Free Role Playing Game Supplement Review: FT – Saydown City

FT – Saydown City is a free role playing game supplement published by Adventures in Filbar. This is a supplement in the FT range, the 30th in the series, which primarily cover urban areas, in this case the capital city of the Denali Monarchy, Saydown, which is visited in the NC series and is the setting for the adventure NC7 – Giant Foothold. The adventure is aimed at the D&D 5th Edition game.

This is a forty page PDF which lacks bookmarks. One page is the front cover, the standard gray colour denoting a free supplement with a stock image of a city on it, one page is a labelled map of the city which would appear to have been created in Hexographer from Inkwell Ideas and three pages have six stock images intended to represent various areas of the city and the elite guards, as well as a royal symbol.

One page gives an overview of the city and some recent history. The city itself is then described. This is divided into ten lettered districts with 119 locations described across them all, followed by a description of the Fringe, the area outside the main city which is effectively a slum area.

Each district is named and has a brief paragraph describing it. Each location is also named and the name of the primary NPC is given, and a paragraph giving details on the location, such as what goods or services can be ground there, and a brief outline of the NPC themselves.

Finally, there is a single page on Citizen Characteristics. This is a collection of eight d12 tables that can be used to randomly roll up an NPC’s appearance.

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, given its length, these would have been useful. The text maintains the publisher’s standard single column layout with a border and a few minor errors were noted. The map is decent and serviceable and the illustrations, whilst being stock, do do their job reasonably well.

The supplement lacks any statistics so, even though the adventure set in it may be primarily intended for D&D 5E, the city itself is effectively system-agnostic. It should also not be too difficult dropping the entire city, perhaps as a city state, into another setting in a suitable place (the Denali setting has a Hawaiian feel to it).

Throughout the description of the town there are a number of minor matters that could be expanded into adventure hooks, as well as references to changes following the ascension of the new king which suggest that there is a serious problem simmering below the surface. These are probably hinting at the events of the adventure Giant Foothold.

Saydown City is the largest free supplement from Adventures in Filbar in some time; recent free offerings have tended to be short or single page adventures. In fact, it’s probably the largest free supplement ever from the publisher. Overall, FT – Saydown City is a pretty useful supplement describing a small city that can easily be dropped into many settings, and it can be obtained for free by clicking here.