Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Authors: Brian R. James and Eric Menge
Year: 2012
Players: 2 or more
Ages: 12+
Category: D&D RPG Supplement
Pages: 128 pages
Retail Price: $29.95 hardcover
Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue is the latest supplement for the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting featuring the Underdark city fans of D&D are most likely familiar with mainly through Bob Salvatore’s series of Drizzt novels. One interesting aspect of the supplement is the fact it’s rule system neutral and provides information on running the city in any D&D edition – in almost any fantasy role-playing game system actually. Of course, there aren’t too many RPGs featuring the drow but still, for many gamers, the fact they can utilize 3.5 rules or earlier is a selling point in my opinion. On the flip side, there may be some out there who’ll miss the “crunch” of any specific Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition rules so it’s important to make note of that. The supplement is rife with all one would need to run adventures focusing on the drow and their Underdark city as there’s plenty of adventure hooks, campaign ideas, and faction info about the various houses so there’s a lot for players and DMs to chew over.
Let’s start by saying the production quality of Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue is top notch and makes for a fun reading experience. Nothing seems out of place as far as layout and the artwork ranges from really good to absolutely stunning. Six chapters make up the book and make no bones about it, the focus here is on running a campaign in which drow are the central characters. This might shorten the number of gamers who’ll feel a need to purchase the supplement but drow characters, and in reality playing evil characters, is the nature of this beast.
Chapter two delves into the spider goddess Lolth as well as the over-arching religion of the drow including other lesser gods worshipped by the populace. Much of this chapter delves into aspects of drow society in order to flesh out the culture and race so as to present them as much more than a simple one note/catch all group of villains. Although I’m not one apt to play an evil character, or even run a campaign where the players represent the bad guys, I have an impression some fans of D&D shy away from including drow in their campaigns because they felt there isn’t enough meat in which to craft a truly three dimensional culture; playing a sort of Snidley Whiplash mustache twirling evil doer smacks me to be about as boring to game as a Dudley Do-Right style of lawful good paladin blindly stumbling along the path of righteousness.
Chapter three details the drow factions and houses with detail given for each including the current rank of power they exert in drow society as well as the size of membership. Each house is given a bit of personality to differentiate it from other houses and rules are included to create new houses as well. Could it be your band of adventurers could rise to power through the creation of their own faction?
The fourth chapter tackles the City of Spiders more so in bullet style giving gamers enough info in order to get a feel for each district of the city as well as landmarks which would be familiar to residents of the Underdark mainly and citizens of Menzoberranzan in particular. Overall this is probably the least interesting section of the book for GMs as those with experience will discard much of the high level description of districts in order to create their own customized experiences for the players while those new to running an RPG will feel the lack of overall depth to the chapter leaves them with only straws to grasp at.
Chapter five is a look into the Underdark outside the great city and a good amount of attention is given to various regions as well as changes depending on time periods. The little explored Northdark could lead to a lot of really fun adventures and I found this chapter to be a welcome addition which gamers will appreciate.
The final chapter of the book dives into much of what it means to be a drow. How the drow society judges the worth of its members, how that worth can rise or fall based on deeds done or even random circumstances, and how the characters can look to gain status in the community. Fans of Salvartore’s Drizzt books will no doubt get a kick out of the scoring his character has sunk to during his adventuring career according to some sidebar info. The chapter finishes up with some tips on role playing drow, which is equally valuable for players and GMs alike.
All in all there’s a lot to really dig with Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue but the actual value of the source book is going to have a lot to do, at the end of the day, with the person who’s plunking down their hard earned ducats. First off, the pricing seems a bit steep for the page count. Don’t get me wrong this is an excellent book but I tend to think somewhere in the area of ten to fifteen cents per page strikes me about right when it comes to a hard cover RPG supplement. I’ll veer to the higher end when you have a lot of really nice original artwork, as well as useful content, included in a book but with Menzoberranzan you’re looking at a cent or two under a quarter a page and I think that’s a bit too high IMO folks. If you’re going to buy the book, swing over to an online retailer and get it there; Amazon has it for less than twenty bucks and that strikes me as a much more reasonable price.
Lastly, publishing the supplement as an non-edition specific book is a bit of a double edged sword for WoTC; on one hand it announces the fact the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons has a limited shelf life and Wizards wants to provide materials that will appeal to gamers looking to take part in the future edition on the horizon while, at the same time, they may be leading to discontent from their core 4th edition gamers because there isn’t a shred of info specifically geared to that specific crowd and those mechanics. Personally, I like this but I’m sure there will be plenty of others out there who won’t.
I think Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue is an excellent book for folks who play D&D as long as they understand its focus is on a drow-centric campaign and will hold the most value for those who hold a warm place in their hearts for the dark elves.
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Interesting. What about maps and particularly maps or pictures of drow architecture?
There are a couple of maps that are pretty nice and loads of photography. I can’t say there are any images devoted strictly to architecture but there’s enough background to give you a good feel for the setting.