Campaign Sourcebook I Like - Neverwinter Campaign Setting for D&D 4E

The Neverwinter Campaign Setting (Wizards of the Coast, by Matt Sernett, Ari Marmell, Erik Scott de Bie) is a D&D 4th Edition Forgotten Realms campaign sourcebook designed to handle Heroic Tier (levels 1-10) characters. The northern city of Neverwinter was devastated by a magically-caused volcanic eruption 28 years ago, and the campaign centers around the various factions trying to dominate and rebuild the city, or take advantage of its descent into chaos and ruin.

The sourcebook presents a wide variety of allies and foes, including human and demi-human occupiers, aboleths, demon worshippers, drow, and barbarians.  By picking and choosing which plot lines to emphasize, the campaign could be very political and urban, or focused on ruin-based dungeon crawling, or even wilder expeditions into the wilderness and other planes.  In my opinion, this book contains at least two or three times more material then could be used in a single campaign. However, that is not to say that the campaign is handed to you on a silver platter.  Rather, the sourcebook gives you information on the various factions, including their leaders, goals, typical activities and which monster stats to use.  The game master will need to put a fair amount of work into building the campaign, but a very useful skeleton is provided here.

For me, the idea to steal from this book is the use of character themes to help define the campaign and tie the characters into the various factions of the city. (Character themes are a D&D 4E option that combines a background story with a few mechanical features such as skill bonuses or additional character powers.)  The book provides 13 themes that players can choose from. The “Neverwinter Noble” is a scion of the cities noble families, and his very existence embroils him in the political maneuverings of the city.  The “Devil’s Pawn” is marked by the Lords of Hell, and his adventures in Neverwinter will assuredly be watched by the cult of Asmodeus operating in the city.

With a party of 4-6 characters, each with an appropriate theme, the game master has a great tool to pick and choose which of the many plots offered by the book to focus on.  If no one chooses the “Devil’s Pawn” theme, then the game master can feel free to de-emphasize or completely ignore the cult of Asmodeus operating in the city.  If someone chooses the Dead Rat Deserter, then the game master knows to give greater emphasis to the were-rat thief’s guild setting up operations in the city.  While some plots will always be present, by altering the secondary plots the game master can more easily weave a unique campaign for his players.

In my opinion, the Neverwinter Campaign Setting sourcebook is a very good product if you are looking for a campaign that centers around a single city.  While designed for D&D 4E, the sourcebook contains more fluff than mechanics, and I could easily see running the campaign with any other edition of D&D, or another fantasy system such as Runequest or Savage Worlds.