Book Description
Cityscape features city-building rules, new options for city-based characters, city-based encounters, and rules for urban terrain. The game material is completely compatible with the D&D core rulebooks and includes timesaving tools and tips for any urban campaign. The material in this supplement is appropriate for both D&D players and Dungeon Masters and includes content that appeals to both
Customer Reviews:
A Useful and Interesting Resource!.......2007-05-23
As mentioned in other reviews, this is a DMs resource. This is not the book to come to if you want more base classes or advice on how to adventure in a city. As with all reviews, choose this based on what you know. If you are inexperienced and need advice on how to run urban campaigns, or if you have run urban campaigns before and merely need more ideas this is the perfect book to come to. It presents new and interesting feats, NPC prestige classes, and tips for running different types of urban settings.
In this book you can find advice for:
Flying cities
Race-based cities
Specific environment based cities
Different Locales within the city
...and much more along those lines
I am preparing for a campaign and this book is exactly what I needed. I have several years of experiance DMing and find that this and Dungeonscape both provide interesting ideas. Keep it up Wizards!
Fluff.......2007-03-22
Like Dungeonscape, this book is just about useless. Nothing in it is new save for a few things nobody will use. I haven't used it since I got it the day it came out. A waste of shelf space. Anyone want to buy mine?
Great book.......2007-03-14
this book is great for guilds and city information allows you to wip up a city in no time.
Don't Waste Your Money.......2007-02-20
Poor product. Bought it to satisfy my gaming fix for the month, and I was quite disappointed. I can't say anything else about it the other reviewers haven't already said. I am now very suspicious of Dungeonscape.
its a great resource .......2007-02-17
understand this is a dm resource.
you won't find classes or a bunch of new weapons ect. it is an excellent resource for the dm, when planning cities. full campaign or even just trying to add a little life or flavor to those that your pcs pass though.it helps give ideas on city design, history, governing bodies, businesses, hazards, defenses, ect. this is the type of resource i enjoy; i can make my own campaigns, but this helps remind me to add in the extras. (the gingerbread or garnish if you will) those little extras that make a setting more tangible to the players.
i will note on the side that like so many other books i've gotten form amazon,(it seems 1/3) this had a binding problem its dealable and all the pages are there at least.
Book Description
Artists interested in graphic novels and comic book illustration will find all the guidance and inspiration they need to draw and paint landscapes that evoke myths and legends, lost empires, futuristic planets, dramatic dreamscapes, underwater worlds, and subterranean cities. Easy-to-follow instructions and step-by-step illustrations demonstrate techniques for rendering a wide range of fantasy features, whether working in ink, watercolor, or computer pixels. Details covered in this heavily illustrated volume include -- choice of materials, with advice on getting the most from software programs . . . basics of perspective, architectural geometry, color, mood, and seasonal variations . . . landscape features, including skies, clouds, mountains, caves, deserts, snow, and water reflections . . . imagined landscapes from ancient cultures, future worlds, alien planets, undersea worlds, and surreal dreamscapes . . . cityscapes, from medieval towns to the metropolis of the future . . . famous fantasy worlds, from Atlantis to Middle Earth. This good-looking and instructive volume features a gallery of fantasy and science fiction images among its more than 200 color illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
A FINE ADDITION TO ANY FANTASY LIBRARY.......2007-04-25
I dabble in fantasy art, being much better at looking at it than actually creating the stuff myself. I did enjoy this work. While I will never be as good as the work displayed in this book, I use books such as this for inspiration and motivation. This work is well done. It gives some good, basic tips in developing this particular genre of art. It would be difficult to say if this work is good for beginners or if it is only for the advanced student. We all have our own level. I personally found it helpful, interesting and quite motivating. If nothing else, it is fun to thumb through and just look at the wonderful pictures.
Very helpful.......2007-03-11
For some one like me, who would love to learn how to draw amazing looking and well detailed citys and Landscapes. this book is very helpful, in telling the reader were to start and what the best media to use would be.
in all its a book i would recoment to any one out there who whants to learn how to draw fabules Scapes.
Fantasy Supreme.......2007-02-25
This book makes me want to get my drawing supplies out and start fantasizing. A real stimulus with beautiful illustrations.
Great for amateurs and professionals alike!.......2007-02-09
I have an ever expanding library of art books focusing on techniques for drawing and painting. This by far is one of the best I have found. It covers ever medium from oils to computer aided illustration, offering insight into seeking sources for inspiration, planning and design, and final implementation. The author provides examples from well known and well respected artists, helping both the professional and amateur develop their skills. I would recommend this book to anyone who is seeking guidance for their art.
An outstanding 'how to' guide any aspiring fantasy artist can learn from........2006-11-07
Fantasy enthusiasts and artists who would create their own cities and worlds will learn much from Rob Alexander, a working illustrator who has moved between games and collectible card game markets to magazine art. He's known for his fantasy and science fiction works as well as for landscapes and fine art, and Drawing & Painting Fantasy Landscapes & Cityscapes combines all his talents, packing in color examples throughout to help with fine drawings of fine art works. An outstanding 'how to' guide any aspiring fantasy artist can learn from.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Book Description
The American West conjures up images of pastoral tranquility and wide open spaces, but by 1970 the Far West was the most urbanized section of the country. Exploring four intriguing cityscapes--Disneyland, Stanford Industrial Park, Sun City, and the 1962 Seattle World's Fair--John Findlay shows how each created a sense of cohesion and sustained people's belief in their superior urban environment. This first book-length study of the urban West after 1940 argues that Westerners deliberately tried to build cities that differed radically from their eastern counterparts.
In 1954, Walt Disney began building the world's first theme park, using Hollywood's movie-making techniques. The creators of Stanford Industrial Park were more hesitant in their approach to a conceptually organized environment, but by the mid-1960s the Park was the nation's prototypical "research park" and the intellectual downtown for the high-technology region that became Silicon Valley.
In 1960, on the outskirts of Phoenix, Del E. Webb built Sun City, the largest, most influential retirement community in the United States. Another innovative cityscape arose from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and provided a futuristic, somewhat fanciful vision of modern life.
These four became "magic lands" that provided an antidote to the apparent chaos of their respective urban milieus. Exemplars of a new lifestyle, they are landmarks on the changing cultural landscape of postwar America.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent urban history.......2005-09-28
Americans have always looked west to reinvent themselves. This trend has been constant from the nation's inception throughout the twentieth-century. With this migration came growth in population and urbanization. In Magic Lands Author John M. Findlay argues that planned communities arose to offer alternatives to this unrelenting urbanization. To support his argument he presents four case studies of planned communities: California's Disneyland and Silicon Valley, Arizona's Sun City retirement community and grounds for the Seattle World's Fair. These "magic lands" were sources of recreation, inspiration and optimism for the rest of the country.
Magic Lands begins with a look at the West's rapid growth at mid-century. Findlay credits the military spending of World War II and a post-war boom driven by the G.I. Bill for increasing populations and changing landscapes. New industries-such as Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley and Boeing in Seattle-aided this growth by driving the west to new economic heights. With new jobs came an increase in demand for housing and shopping plazas. The result was the "horizontal" urban community, one which sprawled outside of the urban center creating sprawl. Reacting to this eastern-style growth, westerners escaped to planned communities for amusement and alternatives to urban lifestyles.
These alternative visions presented in Magic Lands vary drastically. Walt Disney envisioned Disneyland both as family entertainment and as his example as "the city of tomorrow". Stanford built an industrial center that relied on the surrounding natural geography and climate to draw its workforce. Conversely, Sun City severely altered its surroundings to provide an "ideal" active retirement community. And Seattle converted a run down neighborhood to house it's 1962 world's fair. In each case study, Findlay explores how these areas transformed their adjacent communities geographically, economically and culturally.
But how these Magic Lands were constructed varied drastically. Disneyland was built under the close supervision of Walt Disney, who envisioned his planned community as an example for the entire country, but Stanford's Industrial Park (i.e. Silicon Valley) never had a master plan-simply a goal of building a high tech industrial center. In the case of Sun City, a drive for profit and little else led to the construction of this rich and green retirement community in the Arizona desert. Seattle's World Fair aimed to revitalize its downtown district-and failed. But in each case, the results of these communities influenced national ideas on architecture and urban landscapes.
While Magic Lands does offer a compelling look at these four planned communities, their similarities are tenuous at best. Comparisons of Disneyland to the Seattle World's Fair are sometimes a stretch, while Sun City shares little in common with Seattle. These are vastly different and unique communities. More compelling is Findlay's final chapter that shows the impacts of these communities today in places like Irving and Los Angeles. These planned communities had vast cultural and environmental impacts, and these topics could be covered more in depth. Regardless, Magic Lands will both appeal to and inform those interested in urban development and the growth of the American West.
Good History of Planned Communities.......2003-10-22
Findlay has written an excellent book in urban history. He weaves theory into his narrative effortlessly with few exceptions. Those rare exceptions occur when he heavy-handedly repeats his message, but they are easily overlooked. He also masterfully uses the photographs to enhance his argument, though one wishes that he had included comparative maps to make the micro-communities "legible" to the reader. His argument was convincing overall and left one wishing that he could have treated just a couple more important western landmarks. His most important contribution is to help the reader understand how western cities evolved from eastern, nuclear conception of a city to a model akin to the solar system.
Book Description
Spain's southern city of Seville basks in romantic myths and legends, evoking the scent of jasmine and orange blossom. But there is an ascetic core to its sybaritic spirit. For all their fame as passionate performers, the poet Unamuno called Sevillanos "finos y frios"-refined and cool. Once Europe's most cosmopolitan metropolis, bridging cultures of East and West and hub of a sea-borne empire, Seville was defined by Spain's great seventeenth-century playwright Lope de Vega as "port and gateway to the Indies". The city retains both the swagger of its seafaring heyday, and the sensual flavor of Moorish al-Andalus. Seville produced Spain's lowest ruffians, grandest grandees and a seductive gypsy culture that colors our wider perception of Spain. Elizabeth Nash explores the palaces, the mosques, the patios, fountains and wrought-iron balconies of Seville, Cordoba and Granada, cities celebrated for centuries by Europe's finest painters, poets, satirists and travel writers for their voluptuous beauty and vibrant cultural mix.
Book Description
Robert Campbell's eloquent and witty text sculpts an image of how Boston has changed with time. Each pair of pictures compares a site in Boston in the past and in the present. This book also explores the evolution of cities in general--how they develop and decay, build up and spread out, and revive and change. Beautiful black-and-white photography gives an insightful portrait of Boston, past and present.
Customer Reviews:
A worthy successor to a pretty cool book... when's volume 3?.......2003-05-01
The authors' second collaboration of historical photos of Boston (the first was Boston Then and Now from 1982) came out ten years after the original, and shows a Boston I'm more familiar with. Much of the blight that Boston seemed to have been drowning in as late as the late 80s is gone in the new pictures in this book, and more of it is shown. The architectural finesses -- buildings with added floors, the defacement of buildings such as the former Fiske building on State St, before-and-afters of Quincy Market -- are given great attention in this book, and Campbell, the author of the text, is not happy with much of it. Especially poignant, towards the end, is a huge bit of graffiti along Columbus Ave from the 60s protesting the impending construction of I-95 through Boston; in 1992, however, the highway never having been built, it is now a park serving people from the South End all the way down to Jamaica Plain.
This book is actually a readable book, more so than the first which was all about the pictures, and much of Campbell's ideas on urban planning are on display here. Campbell, one gathers, would not be happy with the current plans to build open space over the Big Dig, yet he applauds the demolition of an old parking garage that converted Post Office Square from a desolate, confusing high-rise commercial ghetto into at least a more presentable area where the architecture of the surrounding buildings can be enjoyed from street level. Campbell's obsession with urban density comes off as being a bit agoraphobic, but it's easy to see what he means when he describes useless open space as being as much a blight as overhead highways or slums.
To those of you who might live in or regularly visit Boston, but have never seen, can't remember, or simply can't imagine downtown without the dust and construction that the Big Dig and its related projects have brought on, this book is a record of Boston just before they started tearing everything apart. It's also a valuable historical record of the evolution of a city.
awesome historical record -- and entertaining too!!.......2002-04-10
With text by Robert Campbell and photographs (primarily) by Peter Vanderwarker, this book is not only a wonderful volume documenting the history of Boston, but a general and gentle instruction in the rise and fall and rise and fall cycles of many cities, focusing in particular on the "built environment". All photographs are in black-and-white, but this makes the comparison between old and new cityscapes easier. Within each of seven chapters there are a series of two-page pieces featuring photographs and an essay on such topics as: Murdering Another Street, A Waterfront Workplace Becomes a Playpen, A Landmark on Top of a Landmark, A Building That Floats, etc. The text is informative and interesting. Maps are used to supplement the material, and a good index follows. If only all history and architecture books could be this well done!
Exceptional work, highly recommended.
New insight into Boston.......2000-12-14
My sister in law gave us this book a couple years ago when we moved to Boston. I grew up in the burbs and my wife in the Midwest so we had plenty to explore. The book sat idle for over a year, but when I pulled it down, I was amazed that I hadn't opened it sooner. This book is wonderful.
This is a city that revels in its history, and, to an outsider, Boston sometimes seems a bit mired in its parochial and seemingly unchanging ways. You can end up assuming, "Gosh, it must always have been this way with it's cobblestones and colonial landmarks." This book shattered my assumptions about the static nature of this city.
The authors peel off layer after layer from the city and as the landmarks come and go the authors reflect, educate and entertain as to how these physical changes are linked to history of the city. Some changes are success stories of planning, others fortunate twists of fate, and yet others, unmitigated urban planning disasters. All fascinating illustrations that help the reader understand the city on a more meaningful level.
I must admit that I love cities and am enthralled by the idea of so many people sharing a limited space comfortably and enjoyably. Cities, to me, have an energy that speaks to the miracle of civilization where people can grow personally by sharing in the diversity of those around them. It nevers goes perfectly, because after all we are human, but it is nonetheless comforting to frame your current surroundings in the context of those who have come before you.
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URBAN SPACE AND CITYSCAPES (Questioning)
Manufacturer: Routledge
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The Urban Design Reader (Routledge Urban Readers)
ASIN: 0415366534 |
Book Description
From the verticals of New York, Hong Kong and Australia's Gold Coast to the sprawls of London, Paris and Jakarta, this cross-disciplinary volume of new writing examines constructions, representations, imaginations and theorizations of urban space and cityscapes in modern and contemporary culture. Linked by a shared concern for issues of spatiality, the essay topics are organized around three interrelated themes - image, text, and form - and range from the examination of cyberpunk skylines, postcolonial urbanism, and the cinema of urban disaster, to the analysis of iconic city landmarks such as the Twin Towers, the London Eye, and the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Working at the intersections of visual, material, and literary culture, Urban Space and Cityscapes seeks in particular:
· to provide new critical and theoretical perspectives on the city at a time when the condition and future of urbanism are major subjects of international and public concern.
· to examine the aesthetic, narrative, and representational strategies used to interpret the dynamic space of cities.
· to explore the relationship between urban space and a variety of pressing cultural concerns, including issues of identity, memory, technology, class, gender, nation, and ethnicity.
With original essays from the fields of architecture, cultural theory, film, geography, literature, and visual art, Urban Space and Cityscapes offers fresh insight into the increasingly complex relationship between urban space, cultural production, and everyday life.
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Cityscapes of Modernity: Critical Explorations
David Frisby
Manufacturer: Polity Press
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Binding: Paperback
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Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization
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The City Reader (Routledge Urban Reader Series,)
ASIN: 0745626254 |
Book Description
The modern metropolis has been one of the crucial sites for the exploration of modernity since at least the mid-nineteenth century. In this new volume, David Frisby provides an original and critical examination of the construction and experience of metropolitan modernity. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, Frisby seeks to reveal some key features of metropolitan experience in modernity. Among the issues examined are Benjamin's account of the flâneur and its relevance for social investigation and urban detection; Simmel's influential essay on the metropolis; contrasting interpretations of fin-de-siècle Berlin and Vienna by Sombart; the work of Otto Wagner; and the response to the modern metropolis as highlighted in German Expressionism and Weimar Berlin. Cityscapes of Modernity will be a valuable text for students of sociology, social theory, urban theory, cultural studies and architectural history, as well as all those interested in the urban culture of modernity
Book Description
Formerly the viceregal capital of Spain's vast South American empire, Lima is today a sprawling metropolis struggling to cope with a population of eight million. Located on the coast between the Andean foothills and the Pacific Ocean, it is many cities in one, with an indigenous past, an old colonial heart, and turn-of-the-century quarters modeled on Paris. Leafy suburbs like San Isidro and tranquil seaside communities such as Barranco contrast with ever-expanding shantytowns. Lima has always dominated national life, as the center of political and economic power. Long a stronghold of the European elite, the city is now home to millions of Peruvians from the Andean region as well as the descendants of African slaves and migrants from Europe, China and Japan. As a popular saying puts it, the whole of Peru is now in Lima. James Higgins explores the city's history and evolving identity as reflected in its architecture, literature, painting and music. Tracing its trajectory from colonial enclave to modern metropolis, he reveals how the capital now embodies the diversity and dynamism of Peru itself. -- CITY OF HISTORY: ceremonial sites and museums of pre-Hispanic antiquities; colonial churches and mansions; the Museum of the Inquisition; monuments to the heroes of Independence. -- CITY OF CULTURE: pre-Columbian textiles, pottery and goldwork; Baroque architecture and art; writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Alfredo Bryce Echenique; painters and sculptors; a vibrant popular culture. -- CITY OF MULTICULTURAL EXCHANGE: the indigenous legacy; the imposition of Spanish culture; African slaves; European and Asian immigrants; mass migration from the provinces.
Customer Reviews:
A must read...especially for frequent visitors of Lima .......2005-04-17
James Higgins describes the "mysterious city," of Lima with such great expertise that even frequent visitors of Lima will benefit from this new Oxford University Press publication. On that note...if you are going to Lima for the first time, certainly do yourself the favor and buy this book.
This is a five part book. Part One is short (14 pages), introduces Lima's setting, climate, history, power struggles, painful independence and modernization and change. Part Two is super short (7 pages) and reviews the pre-history of Lima. Part Three and Four is the meat of the book and provides an extensive guide to practically everything of historical importance to Lima. Finally, Part Five covers the expanding metropolis and ends with a passage on the future.
James Higgins is a master of Lima's history, architecture, literature, painting and music. Moreover, the author includes outstanding drawings, a list of further reading (on pgs. 232 -235), plus a highly organized index of literary and historical names as well as a detailed index of places. This book is mandatory reading for the serious visitors of Lima. Highly recommended.
Bert Ruiz
Book Description
Founded in 1718 by two French-Canadian brothers for French King Louis XIV, New Orleans grew from its roots as a Euro-Caribbean port city at the nexus of North, Central and South America. Situated at the bottom of the Mississippi River Delta, the city became "Paris on the Mississippi," the fashionable cultural capital of the American South, home to America's first opera house and birthplace of jazz. Many think of New Orleans, with its antebellum mansions, above-ground cemeteries and ghostly moss-bearded oaks as a haunted place. It is certainly the most un-American of American cities, creating its own laid-back "Big Easy" attitude from the customs of the people who founded it: French and Spanish colonists, gens de couleur libres, Northern adventurers, riverboat men, pirates, and Cajuns. From this eclectic mix of influences has evolved a distinctive Creole culture, expressed in language, architecture and cuisine. Louise McKinney explores the soul of this deeply spiritual and hedonistic place, where every year the pre-Lenten Mardi Gras bursts forth with outrageous excess.
Customer Reviews:
Jazz Tour of the City.......2007-02-16
This is a truly excellent book, however, the title for this book should have been "A Jazz Tour of New Orleans Neighborhoods." Ms. McKinney does an amazing job of guiding the reader through the many fascinating neighborhoods of the city, but in the end, this tour serves only to highlight where a visitor can find good Jazz music. Certainly, no book about New Orleans culture would be complete without a discussion of Jazz, possibly the city's most important creation. But the intense focus on this one subject comes at the expense of leaving out countless other highlights of the city's neighborhoods.
If you want to read a book about New Orleans Jazz, and where to find the best venues for it within New Orleans, then believe me, this is the book you want. But if you want a book that covers other aspects of New Orleans culture, then you may have to look elsewhere. Still, this is a wonderful and unique book (the first one I have found that explores the cultural significance of neighborhoods like the Treme, Mid-City, Carrolton, the Irish Channel, etc.), and I highly recommend it for anyone with a passion for New Orleans.
A Broad Spectrum.......2006-12-01
As a tour guide in the city, I appreciated Ms McKinney's successful efforts of covering such a broad spectrum of the city's history. I found a few inaccuracies such as Anne Rice's owning St. Alphonsus, a magnificent former church in the city. She owned St. Elizabeth's, a former orphanage; Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel and other properties.
Lagniappe!.......2006-07-31
Ms. McKinney has fashioned a marvelous chronicle of "The Big Easy," which will surely be on my side - pages laminated for my convenience - during my next scuba trip to New Orleans.
Book Description
From Athens in the time of the Emperor Hadrian to a bird's-eye view of the majestic dome of London's St. Paul's Cathedral; from the lush Northamptonshire countryside to rugged alpine passes, here is a magnificent assemblage of town and country scenes. Exquisitely rendered, atmospheric, and possessed of photo-like realism.
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- Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
- Exploring Visual Effects (Design Exploration Series)
- Film Directing: Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen (Michael Wiese Productions)
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