World's Largest City...any info?
- Thread starter Ghost2020
- Start date
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
The book is full of engaging, interesting, setting info and hundreds of neat self-contained plots (adventure seeds, if you will). The pitfalls, however, are numerous:
1. There are no maps of interior spaces -- be they sewers, catacombs, or buildings. This was probably intentional, as the product is designed to be easily customizable. The downside here is that without these maps, huge swaths of the city become unuseable without GM-provided maps, whether you draw them yourself or cull them from other products. This decreases the product's utility quite a bit.
2. There is no index or detailed table of contents. This is completely unforgiveable in a product of this size and scope. Finding specific information on topic X is next to impossible unless you have already stumbled across it and remembered to bookmark it. The World's Largest City not having an index is a bit like an encyclopedia not being alphabetized. Using it during actual play, as a reference, is next to impossible.
3. No 'in-line' stat blocks for encounters. That is, instead of following typical D&D 3.5 adventure format (including that used in the WLD) and presenting creature or character stats next to encounter descriptions, the book instead contains an appendix of generic NPC stats that you are referred to for all encounters. On the upside, this saves space. On the downside, it further reduces the utility of a product already severely crippled in terms of being useable during actual play.
The bottom line is that, due to some poor presentation choices, the WLC is a great idea mine and source of adventure seeds but utterly useless as a reference text or actual play aid. This is unfortunate, as it could have been a fantastic product. As it stands, it's merely a bit above average.
1. There are no maps of interior spaces -- be they sewers, catacombs, or buildings. This was probably intentional, as the product is designed to be easily customizable. The downside here is that without these maps, huge swaths of the city become unuseable without GM-provided maps, whether you draw them yourself or cull them from other products. This decreases the product's utility quite a bit.
2. There is no index or detailed table of contents. This is completely unforgiveable in a product of this size and scope. Finding specific information on topic X is next to impossible unless you have already stumbled across it and remembered to bookmark it. The World's Largest City not having an index is a bit like an encyclopedia not being alphabetized. Using it during actual play, as a reference, is next to impossible.
3. No 'in-line' stat blocks for encounters. That is, instead of following typical D&D 3.5 adventure format (including that used in the WLD) and presenting creature or character stats next to encounter descriptions, the book instead contains an appendix of generic NPC stats that you are referred to for all encounters. On the upside, this saves space. On the downside, it further reduces the utility of a product already severely crippled in terms of being useable during actual play.
The bottom line is that, due to some poor presentation choices, the WLC is a great idea mine and source of adventure seeds but utterly useless as a reference text or actual play aid. This is unfortunate, as it could have been a fantastic product. As it stands, it's merely a bit above average.
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Olaf the Stout
Legend
Who the heck made the decision not to include an index? You would think that an index would be one of the first things you would include in a product of that size.
Olaf the Stout
Olaf the Stout
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Olaf the Stout said:
I have no idea who made the call but it is unquestionably one of the worst decisions made in the industry for a good, long, while. The other stuff taken by itself probably wouldn't have hurt the product too badly but the total lack of an index and detailed table of contents completely crippled it insofar as utility is concerned.
ChimericDream
First Post
I don't have the WLC yet, but considering the WLD book didn't have an index or table of contents either, I'm not terribly surprised that the WLC book is missing these.
Olaf the Stout
Legend
muzick said:
No index in a mega-sized adventure I can understand. No index in a mega-sized sourcebook/campaign setting (which is what I thought WLC was) makes no sense whatsoever.
It stands out even more when you compare it to the only product that I consider to be a relative comparison, Ptolus. Ptolus has a huge table of contents and extensive index. In addition, a more detailed ToC is included on a CD with the book. And then, on top of that there are notes in the margins of every page, giving page references to different things as they are mentioned in the text!
Ptolus showed how to set out a book of that size to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for. I don't understand why AEG didn't just copy them.
Olaf the Stout
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
muzick said:
The WLC has a table of contents, just not a detailed one (hence, a fairly useless one). It breaks down the book by city sections but nothing else. This wouldn't have been a big deal if there was an index -- but there isn't. As Olaf correctly surmised, the book is a campaign setting/sourcebook, not an adventure, which made all of this doubly frustrating.
With WLD, this kind of oversight wasn't a big deal as you could read it/use it in small chunks (no need to read all 800+ pages of it prior to the start of your first game session). You could bookmark one chapter and pretty much read through it in order of play. No biggie. Not so with the WLC (where characters could conceivably visit many sections of it in the course of a single evening game session).
I really liked the content of the book but it was so impractical to use during actual play that I ended up parting with it -- for $15 in credit at the FLGS. I probably could have held out for more cash or trade value, though I finally came to accept that short of memorizing the entire book (or investing in multiple boxes of bookmarks), it wasn't doing me any good.
In keeping with my New Year's Resolution to only purchase/retain books that will get used, the WLC had to go. It's not the most disappointing RPG purchase of the last decade for me, though it's easily the most expensive disappointing RPG purchase that I've ever made.
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DM_Jeff
Explorer
Ghost2020 said:
There was a 4-page discussion here at En World:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=171808&page=1&pp=40
*ducks back into shadows*
-DM Jeff
Odhanan
Adventurer
WLC could be best described as a vanilla city spread throughout a mammoth of a book as an endless succession of locales. The pitfalls, as other posters described, are both surprising and unacceptable: no index, no maps of particular locations in the book, few artwork. Maybe if you liked the layout of WLD you would like WLC's, though it seems to me the two books are made for very different puposes, the latter requiring an excellent organization that here, remains inexistent.
You could use it as it stands, but for me, it would be really, really bland. The best option from my point of view is to plunder the book for particular elements, locations, NPCs you would use in your own campaign.
I'm running Ptolus at the moment, and purchased WLC with that intention in mind. I must say I haven't ripped anything from it to use in the campaign yet.
You could use it as it stands, but for me, it would be really, really bland. The best option from my point of view is to plunder the book for particular elements, locations, NPCs you would use in your own campaign.
I'm running Ptolus at the moment, and purchased WLC with that intention in mind. I must say I haven't ripped anything from it to use in the campaign yet.
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