Ptolus: City by the Spire was a massive 672-page, premium and expensive book from D&D 3.0 designer Monte Cook.
At the time, Ptolus was an example of a homebrew setting created by a D&D celebrity. The fantasy setting was played by the Wizards of the Coast team, and fans knew it.
Monte Cook writes;
My players were, for the most part, co-workers—a veritable who’s who of D&D and d20 at the time—and we had a great time developing and exploring a rich and detailed setting built from the ground up as the type of city that might thrive in a true D&D world.
Ptolus was never released by Wizards of the Coast, though. Monte Cook moved on, founding his own studio called Malhavoc Press and it was that company that published Ptolus.
The new book will be published twice if the February Kickstarter is successful, once for D&D 5e and once for Cook’s own Cypher System.
Games like Invisible Sun, Numenera and even the Cypher System stand on the back of the Ptolus project, says Cook. The lessons learned in the Ptolus project left their mark and have been a part of all projects since then.
There’s also already a wealth of Ptolus content on DriveThruRPG. If you count tie-ins and third-party content like the maps from SkeletonKey Games, there are nearly 40 products.
The digital version of Ptolus costs $60 and the standard hardback, which isn’t the same quality as the main print run, costs $90.
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