EZG reviews Urban Dressing: Pirate Town
This Urban Dressing-installment clocks in at 13 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 8 pages of content, so let’s take a look!
There are plenty of Pirate Towens out there – from Freeport to Sasserine and Riddelport to Raor Coast’s Port Shaw, there are quite a few of the cities out there and this book seeks to provide a handy way to make them stand out more. The pdf thus kicks off with a massive 110-entry table of sights and sounds to provide local color and hooks at the miniscule level for the PCs – you know, all those small things that make a place come alive: Cured sharks, loinclothed pearl-divers, ordered men from the military on a futile quest to bring order, a mausoleum built of skulls and bones…from the mundane to the extravagant, a neat array of fluff. The next table, spanning 50 entries, contains one sample business for to integrate into the campaign.
It should be noted that, between fishmongers, tattoo parlors and the like, a counterfeiter called “All that Glitters” makes not only for a cool entry, but also for a neat easter-egg for RSP’s superb print book of the same name. The type of business is provided in brackets behind the name of the business. And yes, tarboys and similar often neglected professions are here. Kudos indeed!
A massive second table of 50 entries containing sample people of interest can also be found herein and besides corrupt scum, people hustling to get along etc., sea hags and similar creatures make for a small, rare touch of the exotic here for a brilliantly balanced table between the weird and the kind-of-mundane – as far as living in such a city can be considered such.
Of course, sometimes a DM just needs a quick hook/complication to spring upon your players – the table containing 20 events – from gaining the black spot from a stranger to finding a bloated body to weirder entries – yet another neat table. The pdf’s final page is taken up by a one-page spread artwork in b/w of a harbor.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to RSP’s superb, streamlined and printer-friendly 2-column b/w-standard with thematically-fitting, neat b/w-stock art. The pdf comes fully bookmarked and in two versions, one optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out.
Author Josh Vogt delivers one of the most rounded versions of the diverse Urban Dressing-pdfs, with details galore to flesh out a city of the type, ample things to do and each table hitting home just as it should – immensely useful, fun and just helpful, this pdf makes for a great purchase at a very fair price to bring more life to your pirate towns. Final verdict? 5 stars + seal of approval.
You can get this cool dressing for all piratey towns here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop.
Endzeitgeist out.
