Review of Cursed Scroll #6: City of Masks

A city can give a fantasy campaign somewhere to return to, people worth knowing, and trouble that follows the characters long after an expedition ends. It can also become the place where everybody sells their loot, buys another fifty feet of rope, and waits for the next adventure. Kelsey Dionne’s Cursed Scroll #6: City of Masks, with additional design by Baron de Ropp, gives the GM a compact city and rules that encourage characters to spend time there. My question is how much of that material I can actually use once the players start asking questions.

Across its 68 pages, the issue introduces the Bard and Duelist, spells for lawful wizards, renown, downtime activities, expanded carousing, and the seaside city of Meridia. Eight districts contain fifty keyed locations, supported by factions, rumors, encounters, and quick references. Where earlier Scrolls sent the party into wilderness regions and dangerous ruins, this one gives substantial attention to what happens among shops, colleges, temples, taverns, and competing authorities. That makes it useful both as a potential home for a campaign and as a source of material for a city already on your map. This is a review of the book as written; I haven't run Meridia, so my judgments about its procedures are based on reading rather than table experience. If you’re new to the game, my Shadowdark review⁠ covers the rules these zines build on.

What Players Need

One of the most useful pages in the issue is titled “Swiftly! I Need…” It groups locations by services such as shopping, training, entertainment, criminal contacts, and law and order, then separates those options by district wealth. If someone wants a weapons instructor or a place to sell stolen goods, the GM has a direct way to find an appropriate business. The opening location directory adds page references, while the numbered city map connects those businesses to their districts. These are ordinary reference tools, but they address an ordinary problem that can slow a session down considerably. A city becomes easier to use when the book anticipates what players will ask for.

The district spreads continue that approach. Each begins with a local map highlighting its keyed locations, followed by the district’s social class, purpose, and the time it takes the City Guard to arrive. Bold names and numbered headings make the entries easy to scan, and related locations receive numbered references in the text. The descriptions generally establish the proprietor, the service, and a complication within a short entry. I can find out who teaches swordplay, what advantage the training provides, and why another school wants to cause trouble without reading a history of either institution. That is the sort of information I want available while the players are deciding what to do next.

Players also have reasons to favor particular businesses. A tavern might improve their carousing results, while a teacher or library helps with a downtime check. Anvil Hall’s dwarven smiths charge more for equipment whose craftsmanship improves attacks or armor class. Other merchants provide convincing disguises or supplies for magical research. Those differences give players something to remember when deciding where to spend their money. As they return to the same places, the proprietors can become familiar contacts, and the GM already has their personalities and connections at hand.

Characters and Magic

The Bard fits comfortably into a city where performers, scholars, and public reputation carry influence. Bardic Arts grants advantage on checks involving oration, performing arts, lore, and diplomacy, while additional languages help the character deal with unfamiliar people. Fascinate offers a way to hold the attention of suitable targets, and Inspire supplies luck tokens to help the party. Magical Dabbler allows the use of scrolls and wands through Charisma, with the option to acquire a random wand instead of rolling a talent. About nine or ten days ago, in our own campaign, our bard helped sing us into a position to negotiate our way inside a guarded tower. There was a time in my playing career when I would have scoffed at bards, but these days I often look to them for guidance in tense encounters. That session was a good reminder of how much a character can accomplish before anybody draws a weapon. Shadowdark’s version gives the Bard useful work in conversation, investigation, and an expedition without requiring a separate spell list, and I would play this class outside Meridia without hesitation.

The Duelist has an equally clear purpose. Parry can turn a hit into a miss once per day, while Taunt grants advantage against an enemy in the following round after that enemy misses the Duelist. Tale Spinner lets the character attempt to convince strangers that they are famous and important. There is enough here to support a confident swordsman who talks himself into situations he may then have to fight his way out of. The class’s abilities are brief enough for a player to understand quickly, and the city provides fighting schools, public contests, and social occasions where that personality could matter. Neither new class needs a lengthy explanation before somebody can start playing it.

The lawful wizard spells are similarly easy to find uses for. Cleanse removes a poison, Reveal exposes nearby invisibility and hiding creatures, and Speak With Object allows a few truthful yes-or-no answers from something the caster touches. That last spell could be particularly useful in an investigation, though choosing the right object and asking useful questions still falls to the player. Other spells provide protection, restrict movement, or change the terms of a confrontation. These are additions I could use in an existing campaign without adopting the city, and their concise descriptions make consulting them during play straightforward. The GM will still need to consider how information-gathering magic affects a mystery, just as with comparable spells in the core game.

Giving Downtime a Purpose

The downtime rules are the part I would borrow first. Characters choose an activity between adventures, with options covering spiritualism, skulduggery, martial training, and magical research. Each activity lists its relevant ability checks, difficulty, cost where applicable, and result. A character might seek relief from a curse, improve with a weapon, create a scroll, start a rumor, or escape pursuit over a crime. Failed attempts lower the difficulty of the next attempt by one step, resetting after success, and luck tokens cannot be used on these checks. The procedure gives players a manageable set of choices while leaving the GM room to describe who helps and what the work involves.

What makes those pages more useful is their connection to actual places. The university supports magical research, fighting schools specialize in different equipment, and religious sites offer benefits to characters of the appropriate alignment. A player choosing an activity can have a reason to visit a particular district and meet someone there. Those contacts may then introduce complications, favors, or rivalries that outlast the downtime check. I appreciate that the book supplies both the procedure and people who can support it. A GM borrowing the rules for another city could attach them to existing NPCs with relatively little preparation.

Renown gives public standing a similarly concrete role. It begins with a character’s Charisma modifier and changes through events such as gaining levels, public honors, humiliations, and encounters with the law. Higher renown improves carousing outcomes, can affect reactions where the character is recognized, and opens doors to exclusive businesses and influential people. The setting takes fashion, spending, and social status seriously, so a wealthy adventurer cannot assume that owning enough gold guarantees a welcome everywhere. I would explain those expectations before using them, particularly the ways frugality or a fashion mistake can damage renown. For a group interested in reputation and social access, the rules provide something tangible to pursue between expeditions.

The Royal Jeweler makes that practical: a character needs at least 8 renown just to enter, regardless of how much gold they carry. At that same threshold, the noble Gaston di Vanglare takes an interest and invites them to dinner. Reputation gives the players access to people and places that were previously out of reach. That gives the GM a straightforward way to introduce new opportunities as the party becomes known around the city.

That reputation carries over into carousing, which expands into separate benefit and mishap tables, with results influenced by the event, renown, certain talents, and local circumstances. The outcomes can establish allies, enemies, obligations, and discoveries that give the next session a starting point. Holidays add another reason to pay attention to the city calendar, since celebrations affect both carousing and appropriate dress. This is also where the GM takes on more bookkeeping: temporary effects, favors, and new relationships need to be recorded if they are going to matter later. I would use these rules when the group wants those developments to receive attention. A party that prefers a quick shopping trip before the next dungeon may have less use for the full expansion.

A City That Produces Adventures

Meridia gives the GM plenty of opportunities to put Percy’s confidence in self-interest to the test. Its factions establish who holds power, who wants more, and what each group stands to lose. The major entries identify goals, structure, enemies, and resources, including the Duke, the Bardic College, the House of Seren thieves’ guild, and the masked conspirators of the Shroud. Their interests appear again in the district descriptions, so the faction section has consequences beyond introducing names. A merchant may owe a dangerous organization a favor, a respected institution may contain a conspirator, and a business dispute may involve people with access to considerable force. The connections help the GM develop consequences when the party chooses a side or interferes with someone’s plans.

The individual locations are often enough to begin an adventure. Rival fighting schools are approaching violence, a barrister needs protection from the friends of a condemned client, and two young guards have become involved in a plot against a champion racing pig. Some problems could occupy an evening, while others could grow as the party discovers who else is involved. There are decent people here too, including an old dwarf soldier who feeds beggars and earns their loyalty. That matters because a home city needs people the party might want to help as well as people worth investigating. The book supplies both without requiring pages of introductions.

Travel and encounters receive practical support as well. Movement uses destinations and district relationships, with encounter chances increasing for more distant trips; canals make districts count as adjacent, and rushing gets the party there faster at greater risk. Day and night encounter tables distinguish between canals and wealthy, working, or poor districts. Guard response times also vary considerably, which can change how the party approaches a confrontation. The law section provides a short procedure for pursuit, judgment, and punishment, including a deliberately unequal distinction between crimes against commoners and those against people of higher standing. These rules give the GM a starting response when events become disorderly without requiring a detailed legal system.

Those procedures help the GM respond to trouble, but developing a larger adventure takes more preparation. City of Masks supplies situations rather than a fully keyed adventure comparable to the major dungeons in some earlier Scrolls. Hidden tunnels, conspiracies, and threatened institutions suggest destinations that the GM may need to develop before extended exploration. I could introduce a rival school or a suspicious merchant from these entries, but a substantial burglary would require decisions about interiors, defenses, and the valuables involved. That preparation is reasonable for a city book of this size, and the material gives it direction. Before running a session, I would select a few likely locations, note their connections, and prepare whichever building or underground site the opening problem might lead into. The city makes that work easier, though it does not eliminate it.

Conclusion

Cursed Scroll #6: City of Masks is useful because it anticipates the ordinary needs of a party in town and gives those needs opportunities to become adventures. Its service reference, district maps, numbered connections, and concise entries help the GM find information, while downtime and renown give players reasons to return to particular people and places. I would readily borrow the classes and downtime rules, and Meridia offers enough connected activity to make it a promising campaign home. Groups interested in social maneuvering, recurring NPCs, and consequences between expeditions will get the most from the whole package, while a dungeon-focused group could use selected portions without adopting every procedure. I still expect to prepare the details of any major adventure that develops, but I would rather begin with a city full of useful contacts and unresolved problems than invent all of them when the players arrive.