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Introduction

The City State of the Invincible Overlord (CSIO) is an updated version of the original city supplement for D&D, which was first released by Judges Guild in 1977. Since then an updated version was released by Mayfair Games which was not liked by Judges Guild fans for the changes made to the setting, even though it was a reasonable product. This is the first D20 version of the setting. The feel of the city is classic Sword and Sorcery like Howard's Shadizar the Wicked or Leiber's Lankhmar and it'd be easy to imagine the Mouser and Fafhard as encounters here.

This release incorporates the Wraith Overlord product which detailed the city sewers and underground, that was a separate release from Judges Guild. As this was originally written by Scott Fulton there is a bit of difference in the writing and level of detail which still shows in the revised version, but this is not a problem to the usability of the product.

The City

The city itself has a feel like medieval Byzantium or Venice and is far from politically correct, with slavery, houris and the Park of Obscene Statues. Most races can be encountered there including Orcs, Goblins and Trolls as the focus is on making money, and the overall alignment is Lawful Evil. The Overlord maintains order with the guards, constables and his secret police, the Black Lotus. One thing should be noted, not every location is detailed and DM are encouraged to develop their own material and change things to fit to their own campaign.

The city layout is much more like a medieval city than is usual for gaming products, with densely packed buildings within the city walls and winding streets and alleys rather than a simple grid. This adds a lot to the feel of the place for me.

Generally most gods seem to have worshippers, with nine temples detailed including those of Harmakhis, Odin, Thoth, and the Spider God. The temples all have adventure hooks attached with plenty of scope to build a campaign round them. It would be easy to use unlabelled buildings or any of the existing temples for different gods to support a specific campaign.

The entries for locations tend to give the statistics needed to run an encounter there rather than every detail as it is assumed that combat will not be the main reason that players visit most locations, but there is usually enough there if a fight does result.

Encounter tables are provided with specific ones for many streets as well as the standard citywide encounter tables in chapter . There is a rumour table for the entire city replacing the original's rumours at each location, with these providing plenty of scope as adventure seeds.

The most important NPCs are in an appendix, but these are unlikely to be encountered by players in most campaigns, generally the NPC stats are at the location where they will be met. There is a download of generic NPC available for download which couldn't be fitted into the book.

An example location

207. Pig & Whistle Parand makes no secret of his belief that all gods are simply magic-using tricksters, but this hasn't hurt his business any. Renting clean, small rooms (1gp/week) and serving good, clean food such as ham and cider (4sp), wine (2sp), and ale (3cp) keeps the inn busy serving merchants, pilgrims, and brigands (NA 7d6; lvl 1d6). Parand's business makes a significant leap when Lollina the Fervid, Bountiful Normiena, and Bush Bunsha (Brd1; Cha 17; perform(dance) +7; hand axes) perform their exotic "dance of flying axes" during which they cleverly cut off each other's clothing. The gambling room in back houses pig fights as well as games with the house taking a significant cut of all bets (15%). Parand keeps a strongbox behind the bar with 43gp, 76 sp and 140 cp. Parand the Unbeliever, male human Ftr4: CR4; hp 34; AL CG; SL6; Str16, Dex8, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 13; masterwork longsword.

The Sewers and underground

The underground of the city is detailed with this providing a set of adventure hooks and possiblities. There are encounter tables for this area as well including thieves and amazons.

The four and five level dungeons from the old edition have been omitted, but they are available as free downloads from Judges Guild Website

The area covered is pretty wide including the city jail, the major temples, the thieves guild, despot ruins, patrician theatre and the tomb of Cynges-leah Dirhan. Many of the locations interconnect allowing wide ranging adventures in the darkness beneath the city.

Appearance and production

This is a hardcover book with a clean internal layout featuring black and white interior art. The binding appears to be of decent quality which is important with a product that will be used for a substantial amount of time, the paper is semi-gloss allowing notes to be made if desired. About 90% of a page is used for text so there is little wasted space or padding.

Artwork is by a number of artists, with a Rick Sardinha cover and interior art by Brian Le Blanc, David Day and others. Most of the art relates to the setting and text and helps to add flavour.

A double sided map is attached inside the back cover with additional maps being in the closing pages of the book. The map is on glossy paper. The maps are by Ed Bourelle and very well done and are a major positive for me.

Rules

There is relatively little in the way of rules content in this product. There are only two new classes, both really for NPC's, these being the Agent of the Black Lotus PrC and the Beggar NPC class. There are rules and a new skill for Gambling, and a set of rules for Social Levels.

There is a chapter with rules for crime and punishment, these being tailored for the LE aligment of the city and can be substituted with a different system if the DM wishes. Generally a higher social level helps to avoid or reduce the punishment recieved.

There are encounter tables which could be adapted for other urban adventuring environments, with street specific and city wide tables.

There are 15 creatures included in an appendix at the back with two templates. All of these are used in the setting, but some of the creatures and the templates can be easily used outside the CSIO. An appendix contains the new magic items referred to in the book.

Web support

There is a substantial amount of support for the product on the web including errata, additional material and discussion on the Judges Guild Website and Necromancer Games boards.

Positives

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