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City State of the Invincible Overlord
(Necromancer Games d20 Version)
City
State of the Invincible Overlord was apparently the first
published city for a fantasy roleplaying game, or at least
D&D.
I never owned the original version from Judges Guild, but a few
years ago I did get a copy of the "Revised" edition. It
was sold through the Traveller 20 people, Quiklink, and was
really cheap, $10 or so. As near as I can tell, the revisions
were mostly to remove "D&D" from it, and presumably
change things slightly so as to avoid any possible legal
problems, but it still pretty much was for D&D. (I think this
was after TSR and Judges Guild had their spat).
At any rate, it was a very early product, 1977 according to the
date in it, and it showed. Bizzare layout, weird rules, awful
typesetting. But it had a certain charm, and the original
literally had 100s of locations mentioned, along with stats for
characters at those locations.
The new City
State of the Invincible Overlord (CSIO) from Necromancer pretty
much keeps all the locations and NPCs intact, as well as some of
the rules, but brings the layout and presentation up to date. A
little bit of political correctness has also seeped in. Though
maybe not PCness so much as tact. (I'll go into this later). It
also apparently adds in items from another Judges Guild product,
"Wraith Overlord", the original of which I know nothing
about, but apparently was a book of dungeons and locations
beneath various places in the city.
The City
There's actually not much background on the city itself. About a
page of history. It's set in the Wilderlands setting from Judge's
Guild, but doesn't mention anything about it at all, so you are
pretty much on your own unless you own the "Player's Guide
to the Wilderlands" (which I bought, but never received, one
of the perils of buying mail order) or the upcoming boxed set.
Basically, there are two halves to the city. One is essentially
from the original CSIO, 350 or so keyed locations in the city
itself. Shops, taverns, brothels, etc.
The original CSIO just had a sentence or two for most, along with
stats for some NPCs (sometimes 1, sometimes more). The stats were
in tabular format. Class, level, Alignment, ability scores, hit
points, weapon, treasure.
This book expands upon the description somewhat. Instead of a
line, most locations get at least a paragraph.
Stats are pretty much the same. Class, level, ability scores, but
in some cases, they've given a relevant skill rank or two as
well.
To be honest, a full blown stat block would have been a lot more
helpful. I realize that would have made the book longer, but
OTOH, the book does have rather big margins. Smaller margins and
more stats would have been much better. It would also have been
nice if they added a physical description. On the plus side, many
of the NPCs have nicknames or titles (epithets?), like so and
such the ________. Sir Batan the Stout, Hertogan the Spur, Culman
the Cabalist, Anoletine the Bore, Vikan the Violent, etc, etc,
etc
The locations are really varied, everything from accountants to
wigs. Lots of taverns, around 50 of them. Some are apparently
allusions to classic fantasy literature. For instance, there is a
"Silver Eel" tavern.
Also, the original author was presumably a Queen fan - one of the
brothels is called "Naughty
Nannies". Heh-heh. Actually, given the tackiness in
other areas of the product, I'm surprised there are only 2 or 3
brothels listed.
I've actually had a lot of fun comparing the original entries to
the new ones. For the most part, they really have improved on the
original. Except on one area - gods. In the original CSIO, actual
gods were NPCs in some of the locations. In this, you get that
"avatar" stuff, which I really don't like. . Back in
the old days, gods were gods, there was none of this new fangled
"avatar" stuff. It's very very 2E-ish. (Which is not
terribly surprising, since Necromancer Games' stuff really does
have more of a 2E feel than anything else)
Wraith Overlord
The 2nd part of the city is called "Wraith Overlord".
It's essentially the underneath areas for a lot of the city, but
doesn't detail the entire undercity (though there is a map of the
sewers). Just the undercity for certain buildings.
Essentially, the below parts of these buildings are presented as
dungeons for PCs to explore/sack. Most of these work fairly as
dungeons. But some, like the theater, seem a bit odd.
The first location, the prison, is actually interesting because
it has extremely detailed backgrounds for quite a large number of
prisoners. It's almost like watching a crime show on A&E.
The only real challenging dungeon lies outside of town, and may
or may not be accessible via the sewers. It's pretty short,
though, and involves something of a Cthulhu style cult, only full
of undead. There's another Cthulhu reference - one of the books
found in one of the dungeons is the infamous Necronomicon by
Abdul Alhazred.
New Rules
The original CSIO introduced several new rules for things that
were common to life in the CSIO. Rules for being a noble, rules
for the court system, rules for how you are treated (social
level). And rules for women.
Remember how the 1st edition DMG had that random harlot table in
it? Well, if you think that was tacky, well, the rules in the
original CSIO went beyond that by several velvet Elvises. Anyway,
basically they had rules for er, courting women. What they wore,
their disposition, and of course, their vital measurements.
Anyway, I was curious as to whether or not they would make it
into the new CSIO. Nope! I'm not sure whether that's a good or
bad thing. While they were pretty silly and immature, they do
sort of fit the style of 60s-70s fantasy and in my mind, have a
lot of a camp value.
Anyway, the social level rules are pretty much left intact
(basically there are different levels from 1 to 20, 1 being a
slave and 20 being a god). The court rules get a revamp, mechanic
wise, but essentially stay the same (basically lots of tables,
then a roll).
There's a class for NPCs called "The Beggar". Pretty
much what it sounds like. And a prestige class for the Overlords
secret police.
The Rest
The first appendix is on important NPCs of the City State.
There are apparently only 3 of them. The Overlord, his bodyguard,
and his 2nd in command.
This is pretty lacking, I thought. I would have liked to have
known about the heads of various factions, ie, the thieves
guilds, the temples, the assassin guilds, etc. You get some info
on them in the section in the City State itself, but very little
info.
The second is slightly bigger, and is on new magic items. Lots of
misc. wondrous items, though nothing really exciting.
The 3rd appendix is new monsters, and is pretty big, at 20 or so
pages. Apparently they were done by the Tome of Horrors people,
which pretty much means they are done right, stats wise. Most of
the monsters are fairly gruesome, or something out of a movie on
the Sci-Fi channel (like the Crocman). Except the Valkyrie
and her horse.
The Looks
The layout is okay, but nothing special. As I think I mentioned,
the margins are kinda big, 1 1/4", looks like.
The art is a mixed bag. Some of it is by Brian LeBlanc, who I
consider to be pretty much the best artist in the RPG field
today. He's my favorite, at least. Another artist, Erik Roman,
has a similar style but is less proficient. But the rest of the
art varies quite a bit in style and so the art kind of clashes.
At least one picture of an elf (I think) has the giant, floppy,
anime elf style ears which make my skin crawl and definitely
doesn't fit this book.
The cover, well, I don't even know what the cover art is. A giant
hand coming out of the ground picking up a guy, while 2 other
guys look confused. What that has to do with a great big city, I
dunno. (I think it's an illustration of something in Wraith
Overlord, outside the city and in a crypt. But not something that
advertises an exciting city.).
The map index is pretty nice. You get a listing of the places by
type (ie, a list of all the taverns, shops, etc). And a list of
places by name, and And a list by number. No actual index,
though. So it's really easy to find a place in the book, but
perhaps not a specific person or item.
The map itself is really nice, if somewhat smaller than I
thought. It's the size of 4 normal sheets of paper, with most of
the city being on 2 sheets, and so the city itself is very very
tiny and hard to make out. You almost need the potion of
diminution (which is actually a magic item in the book) to read
it. (The original map was about 50% larger, 8 pages total, with
the city taking up 3x2)
Final Thoughts
I think the conversion from original D&D (or maybe
AD&D) to 3.5/d20 is a bit off. Mostly, they seem to have
translated the levels literally. But that's not quite right, I
think, because in original D&D (in the little brown books),
characters really never made it past 9th level or so. AD&D
went a bit higher, but still, characters never really got that
high up.
3rd Edition D&D is meant for higher levels. A 10th level
character is fairly common, and 20th level characters are not
terribly rare.
But in this, the "Invincible Overlord" is still just
20th level. While 20th level is nothing to sneeze at in 3.X, it's
not exactly "Invincible". Not nearly as much as it was
30 years ago. IMHO, they should have used the epic rules for him
(say, 30th level), and increased a lot of the levels of other
NPCs, for instance, the levels of the high priests in various
temples from 9 to at least 15-18. (9 was the standard level for
D&D "High Priests", especially the "EHP"
or "Evil High Priest"). The write up of Mr. Invincible
also seems to suggest he probably would be an epic level
character - he's done a lot of adventuring, epic style quests, as
well as lots of planar traveling
As written, a group of 4-5 10th level characters would find all
but one of the dungeons in the book a cake-walk. And they
probably wouldn't want to do that last dungeon (not if they have
any common sense, anyway).
I also think the political correctness detracts a bit. Beyond the
removing of the amusing if immature rules for women, I found the
bit about how Necromancer Games doesn't condone slavery in real a
bit stupid. I mean, duh, no one advocates slavery in real life.
Still, at least the presumed nickname of one apparently very
pneumatic dancer remained. (Still, she might have just been a
pottery affionado)
It's a very good book, but not outstanding. It's overly dry (ie,
dull to read), a bit spartan looking, mediocre layout, and as I
mentioned above, I think the d20 conversion is a bit off, not
technically, but spiritually. Still, the non-mechanical fleshing
out of the city and NPCs was very well done. Really, it's
somewhere between an B+
and an A-. I can't
decide. But in RPG.net terms, definitely a 5 for content, and
probably a 3 for style (about average).
While it's mostly useful as the main city in the Wilderlands
setting, if you remove the non-human races, you'd have a pretty
suitable city for Conan. Probably too evil for most other
D&D/d20 settings, though.
Notes:
---------
It probably helps a lot to have the Players Guide to the
Wilderlands. While it's not directly referenced much, and so it's
definitely not necessary, I was wishing I had it to look some
things up in. If I had the money, I'd run out and buy it (along
with Caverns of Thracia, a Wilderlands module).
Interestingly, the original product had several D&D things
that TSR considered to be their IP. Mind Flayers and Beholders
and such. WOTC apparently gave NG/JG permission to continue to
use them. Which is nice, I thought.
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