I own a number of other products by Darkfuries and I was honestly expecting it to live up to the high standards set by their Masterworks Maps series. In that sense, Visira is a huge disappointment. It's just another typical over-wrought storyline set in a city with far too much detail for the parts of their storyline, and not nearly enough usable information for a GM who simply wants to run city for his players. Yes, there's a slew of detailed establishments, but where are they? Yes, this is yet another 'city product' where the creator mistakenly thought that GMs wished to buy a city that needs to be keyed and populated. Visira doesn't even bother to name streets, just 'districts'. Here's a newsflash; anyone can draw a map and a bunch of rectangles on it to represent buildings, and call it a city, in an afternoon. That's the easy part. Determining what's in each and every building, that takes some time and consideration and planning. You won't find that in this product.

Nice city supplement. The Darkfuries people do a capable job and then some of providing setting materials like these. Visira is not one of my more favorite pieces, but it does contain basic elements needed if the city meets your needs.

I was really disappointed with the very simple-looking maps (campared to the beautiful ones of the old Mystara Campaigns). And chunks of the product content consists of poorly written short stories, which you must painfully wade through to get to the basic information about the city.

Even then, the background story of the city was below par, full of trite names like "The Black Sword Kingdom" and the "Raven Lands."

Not much imagination and joy went into this production's creation.

Was it worth even $10.00? Absolutely not.

Perhaps $5.00, but $10.00? No.

I wish I could get a refund.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: lots of NPCs Stats<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: low quality maps, having to wade poorly written short stories, trite names of places and kingdoms. Boring overall.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

Like the other Maelstrom Campaign products, very impressive. A great deal of information and good looking maps. And, once again, more than enough d20 information but also easily used by those who play other systems.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

A large city, still trying to find a way to intoduce it in my campaign and will make a point of it this fall, as I develop out my campaign world better.

What a gem!

This product, Visira, The City of Shadows by Brian Moseley (Darkfuries) is a must have for any campaign. Fantasy cities completely detailed to this extent are almost non-existent. 128 pages of well organized and thought out information to cover any and all aspects of real life interactions when the party of PCs enter into such a well designed realm that is Visira. It even contains the economics of how the city runs - from taxes to how the ports, farms, and organizations run their businesses and interact with one another. If you are interested in the specifics of how a port for ships is run, Brian Moseley details the history, terrain of the coast and how the city is protected from attackers. The city map and huge array of NPCs are well though out and very detailed. I can't say enough good praises about this product, for as with myself being a games-master, complete city systems like this are an invaluable source of adventure and can be placed anywhere in an existing campaign.

Also, after buying this product, I decided to buy the highly acclaimed Darkfuries Mansions & Manors, and the Castles & Keeps products. Again I was pleasantly surprised by the well designed and nice look to all of the floor plans. There is always a need for ready to use complete floor plans with writeups of the inhabitants within and gives the GM and PCs a deservedly visual and descriptive aid to any of those indoor occurrences.

I highly recommend the following Brian Moseley (Darkfuries) products which I have purchased and swear by:

Maelstrom Campaign Setting: Worldbook (The first product that I purchased - Wow! A very ingenuitive, detailed and complete campaign world.) 5 Stars - *****

Maelstrom Campaign Setting: Pantheon (The religions and those who follow of the Maelstrom Campaign Setting) 4 Stars - ****

Visira: City of Sorrows (Can?t praise this product enough!) 5 Stars - *****

Mansions & Manors (Great floor plans and inhabitants) 5 Stars - *****

Castles & Keeps (More great floor plans) 4 Stars - ****

I, and others would encourage and hope to see Brian Moseley (Darkfuries) create a city system product for the great city of Calthayes, following the success of Visira: City of Sorrows.

Sincerely,

Daniel Mac Donald Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

I ordered the Visira PDF at RPGnow.com for $10, which is about 130 pages detailing a single city. I have read half of it and so far it seems well worth the money. It is a fairly interesting and unique city with an evil bent but I think making it unique and interesting comes at the expense of generic and easily insertable (despite the designers claim otherwise - neighboring geographic features play significantly into its current shape and outlook). If you want a fairly (but not completely) detailed city from scratch and have no preconceptions of how you want it then you could use as is. If you want a city that meets certain expectations you will have to modify Visira, and possibly quite substatially, depending how far your vision differs from the designers.

I personally had a pretty detailed preconception of the city I wanted and will have to modify Visira in a number of ways. Not that their design is bad in anyway, it is just different. However, many things I have seen so far I liked so much that I am modifying my city to be more like Visira.

Not to often I find myself here commenting about a book but in this case, I had to. It was a pleasant shock to find this book to be of wonderful quality. In my opinion it brought back memories of when Ravens Bluff first started coming out and the endless potential it had. Even if this was the only sourcebook for this City ever hit light, well worth the 10 dollars. The information is solid and moldable for any campaign, the maps are great and even offer multiple styles and versions. In all, great value for a great product