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Introduction
The EverQuest Roleplaying Game targets two audiences: The EQ player who's never played roleplaying games, and the fantasy roleplaying gamer who's never played EverQuest. Myself, I'm of the latter, and will be writing from that point of view. Realms of Norrather: Freeport is the first EverQuest sourcebook, and Freeport is one of the best known cities by EverQuest players. I'm happy to say that this source book is well-written, and should not disappoint a GM wishing to run an EverQuest campaign.
Art and Layout
Freeport uses the two-column layout of other EQ products. Art is in black-and-white. The infrequent map is of the "bird's eye view" variety. Major NPC's have their profiles, and new monsters have their illustrations. There's also some standard RPG art. Myself, I would have liked to see less RPG and NPC art, and more detailed maps.
Contents
There's more to Freeport than Freeport. In addition to an Overview of the City; the History of Freeport; Churches, Guilds and Factions; and People and Places of Freeport, other chapters include the surrounding Commonlands, the Desert of Ro, the Ocean of Tears, plus an appendix of Magic Items. Of the book's 160 pages, 85 are devoted to Freeport, 60 are for the surrounding areas, and seven for new magic items. The writing is much like the high-level view taken in most city and world supplements.
The Overview of the City and History of the City: These chapters provide the standard background of a city. The Overview chapter contains a Freeport stat block, Politics, Population, districts of Freeport, Economy, Climate, Military, Religion, and Surrounding Territory. The History of Freeport does a good job in tying the factions' relationships with each other. These chapters are well-written, though, like typical rpg backgrounds, the high-level overviews are unlikely to be directly applicable to your first sessions of city play. The Overview section on Religion does describe the tolerance to EverQuest gods, which may be of interest (and consequence!) to your PCs.
Churches, Guilds and Factions: If mentioned at all, most city supplements broadly describe its factions, and it's up to the GM to work them into the PC's lives. Freeport, however, has no less than **twelve** factions, based on alignment and character classes. And, yes, they're all at odds with each other. Considering that the factions control the training facilities (no automatic level progression in EverQuest!), it should be easy for the GM to involve his players with the factions. Unfortunately, since this is an urban environment, less civilized professions (eg. shamans, beastlords) do not have a faction. (Druids, at least, may be part of the Druid Circle in the Commonlands.) Likewise, a party of PCs in different factions may result in players running off in their own faction quests. In addition to faction descriptions, this chapter includes new feats and NPC writeups of faction leaders.
People and Places of Freeport: This section focuses more on places than people. About sixty above-ground and four below-ground locations are described. NPC stats are limited to a "stat line" (sex race, class level, alignment, faction) and short description. Location and NPC descriptions lean more towards background than "what the PCs see". Also, unfortunately, like many citybooks, this sourcebook treats NPCs as people who never leave their place of work and wait for the PCs to do something. I highly recommend GM Mastery's "NPC Essentials" to help flesh out NPCs.
The Commonlands, Desert of Ro, Ocean of Tears: Besides factions, one of the strengths of this supplement is providing additional EverQuest adventure outside Freeport. Each chapter includes the history, current description, settlements, areas of interests, important NPCs, quests, and creatures inhabiting the area (Unfortunately, the creatures are provided as a list, rather than an encounter table, and no CRs are listed). Each chapter also includes new monsters (ghouls, zombies, werewolf template, spectre, madman template, mummy template, siren, ancient cyclops) from the CR3 / 33hp zombie, to the CR16 / 208 hp spectre. (Now you know why your 1st level EQ wizard has to be munchkinized to shoot ten 1d6 Bursts of Flame.) Essentially, with this sourcebook, a GM on a budget (and time to flesh out the book) pretty much has enough EverQuest world for his adventurers to play in. Likewise, the surrounding areas have enough different terrain (less on forests, and more on desert and oceans) for GMs to drop in a premade adventure.
Appendix: Magic Items: The appendix contains over forty new magic items. Some have ties to Freeport and surrounding areas. Some quests tie in with these items. However, it's pretty much up to the GM how he will use these items in his campaign. Personally, I would have liked the items cross-referenced back to where they're mentioned in the rest of the book.
Index: The sourcebook has no index -- a definite drawback. Unfortunately, lack of an index can hamper play quite a bit, when players wish to look for a city location, or are searching for a quest of a particular CR, or otherwise ask the GM an annoying question.
Other Comments
Quests: In this supplement, quests are essentially adventure seeds, which the GM will have to develop. Quest are provide by factions, and can also be found at various locations. The quests have fixed CRs ("So you're first level, eh? Well, we only have this CR7 quest..."), but, since the quests are just adventure seeds, the GM should be able to adjust the CR to fit the party. While some quests fit the frpg "go kill something" stereotype, others range from political shenanagins to humoring an innkeeper's superstition. Personally, I would have liked to see more quests and the quests in further detail (but that would probably double the size and price of the book).
NPCs: The supplement follows the rpg convention of proving background and stats for the leader of each faction. While this is convention, I still prefer stats of NPCs (this would include generic NPC stats) which players would actually **meet**. I mean, who are your characters more likely to meet? The town guard or the leader of the Wizard's guild?
Web support: While there's no download for this sourcebook per se, remember that the web already has pages of EverQuest sites. I easily found quests, maps, and NPCs for Freeport on the web. I can easily see an EverQuest GM cramming pages of printouts into this sourcebook.
Conclusion
Realms of Norrath: Freeport is as well-written as any city or worldbook supplement. It particularly stands out with its factions, quests, and outside areas for adventuring. Also, like many worldbook supplements, Freeport will require the GM to work a lot on development. Still, players of the Everquest RPG should not be disappointed by this supplement, and GMs should consider it for a generic frpg campaign.
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