Neuroglyph
First Post
Cities and towns in most 4E campaign worlds are designed to be “points of light”, and are havens from the dangerous and deadly locales frequented by heroes. But in many campaigns, cities end up just being places to buy and sell treasure, restock rations and adventuring gear, and are considerably less detailed than the rest of the world, holding little allure for adventurers.
Escape Velocity Gaming is trying to change the flat dimensionless image of the “points of light” by adding more depth, more details, and more drama to the mundane medieval cityscape - in City Slices: Marketplace Fun.
City Slices: Marketplace Fun
City Slices: Marketplace Fun is a collection of scenes, scenarios, adventure hooks, and skill challenges designed for D&D 4E and usable in almost any campaign setting. As suggested by the title, the City Slices: Marketplace Fun collection provides Dungeon Masters with supplemental material for use in a medieval/fantasy town’s marketplace, and offers some thirty total “adventure bits” to drop into a campaign setting as desired.
Production Quality
The production quality of City Slices: Marketplace Fun is fair to good, with few illustrations, and a rather basic layout design. However, even though the material is presented in a somewhat “no frills” plain text format, the writing is quite good, offering some very creative scenes and scenarios to bring a fantasy-world’s town market to a level beyond just a place to pawn off dungeon booty.
There is not much in the way of artwork and graphics in City Slices: Marketplace Fun, beyond a few public domain woodcuts and illustrations. However, the lack of illustrations does make the e-book generally printer-friendly and should not use up much ink or toner.
The “Adventure Bits”
The author of City Slices: Marketplace Fun describes the content as “a series of bits, pieces, and snippets that you, as a GM, can plug directly into your campaign world.” The e-book is divided into four sections, each offering Dungeon Masters a different type of material to add to the city or town as desired:
The second section of Skill Challenges consist mainly of little “one shot” encounters that could happen to characters as they wander among the common folk in the market. Ranging from having to rescue a stall on fire to being begged by wailing parents to find their lost child, these skill challenges are charmingly written and are well suited for low level heroes of generally good alignments to make a name for themselves. Paragon and Epic Tier adventurers would probably not be inclined to pause in their pursuit of lich-kings and demon lords to worry about such mundane issues as repairing a battered stall or haggling over the price of common goods, but these are well-designed to easily fit into almost any Heroic Tier adventure as a short side-trek.
The third section of Unusual Stalls describe some very creative shops and vendors which might be found in a fantasy market. Although the author chose to give some of these shops overly “cute” names like the drow-owned and styled clothier called “Web Wares” and the perfumery called “Make Scents”, these places of business represent some great possibilities for adventure. In fact, the author includes a Paths to Adventure section with each entry to give DMs ideas on how the shop might fit into an adventure, or be the starting point of its own quest.
The final fourth section, Food Vendors, gives seven examples of eateries and provisioners that adventurers might happen across when their stomachs start growling whilst on a shopping excursion in the market. The author provides a description of the owners and the fare provided, but also an additional note called “In the Know”. This last bit offers DMs a suggestion on what sorts of information might be gleaned from chatting with the owner or wait-staff at a particular eatery, as it is not unheard of for customers to chat and gossip over their dinner.
Overall Grade: A-
Conclusions
There is no doubt that the author of City Slices: Marketplace Fun really wanted to create more “fun” when role-playing out the humdrum activities that often happen when characters hit a city or town. And there is a lot of really good detailed “bits” of adventure here to add to any city in almost campaign setting, to breathe more life into that odd time between the last dungeon delve and the new mission to nip off and slay the evil marauding dragon. The writing is inventive and descriptive, but is designed generically enough to allow Dungeon Master to mold it neatly into their own campaign’s style. And given the amount of material provided for the price, City Slices: Marketplace Fun is worth taking a look at as an inexpensive and amusing supplement for a DM’s virtual bookshelf.
Editor’s Note: This Review’s Author received a complimentary copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card
Escape Velocity Gaming is trying to change the flat dimensionless image of the “points of light” by adding more depth, more details, and more drama to the mundane medieval cityscape - in City Slices: Marketplace Fun.
City Slices: Marketplace Fun
- Authors: William C. Pfaff
- Cover Illustrator: William C. Pfaff
- Publisher: Escaper Velocity Gaming
- Year: 2010
- Media: PDF (31 pages)
- Retail Cost: $2.95 (available from RPGNow.com)
City Slices: Marketplace Fun is a collection of scenes, scenarios, adventure hooks, and skill challenges designed for D&D 4E and usable in almost any campaign setting. As suggested by the title, the City Slices: Marketplace Fun collection provides Dungeon Masters with supplemental material for use in a medieval/fantasy town’s marketplace, and offers some thirty total “adventure bits” to drop into a campaign setting as desired.
Production Quality
The production quality of City Slices: Marketplace Fun is fair to good, with few illustrations, and a rather basic layout design. However, even though the material is presented in a somewhat “no frills” plain text format, the writing is quite good, offering some very creative scenes and scenarios to bring a fantasy-world’s town market to a level beyond just a place to pawn off dungeon booty.
There is not much in the way of artwork and graphics in City Slices: Marketplace Fun, beyond a few public domain woodcuts and illustrations. However, the lack of illustrations does make the e-book generally printer-friendly and should not use up much ink or toner.
The “Adventure Bits”
The author of City Slices: Marketplace Fun describes the content as “a series of bits, pieces, and snippets that you, as a GM, can plug directly into your campaign world.” The e-book is divided into four sections, each offering Dungeon Masters a different type of material to add to the city or town as desired:
- Section 1 – Five Interesting Encounters
- Section 2 – Six Skill Challenges
- Section 3- Twelve Unusual Stalls
- Section 4- Seven Food Vendors
The second section of Skill Challenges consist mainly of little “one shot” encounters that could happen to characters as they wander among the common folk in the market. Ranging from having to rescue a stall on fire to being begged by wailing parents to find their lost child, these skill challenges are charmingly written and are well suited for low level heroes of generally good alignments to make a name for themselves. Paragon and Epic Tier adventurers would probably not be inclined to pause in their pursuit of lich-kings and demon lords to worry about such mundane issues as repairing a battered stall or haggling over the price of common goods, but these are well-designed to easily fit into almost any Heroic Tier adventure as a short side-trek.
The third section of Unusual Stalls describe some very creative shops and vendors which might be found in a fantasy market. Although the author chose to give some of these shops overly “cute” names like the drow-owned and styled clothier called “Web Wares” and the perfumery called “Make Scents”, these places of business represent some great possibilities for adventure. In fact, the author includes a Paths to Adventure section with each entry to give DMs ideas on how the shop might fit into an adventure, or be the starting point of its own quest.
The final fourth section, Food Vendors, gives seven examples of eateries and provisioners that adventurers might happen across when their stomachs start growling whilst on a shopping excursion in the market. The author provides a description of the owners and the fare provided, but also an additional note called “In the Know”. This last bit offers DMs a suggestion on what sorts of information might be gleaned from chatting with the owner or wait-staff at a particular eatery, as it is not unheard of for customers to chat and gossip over their dinner.
Overall Grade: A-
Conclusions
There is no doubt that the author of City Slices: Marketplace Fun really wanted to create more “fun” when role-playing out the humdrum activities that often happen when characters hit a city or town. And there is a lot of really good detailed “bits” of adventure here to add to any city in almost campaign setting, to breathe more life into that odd time between the last dungeon delve and the new mission to nip off and slay the evil marauding dragon. The writing is inventive and descriptive, but is designed generically enough to allow Dungeon Master to mold it neatly into their own campaign’s style. And given the amount of material provided for the price, City Slices: Marketplace Fun is worth taking a look at as an inexpensive and amusing supplement for a DM’s virtual bookshelf.
Editor’s Note: This Review’s Author received a complimentary copy of the product in PDF format from which the review was written.
Grade Card
- Presentation: B-
- - Design: B-
- - Illustrations: C+
- Content: A-
- -Crunch: B+
- -Fluff: A-
- Value: A+
