http://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-Cit ... 936&sr=8-1

Alternately...

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Wo ... 1594200717

I can't recommend this book more, and Grump's post immediately brought it to mind. Amazing cross-sections of important physical/civic functions in New York fill the book. I looked at it about a year ago, and it's lost in my house at the moment.

The lost rivers topic is fascinating, Grump! Most of my geology knowledge focuses on the natural foundations of natural disasters and soil structure.. ..and the ever popular 'Don't build on a cliff, ya moron!' So I rarely get to read about such topical gems, since geology isn't my major (but I still like it.)

Actually, DeltaIce, your town might not have lost those pipes for lack of trying...I can't get as opinionated as I'd like without a USGS map but depending on when the pipes were first laid out, there might not have been an accurate geological survey map of the area, or whatever party laid the pipe down just..didn't do a good job of using the maps they had. Or didn't use them. Or the city offices lost some records.

Hopefully your streets are back to normal!

My father used to work for a council. If his definition of a 'road' as "a place where a man digs" is anything to go by, they should look under all the main thoroughfares.

Often it means that the records were destroyed - fires that destroyed large sections of cities were common into the early twentieth century. (And was so common in mediaeval cities that the Russians invented prefab housing in the twelfth century.) If the records are in town hall and the town hall burns.... In the case of Portsmouth, New Hampshire some of the sewers began as pipes for a brewer and distillery plant. Both the city hall and the brewery were destroyed.

An amazing number of records were lost more recently, as formats for computer data storage changed - and magnetic tape has a limited lifespan to try to make recoveries.

Also fun - sometimes the streets change after the sewers are done - so descriptions of the locations can be amazingly inaccurate. Recently New York retired a number of nonexistent streets - one, for example, only existed as a manhole cover at the junction of two completely different streets. (If it is completely useless, some gamer, somewhere, knows about it.... ) The whole reason that manhole cover kept the original name was so the sewer could be found again, if needed. They overhauled their files, so they could get rid of the lost street.

Halcy - The Works is a great book. I am also fond of the children's books David Macauley - similar, and somewhat whimsical. His book Underground was part of my inspiration as a young GM.

Zenguy - I will add that to my list, next time I go book hunting.

The Auld Grump

See our little town is actually dealing with the opposite problem. A couple streets over we have a water culvert that burried in some people's back yard. The village knows it's there, and you can see it quite easily until it runs into the side of the hill and disappears, And it carries water like a champ. (but more on that later)
The problem is it shouldn't be there. The village records don't show any record of where this pipe comes from or goes and all of the water dumps into our little stream. However that stream feeds into federally protected wetlands and so by law we have a limit to the amount of water we can dump out of the stream based on the area we are "supposed" to be draining. So when it rains this extra 14" pipe dumps water that we are not able to get rid of and we end up having to hold back the water.
Under normal conditions this isn't a problem, but a heavy rain comes, well this backs up our stream and floods a number of the areas around... Needless to say we aren't happy about the situation. (Particularly my neighbors who's yards/houses flood under a really heavy rain.)

All because there is no record of where this water is coming from and who put the pipe there.

As a (somewhat late) aside - cities on rivers tend to be built at the mouths and at the fall lines - which also tend to be confluence points. (The fall line is as far up the primary river as is navigable - there may, or may not, be a waterfall or other rapids.) This is also why so many cities are built on what used to be swamp....

The Auld Grump

This and Himmelveil 1 now at 90%, which I think is an update right? The finishing line is in sight! Come on Denny!

More love for sewers:

Ooooooooh soooo nice!!1

Looks like I may be able to also use these for some Carrien Hunting sessions of SLA Industries, which would be very kewl

Still finishing up promos for sewers. More to come.

Gaaaaaahhh! Do want!

Just out of curiousity, but what happened to your old mascot, the antler-headed barbarian dude, Denny? Okay, I know I'm old school but I kinda miss his presence in these latest promo pics....

Bob,

That's funny as someone else on the beta expressed the same view. Bring back Mossy!


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

Sewers IS GOLD!!! GO GET IT HERE: http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/in ... cts_id=304

Got it.

Question for people who have snagged this... Could it plausibly be used as a replacement for minichunk to make my dungeon for my 4e game? I'd want at least some flooring that had no muck and some walls that were low tech and/or bare. Thanks in advance!

Flooring should be no issue as their are tiles with and without sewer-flow. Walls at most have a grating. I THINK their were some blanks...have to double check.

Got mine, now I can start on the old Shadowrun sewers..
Wonder how much I can get done by fridays game

I've got Streets, building it, looks really cool and goes together quickly and neatly, but I'm actually going to wait on Sewers until I see more of how Canals integrates with the city.





.............of course, I'll buy both then, not entirely sure why I'm waiting.

Help. I can't find the sewer tiles 'without' the mounting post tabs? Were there any like in Streets? Tiles with complete texture on top instead of white spot mount points for tabs?

I think the idea is that each tile has the pieces attached and laid flat if not in use. This would suggest usefulness in future build due to modular nature of the set(s).

Darn. That's a lot of extra work. I was hoping i just wasn't seeing where the non tab file was .

For those who only want the tiles for a flat play area it might reach a bigger audience if those were included.

I agree, having "plain" versions w/out the tab cut out would make this set more appealing to the DDM players who are just looking for more ground tiles to make maps with (one of the selling points I've made over in the WotC forums). If it's not too much trouble, I'd recommend adding it.

Printed up one of every page (except the rails/balconies) from this with my new ink and its not showing a hit yet! Considering that was...oh...nearly 40 pages, I'd say thats pretty good!

Also, printing this on matte photo paper. Just realized I did not set it to that in the print settings and it STILL looks way better than cardstock printouts.

I too would like too have the tiles without the gluemarks.
Apart from that I´m very pleased with both sets.

NOW GET WORKING ON CANALS!:wink:

No seriously you guys need and have deserved your rest.

cheers
BULL

I noticed that there weren't any sewer pieces without mounting points, but I assumed that was probably because sewers aren't likely to have a lot of huge expanses of open space in general. There are some pretty straightforward workarounds though.

Preface--I was one of the testers and the Craft ROBO consultant for both sets.

Llew has it right--the reason why Streets has blank tiles is because you're more likely to see large open expanses aboveground, while for sewers, there are generally lots of walls that form confining spaces.

TLX is a modular system that spans the 2D to 3D range of layout possibilities, and as such, the occasional compromise is necessary. Lego bricks are awesome, but a side effect of that is a lot of your builds have little round pegs poking out of their surface--this isn't very different at all, and just like with these round Lego pegs, you won't really notice the anchors after a short while.

The expedient thing to do when you want a "blank" tile and you have no plans to ever do a 3D layout is to simply cut the anchors in half so that you're only gluing down one layer. However, where this system shines is in the modular 3D possibilities. If I were you, I'd build the anchors anyway and mount them--once you've done that, moving on to 3D later is super easy because you've already done the groundwork, as it were.

Using these sets for straight 2D battlemats, in my opinion, is kind of like buying a Ferrari so you can hitch a horse to it. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's more fun to get behind the wheel and turn the key, instead of just sitting on the hood bellowing "Josiah, giddyap!"

-Mel

Hey gang, hope you're all enjoying the new sewer-y goodness (seems a bit contradictory and slightly gross I know but there it is).

On the topic of open tiles, frankly their inclusion never came up until well into development and by that time the filesize of the set was pretty much where it ended up being in the final version. Balancing content, release date, filesize and pricetag meant lines had to be drawn somewhere and that was one of those lines.

Also there's the core idea itself. The set is after all a sewer, so vast expanses of open space don't really make logical sense, both in concept and in terms of practical application where the street tiles are placed above the sewers, going more than a tile or two without supports would be problematic indeed.

However, don't despair. Part of the new Terrainlinx paradigm is rapid turn around on new sets, including expansions so rest assured we are listening.

I think you made the right choice. I mean, its already 130MB and the amount of content is...well, insane. That is what expansion sets are for, eh?