One of the things players and GMs alike love about Freeport is its blend of fantasy genres and flavors. It’s a pirate city, but it’s also the site of an ancient serpent people empire, a location for cultists of mad gods, an escape from a continent that waged a war with a series of necromantic warlords, and the center of a trade route that can include sea-travel to alternate realities. Its tone ranges somewhere near “pulp swashbuckling Lovecraftian horror,” which is a neat idea but can be hard to maintain. There’s an introductory adventure in the Freeport City of Adventure hardback to help get GMs started, and the Return to Freeport adventure series currently being released in pdf, but a GM wishing to expand beyond those may find it difficult to maintain the “Freeport tone” of other encounters.

In short, some GMs could use some guidance on what Pathfinder Roleplaying Game monsters fit well in Freeport… and which don’t. Luckily, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game has a number of useful tags and categories that can be used to help determine if a creature is going to feel out-of-place in a Freeport campaign.

While it hopefully goes without saying, I’m still going to note that all of these are suggestions only. There’s no “wrong” way to run or play in a Freeport campaign as long as everyone is having a good time. If you and your players love telling the story of the open war between androids and devils fought publicly in the city’s streets, have at it! To a much lesser extreme, a Freeport campaign may well have less “typical” encounters from time to time as examples of unusual occurrences, and there’s nothing wrong with that. These ideas are just guidelines for how to try to stay within the existing feel of Freeport products, so if you vary from that feel you do so intentionally, rather than by accident. Read more →