Bluffside: City on the Edge was a city supplement made for the d20 game back in 2002 (they're currently working on a Castles & Crusades version). Does anyone else have a copy? If so, has anyone else noticed its similarities to the World of Greyhawk's city of Roland?
Compare:
Bluffside wrote:
In addition, the 500-foot-tall cliff to the west makes it all but impossible to assault the town from the sea.
Ivid the Undying wrote:
The cliffs around Roland are 150 to 400 feet high, but the harbor is deep and vessels can draw virtually up to the sea gates of Roland itself, located in the Bay of Gates. By virtue of those cliffs, Roland is highly defensible, which is why the Oeridians founded it. Set back from the harbor, the place is immune to maritime invasion...
Ivid the Undying wrote:
Roland is virtually a split-level city. Most of it is built on the hills by the coastline, but there are also extensive caves below, excavated by the dwarves and gnomes who once lived in considerable numbers in the Gull Cliffs. Now, there are perhaps 150 dwarves and 200 gnomes in the town, with 250 dwarves and 1,000 gnomes in small scattered settlements in the Gull Cliffs.
Bluffside wrote:
The first thing the steam gnomes did was open up ancient passageways leading down to the bay. Some new tunnels were dug, but with the help of nearby dwarves, they were completed in only a few years.
So both cities are built on the edge of high cliffs. Both have undercities built by dwarves and gnomes with tunnels leading to the bay, where boats can dock (in Bluffside, they built an artificial floating town in the bay for this purpose).
Both are ruled by councils of five oligarchs, in both cases called simply the Five. Both groups of five include a woman and a priest, and both cities have a previous ruler who is now undead (in Bluffside he's a lich, while in Roland he's an animus).
There are lots of differences. Bluffside is huge, with a population of 60,000 to Roland's 5,000. Bluffside is a mining town based on the discovery of adamantine, while I see no indication that there are any mines near Roland (other than the presence of gnomes and dwarves, who must have some reason to be living underground there). Bluffside is a city with 200,000-year-old ruins, rifts to the Plane of Shadow, routes to the Underdark, a handful of new PC races (draconic humanoids, winged humanoids, gilled humanoids, drow-elf crossbreeds, and steam gnomes), a backstory involving a meteor strike and an ancient ice age, and an eccentric cult that worships a gray ooze named Carl (names are not these designers' strong suit). Roland was founded about 1,000 years ago by migrant Oeridians, while Bluffside was founded only about 200 years ago (built over prehuman ruins 200,000 years old).
Bluffside is built near two mountain ranges that look like they're probably bigger than the Gull Cliffs. There are nearby orc, goblin, giant, and kobold strongholds that are fairly interesting and might be placed somewhere, and a nearby small human town, Perten, that is definitely not very much like Roland's nearby town of Grelden.
All the differences aside, Bluffside might be worth a look. It looks pretty easy to ignore the differences, linking the timeline to the takeover of Roland by the Five about 150 years ago rather than the very founding of the city, turning the embassy of the draconic humanoid empire to an embassy of Rel Astra, other new races could be ignored or used as desired, substituting Greyhawk gods for the pantheon of mostly unnamed gods in Bluffside so that the Great Provider is either Pelor or Pyremius depending on his aspect, Sky and Air is the Oeridian wind gods, Sustainer is Procan, Frozen One is Nerull or Telchur, Great Mother is Beory, Traveler is Fharlanghn, Builder is Nebelun, Miner is Segojan Earthcaller, Great Teacher is Delleb, Healer is Pelor, Sufferer is Laduguer, Lolth, or the Elder Elemental God, and Purifier is Pholtus probably.
The big backstory of the ruined civilization of Sem La Vah should probably, if Bluffside is linked to Roland, be connected to the Sinking Isle culture since it's right there in the Bay of Gates and it seems pretty hard to imagine a giant meteor destroying an ancient civilization that Roland is built on that somehow has nothing to do with another ancient civilization that drowned in the nearby sea.
In Bluffside there are cults and secret societies dedicated to bringing back an ancient ice age and other groups dedicated to preventing the return of said ice age, but while Greyhawk probably had an ice age at some point it's not really a big part of the setting's backstory, at least not in most campaigns. I suppose a city where everyone believes the ancient meteor strike that caused the ice age is buried in the hills nearby might make a bigger deal about it than most neighboring cultures, though.
Though Roland and Bluffside are similar in some ways, Bluffside could probably be substituted for other cities near the sea. My second choice would be Dullstrand.
Wow, I just ordered it from Amazon last week, $4 including shipping, great deal! Thanks for telling me where to put it already MS already gave me heck for wasting $4 'on something you can't use for Greyhawk', now I know I can with a little tweaking!
TT _________________ Servant of Azmekidom the Most Prudent Despot, The Unapproachable One
Last edited by tigger1tom on Sun Jun 02, 2013 7:29 am; edited 1 time in total
MS already gave me heck for wasting $4 'on something you can't use for Greyhawk . . .
Actually, that's not what I gave him trouble about, though I did ask if it was set in Greyhawk.
He said he bought it so he could run a campaign there . . . Tiggertom does not "DM." He hasn't DMed in quite some time (almost two years) and has no plans to do so.
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MS already gave me heck for wasting $4 'on something you can't use for Greyhawk', now I know I can with a little tweaking! 
double post!! 
evil internet!!
