Being a DM is a funny thing at times. You can plan and plot your little heart away and players will still do things that you haven’t planned for. Describe a small temple off the side of the beaten road and players may just wander on over to it. If you mention a Inn at the wrong time , the players give up the investigation to wet their whistle. Well, Bard’s Productions has made life a little easier for GM’s who are often under the creative gun with Common Ground I: Churches, Inns and Merchants.
The book is broken up into three sections, each one covering a different Common Ground. Guess which three eh? Each section is then broken up into different parts to customize each local. Choose a size, choose a map, choose characters, choose race, customize based on location and building. For example, the Merchant section allows the GM to choose size, affluence and map. Then he can choose merchant, assistants, and guards. Because merchants aren’t only found in stores, there is some information on creating a Caravan. The Instant Merchant Worksheet is almost grid like place to store your information.
The full color maps take up three pages and are done well but missing a very vital piece of any map puzzle. A legend. While it's fairly easy to tell that what's what, a master legend would've been nice.
These Instant Worksheets are provided for each section and should be copied ahead of time. The GM can then have several of each type of Common Ground ready to play if players get off the beaten track.
The NPC section seems sound game wise. The interesting thing is that the NPCs are not humans by default. Each core race has a subsection to modify NPCs. So if your Merchant is Rich, and has the F listing, which is Wizard 5 level, his stats need to be modified according to race.
I’ve used the Inns section quite a bit. It works well for a city like Mithril where you have numerous types of social statuses in one city. I’ve taken a few of the names like The Mystic’s Folly and The Dragon’s Tear and build up some interesting NPCs from them. The only annoying thing about this is that the names and the Racial Modifiers are listed under Inns and Churches and a lot of that information is repeated in each section. A master table for NPCs with names and racial traits would’ve saved a lot of space. While it’s nice that there are some names in one collection not in another, it’s bad that most of the names are the same.
The book is easy to use but does need some improvements. We’ll start with art. While the maps are sound, and the full color on glossy paper is a nice bonus, in a small product like this, it might be wiser to make them suitable for miniature use. The non-mapped art itself varies from okay to poor. Do I really need to see a blank menu or a scale with some coins on it? The art often just takes up space for no good reason. This is especially true in the introductions where an illustration takes up half the page.
Next up, NPCs. Most of these characters are low level. For Merchants and Inns I can see this as being very reasonable. For Churches though, I don’t think that a multi-level church is going to have only a 5th level Cleric standing with at most, 5 2nd level Acolytes. For a low level fantasy setting, this is fine but some options to augment their levels might've been better.
In terms of layout, the book uses one column. It’s not bad but unusual. It becomes bad when the art pushes it one way or another ruining the balance of the page. The front interior cover is used for credits and the rear interior cover used for the OGL license. The book does unfortunately include a full-page ad for A Race for Retribution and I say it’s too bad because between this and the table of contents, and the duplicate worksheets at the end of the book, the book’s fullness suffers a bit. The pricing of the book isn’t to bad though as it boasts glossy paper and three pages of full color maps.
Lastly, it’s important to note that just because it has the D20 logo on it doesn’t mean that the maps and some of the ideas wouldn’t be right at home in a Palladium Fantasy, GURPS Fantasy, or Hero Fantasy setting. The book has a lot of sound ideas and makes rolling up a church, inn, or merchant house a breeze. If they can improve the presentation, layout, art, and include more maps with less fluff, they’ll have a runaway hit on their hands.
Those interested in saving time should purchase this book while those more comfortable with their own skills or those pregenerated products they've bought may want to move on.
http://www.bardsproductions.com/index.htm For those who want more information on Bard's Productions, check out their home page.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)