Book Details
| Title: |
|
Volo's Guide to Waterdeep |
| Author: |
|
Ed Greenwood |
| Times Read: |
|
1 |
| Last Read: |
|
12.04.20 |
Other Books Read By This Author (0)
Notes History
| Date Read |
Note |
| 12.04.20 | Another D&D book. This one's old, back from the days when I used to play as a highschool kid. I wanted to read this for a few reasons: 1) because I realized when I got back into the hobby that I never really read much of the stuff I bought back then. I guess I mostly looked at the maps and art and scanned the pages and used it as inspiration. 2) I watched a youtube video from a guy who reviews classic adventures and he had a two-part series on Waterdeep in which he said this book was an entertaining read even if you're not into D&D. 3) I bought a 5E Waterdeep adventure which has like 20 pages of backstory on the city but makes reference to this book as being more complete. I do find the format clever: it's written as a guidebook to a fictional city, so the chapters are organized by city ward then broken down by shops, taverns, inns and festhalls, etc. And each are given ratings for how expensive they are, the quality of drink, or level of danger in each back alleyway. And the whole thing is written from Volo's perspective, as if he'd visited all these places and was giving them reviews. I found the first half pretty entertaining but the second half became a pretty big slog as I'd gotten the joke and maybe this is one book that's not intended to be read cover-to-cover. It wound up taking me nearly forever to finish this short small-format paperback book, largely hindered by the fact that I'd only get through a page or two each night. In the end, it's way too much for me to ever hope to retain if I ever bring my players to Waterdeep, but hopefully some of the stuff would sink in and I do have a greater sense of this fake place. I think maybe more has been written about Waterdeep than any other D&D location. Granted, it's like THE main city on the sword coast (where the Forgotten Realms are centered), but we're still talking about a half dozen box sets or setting books in first/second edition alone, let alone who knows how many adventures set there. There's even a well-regarded boardgame. The level of detail is pretty crazy for how fleshed out the place is. The map included in this book has every street and alley named and accounted for an almost 300 named locations. If Wizards of the Coast had their licensing straight I could easily see a full-length video game taking place in (and under) here. It'd be amazing to be able to walk these streets like Assassin's Creed or Thief. But I digress. This was a fun but ultimately challenging book to get through. I'm definitely ready for a Michael Connelly mystery or something. |
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