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Parsantium: City at the Crossroads, City Sourcebook for the World's Bestselling Fantasy Roleplaying Games
Parsantium: City at the Crossroads is a city sourcebook for use with all editions of the world's bestselling fantasy RPGs. Parsantium is a melting pot, a cosmopolitan city where trade routes meet and great cultures collide. Inspired by real-life Byzantium with its rich Greco-Roman heritage, Parsantium is packed with characters, monsters and magic from the Tales of the Arabian Nights, ancient India and the Far East, alongside traditional medieval fantasy elements. Featuring evil cults and exotic gods, unscrupulous politicians and nobles, scheming rakshasas and serpentfolk, ancient dungeons buried beneath the city streets, powerful criminal gangs, gladiators and chariot racing, Parsantium contains enough adventure hooks and adversaries to keep your player characters busy throughout their careers, without having to step outside the city walls. The Parsantium city sourcebook contains: 2,000 years of history 17 character backgrounds for new PCs Over 70 detailed city locations Over 200 NPC descriptions 50 power groups, guilds and noble families 35 deities Compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Parsantium: City at the Crossroads contains minimal game stats, making it easy to use with whatever edition you are playing. Parsantium can be readily incorporated into your own campaign world or published fantasy setting. Written by Richard Green, author of the Midgard Bestiary for 4th Edition D&D (Kobold Press) and So What's That Shiny Thing Like, Anyway? (Raging Swan Press), and featuring cover art by Joe Shawcross, brand new interior art by Matt Morrow and Marc Radle, and a double page map of the city by ENnie Award winning cartographer Jonathan Roberts.
- GenresFantasy
176 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 2014
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November 24, 2021The "Fantasy Frontier" Bundle of Holding, which is mostly non-European fantasy settings/games, and which left me with a few questions:
* Against the Dark Yogi (Tab Creations) -- a setting and game system inspired by mythic India, with epic heroes and past lives, and a dark foe who threatens the whole subcontinent. Curiously, the bibliography includes several Dragon magazine articles for D&D, and of course D&D has already hoovered up a lot of world mythologies into its all-encompassing fantasy, so what sets this apart?
* Castles & Chemo -- a few D&D/Pathfinder adventures inspired by the author’s experience of cancer and cancer treatment; I can't speak to the quality of the adventures (this is for D&D 4e, so it feels like a tactical/technical exercise mostly), but I thought the end was touching, when the author included an appendix on several heroes, and in each entry, mentioned who inspired the name, and whether they had succumbed or survived their cancer
* City of Clocks (Battlefield Press) -- a system-neutral write-up of a magical city (shaped like a bunch of gears), riven by different factions and destabilized by the return of ancient powers; what I mostly took away from this book is that I will not read 20+ pages of made up history as the opening to the book. You have to sell me on the premise or promise, and then I will do homework.
* Ehdrigohr (Council of Fools) -- a Fate-powered epic high fantasy inspired by native and indigenous tribal cultures, where the world of humans is threatened by horrors that mostly come out at night. I find myself a little torn by this game: I like the non-Euoprean feel and the horror aspect, the idea of this being inspired by tribal cultures from around the world feels a little flattening; also, I find it very funny that the inspiration page lists so many animes. I found myself wishing for a game that was less a toolkit and more a focused game with a strong POV. (In other words: you might like this if you want a toolkit for this sort of world.)
* Egyptian Adventures - Hamunaptra (Green Ronin Publishing) -- ancient Egypt as a d20 setting, so you get all the usual D&D classes and races, but with new names and some new spins (gnomes are servants of Set, but still jovial). It's nicely put together, as you'd expect from Green Ronin, one of the survivors of the d20 boom, but it let me wondering: can you ever pierce the layers of cultural representation about something like ancient Egypt and to what end do you do that? Like, if all your players have the layperson's understanding of ancient Egypt, won't this just be the tropes of Egyptian adventure?
* Parsantium - City at the Crossroads (Ondine Publishing) -- it's Byzantium, but a fantasy version, so with the serial numbers lightly filed off. (There's even a fantasy Viking Varangian guard.) As a lightly fantasized historical city, it doesn't really stand out, because fantasy RPGs are full of fantasy versions of real world things. But the book does stand out a little to me as a city guide, with its attention to some passersby you might meet on the street to give each quarter a little color but without starting an adventure (a vain gladiator who assumes everyone wants an autograph, the jeweler who just discovered she was swindled, etc.). I enjoyed this enough.
* Spears of the Dawn (Sine Nomine Publishing) -- an African pastiche setting for a d20-style fantasy game (so a lot of activities and character types you expect); but also, I was somewhat interested in Kevin Crawford's intro that discussed how this was the product of a few months work and how more people should try to be inspired by non-European settings. (Which sure, but can you really get something that isn't just a thin veneer in a short time?)
Crawford actually suggests to start from the cliches of the adventure that your players might be familiar with -- there was a long war, now there are still horrible monsters, and you are respected troubleshooters wandering the land; and he also suggests that the GM should adjust players' actions by taking into account their intent in a way that is generous to the gap between player and character, which is sort of at the heart of roleplaying for me. (Or at least, right now I'm so curious how we ever can really get into the mind of someone else and their experience? Or are RPGs just for making fart and cellphone jokes with the trappings of some other world?)
But what the book doesn't quite explain for me is how the GM would know the things about the culture. That is, if this is meant to be something that draws from real mythic Africa (well, that's terrible, let's say real mythic Western Africa), how does the GM keep track of what that myth is? One advantage D&D has at the current point is that its myth structure is so entwined with mass culture myth -- if you know a little bit of Arthur and the Norse, you know D&D. But what percentage of the RPG community knows about the kings of Benin? And how do we get the ones who don't know to be interested?
(Also, this being a Kevin Crawford work, there's a lot of random tables to populate the world quickly, and I really kind of dig that these days. Someone recently noted how random tables are an underused way of building the world -- building what's possible -- and I've been chewing on that a bit.)
* Spellbound Kingdoms (T. Shield Studios) -- so one thing that should be clear is that the closer you look at something, the more likely you are to find something worth looking at. So maybe it's my fault for skimming this so liberally, but \shrug. I also skimmed some reviews that extolled it for being fast in the action and very interested in trying to mechanically capture inspiration and mood. (Good at sword-fighting and love your family? Maybe you lose your edge from distress when they're murdered -- until you find "revenge" as your motivation.) The setting is Renaissance-esque, with gunpowder and airships; and of course, you can tell a lot about a game by what it has rules for, which here is chases, combat, war, social clashes. The one thing that I will take away from this is that you need a coherent art style, man -- it's not really compelling when half the art is public domain classic art of social scenes (duels, kisses, court dances) with ... not so classic art of monsters.
* Yggdrasill - The Lands of the North (Cubicle 7 Entertainment) -- Why do we need a Viking/mythic Scandinavia game?
* Against the Dark Yogi (Tab Creations) -- a setting and game system inspired by mythic India, with epic heroes and past lives, and a dark foe who threatens the whole subcontinent. Curiously, the bibliography includes several Dragon magazine articles for D&D, and of course D&D has already hoovered up a lot of world mythologies into its all-encompassing fantasy, so what sets this apart?
* Castles & Chemo -- a few D&D/Pathfinder adventures inspired by the author’s experience of cancer and cancer treatment; I can't speak to the quality of the adventures (this is for D&D 4e, so it feels like a tactical/technical exercise mostly), but I thought the end was touching, when the author included an appendix on several heroes, and in each entry, mentioned who inspired the name, and whether they had succumbed or survived their cancer
* City of Clocks (Battlefield Press) -- a system-neutral write-up of a magical city (shaped like a bunch of gears), riven by different factions and destabilized by the return of ancient powers; what I mostly took away from this book is that I will not read 20+ pages of made up history as the opening to the book. You have to sell me on the premise or promise, and then I will do homework.
* Ehdrigohr (Council of Fools) -- a Fate-powered epic high fantasy inspired by native and indigenous tribal cultures, where the world of humans is threatened by horrors that mostly come out at night. I find myself a little torn by this game: I like the non-Euoprean feel and the horror aspect, the idea of this being inspired by tribal cultures from around the world feels a little flattening; also, I find it very funny that the inspiration page lists so many animes. I found myself wishing for a game that was less a toolkit and more a focused game with a strong POV. (In other words: you might like this if you want a toolkit for this sort of world.)
* Egyptian Adventures - Hamunaptra (Green Ronin Publishing) -- ancient Egypt as a d20 setting, so you get all the usual D&D classes and races, but with new names and some new spins (gnomes are servants of Set, but still jovial). It's nicely put together, as you'd expect from Green Ronin, one of the survivors of the d20 boom, but it let me wondering: can you ever pierce the layers of cultural representation about something like ancient Egypt and to what end do you do that? Like, if all your players have the layperson's understanding of ancient Egypt, won't this just be the tropes of Egyptian adventure?
* Parsantium - City at the Crossroads (Ondine Publishing) -- it's Byzantium, but a fantasy version, so with the serial numbers lightly filed off. (There's even a fantasy Viking Varangian guard.) As a lightly fantasized historical city, it doesn't really stand out, because fantasy RPGs are full of fantasy versions of real world things. But the book does stand out a little to me as a city guide, with its attention to some passersby you might meet on the street to give each quarter a little color but without starting an adventure (a vain gladiator who assumes everyone wants an autograph, the jeweler who just discovered she was swindled, etc.). I enjoyed this enough.
* Spears of the Dawn (Sine Nomine Publishing) -- an African pastiche setting for a d20-style fantasy game (so a lot of activities and character types you expect); but also, I was somewhat interested in Kevin Crawford's intro that discussed how this was the product of a few months work and how more people should try to be inspired by non-European settings. (Which sure, but can you really get something that isn't just a thin veneer in a short time?)
Crawford actually suggests to start from the cliches of the adventure that your players might be familiar with -- there was a long war, now there are still horrible monsters, and you are respected troubleshooters wandering the land; and he also suggests that the GM should adjust players' actions by taking into account their intent in a way that is generous to the gap between player and character, which is sort of at the heart of roleplaying for me. (Or at least, right now I'm so curious how we ever can really get into the mind of someone else and their experience? Or are RPGs just for making fart and cellphone jokes with the trappings of some other world?)
But what the book doesn't quite explain for me is how the GM would know the things about the culture. That is, if this is meant to be something that draws from real mythic Africa (well, that's terrible, let's say real mythic Western Africa), how does the GM keep track of what that myth is? One advantage D&D has at the current point is that its myth structure is so entwined with mass culture myth -- if you know a little bit of Arthur and the Norse, you know D&D. But what percentage of the RPG community knows about the kings of Benin? And how do we get the ones who don't know to be interested?
(Also, this being a Kevin Crawford work, there's a lot of random tables to populate the world quickly, and I really kind of dig that these days. Someone recently noted how random tables are an underused way of building the world -- building what's possible -- and I've been chewing on that a bit.)
* Spellbound Kingdoms (T. Shield Studios) -- so one thing that should be clear is that the closer you look at something, the more likely you are to find something worth looking at. So maybe it's my fault for skimming this so liberally, but \shrug. I also skimmed some reviews that extolled it for being fast in the action and very interested in trying to mechanically capture inspiration and mood. (Good at sword-fighting and love your family? Maybe you lose your edge from distress when they're murdered -- until you find "revenge" as your motivation.) The setting is Renaissance-esque, with gunpowder and airships; and of course, you can tell a lot about a game by what it has rules for, which here is chases, combat, war, social clashes. The one thing that I will take away from this is that you need a coherent art style, man -- it's not really compelling when half the art is public domain classic art of social scenes (duels, kisses, court dances) with ... not so classic art of monsters.
* Yggdrasill - The Lands of the North (Cubicle 7 Entertainment) -- Why do we need a Viking/mythic Scandinavia game?
May 28, 2021
A richly detailed and fascinating roleplaying sourcebook for Green’s city of Parsantium – a creative fusion of influences, incorporating elements of Byzantium, the Middle East, India and the Far East. The city is substantial in size and scope as a setting for many exciting adventures, and is home to 75,000 inhabitants of human and non-human races, divided into three quarters – including an underground ‘Hidden Quarter’ – separated by the Dolphin Strait.
Rich and poor mingle in Parsantium’s many wards: copious adventure hooks and descriptions of NPCs deliver opportunities to craft your own storylines, or simply follow Green’s included campaign themes to explore the city’s extensive history and ongoing intrigues, where PCs will face gangs, cults and monsters; explore dungeons and unearth lost secrets; or involve themselves in the politics of the government, guilds and noble houses.
The book’s contents can be easily adapted to any RPG system, or slotted into another campaign setting – it has directly inspired several gameplay ideas for my own world and adventures, as there’s so much engaging content here that it would be quite impossible not to be inspired.
Rich and poor mingle in Parsantium’s many wards: copious adventure hooks and descriptions of NPCs deliver opportunities to craft your own storylines, or simply follow Green’s included campaign themes to explore the city’s extensive history and ongoing intrigues, where PCs will face gangs, cults and monsters; explore dungeons and unearth lost secrets; or involve themselves in the politics of the government, guilds and noble houses.
The book’s contents can be easily adapted to any RPG system, or slotted into another campaign setting – it has directly inspired several gameplay ideas for my own world and adventures, as there’s so much engaging content here that it would be quite impossible not to be inspired.
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