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Background
I have been out of the market for fantasy campaign settings for a few years now, a dedicated junky of Kingdoms of Kalamar. I had little interest in Ptolus when I first heard of it, other than curiosity at the size and enormous price tag. I didn't give it a second thought until I caught a bit of a preview out of the corner of my vision and took the time to look over some of the material posted on Mr. Cook's website in anticipation of its GenCon release.
As a bit of background, I was in the midst of my second wilderness campaign where I subjected my players to lots of travel with little time spent at any given location. I was also despair somewhat at fighting to maintain the low-magic feel of the Kalamar setting as it wasn't really in line with the base D&D rules and I wasn't really interested in shoving massive house rules down the throats of the players. So, when I looked over the preview material for Ptolus, I saw first that it was exactly what I was looking for: a practically vanilla D&D setting which allowed for all of the game's assumptions and weirdness, with a focus on settled urban roleplay. The concept of an entire campaign set in a single hyper-detailed city with vast underground (and aboveground) dungeons was very appealing, particularly since pains were taken to lend justify the existence of it all.
What won me over beyond just the basic premise, though, was the apparent insane attention to detail that I loved about Kingdoms of Kalamar. Sidebars about gambling, drug use, food, and dress styles. A map where all the streets are named and meticulous attention is paid to the local geography, weather, and economy. Lots of setting fluff with only a bit of added crunch to give it some flavor. Plus, the book was to be aggressively cross-referenced with informative sidebars to make it a snap to find any piece of information you need.
Further, as a DM with a full-time job, a toddler, and several other hobbies, I was a good candidate to buy a setting with as much of my work done as possible. Loads of detailed NPCs, locations, plots, adventures, and handouts for me to work with when I am too busy to spend much time preparing for the week's game. I can wing sessions well, but the more material I have on hand, the easier it is and the better the result. I once was an avid world-builder but I just don't have that kind of time anymore. What I, and many like me, do have is a large amount of disposable income. Thus, the price was somewhat daunting, but hardly unobtainable.
First Impressions
With the quality of the sample material online and the PDF Player's Guide (the entire first chapter), I decided to just take the plunge and purchase the beast at GenCon, using the majority of my budget for games. Handling the actual physical text, I was quite impressed at the craftsmanship. Full-color, with a heavy duty textbook binding, solid craftsmanship, and three silk bookmarks. The art was one of the first things to jump out at me. The pictures of the NPCs had character rather than being generic and forgettable and many were practically photo-quality. The illustrations, maps, and descriptions (with only one exception that I noticed) all matched, something I've found sorely lacking in other RPG products, as well as being of excellent quality. Overall, production quality was excellent.
Contents
Part I: Ptolus Player's Guide
The first chapter is the same as the free PDF player's guide and gives a basic overview of the world, the city, and its environs, just enough background for a starting player without any details to give away the plots or secrets of the setting. The guide is also available in print, both individually and in five-packs, for easy distribution to players. It is an excellent approach, as most of what is in the rest of the book is unsuitable for players. It is also short enough not to be too much of an imposition to require players to read while having enough detail to serve as a good reference source after the game is done. The PDF and print copies include maps of the city, local environs, and the whole empire as well as a character sheet and guide to Delver's Square, the center of adventurer culture in the city.
Part II: Background
These chapters give background on the world in which the city of Ptolus exists. General history and a brief description of the empire and the regions comprising it. Not enough to run a campaign there, but enough to provide background for the world and places for characters to come from. One of the things it details is religion and it offers two sorts, depending on what people want to play. The most powerful religion is the church of Lothian, which has definite Christian overtones and is the official religion of the empire. It is suggested that any player that wants to really roleplay being part of a massive church hierarchy with politics, intrigues, and complex structure make a priest of this church. The other option is to play a priest of one of the "million" or so other little gods that have followings in the city. This gives more options and also provides religious structures without the monolithic structure of the Lothian church.
The last chapter in this section deals with organizations and this is where the setting begins to really shine. Orders of knighthood, cults, crime families, noble houses, and mystical orders are all represented, offering not only a lot of options for players in terms of membership but lots of intrigue, motivation, and conflict built in for the NPCs. Rivalries and alliances are presented and not all of them are apparent. Good and bad groups sometimes end up in bed together through circumstance or common interest and there are groups that it should be very difficult for the players to figure out if they are benign or malignant.
Part III: City Guide
This section starts with a chapter on the general character of the city and then goes through, district by district, with detailed descriptions of buildings, characters, and locations. Scattered throughout are sidebars on gambling, food, drugs, rules of bartering, tavern etiquette, and other useful topics that relate to the areas being discussed. As with the rest of the book, anything referenced in the text that has a more detailed treatment elsewhere has a sidebar entry pointing you at the primary source. Detail varies. Some places, like the Dark Reliquary in the Necropolis, have room-by-room descriptions with fully statted inhabitants. Other places are only mentioned by location, type of business, and the name of the proprietor. Overall, it is a nice mix of fully-detailed locations and areas that the DM can expand on. In addition, one of the nice additions is that each neighborhood has look-and-feel section describing how the area looks, smells, sounds, and what sort of encounters are common. The "man on the street" entries offer a few inhabitants for when the PCs ask directions or otherwise accost a random person. This is another good example of the little aids provided to make the DM's life easier.
Part IV: Below the City
This section is much the same as the previous, just dealing with the areas beneath the city. Split into general regions (the Undercity, sewers, natural caverns, and ancient dwarven city ruins), it provides more of a general overview of the character of these areas and what one might find here than fully detailed locations (though some of these are provided). The underground areas are vast and there is a lot of room to put whatever you want down there. I was a little disappointed here that there weren't more maps but there is still a lot to work with.
Part V: Above the City
These two chapters detail the two evil fortresses that are located on the spire which looms over the city, Goth Gulgamel and Jabel Shammar. They are fully described and are tough adventures, particularly the latter which is just made for an epic end-of-campaign finale. Both locations also tie into the Banewarrens adventure included on the CD. Entrance to the latter is an adventure in itself with several means secreted throughout the city for PCs to find in the course of their adventuring. This is part of the benefit of the setting, in that their history has already been tied closely to the setting so the PCs will learn bits and pieces about the locations throughout their careers and plot hooks and hints will be scattered from their first adventures to their last.
Part VI: Living in Ptolus
This section gives an excellent overview of what it is like to be a resident of the city, both as a normal citizen and as a delver. The wonderful slice of life description really offers a good feel for the setting, both with its traditional D&D elements and the bits (like technology) which deviate. The section also covers law, technology, and chaositech (Cronenberg-like evil technology proffered by demons).
Part VII: Running a Ptolus Campaign
Apart from the required sections with new magic, monsters, and prestige classes (all of which are nicely done), this part of the book also offers general advice for running an urban campaign with a particular eye towards accounting for the greater access to resources available. However, the most incredibly useful bit for me was the very first chapter, which gives guidelines on how to build a campaign from the material provided depending on what sort of focus you want to have. Do your players want to focus on dungeon delving or are they more interested in a street level game dealing with crime and intrigue? Several roads are offered towards designing a "save the world" plot, each with different focus and able to be tailored to particular tastes.
The nicest part for me, as someone with limited time to prepare games, is that there is enough fully detailed material in this book and the CD to run a 1st to 20th level game with little additional preparation. One of the chapters provides starting adventures to get the players to the point when they can run through one of the two modules included on the CD, after which they will be powerful enough to tackle some of the fully detailed locations within the rest of the book. With a little more work, there is enough for at least two other such campaigns. And lots of advice is offered here and in the CD supplements to weave them together or switch out bits and pieces to account for player focus and taste.
Appendix and Envelope
The indices are well done and split into a general index, one for locales, and one for people, as well as a sidebar of famous historical figures. The envelope in the back contains, in addition to the CD, numerous handouts relating to the world, locations, and the starting adventures provided. A calendar with notes on holidays, a map and menu from the Inn on Delver's Square which the PCs are likely to frequent, a massive random encounter table tailored to each district and which mundane encounters as well as potentially violent ones, maps, blank documents to fill out, a wanted poster, and so forth. As an added bonus, PDF copies of these are on the CD so you can print out as many as you like. The poster map of the city is beautiful and detailed, though I agree with folks that I would have preferred the maps of the Spire locations not be on the reverse but on a separate sheet.
CD
The CD includes three complete PDF products: the modules The Night of Dissolution and The Banewarrens and the Chaositech supplement. Also, as previously noted, there are PDF versions of all of the handouts as well as several additional indices and reference tables and previews of the miniatures collection.
Support
One of the cool things I have to mention is the amount of support this product is getting from third-parties. The folks who did the architectural and location artwork are offering Ptolus Sketchbooks for each district through the Forge with additional art. Paizo is doing miniatures, Skeleton Key Games is offering Adventure Tiles and maps, and Fiery Dragon Productions is doing counters. Many of these folks are offering freebies, as well.
Summary
After having dedicated well over a month reading through this beast I have to say that it was money well spent. I got what I was looking for, an ultra-detailed setting with enough material to run a long running urban campaign with minimal preparation and sufficient flexibility to account for "PC drift". Everything is extremely well organized and I have had few problems finding things I was looking for. Production quality is also good, after a month of hauling it around and reading it extensively it shows no wear. The binding is solid and the bookmarks are incredibly useful.
As far as the content goes, I really like the setting. It offers exactly what it claims: an urban setting with dungeon crawling that is designed to match the assumptions of Dungeons & Dragons. It provides verisimilitude even though it has to account for the generally over-the-top conventions of the game. You can comfortably let your players go to town and do whatever they want and not have to reign them in to maintain tone or worry that they are going to irrevocably damage the setting. They want to take their dire bear animal companion down to the armorer and get it fitted for full plate? No problem. There's a guy in Midtown who will do it. Sure, it is cheesy, but in the familiar way that D&D has always been. And even though there are 20th level characters of every class living here, they have their own problems and there is plenty for the PCs to do, regardless of if they are 1st level or 20th, themselves.
Reservations
Of course, nothing is perfect and I have a few gripes. My largest is that several of the magic items in the book and in the Banewarrens module are not detailed at all. In the latter, reference is made to the Book of Eldritch Might for many items. Given that this book was touted as being self-contained, this is unacceptable. Particularly since some of the items (like the Black Grail) are incredibly important to the history of the city. I'd like to see at least a free web excerpt of the relevant material offered at some point.
Otherwise, my complaints are fairly minor. I would have liked to see some more of the underground detailed, at least on maps, and a bit more material on the buried ruins of the previous city called Ptolus which existed on the site. It is mentioned several times but never in any depth. Some of the NPCs could have used a bit more on their motivations. Stats, equipment, and combat tactics are always given in loving detail, but sometimes there isn't much on appearance, personality, or motivations, apart from organizational membership. I also would have liked a bit more on the Galchutt (the big bads of the game and the reason Ptolus is like it is). The period of the regular moon and the dates of the solstices and equinoxes also would have been nice.
