Ben McFarland
United States
Upstate
New York
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The first thing that grabs you about the Imperial Gazetteer is the cover. Malcolm McClinton has once again put together a gorgeous image that wraps around to the back. It's fantastic piece of art and one you will never confuse with the newer style from Wizards.
The book is split into five parts. The first covers the Ravenloft-esque surface lands of Morgau and Doresh. Vampires rule these principalities, and the text does a good job of discussing their people, their cities, their armies, their politics, religion and economies. The authors don't skimp on coverage, providing short NPC descriptions and the full stat block for an exiled vampire countess, sure to harass heroic parties. The Baba Yaga mythology sees a good treatment-- something that really hasn't been done right in a long time. An elite ghoul race, the darakhul, is even offered as a player character option, complete with a pair of paragon paths.
The second and third sections take you underground, providing a 4E take on the material from Baur's third Open Design project, _Empire of the Ghouls._ Before you get too excited, it's only 15 pages of material, 30 if you want to count both sections together-- I was a senior patron for _Empire_ and that book was 150+ pages. This is the barest kernel of that material, but it's the choicest cuts and the sweetest marrow. You'll have no trouble putting together a decent Ghoulish campaign arc or three from this material, or even just cherry picking the most detailed spots for the occasional setting pieces or vacation encounters. Again, we're given a look at the daily life of this subterranean culture and everything that entails. The showcased items provide a nice bit of exotic treasure that might serve to draw characters even deeper into the _Empire of the Ghouls_ and would probably be the best sort of springboard for someone looking to build up to E2.
The third section of underdark encounters is nice--there's an abstract map of the connections between locales and good descriptions of each one. These consist of ghoul outposts, mines, a kobold city, a cloaker enclave, derro catacombs and an aboleth's trading port. A pile of story hooks fill out the material, giving DMs many ways to pull characters into the ghoulish cities they would otherwise avoid. The surface might be points of light, but the underdark comes across as points of unpleasant survivial in a web of deadly tunnels.
The fourth section goes into detail about the parts of the Ghoul Empire's capitol. There's no map, unfortunately, but that doesn't matter too much for the underground setting. It's described as a cavern hundreds of yards across and entered through a double "airlock" system, which seems to imply that wanton violence inside is going to result in an early serving of adventurer tartar.
The fifth section provides all the statblocks for monsters described throughout the text. There's heroic to epic tier material here and some nice art to go along with it. Really, the art throughout the book is great. Hugo Solis and Malcolm McClinton provide the lion's (or would that be darakhul's?) share, with some classic woodcuts and a few notable pieces from a couple of other artists. I particularly liked the deathcap myconid and the bonepowder ghoul-- however, I will say that I prefer the PDF for the art and maps (by Jonathan Roberts!). The print version is totally black and white, so you lose something when you only go with the treeware. It might be pricey, but I'd consider picking up both.
If you can live without the paper version (I personally cannot), RPGDrivethru and the Kobold Quarterly site sell the PDF for a very reasonable $9.95. The print comes in at $15.95-- $3 cheaper than the print of E2 on amazon. It's only $1 more for both than you'd pay at your FLGS for E2, and the PDF is nicely bookmarked, too.
Overall, I'd call this a fantastic purchase and well worth the money spent.
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