Review - City-State of the Sea Kings - Part The Last - Admitting Defeat

I know you, the fine readers of this blog, voted on City-State of the Sea Kings being moved to the top of the review pile.

I tried, really I did.

I just can't do it.

There is too much here for the little I want in a setting, and what is here is dry reading. Maybe not as dry as some of those history text books I had to slog through in my college days, but dry none the less.

Classic Judges Guild products were known for their brevity - they might have been dry as a cracker, but they got to the point and moved on. City-State of the Sea Kings is a box of saltines.

Isle of the Blest was less that 30 pages in the Necromancer release of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy (maybe one day I'll run that) whereas City-State of the Sea Kings comes in at nearly 380.

I don't need that much detail. Hell, I can't handle that much detail. It's not a product I would use at this point in my gaming life cycle, as I'll never find the time to read it all the way through, let alone know it well enough to run it.

There are folks out there that this book is certainly written for. Folks that can't get enough detail on a setting. That's not me, nor is it a fit for my group. Southland, from Points of Light comes in at 14 pages, including the map. That's our type of sandbox.

City-State of the Sea Kings is obviously a labor of life. It's detailed with excellent maps and suitable art. There is an audience for this book, and it deserves to find them. As for my copy? I'll probably put it on the shelf next to my copy of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

Review - City-State of the Sea Kings - Part the Second - Late (me), Layout and the Look

Yeah, this part of the review is late. Really late. I've been fending off a cold for the past 2 weeks, and if the 3 weeks my wife has been fighting her's for is any indication, it aint nearly over yet. Sitting down with a book is an easy way to summon the Sandman, and I can't seem to get enough sleep.

I am finding the boxed grey highlighting for GM related material to be distractingly annoying. even the abbreviation of the City-State of the Overlord is boxed and highlighted - why? What purpose does it serve but putting a horrible break in the middle of the text I'm reading.

Here's two quick examples:

 I'm finding this to be at least as annoying as the artwork used as the page background / watermark in Numenura. In this case, I'm fine with it for the really large sections of boxed text, but it's a huge distraction in the middle of a paragraph. It breaks up the reading rhythm needlessly. Oh, and it's just way to dark. Less is more.

I've also run across examples of the final line of a paragraph having three words, and auto-justification has those three words filling up the line. That's just sloppy editing.

The artwork, however, is certainly top notch. Much of it is fairly simple in nature, but it's clean, sharp and abundant.

Oh yeah, I was supposed to talk about the population centers - towns, cities and the like. If any one thing sticks out to me, its the number of locations that are pretty close to be "racially specific": Ring-Tail (Gnomes), D'alfang (98% Human), Entenwold (99% Shadow Elf), Foundation (94% Half-Elf) and Paetor (Mixed Eleven). These are great. These places are excellent tools to make the average PC feel like an outsider (admittedly, there are locations they would never willingly walk around in the open anyway).

Each of the towns included have enough info to make the visit real and different for the PCs then the previous town they've visited. There really isnt a generic town at all.

Thus far, the strength of the City-State of the Sea Kings is in it's content (although I will readily admit the content given for the City of Rallu is a bit overwhelming - more on that with the next post. I'll take content over presentation any day - at least presentation can always be fixed in a later printing.

Review - City-State of the Sea Kings - Part the First - Looks Good, Easy to Read (Judges Guild Wilderlands)

You know how I bitch and moan about some gaming books having layout that simply distracts from the words on the page, thereby making it difficult to read (Numenera, I'm talking to you)? City-State of the Sea Kings (henceforth referred to as CSotSK) does not suffer from that distraction. Simple layout, easy to read with black and white art, CSotSK has the proper "old school" feel for a work that is the first in a line to bring the Wilderlands back into print.

That doesn't mean it's all perfect. I'm glad the grey highlighting was explained by the author as a comment to a previous blogpost (it's there to highlight GM information) it would probably have been better served using a lighter gray for the highlighting. If you, like me, tend to read in poor lighting so as to not keep the significant other awake, the darkness of the highlighting can make things a tad difficult at times. Sure, I could read in better lighting - but that would cause other, non-gaming, issues ;)

The map (which is two sided) is excellent. I comes attached to the inner cover with a small bit of a rubber cement like glue. No stains to the map or the books itself.

I expected CSotSK to start out with detailed hex listed by numbers, but I was pleasantly surprised that it starts with the important settlements on the Isle of the Blest (which is the Isle this book covers). It lists them by hex number, but it isn't ordered by hex number. Having the population centers grouped together works well, especially when one is trying to read the material. I guess I'm used to sandbox styled products that list everything by order of hex number, which isn't easiest way to read material (although it does make for easy look up).

Currently, I'm at the beginning of the book, just reading about the settlements. I really want to skip ahead - I always do it seems, but if I'm going to do this right I need to go in order.