Kuunari

Background

Neverwinter is the big push for Wizards this year.  With a video game, a facebook game, multiple books and an encounters season, Wizards is really pushing this setting this year.

A big component of this push for RPG players is the Neverwinter Campaign Setting Sourcebook.  It comes with 4 chapters.  Chapter 1: Jewel of the North introduces readers to Neverwinter after the cataclysm and spellplague.  Chapter 2: Player Options, goes into the themes for players.  Chapter 3: Factions and Foes details all the many enemies to throw at your PCs and Chapter 4: Gazetteer gives details for each of the locations in and around Neverwinter.

The authors really encourage the DM to use the book as a sandbox setting and that the book is for heroic tier.  I’m sure people looking for paragon tier adventures will be disappointed, as it feels like most of the campaign settings and adventures released so far have focused on heroic tier, but I’m sure it’s what sells the best, as almost all campaigns will start at level one, and only a few will get to level 11 or 21.

Review

Liked: I really enjoyed the amount of fluff.  I honestly don’t need more monster stats, you’ve given me all the monsters I need, I need reasons for the PCs to fight the monsters.  I also felt like the enemies were really well developed.

Loved: I loved the themes. Playing in the Encounters season, I’m totally glued to the background story, even though I’m only playing a couple hours at a time.  I think they did a great job of combining roleplaying and mechanical aspects of a character.  There are still themes that are clearly stronger than others, which could cause a problem at the table.  Still, I think this is a great way to get many of the 4e players who are a bit more focused on building powerful characters interested in the background of the setting.  I would love to see about developing this idea further for my own settings.

Loathed: There might be too many enemies.  I know they are trying to provide a world with enemies and adventure seeds for any type of campaign, but as a PC in a Neverwinter Campaign, I might not know where to start.  Who do I go against first?  And it felt like everyone with a name was being controlled by somebody else.  I did like that for many of the NPCs and locations, they provided multiple possible explanations.  I like a lot of enemies, but it would have been good to have some places of safety and friends in Neverwinter.

Overall: I would highly recommend this book for people playing 4e, particularly people looking for ways to get their players into the story behind the campaign setting.  This was by far the best Campaign Setting book I’ve read for 4e yet.

Resources

NewbieDM Review: Really enjoyed this review by NewbieDM, where he goes into detail about each chapter.  Great review!

Points of Light Review:  A solid review of the book.  He also has some good reviews of Dungeon adventures.

Zooming in on Neverwinter: Some reflections on the new aspects that Neverwinter Campaign Setting brings.

RPG Musings Review: He gives a good overview, and finds that the book is overall a good book, even for non-realms fans, something that I agree wholeheartedly with.

Neverwinter Campaign Setting Design and Development: An article over at Wizards giving the background on the design and development of the Neverwinter Campaign Setting.