In preparation for the release of Ptolus, his upcoming d20 mega-setting (almost 700 pages long!), Monte Cook has just released A Player’s Guide to Ptolus.
Monte has said that Ptolus is going to be very GM-friendly, and he had some interesting things to say about it in his interview with TT, as well.
Based on the Player’s Guide, it looks like Ptolus is going to be very GM-friendly. In short, every campaign setting should offer a player’s guide like this one.
Here’s the skinny: The Player’s Guide to Ptolus is 32 pages long, and costs $2.99. At the moment, you can download the PDF version for free at DriveThruRPG, and there’s a pre-order program available that includes 5 copies of the Player’s Guide with the main book.
Of those 32 pages, 4 are given over the Open Game License, ads and so forth, leaving 28 pages of content. That may not sound like much, but for a price ranging from free to $2.99, I think it’s very reasonable.
The hook behind the Player’s Guide is this: It’s required reading for players in a Ptolus campaign, and it contains all of the basic info that they need to create PCs who are well-grounded in the setting.
That basic info includes:
- An introduction describing the core ideas behing the Ptolus setting.
- An overview of the city of Ptolus, quarter by quarter and including info on power groups, noble houses, etc.
- Introductions to the major organizations in Ptolus, plus a list of notable NPCs.
- A two-page map of the city, with important locations marked, plus a map of the Empire.
- A timeline of the setting’s history.
- Guidelines for creating a Ptolus character.
- A two-page character sheet.
The margins are full of NPC quotes, tidbits about life in the city and other notes, and the book is illustrated throughout.
The idea is that once a player has read this book, they’ll have a good feel for the campaign world, know what it looks like — and most importantly, be able to create a character that has ties to the setting, connections within the city, etc.
As a GM, I love this idea. (Not just love, but italicized love, baby.)
I’m always looking for ways to immerse my players in the setting, and it can sometimes be tough to give them an overview that is compelling without being overwhelming. And that’s exactly what the Player’s Guide to Ptolus does.
Understandably, players aren’t always interested in buying books for upcoming games, and the Player’s Guide neatly solves that problem as well. Even if the free PDF version doesn’t stay free, at $2.99 it’s well within most folks’ reach — and it’s cheap enough that I’d probably buy a copy for everyone in my group if I were going to run a Ptolus campaign.
I only have one complaint about this otherwise excellent book: The character sheet is pretty boring, and it doesn’t list skills (instead, it has a long column of lines for you to write them in yourself). It’s possible that the Ptolus core book will change up the standard d20 System skills enough to justify this, but I doubt it.
This idea — offering a low-cost introduction to a complex, detailed campaign setting, structured to give players plenty of tools for character design and to inspire their interest in the game — is so good that I hope it catches on. I’d love to see a book like this for every campaign setting out there.
If you’ve got the slightest interest in Ptolus, I recommend checking out the Player’s Guide. And if you’ve already done so, I’d love to hear what you think of it — and whether you agree with my take on it.
Martin,
Italicized love, indeed! I had the entire setting pre-ordered as a Chrismas gift, so when I got the 5 free Player’s Guides, I immediately gave 4 of them up to my players (after reading it, of course). They were extremely interested. Then I told them that the Campaign Setting wasn’t coming out until August, and I wouldn’t have anything ready for them until late fall, early winter, and they actually groaned. 🙁
I am as much excited about this as you are! My only complaint is that it didn’t go into the Litorans (tiger-race) at all, except as a teaser. This would be the first race that I would want to try out as a player, and now my players have to wait until I get the Setting.
Overall, it rocks!
I think more campaign settings should do this – make available a 20 page player primer as a give away, perhaps as an online pdf or on a CD-ROM with the book. Put all the necessary info for character creation (races, classes, feats, etc.) as well as a few pages of flavor to get them in the mood.
I had to make my own for Eberron to speed up character creation and to keep some of the more secretive info out of the hands of my players.
I also think new rule sets benefit from this approach. I know I bought GURPS 4th Ed based on GURPS Lite giveaway. I think Green Ronin should do something similar with True20, at least for those of us who already bought the book and are trying to talk our players into giving it a go.
I’m not terribly interested in using the setting, but I am interested from a graphic design & useability standpoint.
I’m also glad to see folks realize you don’t need to, or really want to, hand your players 100+ pages of setting and expect them to study it to play (or worse yet, expect to use 10 pages of it and have one of them obsessively go over minutae contained in the other 90 pages and gum up play).
Ben Lehman made the excellent case that in most games, the -most- you might need is 20 pages to paint the setting, crunchy details be damned. Which, of course, is the logic he took in writing Polaris, and it works rather well.
“I’m not terribly interested in using the setting, but I am interested from a graphic design & useability standpoint.”
Ditto. It’s a little sad that my only interest in the product is its supposedly GM-friendly layout and not so much the product itself. Nothing against Monte, but my interest in yet another D&D setting? Zero.
Which brings me to a new point for Martin: at what point does buying said items entitle a GM to run a game?
For example, if a GM shells out $100 for Ptolus is there an expectation that the players, even if they have no interest in the game, should give it a go? I mean, it seems a little cruel and shallow to tell your GM to take their shiny new ball home.
On the other hand, why should a GM be able to dictate what a group plays by virtue of their purchases? Were Ptolus $20 no one would give a care if that investment wasn’t recouped. $100? Now the GM has a vested interest to get some value back and try to ram that game down the throat of his/her players.
Interesting situation that game prices are putting us in…. 😉
I’m really torn about this product. $100 is a lot to spend for something I’m likely to never use. But the bennies for pre-ordering would be sorely missed if I ever actually used the product…
A players intro to the setting is definitely really worthwhile, though I have two players I haven’t even been able to convince to read a short setting intro (hmm, perhaps it needs to be in comic form, they’ve been gobbling up my Order of the Stick books).
Abulia – interesting question. The issue becomes a bit less of an issue if players are willing to let go of the idea that somehow the gaming group is some sacred thing that should never be split. If we let gaming groups form in more of a free market, then GMs who wish to keep their group together would talk with their players and chose future campaigns based on mutual interest. GMs who really are psyched to run Ptolus whose players aren’t, would buy the book and advertise for new players (who I suspect will be easy to find – especially with the marketting ploy of the cheap/free players intro… [and nothing wrong with that marketting ploy, afterall, in a free market gaming hobby, GMs have to market to their players, so games which provide such marketting materials should do better]).
When I start new games, I collect feedback from my players. But ultimately the decision is mine of what to run (no matter how many players vote for Vampire, I’m not gonna run it). If the GM isn’t psyched about running the game, it’s going to be a dud no matter the player’s interest. Of course if my interests don’t concide with my players interests, then I’ll have to recruit some new players.
Frank
I’m in the same group as Chris and Abulia… interested in the presentation, not interested in it as a purchase.
The teaser handout seems solid; I just linked off to it for a friend who’s making a homebrew D&D world. I think it hits the high points pretty well… if you haven’t considered at least what’s shown in the preview, you might want to look a little closer at your world.
As a players primer, this was an excellent example. It lists available races, character classes, possible backgrounds and enough info about the city/setting that an enterprising player can develop a convincing and useful character.
Fact is, an enterprising DM could run a campaign with this information alone. Couple it with existing Ptolus stuff (Banewarrens, Chaostech) and you could game in the setting and decide then whether you and your group likes it enough to ante up $100.
Every setting type book Wizards produces should follow this model, having a brief players companion product to go with the hardcover.
If you’re worried about getting shot down, run the shiny ball by your players first. If I buy Ptolus, I won’t expect to run it with this group — I know how low your interest is in d20 and fantasy, let alone d20 fantasy.
That said, I reserve the right to say, “This is what I want to run. If that doesn’t grab you, that’s OK — I won’t run anything for the moment.â€
It seems you may have missed it, but my comments were in general as a talking point, not directed at you. (“Uh oh, Martin’s interested in Ptolus…brace for impact!”)
Well, my situation is an interesting case study. I like Monte’s stuff usually. (When I don’t, I really don’t like it–personal taste issues.) But I was all prepared not to buy this book. Even with the AE conversions, I assume that it will be a lot of work for me to run it using AE rules (my preference). And initially it appeared that much of the material would not be usable for me. I’m pretty hard-nosed about these kind of things, now. So I was thinking, “interesting, but I’ll never come close to recouping my investment.”
OTOH, I still had some money saved up where I had absolutely refused to buy any 3.5 product from WotC. 😀
Moreover, the more info I got, the more applicable Ptolus looked. Then some of the other things I had planned to buy started to look not so hot. And suddenly my players were interested in a city game, including some high level play. Then I noticed the incipient burnout approaching with my homebrew, and realized it was time to run a product instead of making everything up myself. So it wasn’t as if my original analysis was all that terribly wrong. It was simply that the situation changed right about the time the pre-pay plan became available.
As for my players, I’m firmly in Frank’s camp. There is a lot of give and take in our group, but we all have limits. They want city game; I want a product. Check. I tell them we are playing Ptolus because I started paying for it last September. In return, I’m willing to run whatever level they want, whatever length of campaign they want. Or even multiple. We are using AE magic, because it’s so much better than the core D&D version, that I can’t stand to run the core anymore. Beyond that, how do they want to do magic equipment–standard, or bog poor as with our current rules. Pure AE rules (classes, races, equipment, combat, feats, etc.) or blend some core D&D into it? Just how much Chaositech and technology do they want to invade the fantasy (something I’m normally against)?
I can tell you, a player that felt brutally constrained by those parameters would have stopped gaming with me a long time ago. 😀
Abulia: Nope, I didn’t miss that you were speaking general. Most of my response was general — I just threw in the bit about Ptolus and our group in case you were worried. 😉
CJ: I think there’s a lot of merit to your compromise approach. Your players want a city game, Ptolus is a city game — hard to argue with that. You want Ptolus specifically, so you give them free reign on everything else. Very workable.
Jerome: Ptolus will have AE conversion material in the books, and Monte has said something about it being essentially a snap to convert to AE. In fact, if I recall correctly, the last playtesting of Ptolus was using AE, so there’s a pretty good chance conversion notes will be copious.
DMN: About the litorians — Think anthropomorphic lions and tigers with a very outdoorsy attitude and a strong cultural code of personal honor.
I see a lot of benefit in the Player’s Guide/DM’s Guide split. Setting books are the sort of thing only one person needs, and only if they’re being used. I’ve been looking for supplemental D&D 3.5 material to use in a campaign, and there are a few setting/crunch books that appeal, because they explain the focus of the book within a matter of moments, and I can see direct ways of using them in the game. As a DM, especially, I’ll rather check out the player material than the DM material initially. What the players see should be a good representation of the whole; if it can’t interest me as a player, there would be no hope of it interesting me as a GM. With each iconic setting or game, you can sum it up in few words, and usually a sentence. If you take that summary, just add the bits needed to begin playing only and publish it, you have the player’s guide.
Martin – Those are the T20 Quick Start Rules, which help sell how the game works but does little to help players create a character. You would still have to give players Chapters 3 to 7 to create their character. With “GURPS Lite” the focus is almost entirely on character creation with about two pages on game play.
Kestrel – I totally agree with you; if the player information can’t grab you, then how can you expect the GM info to sell it to the group?
I find when rolling out a new adventure that I have to be my own mini-publisher in preparing character requirements and background info. If a real publisher wants my group to try out their new world they’ll either need to start publishing more aids like a “free” Player Guide or give me enough info to shoehorn it into the Core Rules Greyhawk campaign I’m now running.
Kestral: I have been following Ptolus development carefully, especially in regards to conversion. I wouldn’t have considered it without the amount of conversion they are providing. However, I’m running an AE homebrew that really isn’t much like Diamond Throne. So it will still be a fair amount of work for me. Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue. But with Ptolus, I’m looking to minimize my work. We’ll see. 😀
Kestal: About the litorians — Think anthropomorphic lions and tigers with a very outdoorsy attitude and a strong cultural code of personal honor.
That’s pretty much the flavor I got on the Litorians, so as a player, I could create a background that would be pretty cool, but the detail is missing. How do you create this character? What are the traits and stat modifiers that are required? Is it just a Human with a tiger’s head?
As a primer, however, it totally piqued my interest. But if I wasn’t already getting Ptolus, then I might feel a little frustrated at the lack of detail.
I was looking for a new campaign to run with my players as I started to burn out with the my current Greyhawk campaign, which had a lack of cohesion on several levels (PCs coming and going, overarching storyline, disparate regions and nations, lack of easily accessible setting information for players, etc). I was torn between running Eberron, of which I have almost all of the books except for the Player’s Guide to Eberron, and Ptolus, which was ideal for the players since learning the setting was a matter of reading a free, 32-page PDF (“free” really appealed to the players).
I really liked the idea of the presentation of the Ptolus package and the all of the extra material available with pre-ordering, but I hated the idea of being coerced into preordering for the sake of making sure I not only get the bonus material, but a print copy at all. I felt like the promotional aspects of Ptolus’ release were rather manipulative. “Reserve your print copy now because we won’t be printing anymore if they run out, most of the bonus material won’t be available even if you buy the PDF versions, which are all that will be available in the end.”
There’s no discussion of future support for Ptolus in the form of more published adventures or any other material. I kept looking at my collection of Eberron books and thought about my money and time already invested for that setting. I also liked the extensive resources available in Dungeon Magazine, Dragon Magazine, WotC’s site, and the prewritten adventures already published. Eberron supports all official D&D content by design. To me, using what I had was a better investment than shelling out another $120 for a new campaign and spending so much time reviewing 1,000 pages of setting content.
Considering the only print version was the $120 package, it just didn’t seem fair to have DMs make such a massive investment in such a narrow window of time (not including DMs you preordered early) for a setting that might not pan out for them.
DMN: Mechanically, expect Litorians to excel in physical combat of all types and some forms of magic. They lose a bit of character level power (+1 LA) for some bonuses to skills used in hunting and tracking, along with their unbalanced physical stats (a +6 total) and boost to one mental stat. (INT, by RAW, but WIS is better in flavor..)
Again, litorians are kinda sparse on the flavor aspects, although that’s by design. I kinda view them as shamanic types and the AU/AE enhancements support this, with rituals associated with nature/honor and litorians having a spell template that grants bonuses to spells that buff attack or defense. How this will work in a city-type environment, I don’t know. They appeal to me a lot though, and I hope you have some success.
Amaril – your reasons for running a Greyhawk campaign are very similar to mine, as well as the trepidations about Eberron. I run my games through a University gaming club, so I’m used to players coming and going, and I run things fairly loosely to accomidate those wanting to join with those who are a little more hardcore about showing up.
Eberron was our first pick, but between having to copy and hand out the first section of the book so they can roll up characters, and the lack of themes early on made it a difficult choice beyond the first adventure. Also for most new gamers Eberron is nothing quite like they’ve experienced, with the mix of “magic-as-technology” and a heavier reliance on character development. I would suggest picking up the Players Guide though. While it does not have the crunch (classes, races, feats, etc.) that comes in the Campaign book, it has two great features. First section is about characters concepts that players can think about when creating and playing. The second section is much larger and contains all the info about the world with the deep-dark secrets taken out.
My group may go back and try Eberron again, and if we do I’ll be sure to let them all borrow this book to scan through and get a better idea of what makes this place unique.
Bento – When I started my campaign, all of the players (except one) were completely new to D&D. We chose Greyhawk for the sake of starting with the core rules and using it as a default setting. I was originally intending to run completely through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, but that became tiresome. Then the game turned into a series of shorter adventures that took the party from one nation/region/city to another without much of a connection between the adventures. What I quickly realized, though, is that the setting of Greyhawk was almost too rich with history so much so that it was only the history that made the setting unique, not the setting itself. The players had no idea what significance the history of places such as Istivin had because there was no resource for them to easily aquire and digest. In fact, most of the significant recent history in Greyhawk was forged by adventure modules, not simply laid out events such as the 100-year-long Last War in Eberron.
That’s when I started considering new settings, namely Ptolus and Eberron. The Player’s Guide to Ptolus was my hook for that setting. I thought it would be ideal for the players to really dig into a new setting with a free resource that’s an easy read, but for the various reasons stated in my earlier post, I chose Eberron instead.
In Eberron, the various locations explored throughout the campaign will have significance for the players since they will have a decent understanding of the recent and impacting history of the world. I’ve looked through the Player’s Guide to Eberron; I plan on purchasing it very soon, and I’ve already made it a recommended (but not required) reading for my players.
(Bento) Those are the T20 Quick Start Rules, which help sell how the game works but does little to help players create a character. You would still have to give players Chapters 3 to 7 to create their character. With “GURPS Lite†the focus is almost entirely on character creation with about two pages on game play.
Yep — I should have been clearer about that. They’re definitely not the same, but I do think they’re well-tailored to their target audience: The Ptolus PG focuses on setting, while the T20 QS focuses on rules, since (IMO) most folks will want to see what’s different from standard d20.
Amaril,
The only thing I’ve really kept from Greyhawk (so far) is the town Saltmarsh which is well detailed in the DMGII. I don’t know anything about the historical richness of its lands, and I find that liberating. Saltmarsh has plenty of hooks written in it that we can go back and forth between dungeon crawls and urban adventures.
Our first adventure which they just finished was one of Goodman’s Dungeon Crawl Classics. It took us an exasporating seven sessions (we game every other week for three hours) and this next Friday they get to Saltmarsh for the first time.
As for settings in general, some appeal to me and some don’t. I don’t like FR because I wouldn’t know where to begin. Player’s knowledge range from “read every book” to “don’t know, don’t care.” So far we’ve had fun with Kara-Tur (original OA setting) and now Saltmarsh.
I tend to seek out settings that are generic enough to have different types of adventures and then be able to plop in a published module when I don’t want to prep as much. Getting back to the theme of the column, its the publisher’s job to sell me on the setting and plot hooks, and sell the players new roles and feats.
I love most of Monte’s work.
Though my players don’t like AE much, they went through the length of getting me Iron Heroes as a birthday present 🙂
As for campaign wise, I’m currently running Age of Worms (Dungeon Magazine) in my own world which is a mix up of original material along with various alterations picked up from computer games like Thief series and The Elder Scroll series.
I always like to insert and update the gaming world with new material I find. After reading the Ptolus Players Guide, it’s inevitable… Ptolus will surface on Talamasia’s landmass if my players like it or not 🙂
Of course I never force my players into doing anything, but as long as it’s my home brew cooking and I’m the cook, they would eat it one way or another.
Two of my players already read the guide and the e-mails I’ve received from them show of the great anticipation on their part, which makes it much more exciting for me to run a campaign there.
Monte, I’m sure Ptolus would be GM Friendly, like most of Malhavoc’s products and I’m happy to have it preordered.