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RPG review of Gangs of Freeport
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Courtesy of Adamant Entertainment
Gangs of Freeport is an adventure for four characters of 5th to 7th level. This review contains spoilers. To identify my group’s experience with the adventure, I used the PLAYTEST tag.
In Gangs of Freeport, the PCs find themselves swept up in events as a mysterious power, making use of techniques both mystical and malign, shows signs of succeeding where others failed. The various gangs of the city work together, and the Sea Lord's Guard proves helpless to stem the rising tide of crime. Only through keen observation, determined investigation, and the judicious use of bloody violence can the characters uncover an old evil behind the threat, and take steps to put it down.
PLAYTEST: Some days, no matter how much I try to plan, things go awry. Whenever we don’t have enough players for the D&D game, my plan was to start up a D20 Modern game, which has a larger pool of players. But of course, those folks weren’t available either. So I figured I’d play D&D with the two fighters of our group. Except that Beldin’s player didn’t show up either. That left Vlad. Vlad’s something of an everyman hero, and his player Matt is an old school gamer. He likes to kill things and take their stuff. And yet, Vlad is often underestimated because he’s “just a fighter.” Vlad’s much more than that, and Matt demonstrates in this solo adventure that he can more than handle himself.
As the adventure begins, the PCs have been recruited for a simple task: escort a shipment of foreign silks and textiles from the docs to a merchant’s warehouse, clear across the Warehouse District. On the way, they come under a surprisingly well organized and orchestrated assault by gang members intent on stealing the shipment. Although the opponents are not impossibly tough, their tactics make them a threat to be reckoned with.
PLAYTEST: What made this adventure possible as a solo adventure was that the fighter had a ring of spell storing, which allowed him to cast a variety of spells (including fireball, among others) to take on multiple opponents.
Having witnessed the battle, a criminal by the name of Cristophe Cirgall, one of Bloody Jack’s lieutenants, approaches the party. He explains to the PCs that he has discovered outside influence in the gang, and was nearly murdered for failing to partake of the new narcotic. Obviously, he cannot go to the Guard, so he offers to compensate the characters if they will assist.
PLAYTEST: Instead of Cirgall, I used Finn, the leader of Finn’s Syndicate. It made Finn being beaten up and asking for help all the more pathetic.
During their investigations, the PCs likely visit a Cutthroat hideout, the Broken Mug tavern, and a capsized ship currently serving a sinister purpose. By combining the clues they obtain in those locations, the PCs can begin pointing fingers, and evidence, at those responsible.
PLAYTEST: Central to the plot is “white smoke” a narcotic that makes it easier to use mind-influencing magic on the population. This is how the gangs are slowly being taken over. I changed the drug to ghoul juice, picking up where The Consequences of Vice left off.
Commissioner Williams still cannot trust his own Guard, so it remains to the PCs to follow through. Only once they have confronted the so-called “serpent priests” in the Eastern Quarter, and captured Tillinghast himself before he escapes his hidden camp, will they truly have broken the back of the nascent guild, just as Marquetta did a century gone by.
PLAYTEST: I pulled few punches. The bad guys play to win, but they play smart, and in a few cases some unexpected things happen. I also applied rules I don’t always remember to use to the bad guys—the lack of Precise Shot when a spell caster attacks with a ray, for example. That kept things in Vlad’s favor. When Vlad faced off against Aboir, he failed – and Aboir acted as a cleaner of sorts, erasing all memory of him from Vlad and sending him after Tillinghast.
Gangs of Freeport involves redirection, drug addiction, and a lot of investigation, which makes it an interesting change of pace for the usual Freeport adventure. With a few tweaks, it can be tightly tied to the previous Freeport adventures to help the PCs bring down the criminal element while helping another one rise to the top.
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