Post/Author/DateTime	Post
StinkyNutz 01-21-05, 02:00 PM	While as a whole I absolutely loved this book, and think its invaluable for any game set in Sharn (and even still very good for fluff in games not set in Sharn). I got to finally see who the city council is, and each of their alignments and dispositions. I got a glimpse of the different organizations, good and evil. I got the population breakdown, and the race heavy areas. I even got holidays that are national and the ones celebrated only in sharn. I got a nice breakdown of each area, with its population and just about everything else one might need. But the one thing that I didnt get is a map of the city!!! At least not one in any real detail. The one hope I had was to be able to finally see what its like to try to go from middle dura to upper central. The fact that they just say that "sharn is a maze and people can easily get lost" doesnt realyl say all that much fluff wise. All the details they put into every other portion of the book, could have been at least half way attempted to paint an actual picture of sharn. I imagine what it looks like, and so does everyone else, but pictures help out ever so much. Just a few pictures of each level of each plateau would have been good enough for me....then Id be able to picture uit even more richly. While not the worst thing in the world as the book still is one of the better ones I have read, it could have been that much better to me.
MrFilthyIke 01-21-05, 02:06 PM	But the one thing that I didnt get is a map of the city!!!. So complains the guy named StinkyNutz... :rofl:
MrFilthyIke 01-21-05, 02:11 PM	Imagine the lack of map like being a tourist...now you KNOW how new people to Sharn feel, and can pass this along to your players. ;)
ccerose 01-21-05, 02:28 PM	A detailed map would have been a welcome inclusion, but realistically it would have easily doubled the number of pages in the Sharn book. I found it easy enough to sketch out alleyways, pubs, and not so abandoned wherehouses on a battle mat for any urban encounters that I weaved into the storyline. I think there are just too many ways to get from point A to point B in Sharn. The art work in S:SOT is a great resource to help PCs visualize the city itself. I printed off a few key locations from the art gallery.
Master of shaarat'khesh 01-21-05, 02:39 PM	My thoughts on the map are to suggest to the powers that be in charge of such things, that they put forth a map folio type of product that details sharn. I think the nature of the city and how it is arranged and so forth makes it impossible to do it any justice with anything less than some sort of seperate product like the Folio. I have the original city box set of Waterdeep, which is nothing but a book of details of the city and maps... Lots of maps! maps of everything in Waterdeep! That was one of the best products TSR ever released for anyone who loves maps, or detail, or good products. Maybe somebody in the ivory towers of WotC will make something like that
Gez 01-21-05, 03:22 PM	At least I'd like hi-res JPGs of the wards and districts maps that are in the book. That way, I could print them out rather than having to flip through the book back and forth between the maps and the description. See, the maps are by levels (upper, middle, lower, etc.), while the districts are by ward (central, dura, menthis, etc.). Plus it would double as errata, because there are mistakes on these maps (i.e., Middle Menthis, replace Platinate by Little Plains and Deniyas by Torchlight...).
Uller999 01-21-05, 06:14 PM	I'm not sure if its in all editions but at the back of copy of the sharn book there were two maps with a "typical street in sharn" and shows an example of a lower map and higher map, they aren't anything fancy but they do give you a topographical idea.
StinkyNutz 01-21-05, 06:24 PM	I have the original city box set of Waterdeep, which is nothing but a book of details of the city and maps... Lots of maps! maps of everything in Waterdeep! That was one of the best products TSR ever released for anyone who loves maps, or detail, or good products. Maybe somebody in the ivory towers of WotC will make something like that My thoughts exactly. Thats kinda what I was expecting in the Sharn book, something like they did for Waterdeep or many other cities in the other modules. I think it would have made it possibly the best product that has been produced, even surpassing TSR stuff. erhaps we will see more of it later, but Im impatient and whiny. And do not fear the stank, for it holds the key to power....or at least holds the key to a new fungus that could possibly be a cure for a disease or something.
StinkyNutz 01-21-05, 06:27 PM	A detailed map would have been a welcome inclusion, but realistically it would have easily doubled the number of pages in the Sharn book. What I wonder is, since when did a cap on pages become common place? I remember some of the old books would range in pages from 100-400 at least...plus have at least 4-5 maps included. Sure we gotta save paper in this day and age, but sometimes its just called for to cut down a couple extra trees.
Edymnion 01-21-05, 07:35 PM	Um, one thing you guys should consider. This city is miles across, and its not just one city. Its got three distinct layers, a sub layer, and a mini floating upper layer. Thats at least 5 full sets of maps you would need for this one city. And each area of each layer is big enough to warrent it's own full map. Big high quality maps of Sharn just really aren't feasable...
sh0 01-21-05, 07:50 PM	My biggest gripe with S:CoT is the lack of one piece of art. A perspective view of Sharn. Maybe something like like off the deck of an airship a few miles away from the city.
Cloud Divider 01-21-05, 10:53 PM	Regarding page count - Generally the issue isn't "Can I squeeze in another 5 pages." The issue is "To have more than 96/128/whatever, I need to add a section, which is 32-pages. Do I have enough material to fill the other 27 pages? Do I have enough budget left to make more maps/illustrations/etc for those pages? Will adding those extra 32 pages be worth an additional $5-10 on the end cost?" I may have the terminology wrong (I'm sure "section" isn't the proper printing phrase), but the principle is there. Granted, with an extra 32 pages, that would have have given more than enough room for some better maps and that index at the minimum; and maybe even another 10 pages of other stuff... Regarding maps - One of the things I've really been considering is to print off scanned copies (electronic would be better, but not so likely) of the Sharn level maps onto transparency paper, and then bind one edge, so I can see how they all stack together. That'd be a fairly useful tool - I find myself flipping back and forth a *lot* looking for the different maps trying to figure out how close Ward X is to Ward Y...
Master of shaarat'khesh 01-22-05, 01:36 AM	Originally posted by: Edymnion This city is miles across, and its not just one city. Its got three distinct layers, a sub layer, and a mini floating upper layer. I agree that Sharn is somewhat unique in its design however, I don't believe it would be as difficult as it would seem. In the box set is states that the population rarely dips below 120,000. Now in the more recent FRS it states that the population is approximately 1.3 million. Sharn I think I read is a round 211,000 in population, so they are somewhat similar with respect to large populations. Granted Sharn rises but we really don't even know what the land area it encompasses is because there is no scale on the pityful maps in the book. In the City Sytem box set (TSR) for Waterdeep it has a very nice isometric cross section view/map of Castle Waterdeep which is 10 levels high with a scale on the map of 1 inch=20ft. The rest of the maps are of the city itself each map 10 in all are a whopping 21.5" x 33.5" poster size map scaled at 1 inch=100ft. very good quality (for the day) and finally and really the nicest thing to have is an arial isometric/3D view of the whole city as if you were flying in on a dragon or somesuch creature. This isnt so much of a map as it is just a wonderfully rendered view of the city. It's nice because it helped everyone see the size and scope of Waterdeep when I DM'ed FR. I think it all boils down to money and guts. Now, I paid $15 for it when it came out in '88 or '89 which even then was a steal for what I got, but I'm an artist and know a little ;) about the print cost of stuff and I don't believe for one minute that WotC can't make a profit on something even remotely similar for Sharn. I just think that they look at some of the other past products that they (or TSR) thought were going to go over big and instead fizzled and now everyone is to gun shy about suggesting something like that. :rant: *Prepare for rant* :rant: The thing I really don't understand is the idea of a very hyped setting and very good one at that, that was very thought out and well constructed but no one seemed to care that we, the buying public love maps. I mean I have Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, I even have Mystara and you know what I got with them? MAPS! And, I got them free with the setting. I have more maps of other setting than I know what to do with, and to top it all, guess what they're adding to the next four issues of Dragon mag? Maps!!! Oh, But not of Eberron... NOOoooo! Greyhawk :banghead: GREYHAWK!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!I MEAN WHAT THE... If you're playing Greyhawk, You already have more maps than you need! There's no place that hasn't been detailed. They put a freakin' map of Greyhawk in every Greyhawk product they ever released! Don't they get it? We want maps of Eberron! The new setting that everyone at WotC pushed and pushed and pushed. I mean c'mon throw us a bone here!:banghead: Sorry I think I almost passed out... I'm o.k. now but there is some conspiracy against Eberron and maps... maybe they are trying to push the Noir feel of mystery in Eberron by not producing any maps... Regardless, I think I need to lye down now. :) Rant complete Edit: By the way I am not knocking any setting that I mentioned nor Eberron (I love it) Nor is my rant at you Edy. I am however, ranting at WotC for not using thier resources to do what a couple of very talented people have done in making there own maps (of Khorvaire) I downloaded them, but I think it would be nice if they made an official effort. Afterall, All one has to do is look at the number of threads on these boars that revolve around the dissapointment of the "No map conspiracy".
castlemike 01-22-05, 03:31 AM	I have to agree. Fewer or less colored drawings of characters and monsters and miscellaneous items that serve no purpose other than filler when there are so many of them. Instead of that how about some heraldry of the various noble and royal houses. Everybody knows what their characters look like how about working in Baron.... accompanied by two guardsmen wearing his heraldics, or the Twelve. While colored maps and some pictures are nice. It doesn't always need to be so fancy. How about a few simple black and white map sketchs with some numbered highlights for the area or ward. Something like The Free City of Greyhawk 1" to 400 feet map in the PGtG gives a nice feel while the Keyed color 1992 map from Volo's Guide to Waterdeep really gives you a better feel depicting sites mentioned in the campaign source by numbering the locations on the map. A map or a few maps that gives you a feel of how the city feels. What your PC would see looking at the city from a distance complied with something that breaks the sections of the map down a bit more by identifying.
Edymnion 01-22-05, 09:37 PM	Well, there is also the bit about Eberron is supposed to be customizable to the DM's needs. If the DM needs something to be somewhere, its much easier to just insert it in Eberron than it is in someplace like Faerun. The downside of detailed maps is that they pin everything down, it becomes carved in stone. Sure, the DM can change it when they need to, but then they have to bump something else out of the way, or otherwise overwrite whats already there. I'm personally liking this trend of not giving specifics. Give us the general idea, some hand waving about what is where, enough to get the idea, and leave the nitty gritty stuff to the individual DM to customize.
Sarlax 01-22-05, 11:33 PM	I'm likewise frustrated by the lack of maps for the setting. Maps can make it easier and more fun for players and DMs to immerse themselves in the game. If someone doesn't want the world to be too defined, that's fine, but denying everyone else something they can enjoy is hardly fair. Sharn certainly isn't beyond mapping. With 200,000 people spread over a vertical area reaching hundreds or thousands of feet, the city can't be very wide. And if it is, well, maps can be scaled down. The unique geography isn't a barrier either - after all, they did do some mapping of the city in the book already, and more unusual areas have been mapped before (Sigil, anyone?). Of course this is an economic issue, not a "in fairness to DMs who want to shape the world" issue. It was calculated that the loss of book sales due to not including maps was less than the cost of adding maps to every book. Whether or not the decision was economically wise (I'm guessing it was) doesn't matter at this point. But now we've got this: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/eberron/950060000 . Yay! An Eberron poster-map for only $14.95, and only a year after the setting's release. Maybe we can see a Sharn map in 2006. And if you don't like that, all you have to do is download one of the various composite maps online, then print it all out on your home computer on a bunch of different sheets and tape it together. Or take it to your local print shop and pay $10+ for a poster map. Neato.
ThanisKartaleon 01-22-05, 11:34 PM	Plus it would double as errata, because there are mistakes on these maps (i.e., Middle Menthis, replace Platinate by Little Plains and Deniyas by Torchlight...). Smokey Towers, actually. Torchlight is beneath that. Or is it beneath Little Plains? There were enough errors in that section that it's hard to tell. I am however, ranting at WotC for not using thier resources to do what a couple of very talented people have done in making there own maps (of Khorvaire) I downloaded them, but I think it would be nice if they made an official effort. They actually did (link (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebwe/20041206a)), and it's pretty nice (official numbers for mileage on lightning rail routes, so it's 2 for 1.). And Dragon did release a map of Khorvaire (but it was just one piece the size of ONE of the greyhawk maps, and without political borders or labeled cities.) I believe the real reason, however, that we are not seeing a detailed map of Sharn (besides the fact that mapping a city that covers a 1 mile x 5 mile area, plus however deep undersharn goes, is a lot more difficult than it might seem... Some math: the city reaches a little more than a mile high. Each floor is, on the average, 10 feet tall. That's about 530 stories to the tallest tower of Sharn, or a little over 100 floors per district... as opposed to the 10 levels of Castle Waterdeep. So, we'd be looking at not a few pages, but several hundred more pages of just maps... and as the page count rises, the price rises. I can't remember any old TSR books that were more than 300 pages, unless you care to enlighten me.) is so that every game is different. If it was all mapped out, some of the mystique would be gone. (What do you mean it's easy to get lost in this city? I've got this map and it says that the hideout of Daask is right here!) Plus it even says in the book that the borders of different districts can easily fluctuate. That would make the entire work worthless, especially the next time a tower falls (check the Sharn Inquisitive!). Now transparencies showing the general layouts... I could get some of that action. I can't tell you how many times I've had to flip back and forth though the ECS looking for the different ward maps. Transparencies with a scale, of course. Scale, compass... maybe even a grid. And indeed, an ariel viewpoint (from a distance, of course, and one that could be reinterpreted by each DM) would be kinda nifty. IMO, if you want to get a small idea of how big Sharn is, play FF IX and look for the FMV when they enter Lindblum. Consider that Lindblum is small compared to Sharn....
Gez 01-23-05, 04:13 AM	We demand a Fold-Up Paper Model of Sharn, the whole city! :P
castlemike 01-23-05, 05:22 AM	Well, there is also the bit about Eberron is supposed to be customizable to the DM's needs. If the DM needs something to be somewhere, its much easier to just insert it in Eberron than it is in someplace like Faerun. The downside of detailed maps is that they pin everything down, it becomes carved in stone. Sure, the DM can change it when they need to, but then they have to bump something else out of the way, or otherwise overwrite whats already there. I'm personally liking this trend of not giving specifics. Give us the general idea, some hand waving about what is where, enough to get the idea, and leave the nitty gritty stuff to the individual DM to customize. Quoting you because I believe you work at WoTC. Eberron is huge at 5,000 miles. Personally I like specifics because it is much easier to ignore something in a campaign than to invent it from scratch. Not giving specifics gives me the impression that WoTC doesn't care about the product it is developing in this case ECS. IMO what some of us are saying is there is plenty of room in Eberron so give us a few more general details. We don't want to reinvent the wheel or waste our time doing it knowing another more comprehensive source book looms in the distance which means we just wasted our time. Time we could have spent on other endeavors. Sharn is huge at 1 mile by 5 miles and hundreds of levels. Sure WoTC could make another source book just devoted to maps about Sharn and still not completely cover the city. But with a few to a half dozen pages and some black and white sketches you can really flesh it out better. From a distance. Some locations keyed by ward. Some of us want and need "Basic" maps (I realize some people never use them). Maps are a useful tool. They give you an ideal of the big picture. Personally 20 - 40 places per ward in a big city or metropolis won't touch a metropolis like Sharn but it will give it more of a real feeling. Consider the huge populations in the various countries. I'd like to see at least 200 more Towns, Villages and Hamlets listed by name on a map even if WoTC never develops them further. IMO Breland should have 10,000+ with 90% of the population living in Thorps, Hamlets and Villages with a population of 3.7 million. Parliament should be Huge in the thousands and larger than our congress by the description in the source book. Since I'm on Breland. When WoTC says it has 27 nobles I personally would like to see the the names of the 27 houses at the minimum but would prefer something a little more useful like the short writeups on the Dragon Marked Houses with their heraldics. Particularly when they are going to be PC patrons. Second if these 27 nobles had a village or town named after them on a map that would give us a basic ideal of where their lands are so when a PC is travelling through on the lightning rail the DM can flesh that out? WoTC knows who all or the majority of these nobles are by name. I don't want to waste my time figuring out 27 Barons, Viscounts, Counts and Dukes and then need to make a map of their holdings mainly because it takes a lot of time and will be wrong. When WoTC wants to make a change WoTC will make a change. Waterdeep is huge and Sharn is larger and more 3 dimensional. The 281 sites that were mentioned and depicted with a location in VGtW were 1% or so of the buildings but they give you a feel for the city. WoTC wants to move a location saying they moved it makes it so although a single sentence the tower collapsed, the owner died, retired, went out of business or relocated to where ever and now there is a vacant lot or a new business would be nice.
Brastan 01-23-05, 05:25 AM	IMO, if you want to get a small idea of how big Sharn is, play FF IX and look for the FMV when they enter Lindblum. Consider that Lindblum is small compared to Sharn.... I had that exact same thought. Although Midgar in FF7 would do as well if you think of all the metal as stone. There a many such examples to draw on. What I really like in that sequence were all the airships (elemental skiffs) flitting about, now that would be classic upper level Sharn. What I think Wizards D&D arm needs to look at is a set of generic-type battle sheets. Although continued map-folios would be nice. I plan on using just about everything in Map Folio 2 for Xendrik. A map-folio for generic towns could work well for Sharn. Like the sets of maps in the past folios the could break it down into districts of varying density. You could even use a small hamlet map inside of Sharn because of how much of the low-class housing is arranged. Its just a question of what order they create their products. I would have liked the Plains/Forest Environment book released first as it is the most commonly used environment in D&D as far as I can tell. We demand a Fold-Up Paper Model of Sharn, the whole city! How about one of those 3D puzzles instead? Just asking who has Dundjinni? I need to buty the 3 advanced packages before I go crazy with it but it might be a source for alternative maps in meantime.
Gez 01-23-05, 06:03 AM	How about one of those 3D puzzles instead? Ooh, good idea! Must be to scale with the D&D minis, though. And it should be very sturdy -- because it will have to stay in the garden... :D
GryMor 01-23-05, 06:20 AM	Sharn is a city the size of modern day Londen stacked into a 10-15 square mile area, spanning from deepest Cogs to Skyway, at least 2 miles in height, probably closer to 3. It has skybridges all over the place and significant veritcal diversity. Two dimensional maps of any detail would need to be very numerouse in their slices, and still would have difficulty indicating distances between locations simply due to the frequent changes in altitude for any usefull path. It's population is low for it's volume simply because at least a third of the city isn't counted but is instead unending, monster occupied, ruins, another third is unocupied industrial areas.
castlemike 01-23-05, 06:31 AM	All the more reason maps are both helpful and necessary.
Gez 01-23-05, 07:07 AM	All the more reasons maps are technically extremely difficult to make. See, I was joking with my foldup paper model thing, in case it wasn't obvious. It's the only way to give an accurate representation of a 3D labyrinth, like Sharn is. You could make a whole 224 book containing nothing but maps of Upper Menthis.
Joni-san 01-23-05, 02:40 PM	Am I the only one that doesn't care about maps? I had no problem with the lack of a poster map in the Eberron book. Sure, I was glad when they released a new map later on but I wasn't bothered earlier. If they would make a map of Sharn I'd feel trapped. Why? Because the ability to decide on things by myself and improvise are the things I like about Eberron Sigil never had a detailed map I don't see anyone complaining about that
Ch@pel 01-23-05, 09:25 PM	I'd have liked a perspective shot of Sharn as seen from an airship or something. I'm finding it hard to picture the lower levels of the city. If you look up, can you see the sky? Or are all the lower levels completely covered by the upper levels? The working image I have is something kind of like Minas Tirith from the LotR movies, only three times higher and with four more such cities surrounding it. It seems like each quarter of the city would have to build sort of like a mountain, wide at the bottom but narrow at the top. Although I think I remember reading that thats not always the case somehere in the CoT book. What do you think?
nick012000 01-24-05, 04:36 AM	Sharn is a modern, scyscaping sity, made an order of magnitude larger.
Beleriphon 01-24-05, 05:00 AM	Sigil never had a detailed map I don't see anyone complaining about that True, but it still had a map depicting the major landmarks, and gave rough guidelines to the borders of each wards. Or course with Sigil being a torus it didn't matter how you drew the map everything would end up in the same order of placment eventually.
syndalis 01-24-05, 05:10 AM	Sigil never had a detailed map I don't see anyone complaining about that Actualy, Sigil *did* have a detailed map. I think it came with one of the early adventures, but it was poster sized, and formatted as two long rectangles, which one would curl lay atop each other and connect the ends mentally to get the actual layout. However, Sigil is much harder to map than most other cities. Not for its layout, but more for the fact that the streets change and buildings move at the whim of the lady. Yearly maps are probably the in-thing in the city of doors.
solkanuk 01-24-05, 06:20 PM	I think that it would be exceptionally difficult to create a decent map on sharn, what I would like (and will probably do - using my handy scanner) is all the little maps on one page. To make anything else that would be more useful you'd be looking at 3d computer models and I don't think anyone at WotC has the expertise to do this (though I'm making assumptions here).
GrayS 01-25-05, 03:53 AM	Sticking to the original point of this thread - I agree wholeheartedly. We need a good map of the city! It's criminal that a valuable DM resource of a major city such as S:COT doesn't include a map of that same city! Criminal I say! :mad: In fact, WoTC seem to be extremely bad at supplying maps for Eberron in general! How long did we beg, plead, grovel and generally debase ourselves before WoTC finally gave in and supplied a decent map of Khorvaire (online at first - but a printed version will eventually arrive with the DM's screen). It looks like we've got to start a whole new campaign for a similarly detailed map of Sharn! I love maps. They tell you so much more than any flavor text and fluff can give ("...a picture is worth a thousand words..."). This campaign setting is starting to become hard work!
GryMor 01-25-05, 11:47 AM	We have one to scale map that gives a good rough overview, we have pieces (that if scanned) should be relatively easy to put into a composite map. What we need is a too scale side view or verticle slice from the cogs to the top of the tallest tower. A full map of Sharn would be very troublesome to construct even if we could visit Sharn.