A year after putting out Waterdeep and the North, TSR published one of the most unusual boxed sets in RPG history. Usually a boxed set is a variety of material, including a couple of books, and maybe a couple large maps; but in this case, it contained one thin booklet and twelve poster-size mapsheets. Technically, the booklet could help out with running a game in any city, but this was less than entirely accurate, and the real reason for the box were the twelve mapsheets, and all of these were about one city in particular; Waterdeep.

The booklet itself is 32 pages long, and has some notes about the what the rest of the contents of the box were all about, and then reiterates the basics of the city of Waterdeep from FR1, including the history and laws of the city, though this includes a timeline not present in the original. There is a reiteration of the building key as well (needed, since the included maps mark the same buildings), as well as a ‘guide to services’, which lists them by type and map/grid location, so that this time there is an easy way to answer sudden questions such as ‘where are the nearest stables?’, from the party.

After that, there is finally something that could be used with any city; ‘street scenes’. These are large random tables (d100) of things and people going by on city streets that can be used to help set the stage (flavor, witnesses, etc.) at any point in an adventure in Waterdeep. These tables are keyed to the different wards of Waterdeep, but it wouldn’t be too hard to adapt to another city. There is then a short discussion of using recurrent encounters to help drive a sense of continuity in city life, with a page of suggestions, and the book finishes up with four pages of random tables for the potential results of picking a random NPC’s pockets.

Ten of the twelve mapsheets in the box go together to form a huge 67″x108″ map of Waterdeep (arranged in a 5×2 pattern; Waterdeep is quite rectangular). It’s quite impressive—if you have the space for it. (I don’t currently.) This isn’t the best that it could be, as the buildings are color-coded by what ward they’re in (handy, but a bit heavy-handed), and each keyed building is cut out of the image, leaving a white area with the number.

Waterdeep isn’t actually as wide as two mapsheets put together, and that’s where some of the more useful parts of the product come in. Along the outer edge of each sheet are a number of floor plans of potentially important buildings. These aren’t anything truly inspired, but they are potentially handy, and probably the most useful part of the entire product with about thirty different floorplans (most with multiple levels) in a 5 feet to the square scale.

The eleventh sheet is an isometric map of Castle Waterdeep. This includes a plan view and a close-up of the castle itself, showing the long switchback ramp up to the main gate. It’s not entirely bad, but the design is a very poor looking collection of narrow round towers with no thickness to the walls (probably not enough to support the structure, much less keep out rude neighbors), lines of windows along the top galleries, and not an arrow slit, machicolation, or other sensible defensive siege feature to be seen. TSR’s chronic lack of understanding of siege engineering is on full display here.

The final sheet isn’t really a map. It’s an illustration. A view of the city as seen from the top of the fortifications of the harbor. Since the southern part of the plateau the city is on slopes down to the sea, you get a very good view of the southern parts of the city, the ridge/mountain that Castle Waterdeep is on, the castle itself, and part of the city walls, though the actual South Gate runs off the right side of the view.

Assuming that TSR was able to just blow up their existing map of Waterdeep without much re-work, this box set was probably fairly easy to produce. However, value is lower than even that fairly simple job. If you want to run a game centered (or entirely) in Waterdeep, this can give good value, as the extra color will help, and the easier to read, blown up map will help. However, it is in no way essential to that, and if you aren’t heavily involved in Waterdeep, there’s extremely little of interest. Map junkies will still enjoy it however.