labcats | Done With Shackled City

I have now finished reading The Shackled City, a 3.x campaign, and I'm able to see its virtues, as well as its flaws. I gather that this was one of, if not the, first attempts to create a setting where the characters could go from 1st to 20th level in a city. As such, it does interesting things with recurring NPCs, both friends and foes.

It also does a fine job of looking at the magic available in the D&D world and saying, "Okay, now how does society as a whole change because of this?" The title city is inside a volcano, and is vulnerable to floods, but the people don't worry about this because clerics can create wands to control the floods. And this is the crux of one of the adventures. In another, one enterprising woman uses a brown mold as a refrigeration device for her inn or tavern (I forget which and don't really feel like looking it up). I really liked that.

Tactics for many foes are spelled out in detail, down to the spells they'll have prepared ahead of time. There are social events where the PCs can make friends and allies with the high and mighty. All of this is worth doing. It's just that I'm spoiled by companies that do this in their scenarios as a matter of course. And this isn't quite fair of me, especially as Call of Cthulhu, fr'ex, has the advantage of not having to invent the entire world.

It's not as useful to me in terms of transplanting stuff as I had hoped, and a lot of assumptions about the city and the law and what PCs will do did raise my skepticism. But, I got my $10 worth of this book, which originally sold for $60. If anyone's interested in it, let me know.