Sharn: City of Towers

Overall score:

When Eberron was first announced I had much the same reaction as Fellfrosch did: it seems to be nothing more than an “everything including the kitchen sink” setting, and I never bothered to read it until Fell asked me to review Sharn: City of Towers. What Keith Baker’s setting lacks in originality, due to having to include every aspect of D&D, it more than makes up for with the quality of the writing and presentation; it takes the same old same old but throws in some pleasant new ideas. With Sharn, Baker and Wyatt manage to do just that: they’ve taken a typical fantasy city and built it up instead of out, all while working with the D&D 3.5 rules instead of being restricted by them.

What impressed me the most about Sharn is that not only did the authors describe every nook and cranny of the city, but they did so in a non-tedious, non-repetitive way, leaving lots of room for the GM to customize city areas to his needs. Each neighborhood in Sharn is described in just enough detail, usually a few paragraphs, for the reader to get a feel for the life there while leaving the game mechanic details to a few numbers at the start of each entry. Each area lists what type and number of possible businesses, residences, and organizations might be there, and the GM can then look at a chart near the front of the book and randomly determine what would be there. One you know what’s readily available to the players you can look up the cost of that service—just about everything is covered from Adventure guilds to brothels, as well as things more unique to the Eberron setting such as sending packages on the Lightning Rail or buying a Marquee to explore Xen’Drik. Those that don’t want to read all 50+ pages on the different locations in the city can just browse through the first section (aptly titled “A Visitor’s Guide” to Sharn), which summarizes the key differences between the major sections and includes the aforementioned prices.

The book presents the basics on Politics and Law in the city, but thankfully the authors spend more time on how to incorporate these aspects into an adventure than on actually listing lots of silly laws or what the different tax rates are. This chapter talks about things like how the city watch deals with adventures, thieves, and smuggling, and how roleplaying these aspects instead of just ignoring them outright can add a new level to city adventures. The political intrigue suggestions are worth noting, since many of the powerful people of Sharn are out for something; the authors give some good advice on how to get your players involved with the different power groups via doing favors or having them framed for various crimes. There’s some good advice on how to run a city adventure and how it’s different from a standard dungeon crawl—after all, you can’t just launch a fireball in a crowded city street without consequences, now can you?

Besides this, nothing much new is presented in this book. There are some Sharn-only gangs and villains, as well as feats, prestige classes, spells, and monsters; but it’s all your standard D&D fare. Most of it is only usefully if you’re planning on running your whole campaign in Sharn and rarely leaving. Some of the feats and spells only work within the city. That being said, they’re all at the expected level of a Wizard’s product: they're good, just not worth noting.

Despite how well of a job done describing the city as someplace where 200,000 people live, I’m still left confused as to what Sharn is actually like, structurally. The book describes it as massive towers that extend up a mile or more into the sky yet the descriptions, art, and few maps tend to all contradict each other. Basically there are 3 levels to Sharn each built on top of each other (not inclideing the underground parts). Yet each level has its own layout, the pictures show the sky and no massive towers around or above things at the lower levels and I’m still not sure how all the towers are connected. The maps show bridges and small walkways, yet descriptions and pictures show the different levels with their own ground (like multiple levels of a parking garage). It’s terribly confusing, and while I know that art of these books doesn’t always reflect what’s written, the fact that the authors tend to say different things as well doesn’t help.

Sharn: City of Towers is a book that anyone playing Eberron right now could use, since the city is a great place to begin adventures and one of the few ways to get to the southern continent of Xen'Drick, which is a focus of the setting. If you plan on having your players there a lot then it’s a great buy. Baker and Wyatt do an excellent job of presenting a city you can spend your whole campaign in; if you're only planning a quick stop you probaly won't have use for the majority of what's presented. It is $30 for a little less then 200 pages—though it does come with a free CD of bland and uninspiring music to use in your game.

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Written by Spriggan on August 22nd, 2005