do a lot of work - presumably pencil in what various people look like (outside of those without pictures). And while some major NPCs get stats, most get just their class, level, and hp.
There are no random encounter tables. I know, some people don't like them. But I think any city needs them. If only to give you a general feel of what the population is like. And while each entry is detailed greatly, there is really not all that many, 59, many of which are basically useless for fantasy RPG purposes (like the insurance agency, or the opera house, or the rickshaw company, or the Widows & Orphans charity). So you're going to have to do a lot of work filling in the gaps. Especially the seedier places - taverns and inns that are actually plausible (not like the stupid orc bar, or the one where they drop people into the ocean, etc).
There are a lot of minor errors. I noticed a bunch, and someone posted a huge list of about 50 of them on the Green Ronin message boards. Many are rules problems. For a book delayed so long, they should have proofread better. This is extremely nitpicky, I know, but it bothers me every time I read the book, so I have to mention it. The font used for things in large type is somewhat hard to read. The 'C' really really looks like a 'G', it has that curly thing on it, while the G has a huge dagger or spike going down, and looks nothing like the 'G' I know. The 'V' looks like a 'U', rather than having a point, it's rounded (though it's lopsided). Again, maybe not a big deal, but at a glance it's hard to say whether it's "The Plaza of Gold" or "The Plaza of Cold"
So, while this book might look really impressive at first glance, on further scrutiny, it's pretty awful. The rules are the best part, but even a lot of those seem to be filler (I mean, 2 animated magical monkeys?). I was really realy disappointed with this. I was really expecting what was advertised on the back cover, in terms of style (ie, "the most larcenous city in fantasy", and the high editing and rules quality I'd seen in previous Green Ronin books.
(Disclaimer: I'm not sure what to put in the playtest/capsule section for sourcebooks. I have used Freeport as a setting to run adventures, but mostly before this book came out. I also did try out the Cultists in the book, and they seem okay)
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