Ptolus is a

campaign setting A campaign setting is usually a fictional world which serves as a setting for a role-playing game or wargame campaign. A ''campaign'' is a series of individual adventures, and a ''campaign setting'' is the world in which such adventures and ca ...

for the ''

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical Studies Rules ...

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...

written by

Monte Cook Monte Cook is an American professional tabletop role-playing game designer and writer, best known for his work on ''Dungeons & Dragons''. Role-playing industry career Early years Cook has been a professional game designer since 1988, worki ...

. It was published by Malhavoc Press on August 10, 2006. Ptolus is also the name of the city featured in the campaign.

Setting

Ptolus is based upon the setting for Cook's home game, which served as the initial campaign for the 3rd edition of ''Dungeons and Dragons''. The campaign centers around the city of the same name, which lies on the Whitewind Sea at the edges of the crumbling empire of Tarsis. The city lies in the shadow of an impossibly tall and narrow

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

. Below the city are many

dungeon A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period. An oubliette (from ...

s, including the city's sewers and a forgotten dwarven city named Dwarvenhearth. The book's author claims it is the "most deluxe roleplaying product ever published," weighing in at 672 pages with multiple special features, including a CD-ROM that includes a new adventure, ''The Night of Dissolution,'' and two previous Malhavoc products with Ptolus connections: ''The Banewarrens'' and ''Chaositech.'' The book was produced in hardback on full color glossy paper. The first 1,000 pre-ordered copies of the Ptolus book had their copy signed and numbered by Monte Cook and also received a printed copy of ''The Night of Dissolution'', which was not otherwise available at the time, and five copies of ''A Player's Guide to Ptolus''. ''A Player's Guide to Ptolus'' consists of the material of Chapter 1 of ''Ptolus''. It was available for separate sale from several months before ''Ptolus'' either individually or in packs of five. As well as five copies coming free with pre-orders of ''Ptolus'', it is also available in

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

format on CD that comes with all printed copies of the ''Ptolus'' book and available for free download. The contents of this book is designed to represent the common knowledge available to city residents or visitors to Ptolus. It is intended that each player in a Ptolus campaign should have access to a copy of this book.

World

The world of Ptolus is called Praemal. 80% of its surface is covered with water, and it is currently in an ice age. The planet has two visible moons, and allegedly a third that disappeared eons ago.

Chaositech

The technology of Ptolus is slightly more advanced than usually found in other fantasy settings. Gunpowder and clockworks are quite mundane. In addition to "normal" technology, there is also chaositech, which is a mixture of fantasy settings' magic items and cyberpunks' cyberwares. It is considered an abomination in the world, although there are a few who consider it to hold great potential and would sell their own soul for a piece of it - as they usually do. As can be discerned from the name, this technology originates from chaos. Some of the greatest experts in chaositech are the

drow The drow ( or ) or dark elves are a dark-skinned and white-haired subrace of Elf (Dungeons & Dragons), elves connected to the Subterranea (geography), subterranean Underdark in the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' fantasy roleplaying game. The drow have ...

New races

Although Praemal is populated by the standard ''D&D'' races, there are few new races as well, and some twist in the original races, too. Races that are considered savage in other settings are civilized people in Ptolus, like the minotaurs.

Shoal elves

Seafaring elves; in the world of Ptolus, elves must sleep, and therefore they don't have the immunity of sleep spells and effects.

Harrow elves

Despite the fact that dark elves exist in the world of Praemal (and, as usual, are greatly feared and despised), there is another twisted kind of elves. The harrow elves, which were created by Ghul, are terribly deformed and considered second-class citizens by most of Ptolus. They are very much like the orc race from

Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works '' The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawl ...

's mythos, elves that have been perverted by a powerful overlord. They are considered more apt to be tempted by evil and most often do not have good family lives. (Since every child produced by a harrow elf will be a harrow elf, there is a common conception that the race has a tendency towards rape.) Harrow elves have considerable magic abilities, and their favorite class is monk.

Cherubim elves

Winged elves, who are more fragile, but very swift, too. They usually live in the mountains, and do not interfere with the life of other mortals. They have thin bones and pale skin.

Litorians

Humanoid lions, who have a very strong sense of honour. They have extraordinary physical abilities and senses. This race also appears in The Diamond Throne, the setting introduced in Monte Cook's

Arcana Unearthed ''Arcana Unearthed'' (properly ''Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed'', ), first published in 2003, is a role-playing game created by Monte Cook. Described as a "variant player's handbook", the 256-page hardcover core rulebook bears many similarit ...

Reception

It has received good reviews, and won the 2007

ENnie The ENNIE Awards (previously stylized as ENnie Awards) are awards for role-playing game (RPG) products (including game-related accessories, publications, and art) and their creators. The awards were created in 2001 by Russ Morrissey of EN World ...

award for Product of the Year.

References

Sources

* * *{{cite book , last =Cook , first =Monte , title =The Night of Dissolution , publisher =Malhavoc Press , date =2006c , isbn = 1-58846-939-5 D20 System Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings ENnies winners Fictional city-states