The scans are rough... bit who cares! Its a classic!

Firstly- the product is great, wonderful, detailed city, I've wanted this for ages.

But I have to say that the scans are very difficult to read. I think this is because the font is small- much smaller than other modules like Dark Tower. This makes it very hard to read when printed . Its OK if you view as PDF and can zoom in. It should be rescanned and the full use of the page, because currently there is aband of wasted space at the bottom of each page. The text should be zoomed (even if it means losing the page number). This way the text would be more legible.

I've never had a problem with any other RPG Now downloads- they have all been excellent. But CIty State was a bit disappointing- hampered by the sheer volume of info packed on each page.

Thanks,

DL

Yes, the holy grail of geekdom in all it's glory! I have been trying to find a hard copy of this for years, literally. I have been unable to find it, but I was happy to find it here. Yes, it is a bit tough to read and yes some of the scans are not perfect BUT some of the original Judge's guild products were not perfect (Not trying to be rude, but these were the days of typewriters and mimeograph machines and some of you weren't born then or you have forgotten that it was often difficult to take a test on those "lovely" copies). I am sure that some of the subtle shades are lost from PDF to print, and I am sure this is frustrating to some but it is easily overcome. To me, it has all the flair and mystic it should. It seems to me to be perfectly accurate and intact. I have already printed it out in it's entirety and added the detail I wanted to for the new (yes, NEW) campaign I am starting for a group of gamers who remember the days these classics were on the shelf at the local shop like I do. For those of you who don't know, a lot of the Judge's Guild products were a bit vague in spots to allow for easy DM customization for their particular campaigns, or so we always believed. I have often thought that Judge's Guild products were formalizations of the individual DM notes and maps of a campaign somewhere that the authors were running or playing in, but that had some of the details left out. I have been VERY pleased with the downloads and this site is AMAZING!

To give a good review I would have to say that the product printed very well. I am using an old Laser-jet 6p and it looked good when done printing, even the maps. I have yet to get a bad download, and I have downloaded almost 20 products from here. Most of the downloads were old D&D products (First Edition and Basic) from TSR or Judges Guild. Some of the downloads are taken from the "in house" copies (read as actually used on game night, probably for a long time) and I have seen one pen mark (on a different download) that was not removed from one of these copies. One pen mark out of the thousands of scans these good folks had to do is easy for me to forgive. Overall rating is a 9.9 out of 5. Yes, that high.

If you are unfamiliar with the City State it is a bare bones, house by house, description of an entire city. Every lord, merchant, thief and hooker gets full stats and a brief description. Plenty to build upon, but not so much that you feel your creativity being stifled. Easy to slip into an existing campaign, or to use as a jumping off point for a new one, or several new ones. You could run three simultaneous campaigns out of here and have a high probability that they'd never cross paths. The additional, essentially blank, player map of the city allows your players to make notations of important locals, and now that we can print it off you can give them several copies for different information. Or no copies and make them squirrel it all out on their own.

The only thing I miss in this product is a full sheet version of the GM and players maps of the city. You can print out the several sheet version and tape it together, but I'd love to be able to run down to the local office store and print out one big one.

the text and map are hard to read, some of the poorest quality scans of any old books i have ever seen.

To begin with, this is a poor scan, with plenty of crooked pages - not a good start. Making matters worse and, basically, untenable, is the fact that it is overexposed in black and white. Judges Guild Maps relied on a subtle shades for their maps which ar e lost here. Unless you absolutely need the print for this, pass on it.