Scarrport
Scarrport is a conflicted city full of danger, political intrigue, wondrous steampunk artifacts, and pesky gremlins. Scarrport: City of Secrets is a new Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition supplement from Reality Deviant Publications, which, at 115 pages, offers a deep look into the people, politics, and conflicts of the city. It features three new races: the ghoden, who were descended from giants, the curious and inventive gremlins, and the wise otterkin. It also includes the Elementalist, a Striker who uses elemental attacks to destroy enemies. Lastly, anyone who wants to add a little steampunk to their campaign will find several clockwork items and creatures which could be dropped into a number of campaigns.
Reality Deviant Publications pulled out all of the stops when crafting this book. There is a danger in any Dungeons & Dragons supplement, especially those not done by Wizards of the Coast, that the quality may not be very high. Back in the days of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, supplements spanned a range with books like Ptolus on one end and a number of hastily slapped together books on the other. Scarrport, with its full color interior art and intriguing writing, is more like Ptolus without carrying the hefty price tag.
Scarrport is broken up into five sections. The first is thirty pages on the city of Scarrport itself and the various factions that call it home. This includes the five burroughs (technically there are four, with the underwarren the unofficial fifth), the various cults that inhabit the city, and many of the areas that surround it. The text does a good job of breaking down each area, explaining what it is like in the present and what political, racial, and natural factors shaped it. In particular, Scarrport’s entire existence was dramatically shaped by the “fever plague” which killed many of its people (a disease which still continues to infect denizens of Scarrport.)
The next section goes into the three new races, which is the low point of the book. Sadly, the three races are not terribly inventive. The ghoden are basically giant-descended warriors who have several different “lineages”, which is neat, but they felt like barbarians with a little elemental magic and a little Klingon thrown in just for flavor.
The gremlins, with their gnomish attraction to technology and the kender-like ability to be annoying, are probably my favorite race. In Scarrport, gremlins are the masters of steampunk technology, which is neat by itself, but there is a drawing of a gremlin in Three Muskateers garb with a steampunk pistol made me want to play them. Of all the races in the book, gremlins depart the most from traditional fantasy stereotypes. Still, it is not a radical departure.
Then there’s the otterkin. Whereas the gremlins and ghoden get flavor text introductions, the otterkin are described as “anthropomorphic otters” which spend time in rivers. At less than two pages, their write up is by far the shortest and it basically describes them as untrusting and cautious. It was hard to get excited about the race from that description.
Chapter three contains the Elementalist, a class which draws its power from the Elemental plane to deliver fire, water, earth, and wind based attacks. The Elementalist has four builds based on whichever element it favors, and it has some neat powers. My favorite is “Splash” a Level 1 Encounter power which allows you to move a number of squares equal to your Dexterity bonus before unleashing a fire attack. Given that it is described as a leaping attack, I thought it was a nice touch.
However, my main complaint about this class is that like the races, it is not terribly new or different. While I could not Google for another example of a 4th Edition Striker who uses elemental-based attacks, I do not believe that the Elementalist represents a significant addition to Dungeons & Dragons lore.
It may seem unfair to say that this book needs to be new and different. It is true not everything has to reinvent the wheel, especially with so few Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition supplements currently on the market. However, chapters two and three are a let down after reading chapters four and five.
These two chapters are the meat of the book. While the information on Scarrport is fun, players are going to be drooling over the new steampunk equipment in chapter four and DMs are going to be laughing with evil glee over chapter five’s army of creatures.
If you have ever wanted to have a steampunk pistol, a wrist crossbow, or to ride a clockwork horse, Scarrport has them. Need a barge or a skiff? Scarrport has them. Want gremlin nightvision goggles? That’s there, too. Just the fact there are rockets in Scarrport got my attention.
More importantly, though, none of the items appear to be overpowered and they seem to balance against other weapons in the game. Part of that is done through giving each item multiple power levels which let DMs control how powerful they can become.
Of course, if the players get rockets, so does the DM when she unleashes a Clockwork Behemoth. If that was not bad enough, Scarrport gives DMs the wolven, a race of evil shapeshifters, clawed Nyggoth demons, and toxic Night Fang Eels. Each monster is fully statted out, complete with interesting lore, including tidbits like the Clockwork Soldier’s rocket attack has an off-switch.
All in all, Scarrport is worth picking up. The chapter on the city’s history contains a great deal of information without feeling like an info dump. Chapters four and five are useful outside of Scarrport and should form the basis of any Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition steampunk campaign. As I was reading through the book, I kept getting ideas for a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen game based on the descriptions of some of the gear.
On the other hand, the new races and classes are just okay. They need to be there to make the setting work, but they do not have the same wow factor as say … clockwork punch gloves or power armor. Still, this is a good supplement and a worthy addition to any Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition fan’s collection.
Want to learn more about Scarrport? Read on…
- Atomic Array: Scarrport (Atomic Array 022)
- Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
- AllGeekTout: Call to Adventure in the City of Secrets
- Dice Monkey: Scarrport: City of Secrets
- The Core Mechanic: Review by Jonathan Jacobs
- Kobold Quarterly: Why I Like Scarrport, City of Secrets
- Critical Hits: Get Some Steampunk in your 4e
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