Campaign Builder Cities & Towns Review

Campaign Builder Cities & Towns is Kobold Press's latest kickstarter to be fulfilled and it has not disappointed! This book is a true tool for any DM's or GM's toolbox! Learn what it takes to create settlements for your games that truly feel alive, like they belong there and have been there for a long time!

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0:00 Intro
4:15 Chapter 1 City Planning
7:03 Chapter 2 Anatomy of a City
11:21 Chapter 3 City Inhabitants
12:37 Chapter 4 City Campaigns
14:02 Chapter 5 City Heroes
15:08 Appendix
16:42 Maps
17:42 Closing Thoughts

[Kevin-Peter]

I missed the Kickstarter but ordered after watching your video, and excited to combine this with Spectacular Settlements & LoreSmyths books, which I also own. Great review Joe!

[ReadingAde]

There are so many campaign builder resources out there. Which are your essential books that every gm should have in their toolbox?

[torry]

yea. another reason to spend money . awesome video

[DMCM]

The Roll20 sucks, I paid 20€ and only got 10 NPCs and 10 Monster.

[matthewtopping]

I don't understand how anyone could read this book and find it useful. Are you quite sure you actually read it?

You say at the start that it's not a 5e book. It is a 5e book. All the NPCs and player options are for 5e. You even show a 5e Druid subclass in this video. I suppose you could argue a lot of it is system agnostic in the sense that it contains no concrete information, so isn't tied to 5e.

The random tables are very generic lists of businesses, government types, districts etc. The art is just OK. It's arguable that some of the subclass options are flavourful but they certainly none have been playtested or given much mechanical thought. The NPCs are fine.

Most of the text is stuff like: "The city watch serves as the city’s police force, responsible for maintaining law and order and keeping its inhabitants as safe as possible. They patrol the city streets, dealing with wrongdoers, breaking up arguments, reuniting lost children with their parents, giving directions to visitors, and so on."
It goes on for another 3 pages like this and the only things you could put in a game are 3 generic Guard NPC descriptions and a d20 table of plot hook gems like 'you find a dead body'- that's literally the whole hook.

Every single section is mostly the same sort of dull, empty filler.