Evocative City Sites: Clockwork Tower by T.H. Gulliver is a role playing game supplement published by Rite Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a 41 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.95 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one page is the Open Game License and two pages are ads.
The description of the tower is an in-character piece of prose with sidebars that contain the actual mechanics, which is different. The clock tower in question is not simply something that tells, the time, but a place that, due to a problem with the tower’s chronomancy, is travelling back in time. In the prose, the narrator gets a letter from himself telling that soon a clock tower that has always been there will appear – there’s a statement that the writer was using draconic because normal language lacked the proper tenses.
Black and white maps of the tower – which extensively feature gears – are within the text. The tower was originally constructed as a way for the builder to get a lot done in a short amount of time, but an argument with her chronomancer lover has resulted in it being sent back in time. The builder is still in the tower, but trapped in slow time, and there is a clockwork fencer and an imp that was the familiar of the chronomancer. A creature is also stalking the tower and will attack any who try to fix it. There are also a number of adventure seeds. Stats are provided for the three NPCs, the new monster, the temporal stalker, and a new magic item.
Finally, 24 pages are enlarged maps of the tower for use with miniatures.
Evocative City Sites: Clockwork Tower in Review
The PDF is decently bookmarked with major and minor sections linked. The text maintains a two column black and white format and appeared to be almost free of errors. Apart from the maps, which are nicely drawn, there are some stock black and white images used. Presentation is decent.
Chronomancy is always a difficult thing, no matter what the medium, but this does it quite nicely. There are also some nice tables on the side effects caused by the odd flow of time in the tower; random effects, random combat effects and random magic effects.
The title of this supplement really doesn’t do it justice, especially when combined with the stock clock tower image. It is far more than it might seem to be, as it isn’t simply a clock but far more than that. Evocative City Sites: Clockwork Tower is one of the more evocative sites in the series and it can be found by clicking here.
Leave a Reply