Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary, RPG Supplement Review

The city of Sanctuary went through changes in the books about it and the people who lived there. From the first book, through the break, and then with them coming back there were lots of details about two different times.

With the number of authors involved with the anthologies and novels there were many interesting characters. And, with the two different time frames, two very different cities developed out of the one location. Combining all of this into a single source could be very confusing for a person wanting to game in the city of Thieves' World if it was done wrong.

Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary by Aaron Rosenberg and Robert J Schwalb from Green Ronin Publishing provides a very good structure for describing Sanctuary and its denizens. The city's history from its earliest known times as a fishing village through to the current era are presented in an easy to follow manner. The districts are described for both of the major time frames and how they changed. The politics and beliefs are all part of this history along with the description of the notable characters from the stories of before.

The presentation comes from one of the more famous characters of the series of books, Shadowspawn. If you haven't read the books, Shadowspawn become one of the most notorious rogues of the city and rubbed elbows with some very powerful figures on both sides of the law. He started in the original anthology and remained a constant. Later Shadowspawn became the bridge to the new era of the city, though he goes by a different name as he takes up training a protégé.

Sanctuary is Shadowspawn's home and his guide to Sanctuary gives a good feel of a place being presented by someone who knows it. Besides the description of the city and the characters there is plenty of other useful content in this roughly 250 page supplement to Thieves' World Player's Guide.

For both game masters (GMs) and players there is information about each district so they can be used as players being residents or as someone new to the streets. This allows you to introduce the city without having to have all of the information first. So, you don't have to read the stories—but I recommend you do if you haven't. These descriptions tell what businesses are located where, the type of people and how well the areas are patrolled, or who really is in control.

There are adventure hooks throughout the book tied to the locations and people, then an entire section devoted to adventures in and around the area. The book has a section of ready to use common characters along with the well-known ones to flesh out the streets with major and fill-in non-player characters (NPCs). These work well for off-the-cuff encounters.

The final chapter of the book is a player's section to help build the characters to take on the streets of Thieves' World. The specialties of the characters we read about are presented so we can create our own. The different cultures of the world are described along with new backgrounds, feats, and prestige classes.

In going through Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary I found it both a fun and useful supplement. GMs can introduce a number of significant NPCs to their players and create new ones. Encounters can be generated from walking down a street, an adventure can be created from the rumors heard, and an entire campaign world can come to life from the pages of the original stories.

They have done a good job of bringing Sanctuary back, again.

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