Capsule Reviews #7: Castle of the Silver Prince

Since there is just so much content in this entire campaign setting I am going to skim it capsule-review style in recognition of it could be some time before I get through it all in detail. Short answer, this is a colossus of a project, with material for years of play.

You can get the authors own overview of all the bits and pieces in the launch-day blogpost

Castle of the Silver Prince Module - comes in a bunch of variant covers, I went for the limited edition orange spine. This is a donkey-killer of a giant book detailing 470 locations across the 8 levels of the castle. There is a complex interplay of magical seasons that make each entry sizeable - as well as all the descriptive markers of odor, features, structural aspects, hazards (traps, monsters, etc.) and secrets we have some of those changing depending on what 'season' the castle is in - randomly determined on arrival. So in fact we have 470 locations x 4 as places to explore - and a ticking clock every time the party enters the castle - which together make this a colossal place to explore and one that really captures the old-school 'every time, start at the door' feel which makes sharp mapping and discovering short-cuts a key piece of play. This book also has a proposed shared background for party membes - the house of Wicke - which is neat and comes with some nice ties into the campaign background.

The campaign premise is that the party gets a charter to reclaim a border castle between two nations - where that castle construction, its residents, the leadership of one nation, its one-time master and some of the monsters lurking in the region are all linked. Clues to events and elements within the castle can be found out in the wilderness around it and as the campaign begins, two grand competing forces are swinging into play as the campaign begins making the castle the fulcrum around which the fate of the region turns. Events ratchet up overtime, motivating returns to the castle to try and save humanity from two dread fates.

The books are supposed to be used with the Module open on the location you are at, the Maps book open to the right map and then you can look up the bits and pieces at that location in the Appendix. With a little wearing-in I can see this working quite well = Map book changes slowy, locations in the Module change as the party moves and you can flip over and back through the Appendix. I cnn see the Maps books will need to be weighed down at the corners but it does all feel suitably epic.

Castle of the Silver Prince Appendix and Compendium - a fantastic work on its own; the section on the economy of the hells driven by Agony and Respite is just amazing. I am at sixes and sevens about the alphabetical layout as opposed to thematic - we have spells, locations, monsters and magic items all mixed together = some locations are gazetteers of entire cities - I might have preferred alphabetical within type of entry but no matter. The content within is chonky - the same cool magic items and weird spells that we always get from Blue Bard along with some cities and the plots and timetables of the major antagonists.

Castle of the Silver Prince Tables & Handouts - monster roster, encounter tables, campaign resolution chart and lots of old school clue-handouts that require your players to be pretty sharp to figure out the meaning. Huso does not mess around with foes having weak cyphers or prophecies being primary-school riddles. These are realistic bits of maps, notes and in-world documents that will require players to engage their brains.

Castle of the Silver Prince Maps - all the maps - tons of work went into these - all the levels of the palace, all the hex-maps of the surrounds and the detailed maps of cities, regions and planes which feature throughout the books. Heraldry, Gods and the Combat Round and Silver Castle Time Trackers are also in here.

Free for download is further content! Any of these are fascinating in and off themselves.

Silver Castle Excel Sheets - get this for a behind-the-scenes DM masterclass. Look through this tool-set of a DM running AD&D by-the-book, especially the Wilderness Day Planner and Spell & Item Crafting. If nothing else there is a longlist of 575 NPCs to inspire your creativity.

Wilderness Attrition & Event Table pdf is a great 189 entry table weighted by a d3+d6 x 3d8 roll ranging from minor stuff through to quasi-apocalyptic event. Tons of content in here alone, not for the faint-hearted.

All Maps in a ZIP - same as the maps above but available for you to print off at your leisure.

All player handouts as a pdf - printable versions of the handouts - which is a great quality of life aid rather than hacking up the book or trashing the spine trying to photocopy pages.

Charters - pdfs in a ZIP - a juicy set of adventuring company charters for the PCs to get signed by their favourite local power - turning them from just a bunch of bandits to crown-sanctioned adventurers. Always nice to have an actual charter to point to - here you get five.

Final zip has Heraldry and also bundles in Gods, the Combat Round and Silver Castle Time Trackers. The trackers are pretty critical quality-of-life improvement tools for the crunchy sort of AD&D that these books assume we are playing.