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Eberron
City of Stormreach (Eberron, #3.5)
Explore a city of untold adventures and intrigue.
City of Stormreach explores the most important frontier city of Xen'drik, where opportunity and peril walk hand-in-hand. The book builds on the plots and characters featured in Dungeons & Dragons Stormreach, the exciting MMORPG produced by Atari and Turbine, and introduces new adversaries and new locations to explore.
Stormreach is a city rich with adventure, where familiar elements intermingle with the unknown. This book describes the shadowy ruins, sinister organizations, and treasure-laden dungeons that make Stormreach such an appealing destination for player characters. In addition to providing Dungeon Masters with a richly detailed city for their Xen'drik-based campaigns, this supplement presents information on the movers and shakers of Stormreach, ready-to-use adversaries, adventure hooks, and location maps.
City of Stormreach explores the most important frontier city of Xen'drik, where opportunity and peril walk hand-in-hand. The book builds on the plots and characters featured in Dungeons & Dragons Stormreach, the exciting MMORPG produced by Atari and Turbine, and introduces new adversaries and new locations to explore.
Stormreach is a city rich with adventure, where familiar elements intermingle with the unknown. This book describes the shadowy ruins, sinister organizations, and treasure-laden dungeons that make Stormreach such an appealing destination for player characters. In addition to providing Dungeon Masters with a richly detailed city for their Xen'drik-based campaigns, this supplement presents information on the movers and shakers of Stormreach, ready-to-use adversaries, adventure hooks, and location maps.
160 pages, Hardcover
Published February 19, 2008
About the author
Keith Baker
73 books194 followersI've been interested in games since I first fell under the sinister influence of the Dungeons & Dragons boxed set, back in sixth grade. Over the last few decades I have managed to turn gaming from a hobby into a career. Here is a list of the highlights of my life as a game designer. If you have any questions, let me know!
From 1994-2002, I fell into the computer games industry. My first job was with Magnet Interactive Studios, in Washington DC. Sadly, Magnet never managed to hit the big time as a game developer. I worked on a number of projects during my stay at Magnet; for a time I was lead designer on a game called BLUESTAR, a position that was held at other times by such roleplaying luminaries as Ken Rolston and Zeb Cook. However, the only work that ever saw the light of day was some level design on the abstract arcade game Icebreaker.
Magnet began a slow implosion in 1996, and along with a number of other people I went to work for a Colorado company called VR1. I started as lead designer on VR-1 Crossroads, a text-based MUD centered on warring conspiracies – The X-Files meets Illuminati, with a world of dreams thrown in for good measure. When VR1 decided to move away from text games, I started work on a graphical MMORPG based on the pulp serials. After a few twists and turns, the project ended up being known as Lost Continents. But early in 2002 I decided that I'd had enough of the computer games industry and left VR1 to focus on writing. Then in June of 2002, Wizards of the Coast announced their Fantasy Setting Search, and I thought: What about pulp fantasy? And the rest is history. . .
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
From 1994-2002, I fell into the computer games industry. My first job was with Magnet Interactive Studios, in Washington DC. Sadly, Magnet never managed to hit the big time as a game developer. I worked on a number of projects during my stay at Magnet; for a time I was lead designer on a game called BLUESTAR, a position that was held at other times by such roleplaying luminaries as Ken Rolston and Zeb Cook. However, the only work that ever saw the light of day was some level design on the abstract arcade game Icebreaker.
Magnet began a slow implosion in 1996, and along with a number of other people I went to work for a Colorado company called VR1. I started as lead designer on VR-1 Crossroads, a text-based MUD centered on warring conspiracies – The X-Files meets Illuminati, with a world of dreams thrown in for good measure. When VR1 decided to move away from text games, I started work on a graphical MMORPG based on the pulp serials. After a few twists and turns, the project ended up being known as Lost Continents. But early in 2002 I decided that I'd had enough of the computer games industry and left VR1 to focus on writing. Then in June of 2002, Wizards of the Coast announced their Fantasy Setting Search, and I thought: What about pulp fantasy? And the rest is history. . .
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 30, 2012
Stuff I Read D&D Edition – City of Stormreach
Well here is my penultimate review of an Eberron supplement, as after this there is only Faiths of Eberron and I will have read and reviewed them all. So soon enough I’ll have to start reviewing other supplements and books, but for the time being I’m staying planted in Eberron. City of Stormreach is kind of like a sequel to Secrets of Xen’drik as it is the second of the Eberron books that deals with the southern continent. This one, however, deals much more exclusively with the city of Stormreach, as the title implies. And I must say, it does provide enough depth and options for a city perched on the edge of the wild unknown. What Secrets of Xen’drik revealed was a land of mystery, always changing and open. What City of Stormreach does is provide a region of relative stability in the swirling chaos. Not that the city is a very stable place, full of agents from most of the organizations of the world, good and evil, benign and malignant. The politics and characters introduced in the book are solid, and go a long way to giving the city a very unique feel while maintaining the Eberron feel. Indeed, with most Eberron cities (or at least the ones that get books) there is the motif of decay and ruin surrounding the newer constructions and lurking underfoot.
It is a very interesting part of Eberron, for me, because with Sharn and Stormreach and other cities like that, they are built on the past, obscuring it from view but still it lingers, giving the feel of both rich history and lost greatness. In places like Sharn that history is hidden under the city and isn’t very visible from the outside, if one were just walking around. Not so with Stormreach, which sits in the shadows of the ancient giant ruins it is built around. And, as Sharn was destroyed a number of times, so too has the area around Stormreach risen and fallen, though with more different races than with Sharn. And, in good Eberron fashion, the particulars to what the history of the city is remains mysterious and, ultimately, up to the DM and party to decide. It might be like this with other campaign settings, but with Eberron especially it seems like a great deal is left up in the air. Options are given for the secrets of the Storm Lords, for example, but nothing is specifically assigned. The DM must either assign the secrets as she sees fit or make them up fresh. Not that making them up isn’t always an option in any setting, but as I have seen Eberron seems to leave more open than most.
But even the stuff that is spelled out is well done and opens more story and campaign possibilities than are closed. The gangs are interesting, as is the various plots of the Storm Lords. And coupled with the ambitions of the Twelve, some rakshasas, daelkyr lords, giants, and private enterprises, the city is teeming with possibilities. And it eases any campaign into Xen’drik’s interior, as it contains a lot of mid level adversaries to face. It also has a large number of high level encounters, which makes this, along with Secrets of Xen’drik, probably the easiest place to have a very high level or even epic level campaign, as it is much less limited in what kinds of monsters or races or NPCs might show up. There are a good amount of CR 12-20 encounters that are given full stats, unique monsters that give Xen’drik a slightly twisted and monstrous feel to it. It makes running a high level campaign more plausible without having to level up NPCs and encounters more suited for Khorvaire. It just works hand in hand with Secrets of Xen’drik to provide a more complete picture of the continent.
And, as I said, it does contain some resources that any DM might find useful, notably the NPCs and monsters that are given full stats and included in the book. There are also campaign and story ideas, including some more information on the House Kundarak tower that I was intrigued about while reading about it earlier in the book. I like these inclusions here perhaps more so than in Secrets of Xen’drik because while they are still optional, they are more concrete than in Secrets of Xen’drik, tied to actual locations and personalities in the city proper, which I like a bit more than dungeons to go through. These are more city themed stories, which give them a more contained feel, in the sense that they are not out somewhere but linked to the larger story of Eberron. Xen’drik is a place that some might feel “doesn’t count” after all, as it is largely unknown, but this book draws it into the larger picture of Eberron quite nicely. And, with that in mind, I give this supplement an 8/10.
Well here is my penultimate review of an Eberron supplement, as after this there is only Faiths of Eberron and I will have read and reviewed them all. So soon enough I’ll have to start reviewing other supplements and books, but for the time being I’m staying planted in Eberron. City of Stormreach is kind of like a sequel to Secrets of Xen’drik as it is the second of the Eberron books that deals with the southern continent. This one, however, deals much more exclusively with the city of Stormreach, as the title implies. And I must say, it does provide enough depth and options for a city perched on the edge of the wild unknown. What Secrets of Xen’drik revealed was a land of mystery, always changing and open. What City of Stormreach does is provide a region of relative stability in the swirling chaos. Not that the city is a very stable place, full of agents from most of the organizations of the world, good and evil, benign and malignant. The politics and characters introduced in the book are solid, and go a long way to giving the city a very unique feel while maintaining the Eberron feel. Indeed, with most Eberron cities (or at least the ones that get books) there is the motif of decay and ruin surrounding the newer constructions and lurking underfoot.
It is a very interesting part of Eberron, for me, because with Sharn and Stormreach and other cities like that, they are built on the past, obscuring it from view but still it lingers, giving the feel of both rich history and lost greatness. In places like Sharn that history is hidden under the city and isn’t very visible from the outside, if one were just walking around. Not so with Stormreach, which sits in the shadows of the ancient giant ruins it is built around. And, as Sharn was destroyed a number of times, so too has the area around Stormreach risen and fallen, though with more different races than with Sharn. And, in good Eberron fashion, the particulars to what the history of the city is remains mysterious and, ultimately, up to the DM and party to decide. It might be like this with other campaign settings, but with Eberron especially it seems like a great deal is left up in the air. Options are given for the secrets of the Storm Lords, for example, but nothing is specifically assigned. The DM must either assign the secrets as she sees fit or make them up fresh. Not that making them up isn’t always an option in any setting, but as I have seen Eberron seems to leave more open than most.
But even the stuff that is spelled out is well done and opens more story and campaign possibilities than are closed. The gangs are interesting, as is the various plots of the Storm Lords. And coupled with the ambitions of the Twelve, some rakshasas, daelkyr lords, giants, and private enterprises, the city is teeming with possibilities. And it eases any campaign into Xen’drik’s interior, as it contains a lot of mid level adversaries to face. It also has a large number of high level encounters, which makes this, along with Secrets of Xen’drik, probably the easiest place to have a very high level or even epic level campaign, as it is much less limited in what kinds of monsters or races or NPCs might show up. There are a good amount of CR 12-20 encounters that are given full stats, unique monsters that give Xen’drik a slightly twisted and monstrous feel to it. It makes running a high level campaign more plausible without having to level up NPCs and encounters more suited for Khorvaire. It just works hand in hand with Secrets of Xen’drik to provide a more complete picture of the continent.
And, as I said, it does contain some resources that any DM might find useful, notably the NPCs and monsters that are given full stats and included in the book. There are also campaign and story ideas, including some more information on the House Kundarak tower that I was intrigued about while reading about it earlier in the book. I like these inclusions here perhaps more so than in Secrets of Xen’drik because while they are still optional, they are more concrete than in Secrets of Xen’drik, tied to actual locations and personalities in the city proper, which I like a bit more than dungeons to go through. These are more city themed stories, which give them a more contained feel, in the sense that they are not out somewhere but linked to the larger story of Eberron. Xen’drik is a place that some might feel “doesn’t count” after all, as it is largely unknown, but this book draws it into the larger picture of Eberron quite nicely. And, with that in mind, I give this supplement an 8/10.
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