The City of 7 Seraphs (PFRPG) PDF

I really like the time shroom peeps :3

Edit: apparently I already said that in here. Oh well it still stands.

I appreciate the double-love for my shroom-folks!

In this day and age, we could all use some harmony-fostering time-shroom people, methinks! :D

I appreciate the double-love for my shroom-folks!

In this day and age, we could all use some harmony-fostering time-shroom people, methinks! :D

Ye!

If any freelancer's reading this: Working with Christen was a phenomenal experience.

Agreed!

Scum of Dunwall wrote:

Have you seen any in depth reviews?

Endz hasn't reviewed this one yet, but you can see various elements that went into the book reviewed at the (awesome) Endzeitgeist's site.

Thanks, I'll look it up.

Scum of Dunwall wrote:

Have you seen any in depth reviews?

What Rednal said. I haven't had the time I wish I had to dig in, but a} the akashic stuff has been around for a while and is excellent and b} everything else I've found the time for has been very flavorful and fun to read.

The PDF is cheap for what it is. I can't recommend it enough.

It's not that cheap where I live, so while I like the cover and description, I'd want to have a taste of what's inside to figure out whether I absolutely need it.

I will, probably sometime this sumemr, get around to covering this, but it'll be rating-less, as I've contributed a race (the Rhyzalla) I'm super proud of to this tome.

With your permission I'll hold you to that. =)

BTW, what "campaign capstone" means?

TLDR It's a campaign setting that can link to or allow the PCs to move away from any other campaign setting.

"Campaign capstone" is a way of saying that City of 7 Seraphs serves as something that can expand a campaign setting or tie multiple campaign settings together, while also acting as a campaign setting of its own. If you're familiar with Planescape and Sigil from earlier editions of the world's first fantasy RPG, you'll have a pretty good idea of what that's supposed to mean. The City of 7 Seraphs has its own robust world for everyone to play in and it has lots of high level monsters and NPCs if your PCs have finished a game that ended before they hit 20th but want to keep playing beyond the bounds of their world.

Since Co7S also has the Lattice, an array of planar bridges connecting all the planes and realities, you can also use it as a jumping off point to allow your players to travel between other campaign settings you might already own (like if you were playing in Kobold Press' Midgard and wanted the PCs to travel across the planes to Stormbunny's Rhune and see a different-but-similar plane that might be the key to the PCs preventing Ragnarok from wiping out all existence).

I'm a huge fan of Planescape, so this looks right up my interest. Does the hardcover version of it from their website come with the PDF (like with many 3pp publishers)? Or is the PDF a separate purchase? Thanks!

I'm a huge fan of Planescape, so this looks right up my interest. Does the hardcover version of it from their website come with the PDF (like with many 3pp publishers)? Or is the PDF a separate purchase? Thanks!

I don't know the answer to that question, but I pinged Christen so he can get back to you. I'm pretty sure he's a couple hours ahead of me timezone-wise, so he might not get my message tonight.

Tangential, anyone looking for more cool Lost Spheres stuff should know that The Zodiac is currently part of DriveThruRPG's Christmas in July sale! Also available at its normal price here at Paizo.com.

Also, thank you to Brother Fen for the concise yet generous review!

Just as a heads up for anyone wondering if Lost Spheres was going to continue providing support for the City of 7 Seraphs in PF1...
The answer is yes! Akashic Realms Volume 1: Emperors and Einherjar is now available on DrivethruRPG and the Open Gaming Store! I expect we'll have it up for purchase here on Paizo sometime in the next week.

Part II of my extensive discussion of this book's perhaps less obvious merits on a grander scheme:

I don’t think that most people would disagree with the notion that extremism, regardless of the precise kind, tends to be hurtful. But I can’t help but consider a lot of the current discourse to be mired in a premise that is inherently destructive and flawed, namely on one of dichotomies. We apply “good” to our side, “bad” to the other. Light and dark. Because it is easy, because we are, to a degree, hardwired to do so by culture, language, etc.

I adore Dark Souls, because it does tend to underline my worldview in my more depressed or fatalistic moments, and I’ll be writing a text on that sooner, rather than later. However, in a cooperative, social game, does this work? Does it really? Gaming is inherently a bonding, social experience. You can have fun with someone who does not share your culture, beliefs, who might not even have the same native tongue, provided you share a lingua franca. Heck, I certainly have played plenty of games with native speakers of other languages, in their respective languages. And this experience? Regardless of your own political views and beliefs? They can build bridges. They can eliminate prejudice. They can soften hardliner stances for all but the most fanatic of persons. Picture a person you’ve played with since your early teens coming out as queer. Would that invalidate your friendship, all those good times shared in your games? Of course not. Even if you hold very strong beliefs on that matter, there’s a good chance you might at least pause and consider.

Roleplaying games in general are a form of communication, and one that, when all are having fun, is anathema to extremism. Because it becomes really hard to hold on to prejudices when playing with people; it’s hard to condemn someone for how they vote when you share so many fond memories. And it is a space that allows us to explore dicey themes in a controlled environment; heck, I bet there are plenty people out there who’ve had their ideologies or certain beliefs at least modified after encountering a particularly thought-provoking plot, right?

Anyways, my contention is this: City of 7 Seraphs, in all of its details, embraces this permissive notion of co-existence not only on a meta-level, but also on both a leitmotif level, and on that of individual characters. The motivation of the party is not to tilt the scales of balance towards good or evil, light or dark – it’s not to subscribe to one extreme or another. Instead, the setting, the city, demands the fact that both characters and players acknowledge the subjectivity of the extremes implicit in alignments systems, and thus, by extension, dichotomous thinking in general.

…or, on a gaming level: The city has plenty of factions – the-so-called parities, of which there are 14. These factions probably elicited a lot of the comparisons with Sigil, but a) are unique and b) are paired in ones aligned with light and dark. And here’s the kicker: They must work together to maintain the spiritual balance of the city. This means that paladins have a good reason to have to work with e.g. vampires or similar undead (like the ones from e.g. Rite Publishing’s In the Company of Vampires or Dreamscarred Press’ Lords of the Night), that there is a good reason for chaotic, leftwing anarchists to work together with Judge Dredd-like super-lawful clerics. Much like real life society, the City of 7 Seraphs doesn’t operate on absolutes – it embraces the need to cooperate, the necessity for both entropy and creation, for all those concepts usually paired off in “vs.” scenarios. It is a more enlightened setting, one obviously built with regards to allowing for sophisticated negotiations of truly complex topics and questions. Or, you know, you could murderhobo in several of its environments just fine, if that floats your boat. ;) And yes, I am aware of the irony of “enlightened” contained the word “light” and being conflated with good – see what I meant by these concepts being deeply-ingrained in our very language?

This is not the only component of this book’s themes that has deep and intrinsic values, mind you, and you certainly don’t need to subscribe to my reading above. You do have to know, however, that setting provides an intrinsic reason for e.g. chaotic evil and lawful good characters to be forced to work together, should you desire such.

I’ve already touched briefly upon the Sigil comparisons and a few aspects that lead me to think of this book as something utterly distinct, and even superior to the Granddaddy of planar metropolises. Where Sigil enforced pretty directly faction conflict and more extreme ideologies, the City of 7 Seraphs focuses not on their direct clash, but upon the negotiation of philosophies and types of weltanschauung on a grander scheme that might well have immediate and disastrous consequences if not engaged in. It sets up these dichotomies between light and dark as at once oscillating tensions between extremes AND as complimentary sides of the same, grand picture. It engages in a type of synthesis, if you will, once that does not dissolve the respective components.

This is not the story of singular villains and heroes – and in that way, the myth-weaving provided in the beginning of the book does something incredibly smart, or at least I think it does. Joseph Campbell once posited the concept monomyth, a kind of template for the heroic journey that might be applied to most mythologies and tales, and while I do not subscribe to the validity of its universal application, I do consider it helpful as a concept – in many ways, gaming could be pictured, on an individual level, as embarking on a variant of such a journey with your character. However, on a meta-level, on the level of the table, City of 7 Seraphs, in both its myth-weaving and foundation upon aforementioned non-dichotomous concepts, it is not set up for a hero’s journey – it is set up for a table’s journey. It, in a thoroughly clever way, at once reinforces the need for the heroic and its balancing; it emphasizes the validity of the concept and subverts it. It is the journey of not a single main character or party, it is the story of individuals, working together. Its basic set-up is that of a truly democratic myth-weaving that emphasizes what a good RPG should deliver: A compelling story for every PC, one that might be part of the header of the party’s name, but which is nonetheless founded upon the individuals constituting the whole. In a way, its very structure is infused with the notion of shared mythweaving and communication, of the act of roleplaying as a meditation and mediation; it could be likened to the structure facilitating a kind of collective engaging in a collective kata – it CENTERS those engaged in it, both in-and out-game, at least when implemented properly.

/End of academic digressions.

Indeed, the whole set-up of the city in districts and the notion parities and balance have an impact that you can notice, even if my observations above mean nothing to you; there is one aspect that is very clever, almost unnoticeable. These notions? They are used for balancing. And I don’t mean soft balancing. I mean hard balancing. It’s something that many people might not notice, but when you take a close look at how this book is structured, how it spreads its veils, feats, class options and archetypes, you *will* quickly realize that there is an intrinsic and surprisingly tight internal method at work that you might miss otherwise: PCs generally don’t have access to the options of more than one district, of more than one parity.

This is not, however, where the appeal of this book ends, perish the thought. Beyond sheer rules and amount of content, I should also emphasize the sheer depth of imaginative content. The vast wealth of ideas. In a way, this book almost feels like something Like Numénara or some of the better OSR campaign settings, where a more rules-lite system is used, but where the narrative obviously is at least, if not more important than the rules. The sheer density of unconventional concepts is staggering. For the purpose of this review, I randomly flipped open the book three times, because I just couldn’t decide on what to talk about, so here is what I got:
-An infectious personality imprint.
-A pair of fully statted serial killers, with one being a shopkeep…and the second being the very shop, putting a dark spin on Terry Pratchett (R.I.P.)’s notion of the wandering shop.
-Two high-CR, lavishly-illustrated and statted Kyton Exarchs with custom abilities. Both make Hellraiser’s Pinhead look positively cuddly.

There is something interesting on literally every damn page, to the point where one could attempt to explain the book like reading a more cerebral, more metal and China Miéville/Clive Barker-esque take on the planar metropolis. But that once again would be a simplification.

As you could probably glean from mentioning some of the playable races herein, there is another leitmotif at work here, namely “Otherness.” And yes, I said that I was done with academic digressions, but bear with me for just a second.

You see, any group of people, society, etc., tends to define themselves by, bingo, dichotomies – “us” vs “them”, “poor” vs ”rich”, “black” vs. “white”, “capitalists” vs. “communists” – because it is easy; because it lends a sense of cohesion to a social unit that might otherwise not exist. The “other”, the “them”, then, would be the unfamiliar, what we consider to be not-“us.” Perhaps that’s my background speaking, but I’ve always held a deep fascination with experiencing the “other” – both in real life, and in gaming, and it might stem from being incapable of feeling like I truly belong anywhere. I’ve always identified more as the “other” to the dominant leading culture. No matter how you stand on that subject matter in real life, in the context of gaming, we, more often than not, seek the “other” – sure, it’s nice to play a classic, old-school setting; it’s familiar, and we know what orcs are, what ogres are, etc. But we also crave something else, something we haven’t seen or engaged with before. That’s the reason so many people love Planescape. Because it established a fantasy that went far beyond the familiar, that was thoroughly distinct in themes, tropes, etc. It’s why e.g. the Bas-Lag novels’ cactus people and sexually-dimorphic scarab-folk tend to resonate with many people. Because they’re the stark, radical OTHER. It’s also the reason why rehashing Planescape can’t ever feel like reading it for the first time.

City of 7 Seraphs does not attempt to rehash Planescape; while they share a planar focus, it acts less as a hub, and instead focuses on being closer to its own thing that can be used to connect whatever narratives you desire. This is also mirrored in the presence of proper ships to navigate the void/aether, and in the races. Yes, I’m calling them races, not “species”, as this book does. Because that’s the game term. In the spirit of discussion: I totally get why the book calls them “species” instead; it’s probably the better term. But, on an emotional level, it’s utterly *WRONG* to me; the fixed game term is called “race.” It’s also a “racial bonus”, not a “species bonus.” I am fully cognizant of the fact that I am very petty here; I am also very much aware of the difference of this term’s meaning in real life, particularly in a US-context, and in the context of a gaming supplement. I get that it is a very loaded term in real life, but why concede its innocent use in the context of elfgames, why concede the ground, when tons of years of supplements did a VERY good job highlighting that they mean different things? It’s not an inherently bad term. Then again, I won’t fault the book for it. I get the intentions and can get behind them. But rules-relevant terms are technical language. And if you really set out to be offended by something, like so many people nowadays seem to enjoy doing, you’ll find something to be offended, regardless of intentions. I guess, this bothered me to no extent primarily because I am so OCD when it comes to the integrity of the semantics and syntax of roleplaying games rules language, and this, to me, represents a thoroughly unnecessary incision. To be frank, I really hated that decision on an emotional level, even while understanding the reasoning behind it. If you think I’m a horribly person for that, then I am sorry – I get your prioritizations, but I have mine, and for me, formal integrity in this regards trumps potentially using a loaded term in an innocent context.

Anyhow, I was discussing the races herein: We have, for example, spider-like symbiotic entities, fungus-beings sent back in time from the future, fey, telepathic jellyfish and more – the focus, more than it ever was in Sigil, is that of an experience of truly fantastic Otherness; not of experiencing JUST a planar melting pot (though this function is still very much here), but of experiencing a fantasy that embraces the thoroughly novel aspects, that are not a rehash or a blending of disparate planar concepts. In short: Even before you add all the aspects from various worlds and games, before you add the planar angles and stuff like that, you have a vision that embraces the entirety of the vast canon of Pathfinder materials, and, with panache aplomb, manages to expand it in a way that reminded me of reading some of the more groundbreaking OSR-settings in terms of sheer novelty and jamais-vu.

And yet, it remains grounded in something relatable. An issue often encountered with particularly experimental settings and the more far-out options, is that they tend to stray so far as to become impossible to relate to – and the City of 7 Seraphs avoids this in a variety of ways: From mythology featuring several instances of obvious adventuring parties and their impact on the city’s destiny to the grand concept, it provides a unifying framework that is exceedingly smart, and once more underlines the notions or the core leitmotifs: The model of the planar geography assumed here is supremely smart, in that it assumes sources of energy/power and the so-called lattice as connecting tissue – which would be, as some sages assume, the shadow of Yggdrasil’s branches. This is clever in many ways – for once, the tree resonates with fans of Norse mythology; it also features prominently in setting-lore, from Midgard to Rhûne. And the shadow-angle means that the presence of the lattice? It does not contradict your own model of the cosmos. In a way, you can use the planar model presented herein as an ersatz-great wheel, sure – or, you could use it as an extension, as a connecting tissue that lets you blend the disparate cosmologies of different campaign settings seamlessly. This might not matter as much to you as it does to me, but these small components, these precise and well-considered observations – they elevate this for me.

In many ways, reading this book felt like that magical moment when I was first confronted with Planescape once more, only to surpass it. In many ways, this book surpassed that moment, as I’m now much older, jaded, cynical, and I’ve literally read a library’s worth of roleplaying games material, and fantasy. And scifi. And other literature. You get the drift.

This book feels almost like it has been written for *me*, for people exactly like me. It’s a feeling I rarely encounter. I’ve had it when I read Faust I; when I read Gödel Escher Bach; when I read House of Leaves; when I read Lord Jim; when I read The Conspiracy against the Human Race; when I read the first book of Bleak House: The Death of Dr. Rudolph Van Richten…you get the idea. Sometimes, you find a book that feels like it has been tailor-made for your interests, that hits this perfect sweet spot of yours.

City of 7 Seraphs does that for me. It is an incredibly densely-packed, vast achievement. It is certainly not a perfect book, but it delivers more creativity in even a third of its pages than some entire publisher’s catalogs. No, that is not hyperbole. I am dead serious.

This book is immensely smart, immensely inspired, immediately gameable, it brims with inspiring ideas, and its production values put many comparable books to shame. It’s over 600 pages of premium content, with less overall glitches and certainly more imaginative content than many “big” books of half that size, and it is paired with a decadent layout, decadent amounts or original artwork…heck, there is one IN THE BACKER LIST PAGES. There is a fantastic piece of artwork in the backer list. I am not kidding. It is evident that this book is a passion project in the best sense of the word; it is the brainchild of deeply intelligent and creative persons. It is a vision of remarkable ambition, and one that actually manages to live up to it.

There is one instance, where half a sentence is hidden behind a visual element; there are a couple of glitches here, and the book assumes that you know Pathfinder’s first edition, that you can judge what works for you and what doesn’t. Regarding formal criteria, a tighter reins on rules in some instances could have made this even better.

But I seriously don’t care. This book does so much right. This is the new fantasy we need. This is bold, unflinching, and even when I disagree with individual design decisions, when an untyped damage type or bonus type makes me flinch and grit my teeth, it always has something up its sleeve that makes me forgive such lapses immediately. For every such minor snafu, there are 10 great artworks, rules operations, novel concepts, far-out and exciting narratives, smart and thought-provoking concepts.

How structured and smart is this book? It even has a frickin’ numerology! It has its glossary at the end of the mythological background, neatly recapping everything. It does not rehash. It expands. If you’ve left Pathfinder behind, I maintain that this STILL is worth the price for the hardcover by the virtue of its writing alone, even if you disregard every single rule herein.

I genuinely LOVE this book, and I have no idea how I managed to be even considered to contribute my measly contributions, when all those top-tier authors obviously gave their all here. It may not always be perfect, but it is always interesting. And that’s worth more to me.

From drugs to haunts to items to vessels to monsters and NPCs to maps – this book has it all. Did I mention the multi-page spanning, thoroughly delightfully wicked effects of the Radia and Occlusion, and that they’re so deadly and versatile, even high-level mythic characters won’t want to dawdle?

If you think that fantasy is dead, doomed to rehashing the same old concepts for new editions…think again.

There is no book, no setting, like this.

Now, as per my policy, I can’t rate this. However, as far as my personal preferences are concerned, I can include it on my personal top ten list, for that is what this book, to me, represents. And I can tell you that you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better city for your adventures. The only book I’m aware of that might yet achieve this level of awesomeness would be “The Blight”, and I’m not reading that monster on screen, so until I can afford the print copy of The Blight and had a chance to digest it and compare it to City of 7 Seraphs, this will not only rank as the single most awesome planar metropolis book for me, but also as the single best city setting I own.

Do yourself a favor and get it while you can. Even if you only extract 10% of its ideas for your games, you’ll have gotten more out of these 10% than out of many, many 300-page snorefests.

Endzeitgeist out.

They probably should have inserted a line saying "Species bonuses are equivalent to racial bonuses and the two do not stack."

I am intrigued by the idea of a setting that is ultimately about cooperation and accepting the Other. I just wish there was a lower-concept version (as my brain is the dull kind that doesn't handle art well). Still, more askashic stuff might be worth it.

This really is a brilliant book. It's too bad that we didn't get a proper map to lay on the table as well as a few mini-adventures to get things started.

@Silvercat:
There is such a sidebar in the book. I just object to changing a game's rules-terminology.

My long-winded ramble? It's just *my* way of reading the themes of this book, and since the setting's leitmotifs really have an intrinsic value to me, I ultimately elected to run with it and share my analysis of these themes, because they can imho elevate the book further when properly udnerstood.

If my review made it sound too "artsy", rest assured that you *can* play this like you'd play Planescape, Oathbound or similar settings; you can just run this as a meticulous, detailed planar hub...or, you can start analyzing themes like I did.

In short: City of 7 Seraphs may be a high-concept book, but how much you focus on these underlying themes? Totally up to you.

Endz nailed it. This book is special.

If my review made it sound too "artsy", rest assured that you *can* play this like you'd play Planescape, Oathbound or similar settings; you can just run this as a meticulous, detailed planar hub...or, you can start analyzing themes like I did.

In short: City of 7 Seraphs may be a high-concept book, but how much you focus on these underlying themes? Totally up to you.

Yeah, but I'd probably just skip the flavor text because I'm just not going to be able to wrap my brain around whatever's going on. Means I have an additional negative consideration when deciding to purchase it.

@Silvercat: I kinda understand that - the mythology in the beginning of the book can feel, admittedly, harder to parse than that of comparable settings - just by virtue of being so DIFFERENT.

That being said, the book does have a glossary that explains terms, and the GM's appendix does spell out themes in a non-academic way that is probably easier to parse than my review, lol. The mythology in the beginning is the only chapter that required "wrapping my head around", if you will.

Anyways, from what I've seen of your posts over the years, I don't think that the flavor would go over your head; even my temporally-confused rhyzala-race does not require Primer-level attention spans. A lot of the book and its flavor can just be consumed, if you choose to do so. There's just a LOT more to unpack concept-wise than in pretty much any comparable setting I'm aware of. Where some settings present, let's say, 4 ideas/concepts per average page, this one is closer to 10.

A good litmus test would probably be Coliseum Morpheuon or Planescape. If you can handle those, you can handle C7S as well. And if you want to dive deeper in some regard, you can do so as well. If not - perfectly fine! :D

Hope that helps!

Endzeitgeist wrote:

If my review made it sound too "artsy", rest assured that you *can* play this like you'd play Planescape, Oathbound or similar settings; you can just run this as a meticulous, detailed planar hub...or, you can start analyzing themes like I did.

In short: City of 7 Seraphs may be a high-concept book, but how much you focus on these underlying themes? Totally up to you.

Yeah, but I'd probably just skip the flavor text because I'm just not going to be able to wrap my brain around whatever's going on. Means I have an additional negative consideration when deciding to purchase it.

As an independent customer, I'd like to offer that there's nothing unusual going on here. Are there "underlying themes"? Dunno. Don't care. Maybe there's some sort of artistic philosophical high-brow cross-referencing literature going on... but when I read the book, I got "neat things in a neat setting".

There's nothing to skip. The flavour text is just like from any other setting material. It tells you what factions and individuals are doing what, and why. It tells you some history of those powers and the environment. Okay.

The setting/environment/flavour is very good. I won't pretend I've read every word, but what I have read has been enjoyable.

But you don't need to worry there's some sort of accessibility issue where us "normals" just won't understand what's going on. It's just a (very good) book.

But you don't need to worry there's some sort of accessibility issue where us "normals" just won't understand what's going on. It's just a (very good) book.

Unfortunately I wouldn't categorize myself as "normal".

I'll think about it.