Cityscape: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly?

[Angel Tarragon]

I am looking into buying Cityscape and was wondering what is great about it, what isn't and the absoluety horrendous. Anyone with the book that has feelings on these please feel free to spolier me rotten!

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I guess from the the lack of replies that there is nothing bad about this book.

 

[MerricB]

It's special that way.

I rather like the way that Temples, Guilds and other organisations are presented. What I'm not happy about is that there now seems to be several official ways of doing them. What happened to affiliations?

I'm also not sure that a 10% tithe to an organisation returning a 5% discount on spells is really worth it.

Some of the sidebars are great (research is brilliant). Others (such as the shopping trip) leave me wondering what they were thinking.

Cheers!

 

[Maldin]

There's been some interesting discussion on the product (which I don't have, so I cannot comment personally) over on the Paizo boards in this thread. .

Denis, aka "Maldin"
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Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com

 

[Joshua Randall]

Based on an initial glance at the book in a store, it looked like a lot of the front section was quite similar to info found in Races of XXX (sections on how different races build cities) and DMG 2 (different neighborhoods within a city). Obviously, not an exact duplicate, but similar enough in content that it caught my eye.

The magical pollution section is neat. There's a preview of that in Dragon magazine if you want a feel for it.

 

[amethal]

Are you thinking of buying it as a player, or as a DM?

If as a player, I have one word of advice. Don't!

The book has the lowest amount of player-useable crunch I've ever seen.

I think it gives good rules on designing cities, which I've made a lot of use of already, but I don't think it helps much in running city adventures.

 

[Arnwyn]

What I'm not happy about is that there now seems to be several official ways of doing them. What happened to affiliations?

Others (such as the shopping trip) leave me wondering what they were thinking.

Ouch. Upon a first glance, these two things look like a condemnation to my eyes.

 

[MerricB]

Ouch. Upon a first glance, these two things look like a condemnation to my eyes.

I think Cityscape is a fairly good book. However, it has structural problems. The sections on guilds, temples, organisations and noble houses are great; it's just that Wizards seem to be flailing about looking at different ways of representing them rather than just using one model.

See DMG2, PHB2 and Cityscape.

Cheers!