Yeah, I paid for the ideas and content more that the 5E crunch. I’ve run and played in A LOT of the official published content from Wizards and even with the wonky crunch this still beats it all hands down for me. I have both the City of Splendors and Eberron Sharn 3.5 books and this has more and better city content that those combined IMO. So the crunch being a little wonky doesn’t bother me. If I had a complaint, it would be that I wish they spent more money on more art and better quality maps. The issue you mentioned about the tent in the Circus Macabre is not really a problem for me. That location is primarily a role play location and so theatre of the mind will suffice. No need for redrawing. If I really need to, I can cross out the “1 square = 5ft” and those tents can be any size I need them to be. For me they are a just a quick location reference and scale is less important. The building is where any combat is likely to occur, so accuracy there is a little more important. The issue I had with the maps is that some were hard to understand until your read through all of the text and exercised some deep thought. And just regular locations, not even the between locations. So they could have gotten a better cartographer.
Wow, I had so meant for this thread to be different than what it has become. It’s more review than an enhancing the module thread. I was hoping for more ideas. But I guess not a lot of people are actually running it or at least they don’t frequent the forums.
So for those finding this and reading it as a review, I guess I will bottom line this with my opinion. This book is almost 900 densely packed pages and is a city guide (complete with locations, NPCs and plot hooks), bestiary and adventure path. The 5E conversion could be better and there are errors here and there. However, from an idea and content perspective, it is better than anything Wizards is publishing in my humble opinion. Their crunch may be better (and it should be since they wrote the system), but their content is half baked. Just look at the recently released Ravnica and compare it to Castorhage—I’d have to go out and buy other MTG books just to complete the Ravnica lore to run it. Casorhage is a complete setting. I recently ran the Tyranny of Dragons AP and I know already that running this is going to require less fixing. For me it’s easier to fix the stat blocks than the entire plot (which I did). I played in an Out of the Abyss campaign which left me feeling underwhelmed. So the Levee, in my opinion, is so far superior to these that it’s not even close when it comes to locations, oddities, political intrigue, NPCs, story, ect.. It’s NOT a perfect book. But there aren’t many that deliver on BOTH content and crunch. Cover price on ROT, Waterdeep and Sharn was about what I paid for the Blight. But I’d take the Blight over those any day for the content alone if the intention was to run an urban campaign. Whether or not this appeals to you, warts and all, will really depend on what you are looking for and what you value (e.g. system crunch vs ideas). For me ideas are everything. Crunch is nice but easily fixed if needed.
