So I read Cities of the Realms, Ed Greenwood's new column in Dragon. And my initial thought is, "Woah. Do we really need a chart of twenty different penalties for breaking the law?"
My more considered thoughts are as follows:
1. The font used in the footnotes is waaaaaaay too small. Also, there is no good reason this information is footnoted instead of integrated into the article itself.
2. The extreme level of detail is overkill. To paraphrase a really old review from the pages of Dragon, what you want is not completeness, but the illusion of completeness.
3. The extreme level of detail crowds out other, more important, information. For example, we get tons of detail on the various taverns and inns, but little detail on the personalities, motivations, and plans of the city's notable NPCs.
(As DM, which are you more likely to need know when your PCs visit a city: stuff about the NPCs they might interact with, or stuff about exactly what foods and wines are served in the taverns?)
4. The ghostly lady who possesses people to make them search for her long lost lover is a neat idea, but making up a new rule to implement this is not good. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. We have at least two existing rules for possession: the ghost rules from Monster Manual (core), and the demonic possession rules from Book of Vile Darkness (non-core). There is no good reason for this article to invent its own rule.
I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this article.
