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It is called the City of Splendors: Waterdeep, most populous of the cities of North. It is a city of wealth, adventure, and danger. More men have died in its taprooms and bars than in all the sieges of Dragonspear Castle. Success and death lurk in its shadowed entranceways and dimly -lit streets. Come explore the greatest city of the Realms in this incredible product dealing with urban fantasy adventures. Waterdeep is detailed in no less than 10 expanded maps, embellished with typical building interiors suitable for use in any campaign setting.
In addition to all these maps, a 32-page City System booklet provides encounters and street scenes, special features and details of Waterdeep, and methods for creating types of buildings in moments and filling the pockets of those unfortunate enough to get in a player character's way. Designed for use with Waterdeep, these features are suitable for use anywhere in the Forgotten Realms!
Product History
City System (1988), by Jeff Grubb with Ed Greenwood, is a boxed supplement for the Forgotten Realms. It was published in July 1988
About the Title. Though this supplement claims to be a city "system", "adaptable for any city in the Realms, or in any other fantasy setting", that's very much a misnomer. City System is very much a Waterdeep supplement for the Realms, with a minimum of information that could be used in any setting. Ironically FR8: "Cities of Mystery" (1989), which was more strongly branded as a Realms supplement, would be more of a city system than this one.
Origins (I): Huge Maps. When Ed Greenwood turned over the Forgotten Realms to TSR, he included a photocopy of his map of the Realms as twenty-four 8.5"x11" papers. He also supplied a map of Waterdeep that was even bigger! This was the inspiration for City System, whose main feature is ten poster maps that fit together to form a 67"x108" map of the city.
Origins (II): Return to Waterdeep. This was TSR's second outing to Waterdeep in just a year, following on FR1: "Waterdeep and the North" (1987). Rather surprisingly, there's a fair amount of material in City System that's copied from "Waterdeep in the North", sometimes verbatim, including the whole section on the Legal System. In some cases, such as the list of 282 buildings in town, the listing in "Waterdeep and the North" even had more details! There is new material as well in City System, but there's more overlap than you'd expect, considering "Waterdeep and the North" was just nine months old.
Adventure Tropes: Cities. For TSR's second great city, following Lankhmar: City of Adventure (1985), Grubb decided to follow the tropes of Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord (1976). A massive map, blown up from the map in "Waterdeep and the North", details the entire city. 282 buildings are labeled and named, but GMs have to fall back on random tables to fill in others (of which there were 850 total, occurring to a Polyhedron reviewer). Random tables also help GMs to fill in city events with "street scenes".
Exploring the Realms: Waterdeep. City System repeats details on the city of Waterdeep, but also features some new material, including: the massive and detailed map of the city; a cutaway map of Castle Waterdeep; and a brief timeline of the city. As always, the TSR iteration of the Realms included some changes to Greenwood's original. Here, some of the street names have been modified to honor TSR designers, among them Heard Lane and Niles Way.
Whoops. The maps of the City of Waterdeep and Castle Waterdeep conflict in scale. On the main map, Castle Waterdeep is 3.5" long, which would be 350 feet, while on the Castle Waterdeep map it's at least double that.
About the Creators. Jeff Grubb was Ed Greenwood's co-conspirator at TSR in early days, coauthoring the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987) and Forgotten Realms Adventures (1990).