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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lady Dragon" data-source="post: 2009124" data-attributes="member: 3453">The Canting Crew is a 180 page hardcover from Troll Lord Games by Gary Gygax and it is priced at $35.95.The cover is somewhat plain with the authors name and the books title being the predominent features.The interior art is adaquate some of it is nice and other pieces are simple and not well done.The pages are a yellowish color but the book is other wise all black and white.The book is divided into several sections which are called Books and I will detail them separetely.Book I  is called The Canting Crew Society.This section takes about sixty pages of the book.This section is basically a "How to create a city with a underworld".Mr Gygax teaches us how to do this by showing examples of a city he calls "Ludnum".The section covers topics such as population and size,Economics,Society,Goverment,Trade,Architecture,City layout and Politics.All this is done with a heavy emphasis on the seedier side of town.All the details are given in a fairly generic sense with Ludnum mostly serving as an example although this city is fleshed out enough that you could use it.I think Mr Gygax's intent was for the reader to add these things to a city of His/Her own creation rather than use the material as is.Almost every aspect of city life is cover in this section.The second half of Book I covers the Canting Crew which is sort of a society of theives that goes beyond an individual theives guild.But is rather an entire underworld Society with theives ,Assassins,beggers,prositutes,pirates,vagabonds or anyone else who might  make a living by preying on others.As a whole this entire section is very well done,and would be extremely useful to anyone looking to set up a criminal underworld in there camapaign.Book II is basically a 60 page english to theives cant dictionary.Theives cant can basically be described as a form of slang that has become is own langauge.While I can see this as being useful to some players who use theives, to add a bit of spice to there character, 60 pages of it is a bit excessive.I really can't imagine anyone one actually going to the trouble of learning all these words and if they did I would ask WHY?I thinka couple of pages would have been sufficient.I can Remember the use of slang in planescape and I didn't like it there either.The amusment wears off rather quickly.Book III is basically 16 pages of prestige classes,spells and a bit on Heirachy at the end.The spells are mostly low level and would suit a multiclassed rouge/wizard or sorcerer well and the prestige classes are excellent examples of the urban theif.Book IV is a chapter meant for the Lejendary Adventures system of which I know nothing.It does bring up the cross-over subject but thats another topic.For the D20 player they are 16 worthless pages.Finally there is an appendix with some useful information.This section cover possible guilds that might exist in a city.Naming ideas for Inns and Taverns,An equipment list,which emphasis on things used in the underworld,and crimes and their punshiments.That about covers the content of the book.Now I would like to state that I don't have a problem paying over $30 for a book if it is color,over 250 pages or both this book is neither.I feel you are paying $20 for the content,$5 for the Harcover and $10 for Mr.Gygax's name on the cover.With most books that I buy I get a feeling that there was so much that was left out because they were limited to a certain number of pages and something had to be cut out.With this book I get the opposite feeling.That they really had to stretch it to make it cover 180 pages.The Print in some of the sections is huge and there are a lot of sections that are blank.My score of a 3(average) is based on the entire book.I really like sections 1 and 3 which is about 76 pages of this book in very large print I feel it could have been done in a smaller softcover for for a lot lower price.Also the Cant section should have either been cut way back or done in a different book for those who find that sort of thing interesting 60 pages of slang is just a bit over done.</blockquote>

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