Tuesday 8 February 2011

City of Lies- City of Stories

City of Stories is the player's guide to Ryoko Owari.

It is fully intended to be acessible to the player, so it is completely writen from an in-world point of view.

It can be roughly divided in five parts, altough the book only recognizes four; the charter of the Emerald Magistrates, wherein the privileges and obligations of the Emerald magistrates are detailed, general information on the city's history and organization, more detailed information on locations within the city, information on important NPCs, and a letter from Doji Satsume detailing the more pressing threats to order in the city.

The travelogue section themselves are a compilation "made" by Asako Anjo from four sources; a dossier prepared by former magistrate Matsu Shigeko for her sucessor, the pillowbook "Memoirs of an Opium Eater", "A History of Ryoko Owari" and "A Visitor's Guide to Ryoko Owari" (seriously).

I would have liked to see "Memoirs of an Opium Eater" as an independent book, organized chonologically, but this device works very well as it is. The entries are informative, but at the same time have enough meat to them to have the players second guessing them and fuel paranoia.

The charter of the Emerald Magistrates also had me thinking about some of the advantages of electronic publishing for some nich products.

As it is the charter is whitin the player's guide, but it could have been included as a detached book or sheet for ease of photocopying, and these day it is something that would make a superb web enhancement on PDF. I'd love to see it printed on scroll paper, specially those with coarser fibers that you can find in craft stores these days.

I'm expecting to reference this book alot while reading the GM guide of course, which will be next.

No comments:

Post a Comment