Denizens of Freeport (Freeport)

Rating:
Summary: Good book that helps fill out Freeport...
Review: Denizens of Freeport is a 96 page softcover sourcebook from Green Ronin, priced at $18.95 (I got mine on ebay for the remarkably low price of $5 + $3.50 S&H). It's an NPC book, that is a book full of characters, complete with stats and background. Generally speaking, I like books like this, because they are very useful when you need to come up with an NPC to populate someplace. And not being a very creative person, most of the NPCs I come up with are either based on people I know or characters from movies or books.

There are a lot of NPCs in this book. More than 60s, the back cover claims, and as there is no easy way to count them, I'll take their word for it. Each entry is generally the same. The name at the top, followed by the stats, then entries on "Background", "Personality", "Physical Description", and "Hooks", the latter being what sort of hook they like to wear (Sorry, pirate humor. It's actually more like adventure seeds or ideas)

I thought the best NPCs in this book are the more mundane ones. For instance, a locksmith. A street vendor, a brewer, a lawyer, a tailor. Unfortunately, there are only a few of these.

This book gets a bit silly (like I thought the Freeport: City of Adventure book did) when it comes to anachoristic NPCs. For instance, drug dealing/growing Hippies named "The Blooms". Get it? Yuk yuk. Or a police detective and a forensic scientist. (CSI: Freeport anyone? Bah). Still, these sort of NPCs aren't too common. Some of the names are again similar to real world people. An actor named "Rikard Burbage" (Richard Burton), a disease carrier is named "Mary" (like "Typhoid Mary"). Things like that ratchet up the dorkiness factor and ratchet down the suspension of belief and believability of the character and setting, at least for me. But again, it only happens in a few cases.

Some of the NPC groups from Freeport: City of Adventure are fleshed out. For instance, in that book there was a group of rich women who were bored and so became thieves and would bully inn owners (picture a bunch of Jennifer Lopezs, I guess). A couple of them are detailed here. One of the closest things to a Thieves' Guild in Freeport is "Finn's Syndicate", which is a halfling protection racket - an assassin from it is detailed here. And that annoying tabloid newspaperman is detailed, too.

As you might guess from the nature of Freeport, there are a number of Pirate characters. One is a mind flayer (whose inclusion has probably doomed this book to never being reprinted, as mind flayers are not in the officially released System Reference Document), one a viking lady, one a halfing, another a lady half-elf, and one just a human woman. Not quite the usual pirate demographics.

There's a lot of interesting other NPCs. A womanizing Paladin, a goblin fireman (with a protection racket), a couple really nice examples of how half-orcs can be productive members of society, a halfling version of Sally Struthers (as Jabba the Hutt). There are some misses: Mungo & his amazing monkeys, most of the villains (they're dorky rather than scary), Harcourt Horkel (a swindler, presumably named after Harcourt Fenton Mudd of Star Trek), "The Hat", a secret agent (it's also impossible for anyone who is a South Park fan, like myself, to use, as it's too close to "Mr. Hat"). Most of the 'urchins' are also really annoying, but that generally can't be helped. One of the most unbelievable characters is an assassin who kills people while shaving them. Um, in a small town (Freeport is something like 10,000 people, if that), just how often would that work? Once. Similarly, there is a halfling who is a child impersonator, who works the same area. Uh, wouldn't the people there catch on after a week or two?

Each NPC is illustrated, which is great, as it gives you a picture you can show your players, rather than having to describe them. Most of the artwork is excellent, and is in a variety of styles, from the fairly realistic to the impressionistic. The only exception is one woman on page 34, whose breasts apparently start at her neck. (Talk about a push up bra.). There's also one picture (of a laywer) that seems to have gotten the sex wrong, though it's a bit hard to tell.

Besides the usually excellent Toren Atkinson, the artist whose work really stands out is Chris Martinez (though he doesn't have many, I think just 3 pictures). There are a couple others I like, but I can't tell who did it (not all the art is signed).

The typeface used for the is the same as in the Freeport: City of Adventure book, and like there, I found it a bit problematic when it comes to telling the difference between some letters (most notably a 'u' and 'v'). The normal typeface used is fine, and there's a lot of text in the book - margins are small, and the overall layout is good. The only real oddity is that stats for the characters are given first, with the description afterwards. Usually it's the other way around (but is not a problem once you get used to it).

It really could have used a table of contents, but presumably there wasn't room. A tiny map of freeport keyed to where every NPC hangs out would also have been helpful, but again, the book is absolutely crammed as it is - not wasted space at all, so it wouldn't fit.

Is this worth buying? Well, definitely, if you're a Freeport fan. This product goes a long way towards filling up Freeport with people and making it a more complete city (one of my complaints about the City of Adventure book was it was kind of skimpy on info about Freeport itself.)

If you're not a Freeport fan, obviously this will be less appealing, but it does give you a number of NPCs that can be used in almost any enviroment, and all but a handful can be used in a generic pirate or port town.

B. If not for the hippies and some of the other sillier characters, I would be inclined to give it a higher score. But I really hate hippies. Much like NRA meetings and showers are, fantasy settings should be hippie free.