Looking like Necromancer Games is putting out a book focusing on the City of Brass. Information can be found here
Does anyone have any further information on this release or speculation for what else may be in it? Any ideas on how close to Planescape it'll be following?
From a previous thread on Enworld, I know a little.
Because of IP issues, they can only write their material based on the City of Brass as it appears in mythology, rather than the D&D City of Brass has been written about it in 'The Inner Planes', 'Secrets of the Lamp', the 3.5 Planar Handbook, etc. Given the company's mantra of "1st edition feel", and some comments in that thread, I rather doubt that they'd use any Planescape material even if they could (without getting sued).
Now it might be a decent product, I can't really say. I haven't been all that impressed with previous stuff that they've produced, but it's largely a style issue more than anything.
And for what it's worth, they were apparently going to originally have Rob Kuntz of 1e fame write their CoB, but he pulled out for whatever reason and ended up writing another 3rd party "city of brass" book for Kenzer, "Sir Robliars City of Brass" (http://www.orcsnest.com/blurber.asp?Title=Sir%20Robliars%20City%20of%20B...). I haven't read it, so I can't comment on it either.
The basic concept - a city built on a brass hemisphere floating above the Plane of Fire - seems similar to the Planescape/Al-Qadim version of the city. I seem to remember (while browsing the Tome of Horrors II in the bookstore) that the Sultan in the Necromancer Games City of Brass is worshipped as a god, which is different from the D&D version, where Imix and Freya are among the most popular beings worshipped there.
The Planescape City of Brass doesn't seem to be much of a portal nexus, either - the only portal I recall off-hand is one that leads to Baator (the Infinite Staircase is some distance away from the city proper, I think). It wouldn't be a big change to add some portals, though, and could improve the city's usefulness.
My biggest issue with the Necromancer Games product is price. It's apparently going to be fiendishly expensive, and I don't see myself shelling out that kind of cash when I like the version of the City of Brass I have already.
There was an ENWorld thread on it where a designer commented.
Whichever the case, I like to think that with our design concept on this one, we left room for there to be multiple facets of the City of Brass residing on possible paralell dimensions... and allow various planar convergences/gates and the like for this to work for you.
So is it Secrets of the Lamp? No, it is not that City of Brass. Is it RJK's ? No. Is it Monte' Cook & Co' from Sigil? Is it Grubb's description? No. Could it be all of those things? Yes. Could you use all those pre-made descriptions from other sources and slot them in with the stuff that we created? Absolutely, and with much encouragement.