City of Splendors: Waterdeep

[thalmin]

So I was looking at the listing for Waterdeep and noticed something, or rather the lack thereof.

The first in-depth look at Waterdeep, the shining jewel of the Forgotten Realms setting, in many years.

City of Splendors: Waterdeep offers an in-depth examination of the great city of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms setting. An overview of the city includes history, a who’s who, information on laws, and rules for running and playing in a Waterdhavian campaign. Information on the people of Waterdeep covers non-player characters, arcane schools, armed forces, guilds, nobility, prestige classes specific to the city, and more. Also included in the book are discussions of specific Waterdeep locales, adventure locales, and new monsters. An extensive appendix gives information on new equipment, magic items, psionic powers, poisons, spells, and more.

NO MAPS!?!?
I'm hoping they just left this out of the description.

 

[jester47]

I think they will probably map it by ward in the book, with location descriptions. At least thats what I hope they do. It would be great if they covered all the places and stuff that was in Volos guide, city of spendors boxed set, city system, waterdeep and the north, and the waterdeep module. I am sure a lot of that is redundant so I think we will get a good gazetteer of the city in this book. The way they make the FR books they can cram a lot of info in one, so I think 160 pages will be enough.

Now that they are starting to run out of stuff to put out books about, I am hoping they will do undermountain! Now that would fit into 128 pages easy (well maybe).

I look forward to new FR releases, if they are going to be as good (IMO of course) as they have been lately.

Aaron.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I am really looking forward to this book. I can not wait for it to be out. I fully intend to get it signed by Ed at GenCon.

 

[Sammael]

With all the crunch (the "extensive appendix" line scares me), there will hardly be any space for the city itself. I fear for this book.

 

[philreed]

Luckily, the old city information is still available in PDF. And years of fun can come from just the original Waterdeep and the North supplement (I remember how much fun we had adventuring in the city using only that supplement and the original boxed set).

 

[Sammael]

Yeah, those are great supplements. But I don't have them in printed form and PDFs just don't do it for me.

 

[philreed]

Yeah, those are great supplements. But I don't have them in printed form and PDFs just don't do it for me.

You could always print them at Kinkos. I've used their online service before (upload the PDF to their site and then they print it and you can choose to go pick it up or have it mailed to you).

 

[Sammael]

You could always print them at Kinkos.

There are no Kinkos in Serbia.

And I'm sure the shipping costs would be overwhelming.

 

[Brakkart]

Now that they are starting to run out of stuff to put out books about, I am hoping they will do undermountain! Now that would fit into 128 pages easy (well maybe).

How are they starting to run out of stuff to make books about? There are huge swathes of the Realms as yet uncovered by any 3E book, and thats just in Faerun. Add in Zakhara, Kara-Tur, Maztica and the Utter East and they have a decades worth of regional sourcebooks alone. Thats not counting possibly doing some books that tie in to the novel line, and I'm not talking adventures. I mean a sourcebook for example, that details the Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy, stats for the characters, the plot, locations, crunch, what effect it has had on the Realms, a complete timeline of the sequence of events, updated maps and stats for anywhere that has changed (like if Baldur's Gate was half burned to the ground, lets have a revised city map and new population figure, plus what major NPC's died etc).

What I'd like to see them do though is adventures again. Either a mega-adventure each year, or better yet an anthology of short adventures by various authors each year, like get 6 good realms authors (Ed Greenwood, Eric L. Boyd, Sean K. Reynolds, James Wyatt would all be good imho) to each write a 24 page adventure (with a good spread of locations, antagonists and levels. Could even have them on a similar theme so they can be linked to form a campaign or used as standalones), bind those together into a 160 page hardback (which leaves 16 pages for the contents page, requisite crunch etc). I'd buy one of those a year in a heartbeat.

I'm glad they are doing a book on Waterdeep, it is the primary city setting of the Realms afterall. just hoping that all the crunch mentioned in the books description doesn't mean that the actual description and details of the city itself are an afterthought. Still I've yet to see a bad book by Eric L. Boyd, so I'm hopeful for this one.

 

[GlassJaw]

Luckily, the old city information is still available in PDF. And years of fun can come from just the original Waterdeep and the North supplement (I remember how much fun we had adventuring in the city using only that supplement and the original boxed set).

EBAY!!

That's where I got mine. The original City of Splendors boxed set is AMAZING. You want maps? It has enough maps to choke a horse. It's not the easiest to get or cheapest of the old boxed sets but well worth it.