Cities: Shadepoint by Chris Bissette is a role playing game supplement published by Loot The Room. Although it is specifically aimed at Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, it is a mostly generic supplement. The supplement describes a mining city situated on top of a cliff overlooking a canyon.
This is a twenty five page Pay What You Want PDF that is available from RPGNow. One page of this is the front cover, one page the front matter, one page the Contents and one page is a variety of ads. As well as the PDF, there are also two maps of the city, both black and white at base but one has the various districts coloured in.
The Introduction starts with an overview of the city, its demographics, where to place it, its government, with the six most important positions described, and crime.
Next three Mining Organisations are covered. Shadepoint is a mining city situated on a huge deposit of black onyx, and the mining companies are rich, especially the oldest as the other two have to pay them a percentage. Three Guilds & Organisations are also covered. One is a trading company that negotiates deals and transports ore, one is a regulatory body that ensures all operating in the city use the same weights and measures and the third has its basis in a former adventuring party that assists with the mining companies when they unearth monsters.
Next there is an introduction to the twelve districts of the city, with hyperlinks to them. Each of the twelve districts is then detailed. Each has an overview of the district’s feel, several major landmarks and, in the majority of cases, a number of rumours. Each also has a map of the city with the district being covered coloured in.
The Council describes the six NPCs of the council in more detail; they were briefly mentioned in the introduction.
The Receiving End is the former adventuring party mentioned earlier, with the two surviving members described and how the organisation operates.
Finally, Adventures in Shadepoint has two adventure ideas, each of which is more than just a simple hook and has several different ways in which characters could become involved.
Cities: Shadepoint in Review
The PDF is decently bookmarked with the major sections linked. The Contents is more thorough, covering the subsections as well and is also hyperlinked. The Districts of Shadepoint section is also hyperlinked to the various districts. Although the bookmarking could have been better, to the level of the Contents, navigation is well above average for a comparatively short supplement.
The text maintains a three column landscape format and a few minor errors were noticed. The landscape format is not convenient to read on a typical 7″ tablet – the text needs zooming in on otherwise it is too small – and the document size does not seem to match any standard and is certainly not designed to be printed out.
As well as the map of the city, there are a number of full colour illustrations, some of them intended for specific characters. In a few places, the background of the city map on the page makes the text more difficult to read than it should be. The map should have been faded out more. Presentation is in general very good.
As mentioned, this may be aimed at 5E but it is also deliberately almost system-neutral. There are no real game stats, making it easy to use with other systems (although relevant stats may need creating). The city should also be comparatively easy to drop into many settings; as it states in the introduction, it does not need to be on a canyon, any cliff overlooking water will do (the city does have docks and trades through them). It could be used as a small city-state, or perhaps as a fairly self-governing city in a larger country.
Shadepoint itself is interesting and a bit different. It is a trade and mercantile city, which is quite common, but having it sited on a hill of almost pure onyx adds to the character, and the appearance, as the onyx is used in the construction of the buildings. There are a few major NPCs described in enough detail and enough locations that have been given an overview of to use the city. A GM will probably need to flesh Shadepoint out more, but there is certainly enough to give this a head start. Cities: Shadepoint is a decent small city supplement that is well-presented for its size and it can be checked out for free by clicking here.
Leave a Reply