Reviews for Cities of Bone/Includes Book/Campaign Guide/Booklet/Poster Map/Cards

The average rating for Cities of Bone/Includes Book/Campaign Guide/Booklet/Poster Map/Cards based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-25 00:00:00 Sheryl L. Mosier I could give the outline of the Forest Maker like I've done for the other Dark Sun adventures I've reviewed...but honestly, the biggest problem is that there barely is one. The PCs start in Tyr because reasons, go to Altaruk, go to Rafernard's forest, realize that the "Great One" there is actually not what she seems, fight her, and the adventure is over. Nearly everything else is padding. There's a bunch of random encounters, but they don't have any greater connections to the plot and they're only there to pad out the time so that the journey to the forest isn't entirely a series of rolls on the wandering monster tables. There's a crazed ranger who just happens to have a flaming sword that's especially effective against sorcerer-kings, a group of elven traders--and the section that introduces them is called "Low Elf Esteem," thrown in only to add a stupid pun and with no relation to the elves' behavior--a fire drake chowing down on pilgrims mesmerized by the force of Abalache-Re's psychic call, and some raiding giants. There's even a whole "subplot" with a defiler who wants access to a tree of life in the middle of Rafernard's forest. The PCs disrupt an attempt by her thugs to beat up a preserver who tried to attack Rafernard, later get attacked by her, and either kill her or she trails them for the rest of the adventure and then gives up when they get to the forest because she realizes she's outmatched. So, why is she there, exactly? One of the minor useless details did get my mind working, though. There's a moneychanger in Tyr's marketplace and notes that he can change coins from all over Athas for only a 10% fee. Since previous books have occasionally mentioned old coins but nothing else, and since the boxed set just had the standard D&D coins other than substituting ceramic for copper, this is quite the change. Do the different city states have different coinages, the same way that Veiled Alliance implies that they have different languages? I'd love to do something with that if my players wouldn't stage a mutiny when I told them that Urikite ceramic pieces are only worth 5 bits in Tyr, but they can go to a money changer to get them switched for a 15% fee or maybe use some of those Raamite coins they found and by this point they've already flipped the table on me. But it's fun to think of for worldbuilding. Abalache-Re's plan involves skipping a bunch of the steps of dragon metamorphosis laid out in Dragon Kings, just like every other sorcerer-king we've run into before. But since Abalache-Re is an idiot, she's planning to use the forest maker ruse to jump from a 21st level dragon to a 25th level dragon--which, if you remember the spells in Dragon Kings, is the beginning of the animalistic period. So assuming that she succeeds in her spell, Raam would tear itself apart with civil war or raise up another ruler in her place while she was off tearing around the Tablelands and eating caravans, and that's assuming that the Dragon didn't kill her for being a threat to the stability of the remaining city-states. So the best way for the PCs to stop her plans is probably to ignore the entire adventure and head off to Raam and lead a revolt rather than dealing with any of this. To top it all off, the adventure awards an insulting few thousand XP a suggested level when the characters need hundreds of thousands to advance. I’ve complained before about a lack of XP guidelines in Dark Sun adventures, but I’d rather have no guidelines than guidelines that are obviously wrong. Also, there’s essentially no treasure anywhere. They can’t loot Abalache-Re’s secret underground compound because fiat, she doesn’t have any magic item because she “doesn’t need them,” even though the Dragon carries dozens of magic items at all times because they provide a survival advantage (though see above about Abalache-Re being an idiot). It’s not offensively bad like Freedom, but it has very little tying its parts together and no reward other than the enmity of Abalache-Re, who’s still a sorcerer-king even if she is an idiot. Sure, survival is its own reward in Dark Sun, but this is taking it a bit too far. I suppose a good GM could wrangle something worthwhile out of this, but it would take a lot of effort and not be that worthwhile. It only avoids one star because it's not actually actively terrible, just boring and pointless.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-03-14 00:00:00 Robert Trend not the whole set. ruleset and screen.