Looking back at the early days of the RPG hobby, it’s a bit surprising how few Dungeons & Dragons adventures took place in large cities. Sure, there were little towns and villages like Hommlet or the Keep on the Borderlands. But they were primarily intended for rumors (adventure seeds), loot selling, and gearing-up the party.
Large urban sprawls as campaign-spanning adventuring locales – with as many locations as a megadungeon – occupied only a small corner of the hobby. TSR itself would not publish such a large city setting until The City of Greyhawk in 1989
Judges Guild filled in the gap early on with the City State of the World Emperor (CSWE) and its predecessor, City State of the Invincible Overlord (CSIO). Today, we’ll take a look at the city of Viridistan, featured in the enormous (for its time) CSWE set.
City State of the World Emperor
1980 … Bob Bledsaw & Craighton Hippenhammer … Judges Guild 0150
Two 80-page books and one 48-page booklet, One 34″x22″ full color city map, Two 17″x22″ campaign maps: Judge & Player (Campaign Map 6: City State of the World Emperor)
Cover Sheet
The Cover Sheet, alas, is often missing from these CSWE sets out in the wild.
The sheet, as well as the books, boast that CSWE is “Approved for use with Dungeons & Dragons”. TSR would later block this claim, forcing JG to term future publications as “Universal Fantasy Supplements.” City State of the World Emperor, last printing, did drop the AD&D reference on the cover sheet and booklets.
On the back is the Treasure Vault: Judges Guild product list. This is used by The Acaeum in identfying the printing. There were 4 printings of City State of the World Emperor.
Book I: Guidebook Map 6
In the Guidebook (48 pages) there is a moderate amount of excellent art credited to Paul (Jennell) Jaquays and Kevin Siembieda (of Palladium fame). Many entries have blank lines for the DM to add notes.
Book II: Shops
The Shops book has little art, the space instead dedicated to a whole lotta named NPCs and their businesses to be placed by the DM.
Book III: City
The City booklet focuses on the more important people and locations in Viridistan. There are several pages of barracks and rumors.
Maps
Of the three Maps, the color city map is the largest. It is blank on the back. The two black-n-beige regional maps are identical, except the Player’s map has large unmapped areas of course. The reverse sides both have a blank hex field for DIY mapping.
Campaign Map 6: City State of the World Emperor is but one of several interlinked maps of the City State campaign.
See also:
Judges Guild City State Campaign, detailed at my RPG reference site
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
I ‘lost’ my entire old Dungeons & Dragons books box sets suppliments collection from when I started first playing in Junior High School in 1980 from the Basic Box Set all the AD&D 1st edition books all the way through to the beginning of 4th Edition. I’d buy, get rid of, buy again, shove in a corner for a decade, rebuy everything, then finally find a great group of friends and play non-stop from the end of 2nd edition through to the beginning of 4th edition until the friend group broke up and after one final gaming session I emptied a walk in closet lined with bookshelves full of all the books plus all the other rpgs we played. Maybe not the smartest move but I was done…but of course I miss it. And one of the things I miss the most is my box set of The City State of the World Emperor. I bought it new at The Military Shop at Lakewood Center in California. The Military Shop was mostly a model shop, lots of wwII planes, ships, tanks, vehicles of all kinds, etc. You name it they had it. But, if you knew, and somehow my uncle knew, they had a small museum in the basement that was only open certain hours. The museum is how I discovered the place. You’d go down the steps to the basement and step into the craziest World War II Memorabilia Museum I’ve ever seen. Oh should I say German WWII Memorabilia. From uniforms, weapons, medals, pictures – ive seen less in actual museums! And throughout they had dioramas using WWII model tanks, airplanes, etc that they sold upstairs to tell the tale inbetween all the uniforms and weapons. Anyway, it was a crazy place, and it was there for many years. From Junior High through High School thats where I bought a lot of my D&D stuff, also Aftermath, Twilight 2000, etc. But thats where I bought my City State of the World Emperor when it was new and ran my friends through many adventures there. One of my favorite times running games back in Junior High and High School. Seeing this brings back lots of great memories.
I also had a favorite shop in my younger days. It too was military-themed, lots of model kits and Osprey books in one half of the store, and boardgames/RPGs in the other half. It was so great.