# What didn't people like about Greyhawk From the Ashes?



## 00Machado (Mar 20, 2007)

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=191219&page=1&pp=40



			
				Korgoth said:
			
		

> I'm a fan of the Greyhawk boxed set of 1983... it's probably the best boxed setting I've seen.  I'd accept non-EGG material... but the whole "Greyhawk Wars" thing sucked so bad that it's probably a moot point.




The above thread/quote got me to wondering. I've seen a lot of people who didn't like the Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes material, and I'm wondering why?

Was it that they changed things? Meaning essentially any material that wasn't an adventure would have been unwelcome?

Was it that you would have been happy with different changes, but not the ones they made? If so, which would you have prefered?

Did you find the products themselves of poor quality, as opposed to having any real issue with the ideas?

From my perspective, I liked the material. It made the setting seem more vivid and an inspiring place to set campaigns. I must say though that I wasn't overly familiar with the background before reading it. I'd played characters in the setting, and had an idea of some of the background, but wasn't steeped in Greyhawk lore, so to speak. Separate from the Greyhawk-ness of the material, I also found the ideas well presented, to the point where it made me think about playing differently in any future campaign/setting or home brew.


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## Thulcondar (Mar 20, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=191219&page=1&pp=40
> 
> 
> 
> ...




From my perspective, FtA simply seemed... unnecessary.

It was a blatant attempt to wrench away the WoG from the material that Gyax wrote (remember, the Wars and FtA came about right after his departure from TSR). The original (1980/1983 books) presented a fantasy world in the "old school" tradition. A place for a DM to set adventures; a sketched-out starting-point that the DM could fill in as needed and desired. FtA tore that asunder; all of a sudden, a DM with a years-long Greyhawk campaign was faced with a decision; go with the "canon" history, or the one he had carefully created as the game play proceeded? 

That was bad enough, but in addition the post-FtA Greyhawk started filling in all sorts of details that were similarly previously the demesne of the DM. Products like "Iuz the Evil". It was a reaction to the success of the Forgotten Realms products, where everthing was set up and presented in nauseating detail, for the benefit of lazy DMs who either couldn't work up those details on their own or couldn't think them up on the fly as needed. There was no room for individual DM creativity any more. 

Greyhawk was at its best when it was a framework upon which the DM could imprint his or her own creative stamp. A place where you could plunk a "generic" dungeon. The Post-FtA Greyhawk was too much like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance; everything laid out following an inexorable path, or detailed to the point where the talents of setting design were no longer needed.


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## Twowolves (Mar 20, 2007)

Other than the fact that Howl from the North and Five Shall Be One were total railroads that ended with the PCs watching the Greyhawk Wars open, I'm not sure. Frankly, I'd like to know. I thought there was a ton of info here, and lots of adventure hooks. I wanted to run a campaign that took place during the wars, but was too busy with my regular campaign back then.


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## trollwad (Mar 20, 2007)

There is a semi-famous essay online called something like "putting the grey in hawk."  Basically, from the ashes was generally flawed because it violated many of the internal dynamics of the setting.  Having some wars or Iuz playing a practical joke on the barbarians to get them to invade some patsies is fine and the setting could have accomodated Howl From The North, it just went well beyond what was needed


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## Gentlegamer (Mar 20, 2007)

I like From the Ashes! I liked the resulting "dangerous areas" . . . perfect for adventure. I particularly loved the Empire of Iuz that stretched across the north. Part of my resulting campaign involved King Belvor of Furyondy and the Archcleric of Veluna declaring a crusade against Iuz that involved the recovery of the Crook of Rao.


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## Thulcondar (Mar 20, 2007)

trollwad said:
			
		

> There is a semi-famous essay online called something like "putting the grey in hawk."




Google is not my friend this eve. Got a link? I would love to read that essay.


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## I'm Cleo (Mar 20, 2007)

I, for one, just _liked_ the world that FtA created.  EGG wasn't involved anymore, and I think a lot of people were upset about that, but I didn't have any loyalty to him beyond my desire to use his material in my campaign (just like the authors of any supplement, adventure, sourcebook, &c.).  Additionally, a lot of people had Greyhawk campaigns running at the time and it was a major shift in the setting (though it's an RPG -- you can do whatever you want).  

I think it just came down to "feel".  Greyhawk was very "classic" (the problem of the extent to which "classic" is defined by "Greyhawk", I leave to the reader), and FtA was more dark -- not in the sense that there was evil everywhere, but that things were more desperate.  As any post-war situation, really.  If you don't go for that, it's not for you; but if you do, like me, then it's great.

And I think there's a solid dose of romanticizing the past going on, too.  "In my day . . ." and all that.

I'm Cleo!

Edit:  I did some Googling (I guess she was _my_ friend, nyah, nyah, nyah! ), and came up with this site:  This Site, which contains lots of Greyhawk stuff, including "What is Greyhawk?  'Putting the Grey in Hawk'", which may or may not be the document you're looking for.


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## Thulcondar (Mar 20, 2007)

I'm Cleo said:
			
		

> Edit:  I did some Googling (I guess she was _my_ friend, nyah, nyah, nyah! ), and came up with this site:  This Site, which contains lots of Greyhawk stuff, including "What is Greyhawk?  'Putting the Grey in Hawk'", which may or may not be the document you're looking for.




Oh, yikes, not Nitescreed...

Ugh...


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## Dr. Harry (Mar 20, 2007)

trollwad said:
			
		

> There is a semi-famous essay online called something like "putting the grey in hawk."  Basically, from the ashes was generally flawed because it violated many of the internal dynamics of the setting.  Having some wars or Iuz playing a practical joke on the barbarians to get them to invade some patsies is fine and the setting could have accomodated Howl From The North, it just went well beyond what was needed




  I started playing with the '83 Greyhawk folder, so I see a lot of the hater's points, but I liked Carl Sargent's work so much (and even the feel of the artwork) that I was willing to forgive a lot.  Plus, by this point I was just stealing stuff for my own campaign, and if I went back to my Greyhawk campaign I had no problem with using our own continuity, so I liked these supplements.


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## Ron (Mar 20, 2007)

*From the Ashes* is a great product, as many of the post-Gygaxian Greyhawk supplements (but not many adventures). However, I prefer the original box.

I would love to read a complete setting developed by Carls Sargent focusing in a dark high-fantasy mood. Still, borrowing from Conan fans, *From the Ashes* is a pastiche. I would rather have something based in a single vision, resulting from the efforts of a single creative team. As such, Greyhawk to me is limited to the 1983 boxed set (or the 1980 Folio) and a few adventures (GDQ, T1-4, S4, WG4, WG6, EX1, EX2 and, perhaps, WG5).

The great advantage of my admittedly restricted view of Greyhawk is that I stopped worrying about the lack of new published support years ago.


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## Mortellan (Mar 20, 2007)

GH Wars/FtA was a logical result from the hooks that Gygax left in the 82 guide and his articles in Dragon(except the Iuz-Vatun thing, yeash). What is startling is all the reverses done to these events when GH put out products for 591CY. Even Philidor vanished. It was like a half-retcon really. All in all I don't reference FtA much since it's outdated material covered twice over anyways in following Guides.


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## Ripzerai (Mar 20, 2007)

_From the Ashes_ was great on many levels, but it was very much Carl Sargent's vision, not Gary Gygax's, and some people are so consumed with Gygax's role in creating the setting and the game or with the screwed up shenanigans involved with his leaving the company that they're not interested in giving his successors a chance.

The Greyhawk Wars did screw up many things that I liked about the setting, devastating entire (interesting) nations like Geoff and Tenh (and hosing the Flan people in most regions). It was a much darker take on the setting, and not everyone likes that. In some ways it made the setting a more limited one - nearly all the campaigns you're going to build with _From the Ashes_ are going to be about liberating ruined peoples from demonic forces or the like, where Greyhawk as it was originally conceived had the potential to be about so many other things.

NiteScreed's "Grey in the Hawk" essay had it wrong in many ways - Greyhawk was never exclusively about balance or moral ambiguity or any of the things NiteScreed thought it was about. That's certainly a good way to play the campaign, but just as certainly not the only way to play it. The problem with _From the Ashes_ was that it made stark good and evil, while certainly not absent in previous incarnations, take over all the other elements entirely.

That said, I love Carl Sargent's material and the depth, the mysteries, and interesting twists he added to the campaign. In the end, the World of Greyhawk isn't about Gary Gygax, Carl Sargent, or any of the other worthies who've elaborated on the setting; it's about what _you_, the players and DMs, make of it. Sargent's material added a lot of interesting wrinkles to exploit or not exploit as you choose, and that makes it worthwhile, whether you adopt the whole history of the Greyhawk Wars metaplot and the somewhat awkward and disappointing way Roger E. Moore dug the setting out of it in 1998 or not.


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## Korgoth (Mar 20, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=191219&page=1&pp=40
> 
> 
> 
> ...





For me, the issues are these: First, I don't like the introduction of an over-arching "plotline".  To me, that's not what a campaign setting should be about.  It should be an evocative setting for my campaign, not the place where I try to squeeze in my campaign around the 'official' one.  Second, I don't like all of this "blow up half the world" stuff.  Sure, I can take any published setting and say "These guys all fight, here's a list of what nations are now destroyed" etc.  Problem is, if you had a campaign set in one of those areas you either have to deviate from the newly-official storyline or have your campaign blown off track by some stupid invasion that, by definition, the PCs have no chance of stopping.

It all amounts to a giant, gratuitous cut-scene that leaves you standing in a crater when it's over.

Maybe this is harder for people to think up, but if you want to come out with new setting material for a published set, how about things like a linked series of adventures, a bunch of plot hooks and side quests, new mysterious locations to weave into your campaign, new magic items, secret societies, legends of artifacts, etc.  Stuff to get the creative juices flowing.  But what you don't want to do, aside from just writing crazy World War scenarios (as an aside, the Hundred Years War lasted a long time and neither England or France ceased to exist because of it... but in GHW about half of the planet ceases to exist in just a few years... even the Trojan War took 10 years to raze one stupid city) where the world explodes and you get to write paragraph after paragraph saying basically just that, is to succumb to the temptation to fill in every tiny little detail that has previously been left open.  Tempted to map out the Mage's Stronghold from the Valley of the Mage?  Don't!  That, just like the city in the Sea of Dust and other "question marks" of the setting are left for the DM to play with.

Ultimately, you want your contribution to the campaign setting to give all the DMs out there _more_ to play with, not less.  You want to create additional potential, rather than closing off existing potential by actualizing it.


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## S'mon (Mar 20, 2007)

I guess the problem is metaplot; Greyhawk isn't a very metaplotty sort of place.  Carl Sargent is a talented writer, but I've never had much desire to play in his version of Greyhawk.  I'd love to see Sargent do a renaissance era setting based on the Thirty Years War, which would fit his dark tone perfectly.  Something more WHFRP than regular D&D.  I guess my favourite version of Greyhawk is that hinted at in the 1e DMG and other pre-1983 sources; the 1983 box is great but started taking it away from sword & sorcery towards a more medieval-fantasy approach, I prefer the former.  Then 2e initially blandified it, then smashed it with the Greyhawk Wars.  Of course EGG also smashes it in his Gord books!


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## haakon1 (Mar 20, 2007)

*No Respect*



			
				Thulcondar said:
			
		

> It was a blatant attempt to wrench away the WoG from the material that Gyax wrote (remember, the Wars and FtA came about right after his departure from TSR). The original (1980/1983 books) presented a fantasy world in the "old school" tradition. A place for a DM to set adventures; a sketched-out starting-point that the DM could fill in as needed and desired. FtA tore that asunder; all of a sudden, a DM with a years-long Greyhawk campaign was faced with a decision; go with the "canon" history, or the one he had carefully created as the game play proceeded?




It didn't respect the world's creator (as pointed out above), it didn't respect DM's (again as pointed out above), and it didn't respect the players.

The Greyhawk Wars authors didn't know the setting.  Their changes either didn't make a lot of sense (Bissel being suddenly crushed after hundreds of years of being a heavily armed "front line" state), disrespected players (Geoff and Sterich being crushed by giant invaders when the whole G123D123Q1 superadventure at the heart of Greyhawk was about PC's preventing that), or disrespected DM's (blew away entire regions: the Wild Coast, the Bandit Kingdoms, and the Great Kingdom are three of the more important areas to get nuked -- if you had a campaign set there, you couldn't use their stuff or you had to change your campaign).

FTA made the bad mistake of taking the results of one playing of a silly Risk-like board game (which didn't take the armies listed in the WOG into account, but used its own rules on the Greyhawk map) as "history".

I asked Gary Gygax his views on setting updates once, on these boards.  He said he figured once the designer wrote it, it belonged to the DM and the players, and only they should advance the history.

I agree -- more depth (Ivid the Undying) is OK.  More adventures and updates of adventures for new editions are fine.  Save the world adventures are fine.  But basically, a game world should be left alone by the publishers.  As an art teacher on the Simpsons once said: "It belongs to the ages now.  Walk away."  Advice TSR (and George Lucas!) should have followed.


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## airwalkrr (Mar 20, 2007)

God, this whole thread is total deja vu for me. I recall reading like the exact same thread a year or two ago.


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## haakon1 (Mar 20, 2007)

Korgoth said:
			
		

> It all amounts to a giant, gratuitous cut-scene that leaves you standing in a crater when it's over.




Well said.



			
				Korgoth said:
			
		

> Maybe this is harder for people to think up, but if you want to come out with new setting material for a published set, how about things like a linked series of adventures, a bunch of plot hooks and side quests, new mysterious locations to weave into your campaign, new magic items, secret societies, legends of artifacts, etc.  Stuff to get the creative juices flowing.  But what you don't want to do, aside from just writing crazy World War scenarios . . . is to succumb to the temptation to fill in every tiny little detail that has previously been left open.  Tempted to map out the Mage's Stronghold from the Valley of the Mage?  Don't!  That, just like the city in the Sea of Dust and other "question marks" of the setting are left for the DM to play with.




I agree, but I would have been happy with them just laying off the juvenile good v. evil world war, and adding whatever new stuff or detail they wanted.  Unnecessary filigrees on old stuff is a lot better than vandalizing the setting by ripping stuff up wholesale.

When you look at FTA follow-up products like "Puppets", you gotta wonder what TSR was thinking.


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## Numion (Mar 20, 2007)

S'mon said:
			
		

> Carl Sargent is a talented writer, but I've never had much desire to play in his version of Greyhawk.  I'd love to see Sargent do a renaissance era setting based on the Thirty Years War, which would fit his dark tone perfectly.  Something more WHFRP than regular D&D.




As it happens, Carl Sargent has written (IMHO, of course) one the best fantasy RP adventures evar, for WFRP. Although Power Behind the Throne wasn't the easiest adventure to run, it was also very rewarding.


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## Garnfellow (Mar 20, 2007)

airwalkrr said:
			
		

> God, this whole thread is total deja vu for me. I recall reading like the exact same thread a year or two ago.




More like ten or more years ago for me, back on the good old AOL Greyhawk forum. Some really good discussions from back in the day on this very issue. I wonder if any of those threads were saved?


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## S'mon (Mar 20, 2007)

Numion said:
			
		

> As it happens, Carl Sargent has written (IMHO, of course) one the best fantasy RP adventures evar, for WFRP. Although Power Behind the Throne wasn't the easiest adventure to run, it was also very rewarding.




Yeah, I know - I was thinking of something for d20 though, preferably C&C.    
Actually a fantasy version of the 30 years' war, as presented in eg Moorcock's "The War Hound and the World's Pain", could be a fantastic setting.


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## mhensley (Mar 20, 2007)

My best D&D campaign to date was a 2nd edition game set in Greyhawk FtA.  Most people's issues with it stem from it not being written by Gygax.


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## diaglo (Mar 20, 2007)

Garnfellow said:
			
		

> More like ten or more years ago for me, back on the good old AOL Greyhawk forum. Some really good discussions from back in the day on this very issue. I wonder if any of those threads were saved?



i'm sure grodog's got them somewhere.

i'll just say i think Carl Sargent should have stayed away from Greyhawk.

the Greyhack Wars and the lead up to them and following didn't make me very happy with T$R.


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## Arnwyn (Mar 20, 2007)

Thulcondar said:
			
		

> It was a reaction to the success of the Forgotten Realms products, where everthing was set up and presented in nauseating *awesome* detail,



FIFY.



> for the benefit of lazy DMs who either couldn't work up those details on their own or couldn't think them up on the fly as needed.



Or those DMs who had, you know, lives and _jobs_. Of course.

(No comment on the quality of how FtA did it, though. I agree that metaplots suck.)


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## qstor (Mar 20, 2007)

Garnfellow said:
			
		

> More like ten or more years ago for me, back on the good old AOL Greyhawk forum. Some really good discussions from back in the day on this very issue. I wonder if any of those threads were saved?




Check Canonfire.com there's some .pdfs of the material on that site.

People forget that EGG laid the framework for the Greyhawk Wars in Dragon magazine articles like the one in Dragon #55. I think Sargent continued along that framework.

I love some of what he did like Ivid the Undying and the Marklands. He fleshed parts of the different areas out. I also like some "higher" magic things he did like the Fading Lands. I think these are all great for Greyhawk.

Mike


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## Garnfellow (Mar 20, 2007)

qstor said:
			
		

> Check Canonfire.com there's some .pdfs of the material on that site.




Nice. Lots of names there I haven't seen in many years. 

Man, that AOL group was an excellent community.


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## Krolik (Mar 20, 2007)

The problem with Greyhawkers is that they do not want their timeline advanced. Most of them have been gaming in Greyhawk for over 20 years and they have advanced the timeline in their own way over the years. Then when you get new published material that changes something they have had in continuity for decades they start jumping up and down and swearing it's not Greyhawk. It's great if you bought Greyhawk back in '81 and have been using it ever since but that does nothing for newbies looking for a new world to game in. 25 year olds have different game expectations then the 45 year olds currently playing Greyhawk. It's called the generation gap. 

For each person who's pissed that Greyhawk got more detail there's a dozen who do not find it detailed enough. I think Gary's Greyhawk was left vague because Gary was the type of DM who would have had no problem redrawing the landscape every spring/summer due to world and civil wars. Old-timers dislike change but I think Greyhawk, more then any other campaign world, was designed to be constantly in flux. Some of that flux could be prevented by the players' actions but the rest of it was supposed to keep fluxing. 

Greyhawk is a miniature-battles world put into a role-playing environment. I think old-timers forget that.


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## Set (Mar 20, 2007)

Loved 'old school' Greyhawk, loved From the Ashes and the Greyhawk Wars.  It really revitalized the setting for me, while addressing one of my problems with quite a few fantasy settings, too many 'good guys' and not enough 'bad guys.'  Evil kingdoms are absolutely a requirement, and the Greyhawk Wars revitalized Iuz, Aerdie and the Scarlet Brotherhood, which gave the DM an assortment of 'bad-guy' options.

Hated the whole Vecna Lives thing, just as I hated the Avatar trilogy / Time of Troubles over in FR.  Meta-plots that involve the gods are on my list of least-favorite things ever.


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## Mycanid (Mar 20, 2007)

Korgoth said:
			
		

> For me, the issues are these: First, I don't like the introduction of an over-arching "plotline".  To me, that's not what a campaign setting should be about.  It should be an evocative setting for my campaign, not the place where I try to squeeze in my campaign around the 'official' one.  Second, I don't like all of this "blow up half the world" stuff.  Sure, I can take any published setting and say "These guys all fight, here's a list of what nations are now destroyed" etc.  Problem is, if you had a campaign set in one of those areas you either have to deviate from the newly-official storyline or have your campaign blown off track by some stupid invasion that, by definition, the PCs have no chance of stopping.
> 
> It all amounts to a giant, gratuitous cut-scene that leaves you standing in a crater when it's over.
> 
> ...




This post just about sums up my feelings and thoughts on the matter perfectly.

I think it is unfair to simply assume that most of those who did not like From the Ashes were "simply" Gygax fans. I did not like it at all. I would not say I am a particular "Gygax fan" or not one. But there WAS a change in the setting's tone to one that was more dark. I did not like that change. I preferred the "open wide" character of it before the whole supplement.


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## Mycanid (Mar 20, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> The problem with Greyhawkers is that they do not want their timeline advanced. Most of them have been gaming in Greyhawk for over 20 years and they have advanced the timeline in their own way over the years. Then when you get new published material that changes something they have had in continuity for decades they start jumping up and down and swearing it's not Greyhawk. It's great if you bought Greyhawk back in '81 and have been using it ever since but that does nothing for newbies looking for a new world to game in. 25 year olds have different game expectations then the 45 year olds currently playing Greyhawk. It's called the generation gap.
> 
> For each person who's pissed that Greyhawk got more detail there's a dozen who do not find it detailed enough. I think Gary's Greyhawk was left vague because Gary was the type of DM who would have had no problem redrawing the landscape every spring/summer due to world and civil wars. Old-timers dislike change but I think Greyhawk, more then any other campaign world, was designed to be constantly in flux. Some of that flux could be prevented by the players' actions but the rest of it was supposed to keep fluxing.
> 
> Greyhawk is a miniature-battles world put into a role-playing environment. I think old-timers forget that.




Krolik ... I think this characterization of "not liking change" is a little unfair and maybe a little too sweeping.

Regarding the subject of the thread at hand, it's not that just that "old Greyhawkers don't like change". It's that they don't like the particular change that was done in this supplement. Also, that the change was disliked by many of them just shows that several people exposed to common things had a common reaction taste wise. Something that may or may not have to do with the issue of "not liking change" in the general sense you seem to present it as.  :\ 

Besides, as you can see in the thread there are "old Greyhawkers" that did not mind the change.


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## Krolik (Mar 20, 2007)

Mycanid said:
			
		

> Krolik ... I think this characterization of "not liking change" is a little unfair and maybe a little too sweeping.



As someone who spend a couple of years at the weekly chat and several years on the Greyhawk lists I think I heard from a great-many Greyhawkers. I didn't find my statement too sweeping. 



> Regarding the subject of the thread at hand, it's not that just that "old Greyhawkers don't like change". It's that they don't like the particular change that was done in this supplement. Also, that the change was disliked by many of them just shows that several people exposed to common things had a common reaction taste wise. Something that may or may not have to do with the issue of "not liking change" in the general sense you seem to present it as.  :\



What change do you think they would have liked better: an updated timeline with every country exactly the same as it was 20 years earlier: Or one that actually lived up to the idea which Gary put in place that Greyhawk was a violent world of warfare and strife? 

While GW and FtA might not have been as well written as they could have been I do believe they lived up to the theme of Greyhawk and made it something that was not stagnant and unchanging.


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## diaglo (Mar 20, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> Or one that actually lived up to the idea which Gary put in place that Greyhawk was a violent world of warfare and strife?
> 
> While GW and FtA might not have been as well written as they could have been...



i can agree with what is quoted. i snipped off the part i disagreed with.

diaglo "i was on the lists too" Ooi


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## S'mon (Mar 20, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> What change do you think they would have liked better: an updated timeline with every country exactly the same as it was 20 years earlier: Or one that actually lived up to the idea which Gary put in place that Greyhawk was a violent world of warfare and strife?




Neitther, of course.  They/we would have wanted more detail on 576 CY, like how Wilderlands and Harn do it.  No timeline advancing - that's fine for comics and novels, IMHO it's consistently terrible for RPG settings.  We GMs want a world we can bend to _our_ will, not have our campaigns bent to someone else's will!


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## Gentlegamer (Mar 20, 2007)

From the Ashes with its "evil is everywhere" theme gave me an idea for Greyhawk campaign set in the ancient past during the time of Lum the Mad or Vecna. I never have been able to put that idea in motion, though.


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## MerricB (Mar 20, 2007)

FtA had a big problem in that it turned Greyhawk from a "fill in the blanks" setting to a "blanks filled in setting". And what was worse was that the blanks that were filled in were often at odds with that had gone before. (To say I am unfond of 'Ivid the Undying' understates it somewhat).

What I really, really hated about it was that the conflict was known as the "Greyhawk Wars". Talk about shoehorning in a name that didn't make sense because of brand identity.

Cheers!


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## ShinHakkaider (Mar 20, 2007)

S'mon said:
			
		

> No timeline advancing - that's fine for comics and novels, IMHO it's consistently terrible for RPG settings.  We GMs want a world we can bend to _our_ will, not have our campaigns bent to someone else's will!




This sums up my feelings EXACTLY. Thank you.


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## Mycanid (Mar 21, 2007)

ShinHakkaider said:
			
		

> This sums up my feelings EXACTLY. Thank you.




I am afraid I agree with this summary as well.


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## Mycanid (Mar 21, 2007)

No worries Krolik ... obviously we just have differing tastes in this regard.

You liked what was done, or could roll with it, perhaps, and appreciated the attempt (as did others).

I did not (also, as did others).

I think the reasons why those who did not like the supplement has been pretty accurately explained in the thread thus far. People can agree or disagree with the stance.


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## Cthulhudrew (Mar 21, 2007)

I liked it myself, and I especially liked the advancement of the world in subsequent products (and in the articles in Dragon magazine that appeared). To me, it made Greyhawk feel like a more fleshed out, living world than I'd ever seen it (outside of the Gord novels, that is- particularly the first two). 

That said, I did get the feeling that it was rushed somewhat, and I think that was part of the problem many people had with it (not the whole problem, obviously). A similar thing happened to my favorite TSR world- Mystara- wherein the introduction of a metaplot and subsequent annual event packed almanacs really made the world a living interesting place, but the whole metaplot was far too rushed and sudden for my tastes (especially as they ended up putting it so close to the "standard" year of the previous Gazetteers- even the original design notes had the whole of it stretched out over a longer and more believable period of time. Don't know why they condensed it.)

So it was good and bad for me. Like I said, I'd never really been interested much in Greyhawk before that, but I felt that in retrospect it should have been more gradual than it was.


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## Nellisir (Mar 21, 2007)

For the record, Carl Sargent had nothing to do with Greyhawk Wars (which was a lame attempt at a lame product).  He -did- write just about all the accessories for FtA.  I think Jim Ward was Greyhawk Wars.


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## the Jester (Mar 21, 2007)

For me, what sucked about Greyhawk Wars and FtA can be summed up in one word: Metaplot.

To use any of the stuff in those sets would have required me to invalidate a decade's worth of game history imc.  Screw that- if I wanted to have those kinds of issues, I'd have played Darksun or Forgotten Realms.


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## the Jester (Mar 21, 2007)

S'mon said:
			
		

> ...we would have wanted more detail on 576 CY, like how Wilderlands and Harn do it.  No timeline advancing - that's fine for comics and novels, IMHO it's consistently terrible for RPG settings.  We GMs want a world we can bend to _our_ will, not have our campaigns bent to someone else's will!




Well said, and QFMFT!!!


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## grodog (Mar 21, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> The above thread/quote got me to wondering. I've seen a lot of people who didn't like the Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes material, and I'm wondering why?




I didn't own much Sargent materials BITD, since I'd quit playing D&D for other rpgs for several years in the late '80s and through much of the '90s.  So, while I haven't generally followed his vision for the setting, I've cherry picked a lot of great ideas and materials from his works to use in my own campaigns.  



			
				Garnfellow said:
			
		

> More like ten or more years ago for me, back on the good old AOL Greyhawk forum. Some really good discussions from back in the day on this very issue. I wonder if any of those threads were saved?




Yes, the Greyhawk folder AOL discussions are archived on Canonfire! @ http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=3


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## grodog (Mar 21, 2007)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> For the record, Carl Sargent had nothing to do with Greyhawk Wars (which was a lame attempt at a lame product).  He -did- write just about all the accessories for FtA.  I think Jim Ward was Greyhawk Wars.




IIRC, Greyhawk Wars was David Cook; Ward was the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover.


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## Banshee16 (Mar 21, 2007)

Hmm..From the Ashes was my introduction to the setting...other than Castle Greyhawk, which I detested.  From the Ashes was serious, somewhat dark, and it felt more gritty than FR, because evil had a real presence, instead of being "hamburglars" or something.  

I never had a complaint about that box.

Banshee


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## Nathal (Mar 21, 2007)

Thulcondar said:
			
		

> From my perspective, FtA simply seemed... unnecessary.
> 
> ...for the benefit of lazy DMs who either couldn't work up those details on their own or couldn't think them up on the fly as needed. There was no room for individual DM creativity any more.




Lazy? I'd rather make up my own stuff than memorize all of the detail. Call DMs who memorize campaign settings what you will, but lazy would not be the word I'd choose.


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## Wraith Form (Mar 21, 2007)

Banshee16 said:
			
		

> it felt more gritty than FR, because evil had a real presence, instead of being "hamburglars" or something.



Oh, SNAP!

LOL

ROTFLMAO

Nice diss.


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## James Heard (Mar 21, 2007)

I'd rather look it all up, but I admit that I'd like to actually like what I'm looking up and that's not exactly how I'd classify some of the minutia of Greyhawk Wars.

As much as I fully allow for the idea that Greyhawk fanboys would be seriously hating it, Greyhawk Wars and FtA are my justification for consistently wishing that Wizards would have revisited the setting with the "fast forward" button and a couple of hardcovers when 3E came out. Greyhawk's an interesting place. It can be interesting without filling in the blanks all the way. Someone could have taken some of the weird "huh" out of the wars and either retconned it into something awesome or rolled with it and turned it into a brilliant twist that made the previous author look like a genius. And then, after they recast history and revisited all the little locations that Greyhawkers loved, they could step back and not touch it for another ten years or more.


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## T. Foster (Mar 21, 2007)

I was out of Official D&D by the time Sargent's FtA stuff came along so I never saw any of it, but I did see both Zeb Cook's _Greyhawk Wars_ set (which was absolutely terrible, a complete travesty, and in fact one of the final straws that drove me away from Official D&D (along with _Spelljammer_ and the "Complete" splatbooks)) and Roger Moore et al.'s late-90s "Greyhawk Revival" stuff, which I found (on some quick broswe-throughs at the game store, I never actually bought any of it) to be uniformly bland an uninspired (but, honestly, not really any worse than the equally bland and uninspired pre-GW 2E material (_City of Greyhawk_, _Greyhawk Ruins_, Falcon Trilogy, etc.) which I _did_ buy, because I didn't know any better yet). The only thing I know about 3E-era Greyhawk is that they changed Mordenkainen's appearance to make him look like Sean Reynolds, but that fact alone is so ridiculous and distasteful to me that's it's kept me from having any further interest or curiosity in that version of the setting. Except for the Maure Castle installments in _Dungeon_ (which really don't have much specific Greyhawk content anyway) there hasn't been a single Greyhawk product that's captured my interest since Gygax left the building, and I'm therefore more than happy to see the setting continue to lie fallow (except for the MC installments, of course, which I hope we get many more of). (Actually, _Expedition to the Greyhawk Ruins_ (or whatever it's called) has also piqued my curiosity enough that I'll definitely check it out in the store when it's released, but at this point I'd say it's very unlikely I'll actually buy it...)


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## Charles Oakley (Mar 21, 2007)

As an old timer, I think that whoever it was who said all the stuff about the generation gap had a point; throughout the 80s I played Greyhawk and it was entirely mine to do with as I pleased.  Suddenly FtA comes out and tons of stuff I'd spent years constructing got undone overnight.  For that reason--and for the fords across the Selintan River, don't get me started--I place no stock in FtA.  If I'd first found Greyhawk in 1995 or 2005, I'd probably feel much differently.  But I got the Greyhawk folio for Christmas in 1981 so, no, I  don't want--and certainly don't need--someone else to advance Greyhawk's timeline.  I've got a pretty good handle on that, thank you.

I do take exception to the Greyhawkers-hate-FtA-because-it's-not-Gygax angle though.  Call me a heretic, but I never cared much for Gygax's stuff.  Partly it was the authority that his name brought to whatever he wrote; like Moses and those stone tablets, there was no questioning anything Gygax wrote.  Partly his idea of a fantasy setting is just more fantastical than I like; I prefer a little 20th century realism (still having trouble advancing timelines) to bolster my fantasy setting.  

Much more to my liking were tidbits gleaned form other modules of the time.  The Ghost Tower of Inverness in particular had much to offer in terms of local color for the Duchy of Urnst: the creepy Seer, the whole Dreidel   legend, and the oppression of religion and magic that was alluded to in the tournament background provided enough of a foothold for all but the dullest DM to advance a timeline of his/her own, if they so chose.


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## Numion (Mar 21, 2007)

The main strength of GH seems to be that it's not supported - a DMs setting if you will. This pretty much makes supporting it a catch-22, given that a setting without support will stagnate and die.


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## I'm Cleo (Mar 21, 2007)

It seems like there are several arguments put forth, some of which are matters of taste, and others which can stoke antagonism.  I'll try to set them out:

1.  I had a campaign that was "ruined".  This certainly applies in a "well, if they were going to spend money producing something, I'd really rather be able to use it" sense, but I still don't see how anyone's bound to use any particular supplement in their games at home.  If you're regularly bringing in new players and replacing old ones, and those new players have expectations about how Greyhawk is "supposed to be", I could see how this plays a larger role.

2.  I didn't like the feel.  Fair enough.

3.  I don't like metaplots.  Fair enough (and this relates to #1), though I think the arguments from the perspective of a gaming company, as presented by several posters here, are pretty compelling _explanations_ for why they did it, if not _justifications_.  

4.  It was low quality.  Fair enough.

5.  It made it detailed, like the (dreaded) Forgotten Realms.  Really?  There's still a lot of detail _left out_ of the FtA-era Greyhawk.  I don't think DMs are restricted in their setting development _generally_, and certainly not _specifically_ with FtA-era Greyhawk.  This also carries with it the "you're a lazy DM" stigma (expressly stated, sometimes), which annoys people who liked FtA.

6.  It's not Greyhawk.  I find this one problematic.  There's "I don't like it," and there's "it's not Greyhawk".  In the latter case, you have to define "Greyhawk" in such a way that your statement isn't equivalent to "I don't like it."  Nitescreed attempted to do so, and I think he succeeds in some areas, but creates a tradition out of thin air in others.  I.e., your "tradition" has to be differentiated from your home campaign (see #1) or your personal conception of the game world.  But to people who play in Greyhawks that don't resemble yours, "It's not Greyhawk" comes across as an awfully arrogant thing to say.  

I'm Cleo!


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## Faraer (Mar 21, 2007)

Ripzerai said:
			
		

> _From the Ashes_ was great on many levels, but it was very much Carl Sargent's vision, not Gary Gygax's, and some people are so consumed with Gygax's role in creating the setting and the game or with the screwed up shenanigans involved with his leaving the company that they're not interested in giving his successors a chance.



I first seriously read Greyhawk materials in the early 90s, from both the Gygax and the Sargent eras. It took me a while to realize that what I liked about the setting was Gary's world-building sensibility, and that Carl's was very different and, in the context of Greyhawk, much less appealing to me.

(The difference is complex, but one strand of _From the Ashes_ is not so much darkness -- WG4 _The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun_ and the later Gord novels are as dark as D&D gets -- as grey, grinding geopolitical realism in place of swords and sorcery.)


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## SWBaxter (Mar 21, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> The above thread/quote got me to wondering. I've seen a lot of people who didn't like the Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes material, and I'm wondering why?




I think you kinda need to treat Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes separately; the former was a big world-changing event, and played out in a fairly railroady fashion. The latter looked at the setting after that event, with at least as much scope for DM's to customize the world as the early 80s Greyhawk products. It's not too hard to find people (like me) who think Greyhawk Wars was kinda dumb, but also feel that Sargent's work is pretty darn good.

Thinking about them that way, the Wars are pretty easy to dislike - it's a major event that doesn't give players much (if any) ability to affect the outcome. It also gets away from the pseudo-medieval feel of earlier Greyhawk, by presenting a massive continental war orchestrated by superspies rather than a more historically plausible conflict. So it didn't appeal to fans of the setting, and it didn't provide any real hook to draw in new fans. I thought the Greyhawk Wars boardgame was kinda fun, but otherwise it's not presented as a particularly gameable situation.

From the Ashes, OTOH, presents an interesting setting with a lot of different possibilities. There's lots of things for PCs to do, lots of ways for players to make a real difference and for DMs to make it their own world. The major problem it ran into was that it was Carl Sargent's vision of Greyhawk, and most existing fans were drawn in by Gary Gygax' vision of Greyhawk. So it never really developed its own customer base, and TSR dropped the line.

If FtA had been a brand new setting, it might've done better; certainly would've had more of a chance, at any rate. Greyhawk Wars, IMHO, doesn't really have much upside potential.


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

Korgoth said:
			
		

> Ultimately, you want your contribution to the campaign setting to give all the DMs out there _more_ to play with, not less.  You want to create additional potential, rather than closing off existing potential by actualizing it.




This, I think, is an excellent point. Although what may inspire one is different from what may inspire another. For me, the plot nuggets, mysteries and even some of the logical extensions of the wars themselves, plus the "state of the world" with all it's licking it's wounds and powder keg tension that the FtA material introduced made me inspired to want to run campaigns in the setting. It made me want to run things in the FtA era as published, previous to that during the wars, and before the outbreak of the wars that maybe introduced ideas the setting would see later. YMMV

I think though that it helped that I didn't have something running that I had labored over that was disrupted because of a compulsion and/or desire to use the new material, to "stay current", etc.

I also agree that if I'm in mid campaign, then optional adventure (plots), and optional locations (exploration/mysteries), are going to be more useful to me than a setting overhaul. I'm in the middle when it comes to the benefits of gazeteers and development of the regions within a settion. FR has more development than I can handle as a GM. I like some of it, don't like other bits as much, but even the stuff I like - there's enough to be overwhelming. I'm not opposed to the idea, but the volume of it is too much for me. On the flip side, I appreciate the way Iuz the Evil, Marklands, and Ivid the Undying developed some key regions in more detail. In my opinion, this detail added, rather than detracted from the usefulness of the setting, and it got my creativity flowing rather than stifled it. They fleshed out mysteries in my opinion more than resolved them. They introduced NPCs and plot hooks for me to build on and take in my own direction. The elaborated, but didn't inundate. I might feel differently if the releases had progressed and they got to one per region like FR eventually did. But the amount of material they did provide ended up being just right for me. Again, others may prefer more or less setting material.


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

S'mon said:
			
		

> I guess my favourite version of Greyhawk is that hinted at in the 1e DMG and other pre-1983 sources; the 1983 box is great but started taking it away from sword & sorcery towards a more medieval-fantasy approach, I prefer the former.




Which books had the more sword and sorcery version besides the 1e DMG? Now I want to track them down and take a look.


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> The problem with Greyhawkers is that they do not want their timeline advanced. Most of them have been gaming in Greyhawk for over 20 years and they have advanced the timeline in their own way over the years. Then when you get new published material that changes something they have had in continuity for decades they start jumping up and down and swearing it's not Greyhawk. It's great if you bought Greyhawk back in '81 and have been using it ever since but that does nothing for newbies looking for a new world to game in. 25 year olds have different game expectations then the 45 year olds currently playing Greyhawk. It's called the generation gap.




Good point. I think maybe it's related more to how long they've been using the setting, more so than expectations from different age groups. A 40 year old reading FtA might have the same expectations more or less than a 25 year old, if it's their first introduction to the setting. A 40 year old who has been running campaigns in the setting for 10 years will likely have different expectations than that other 40 year old who is new to it.


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## Mean DM (Mar 21, 2007)

Sorry if this is thread-jacking, but I don't know if my question warrants its own thread.  This conversation caught my interest in that I have FtA in a box somewhere in storage and have been itching to run it as a campaign. My question is this, out side of the current Gazetteer, what products do folks recommend picking up to have the essential core material?  Or is the Gazetteer sufficient?  I have been eying the older supplements, but don't know if the are worth it (not monetarily wise, since I can get the pdfs cheap).  I also ask this because I was thinking of running at an earlier time (prior, during or just after the Greyhawk Wars).

Mark


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## SWBaxter (Mar 21, 2007)

Mean DM said:
			
		

> Sorry if this is thread-jacking, but I don't know if my question warrants its own thread.  This conversation caught my interest in that I have FtA in a box somewhere in storage and have been itching to run it as a campaign. My question is this, out side of the current Gazetteer, what products do folks recommend picking up to have the essential core material?  Or is the Gazetteer sufficient?




The current Gazetteer advances the timeline beyond FtA and resolves some of the FtA nastiness, so if your plan is to have your PCs do that kind of thing I wouldn't recommend much beyond the FtA set. Going that route, you can find _Ivid the Undying_, an unpublished supplement that covers the mess that used to be the Great Kingdom, on WOTC's downloads page. That should give you an idea as to whether you like the style well enough to track down _The Marklands_, _City of Skulls_, or _Iuz the Evil_, the published supplements.

If you're more interested in current Greyhawk, the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is (IMHO) more than enough on its own. In fact, I personally prefer the D&D Gazetteer, which was an overview booklet similar in spirit to the original Greyhawk gazetteer. But if you want more detail, the place to go is the RPGA - the Living Greyhawk campaign has detailed quite a bit of the setting.


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## XO (Mar 21, 2007)

*Disorderly...*

One of the things about GH that left us in a weird position was the publication, after a time, of material that always should have been there...

Detailed IS fine, sketchy IS fine: making a detailed setting out of an officially and deliberately sketchy one, well, creates unnecessary discrepancies.

Our original pantheon, within that campaign, was the Norse standard. Other (mostly off map) areas my have had a different set, as was the norm for Olde Earth. Meshing whatever our pantheon might be, in the beginning, with myths, legends and tidbits from the DMG was fine. There were no great, unexplainable contradictions. Iuz could fit in as a demigod enemy easy enough.

Having to ditch the Norse pantheon which we'd been using when the GH deities started to appear caused one such contradiction. We wanted more. We wanted WAY more than what was available, but the material we wanted SHOULD have been carefully thought out to avoid touching upon previous DM prerogatives. A supplement named Gygax's GH, with the GH deities as a campaign option instead of cannon, would have been great. And other material should not have relied upon such options unless stated "If using GH deities, Olidammara priests rule in this area".... Whatever...

Lack of forethought, hindsight or any freaking thought, for that matter...


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## S'mon (Mar 21, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> Which books had the more sword and sorcery version besides the 1e DMG? Now I want to track them down and take a look.




"Ghost Tower of Inverness" has been mentioned, also Gygax's "Saga of Old City".  I don't know much about the early AD&D scenarios, there may be others apart from Ghost Tower.
Even the book Quag Keep, I guess.


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

MerricB said:
			
		

> FtA had a big problem in that it turned Greyhawk from a "fill in the blanks" setting to a "blanks filled in setting". And what was worse was that the blanks that were filled in were often at odds with that had gone before. (To say I am unfond of 'Ivid the Undying' understates it somewhat).




I can see the argument for the first, though I don't personally agree that the blanks being filled in are to the level that it exists in FR. My take on it is that it opened up as many or more blanks for GMs to fill as the material filled in for us. But I know the level of detail is a personal preference.

What I'm not sure I agree with, is that changes were at odds with what had gone before. Can you elaborate on what broke from established continutiy (so to speak)?


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

Cthulhudrew said:
			
		

> A similar thing happened to my favorite TSR world- Mystara- wherein the introduction of a metaplot and subsequent annual event packed almanacs really made the world a living interesting place, but the whole metaplot was far too rushed and sudden for my tastes (especially as they ended up putting it so close to the "standard" year of the previous Gazetteers- even the original design notes had the whole of it stretched out over a longer and more believable period of time. Don't know why they condensed it.)




What was the Mystara meta plot/where was the timeline introduced?

And, where might I find the original design notes for comparison?

Thanks.


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

T. Foster said:
			
		

> The only thing I know about 3E-era Greyhawk is that they changed Mordenkainen's appearance to make him look like Sean Reynolds,




F U N N Y


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## Cthulhudrew (Mar 21, 2007)

SWBaxter said:
			
		

> Going that route, you can find _Ivid the Undying_, an unpublished supplement that covers the mess that used to be the Great Kingdom, on WOTC's downloads page. That should give you an idea as to whether you like the style well enough to track down _The Marklands_, _City of Skulls_, or _Iuz the Evil_, the published supplements.




If you can track them down, there were a number of articles (by Carl Sargent as well, I believe) in Dragon Magazine that followed up on events introduced in FtA and provided a lot of interesting information and hooks. Don't know if those articles have been collected anywhere, but they should have been.


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## Cthulhudrew (Mar 21, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> What was the Mystara meta plot/where was the timeline introduced?




Wrath of the Immortals was the metaplot. It involved the Immortals (gods) riling up the mortals of the world into a mass war (ostensibly Glantri vs Alphatia, though practically speaking it was more Thyatis vs. Alphatia). Changed a lot of things.



> And, where might I find the original design notes for comparison?




Bruce Heard, the product manager for Mystara at the time, posted them on the Mystara Mailing list a number of years ago. They can be viewed here, as well as a general overview of where the product line of Mystara was going to go. Most of it actually came about in some fashion, though there are many things that didn't.


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## rogueattorney (Mar 21, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> What was the Mystara meta plot/where was the timeline introduced?
> 
> And, where might I find the original design notes for comparison?
> 
> Thanks.




Wrath of the Immortals was the name of the product.  I think Bruce Heard (who has posted some at WotC's OOP Mystara board) has made some references to the published campaign portion of WotI (there was some significant setting and rule content, too) being a pretty different animal from its original conception.

As to the topic at hand, I was not a Greyhawk fan during the Wars/Ashes period of Greyhawk.  I was, first a Forgotten Realms fan, and then a Known World (pre-Mystara) fan.  In both cases, it was a great big world blowing up meta-plot (Time of Troubles and Wrath of the Immortals) that drove me out of being a customer of new game product for those campaigns.  

Such meta-plots basically require DMs to keep up or to give up buying new product, and in many cases, after the great big meta-plot the only new material that comes out is "updates" on the old material.  (Karameikos, Kingdom of Adventure, I'm looking at you!)


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## Jester David (Mar 21, 2007)

Thulcondar said:
			
		

> From my perspective, FtA simply seemed... unnecessary.
> 
> It was a blatant attempt to wrench away the WoG from the material that Gyax wrote (remember, the Wars and FtA came about right after his departure from TSR). The original (1980/1983 books) presented a fantasy world in the "old school" tradition. A place for a DM to set adventures; a sketched-out starting-point that the DM could fill in as needed and desired. FtA tore that asunder; all of a sudden, a DM with a years-long Greyhawk campaign was faced with a decision; go with the "canon" history, or the one he had carefully created as the game play proceeded?
> 
> ...




This post kept nagging at me. 
The argument, summarized, is that DMs who use the setting now have too much information and have to either ignore it or their campaigns because "lazy DMs" can't make stuff up.

But if the DM is not lazy then why is he using a published campaign setting instead of a homebrew, even  thought "up on the fly as needed"? 

The main problem is if the setting has few details there is NO choice. You have to make stuff up. So if you are a "lazy DM" (read: rushed, distracted, etc) even though you're paying for the world you still need to invest a large amount of creative energy and time into background. But if the world is detailed (or has sections of detail in-between the blank patches) you can choose to use as much or as little as you want. 
And, as someone who has made his share of homebrews, in addition to reading published settings, I know there's also an brainstorming effect. Other writers will ALWAYS think of ideas that would never, ever have occurred to you. These ideas are not always good but can start you thinking in different directions. 


Reading through this thread, as a relative newcomer to Greyhawk and the argument, much of the dislike seems to boil down to change=bad. 

Most of the posters here who hate GW and FtA seem to be old school players (often retired from D&D:\ ). The two updates seem to be receiving the condensed, concentrated vitriol of the setting's change, the change of what people want in a published world, a change in the game and industry, etc. There's probably some residual feelings of the edition changes (OD&D to 1st AD&D to 2nd AD&D) mixed in there as well, further tainting memories and opinions. 

Meanwhile, most of the people who have admitting to like one or both of the accessories, were newcomers to the setting.


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## IanB (Mar 21, 2007)

Speaking for myself, I think Carl Sargent is probably the most talented designer to work on D&D during the TSR years, and I find his work to be consistently high-quality and useful. 
If anything, his Greyhawk is more consistent and logical than the original. From the Ashes is a great supplement, IMO. His other stuff is pretty good too, but I think FtA is the highlight.

That said I do dispense with some obvious errors and some of the "meta-plot" elements, and my GH has diverged from both his and the original.


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## CruelSummerLord (Mar 21, 2007)

Some of the points have already been made here: 

-No chance to affect the outcome: Boom, it happens, there's exactly two things players can do to stop it: Jack and squat.  They nuked many interesting nations (Tenh, Geoff, the Bandit Kingdoms, the Wild Coast, the Horned Society, etc.), all in the span of just a few years, and there's nothing that could even be done to stop it!  

A lot of spits in the face of what went before: How can the giants successfully invade if the players thwarted their plans in the GDQ series?  

-Sense of desperation: I don't like how *everything* seemed in danger of falling apart.  Sure, that's enjoyable in some parts of the continent, but not the whole blasted thing.  I quite enjoy having some stable kingdoms: that's the place where political intrigue can develop.  I don't like having every country be economically spent and poor; danger is a good thing, of course, but what happened to being able to players being able to pursue their own political projects or goals without worrying if the kingdom is going to collapse?  

-Roller coaster syndrome: Since FtA, Greyhawk has been repeatedly plagued by one oerth-shaking event after another, whether in canon or Living Greyhawk.  I myself prefer slow, stable growth, only bringing out the really "Big Bang" events every once in a while.  When they keep happening, how are the economies or social structures of the settings supposed to stay coherent?  Trade is disrupted, diplomacy is broken, all that stuff.  How can rulers pay attention to regular policy decisions if massive events keep happening over and over?

-Wrecking a lot of good countries: Tenh, Geoff, the Bandit Kingdoms, and other places seemed pretty interesting.  If you have a campaign set in one of those areas, how can you continue on with a campaign?


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## Jester David (Mar 21, 2007)

Thulcondar said:
			
		

> From my perspective, FtA simply seemed... unnecessary.
> 
> It was a blatant attempt to wrench away the WoG from the material that Gyax wrote (remember, the Wars and FtA came about right after his departure from TSR). The original (1980/1983 books) presented a fantasy world in the "old school" tradition. A place for a DM to set adventures; a sketched-out starting-point that the DM could fill in as needed and desired. FtA tore that asunder; all of a sudden, a DM with a years-long Greyhawk campaign was faced with a decision; go with the "canon" history, or the one he had carefully created as the game play proceeded?
> 
> ...




This post kept nagging at me. 
The argument, summarized, is that DMs who use the setting now have too much information and have to either ignore it or their campaigns because "lazy DMs" can't make stuff up.

But if the DM is not lazy then why is he using a published campaign setting instead of a homebrew, even  thought "up on the fly as needed"? 

The main problem is if the setting has few details there is NO choice. You have to make stuff up. So if you are a "lazy DM" (read: rushed, distracted, etc) even though you're paying for the world you still need to invest a large amount of creative energy and time into background. But if the world is detailed (or has sections of detail in-between the blank patches) you can choose to use as much or as little as you want. 
And, as someone who has made his share of homebrews, in addition to reading published settings, I know there's also an brainstorming effect. Other writers will ALWAYS think of ideas that would never, ever have occurred to you. These ideas are not always good but can start you thinking in different directions. 


Reading through this thread, as a relative newcomer to Greyhawk and the argument, much of the dislike seems to boil down to change=bad. 

Most of the posters here who hate GW and FtA seem to be old school players (often retired from D&D:\ ). The two updates seem to be receiving the condensed, concentrated vitriol of the setting's change, the change of what people want in a published world, a change in the game and industry, etc. There's probably some residual feelings of the edition changes (OD&D to 1st AD&D to 2nd AD&D) mixed in there as well, further tainting memories and opinions. 

Meanwhile, most of the people who have admitting to like one or both of the accessories, were newcomers to the setting.


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## BluSponge (Mar 21, 2007)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> When you look at FTA follow-up products like "Puppets", you gotta wonder what TSR was thinking.




Actually, Puppets predated FtA.  As did Child's Play (ugh!) and Gargoyles (ugh!).

Everything Post-FtA for GH was pretty top notch, IMHO.  It wasn't a smooth transition, and I can see why a lot of people were mad (the fact that Zeb Cook suggested blowing up the world gets him an eternal black mark from me), but Sargent's writing and vision were both Grade A.  Now as to whether they were "Greyhawk," well, we've been debating that for _years_!

Tom


----------



## S'mon (Mar 21, 2007)

IanB said:
			
		

> Speaking for myself, I think Carl Sargent is probably the most talented designer to work on D&D during the TSR years, and I find his work to be consistently high-quality and useful.
> If anything, his Greyhawk is more consistent and logical than the original. .




You know, I agree with all of that, yet I still don't like it!  I bought Iuz the Evil, and it seems very competently done, yet I never had much desire to play there.  Whereas something inconsistent & illogical like Wilderlands or Known World/Mystara to me just begs to be played in.


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## 00Machado (Mar 21, 2007)

Mean DM said:
			
		

> Sorry if this is thread-jacking, but I don't know if my question warrants its own thread.  This conversation caught my interest in that I have FtA in a box somewhere in storage and have been itching to run it as a campaign. My question is this, out side of the current Gazetteer, what products do folks recommend picking up to have the essential core material?  Or is the Gazetteer sufficient?  I have been eying the older supplements, but don't know if the are worth it (not monetarily wise, since I can get the pdfs cheap).  I also ask this because I was thinking of running at an earlier time (prior, during or just after the Greyhawk Wars).
> 
> Mark




If you want to run during the wars, find "The Complete History of the Greyhawk Wars" online. Cherry pick the events from the war that you want to build adventures around.

Separate from FtA itself, I'd personally use, and so recommend The Marklands, Iuz the Evil, "Risen From the Ashes" Dragon Magazine article from issue 191, and Ivid the Undying, in that order.

City of Skulls and Return of the Eight if you like adventures.

Greyhawk: City of adventure softcover/pdf if you want a more detailed city setting and/or the City of Greyhawk boxed set if you want the larger maps for the region of Greyhawk.

You can play out years of campaigns, and campaigns of many different tones/goals with these supplements.


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## Mycanid (Mar 21, 2007)

Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> ....Reading through this thread, as a relative newcomer to Greyhawk and the argument, much of the dislike seems to boil down to change=bad.
> 
> Most of the posters here who hate GW and FtA seem to be old school players (often retired from D&D:\ ).




Hmm ... well I still must disagree with this assessment. I would modify it to many old school players agreeing that a specific change was poorly done. change=bad is a loaded way to present it.



			
				Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> The two updates seem to be receiving the condensed, concentrated vitriol of the setting's change, the change of what people want in a published world, a change in the game and industry, etc. There's probably some residual feelings of the edition changes (OD&D to 1st AD&D to 2nd AD&D) mixed in there as well, further tainting memories and opinions.




Now while I must admit that I did not like the change over to 2e I did not read the "From the Ashes" supplement until WAY later on ... only a few years ago, in fact. But the assumption that those who did not like the edition changes have a "tainted memory and opinion" with regarding to whether or not they like the From the Ashes supplement is also unfair and rather sweeping, IMO. (Although I think I can understand why you might think that.)



			
				Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> Meanwhile, most of the people who have admitting to like one or both of the accessories, were newcomers to the setting.



 (My emphasis on the word most ... not in original post.)

Not quite. Read through the thread. There are people in here who were "old schoolers" who liked the supplement and the changes.

An earlier post by I'm Cleo seems a little fairer percentage wise in the assessment of the thread thus far. Here it is again:



			
				I'm Cleo said:
			
		

> It seems like there are several arguments put forth, some of which are matters of taste, and others which can stoke antagonism. I'll try to set them out:
> 
> 1. I had a campaign that was "ruined". This certainly applies in a "well, if they were going to spend money producing something, I'd really rather be able to use it" sense, but I still don't see how anyone's bound to use any particular supplement in their games at home. If you're regularly bringing in new players and replacing old ones, and those new players have expectations about how Greyhawk is "supposed to be", I could see how this plays a larger role.
> 
> ...




This being quoted, I fall into the category of numbers two and three - I did not like the change in the feel and I did not like the introduction of a metaplot.

There is another thing though, related to number three. I dislike it immensely when metaplot elements come from deities, demigods and the like. I prefer the gods to be as peripheral as possible, only coming into the player's realm of experience on a very rare occasion. This is also one of the qualities I dislike that is present percentage wise to a much greater degree in the Forgotten Realms settings ... at least in my experience of them.


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## Nellisir (Mar 22, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> IIRC, Greyhawk Wars was David Cook; Ward was the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover.




Y'know, I wrote Zeb Cook first, then second-guessed myself.  Ce la vie.

Anyways, I liked FtA.  I found, and still find, Carl Sargent's writing more interesting and more "hook-filled" than, well, most campaign settings I read.

WotC's intensive gamer survey back in 2000-ish found (and I suspect TSR already knew, and I'm paraphrasing), that most D&D gamers don't actually -use- the stuff they buy.  Most readers of Dungeon, for instance, buy it to -read-, not to run.  A stripped-down, minimalist, "build-your-own-campaign" setting doesn't have much appeal to those people, and it doesn't hold much promise of future income.  Adventures don't sell much now, and by the time FtA came out, they didn't sell much then (they may have sold well in the very early days).  Publishing more detailed settings simply gets more bucks in the long run. (That said, I'm confused about WotC's move away from regional sourcebooks to regional "adventure books" for FR.  I liked reading the sourcebooks; I won't bother with adventure books.)

I fall into that category.  I enjoyed many aspects of FtA, but I didn't have to handle any issues with my home campaign because of it.

The Dragon articles by Carl Sargent were excerpts from Ivid the Undying, which was never published in print.


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## Nellisir (Mar 22, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> Yes, the Greyhawk folder AOL discussions are archived on Canonfire! @ http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=3




That's the best of the first 6 folders.  It looks like they -still- haven't put up the next 6 BoGs.

For those who weren't there...the original AOL folders closed after (500?) posts and were "auto-archived" in AOL's download library (they're no longer there; don't bother looking).  There were 30 folder logs in all, then AOL switched to an unlimited post message board which was not auto-archived.  There were a few desultory attempts to manually log the posts after that, but I don't think any suceeded or survived.

Of the original 30 folders, #27(26?) and #30 are corrupted.  To the best of my knowledge, no intact log of these folders exists.  I have all but the earliest logs (#9 or so, I think).  I'm not sure who, if anyone, also have copies.  Grodog might, or Blusponge - also Erik Mona & PSmedger.  I haven't come across them archived anywhere online (I haven't looked recently either, though).

The Best of Greyhawk files are excerpts from the folders, with posts compiled into articles.  ("Someone who's name escapes me") did 1-5; I did 6-12 or so before stopping.

Cheers
Nell.


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## 00Machado (Mar 22, 2007)

XO said:
			
		

> making a detailed setting out of an officially and deliberately sketchy one, well, creates unnecessary discrepancies.




Was it deliberately left vague, or was that simply driven by the typical supplement length at the time? These days we have 200+ page setting books like FR and Eberron, and similar lengths from other publishers. Back then, books were like 64 pages or 96 pages. I'm open to the idea that details were not filled in by design, but personally I'd guess that it was a combination of the newness of setting material as an idea, and the amount of space they had to work with. Are there any quotes from Gary about the intent behind the level of detail?


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## Krolik (Mar 22, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> Good point. I think maybe it's related more to how long they've been using the setting, more so than expectations from different age groups. A 40 year old reading FtA might have the same expectations more or less than a 25 year old, if it's their first introduction to the setting. A 40 year old who has been running campaigns in the setting for 10 years will likely have different expectations than that other 40 year old who is new to it.



When I was referring to the generation gap based on age I was really talking about how new gamers view game settings today based on how they did back in '81. 

High school and college kids getting into the gaming today have different expectations from a setting then I did back in '78. Greyhawk could afford to be sparse back then because the whole RPG industry was sparse. We didn't know any better when we saw a country getting a couple of paragraphs of description. We were playing tournament modules because we didn't know there was any other kind. As much as we claimed we were only playing Greyhawk we would cram every module we could get our hands on into Greyhawk's continuity just because gaming information was so sparse. 

People getting into gaming today have 250 cable channels. They have internet access which allows them to experience cultures from around the world. They have computer games, and online gaming, and playstations, and Xboxes, and hundreds of other things which gives them a multitude of detail at their finger tips. For the new generation of gamers a two or three paragraph country description just is not enough to spark the imagination. Why spend a week making up details for the Wild Coast when you can go and play HALO and have all the details thrown at you? 

What makes the Forgotten Realms popular is that is satisfies the hunger for details. It does not matter that most people playing in the Realms will never use 90% of that information. It satisfies the need and keeps gamers from having to do it themselves. Greyhawk has been tested many times by the powers-that-be over the years to see if it can be profitable but there aren't enough old-time Greyhawkers around to make it profitable. If Greyhawk is going to get regularly published it needs to appeal to the new generation of gamers; and unfortunately that generation's wants and needs are in direction contention to the wants and needs of the older generation who love it the most.


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## T. Foster (Mar 22, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> Was it deliberately left vague, or was that simply driven by the typical supplement length at the time? These days we have 200+ page setting books like FR and Eberron, and similar lengths from other publishers. Back then, books were like 64 pages or 96 pages. I'm open to the idea that details were not filled in by design, but personally I'd guess that it was a combination of the newness of setting material as an idea, and the amount of space they had to work with. Are there any quotes from Gary about the intent behind the level of detail?



 See this from the 1E DMG:


			
				1E DMG said:
			
		

> I will mention parenthetically that my own *WORLD OF GREYHAWK*, (published by TSR), was specifically designed to allow for insertion of such beginning mileux, variety being great and history and organization left purposely sketchy to make interfacing a simple matter.



Note also that the original (1980, folio) version of _The World of Greyhawk_ was _32_ pages (plus 2 poster-sized maps). The 1983 version added considerable extra material (including the info about racial types, plants/trees of the Flanaess, encounter tables, weather tables, adventure seeds, and _all_ of the deities/religion stuff) and I've known at least a few people over the years (myself occasionally among them) who think even that was going too far, and who prefer the simplicity of the original 1980 version.


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## Faraer (Mar 22, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> Are there any quotes from Gary about the intent behind the level of detail?



I don't have quotes to hand, but Gary has often talked about how he dislikes the idea of a detailed, limiting 'canon' and timelines. He isn't into detailed world-building for its own sake. On the other hand, there _were_ plans to publish supplements on areas such as the Wild Coast.


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## grodog (Mar 22, 2007)

diaglo said:
			
		

> i'm sure grodog's got them somewhere.




Actually, while I was online then, I wasn't on AOL.  They are on Canonfire!, though, and thanks for the vote of confidence diaglo    (BTW, are you attending GenCon or LGGC this year?).


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## T. Foster (Mar 22, 2007)

FWIW, here's part of an essay I wrote a couple years back describing what I see as the difference between "The World of Greyhawk" as default AD&D campaign-world (exemplified by the 1980 folio and various WoG-set but not Gygax-penned modules of the early 80s) and "Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk" (exemplified by the 1983 boxed set, Gygax's modules, and the Gord novels):


> The second Greyhawk is the implicit default setting of the AD&D game, consisting primarily of the material in the AD&D rulebooks (character classes and races, spell lists and names, monster distribution, magic items, etc.) and the 1980 World of Greyhawk folio. At the time this was billed as the world of the original Greyhawk Campaign, but we know now that this wasn't true and the connection between the two was only tangential -- that Gygax essentially invented the published World of Greyhawk from scratch at the time of publication with an eye towards creating a setting that was both broad and eclectic enough that pretty much any AD&D DM could find a place within it to stick his campaign. This is the "everybody is free to do with it as they like" conception of Greyhawk, that is able to fit Quag Keep, Len Lakofka's Lendore Isle and Suel deities material, Frank Mentzer's Aquaria, the Slaver series modules, B1, C1-2, I1, N1, S1-3, U1-3, UK1-3, and each individual DM's own material all under the same umbrella. This World of Greyhawk is in some sense just a synonym for "D&D world" -- the place where all the assumptions as described in the AD&D rulebooks are in effect and thus has no "canon" -- no specific list of what is "in" and what is "out" -- as long as your material is true to the spirit and assumptions of the AD&D game and isn't specifically set elsewhere it will fit somewhere within this World of Greyhawk. This Greyhawk is of obvious continuing interest because of both its tie to the AD&D system and its wide-open nature. This is "your" Greyhawk, loosely defined by the rules and folio and open as a toolbox for each DM to develop and do with as he wishes.
> 
> The third Greyhawk tends to get confused with both the first and the second (Erik Mona's breakdown failed to really differentiate them) but is distinct in my mind, and I think the failure to recognize that distinction is what has lead to a lot of the strife and confusion we see in Greyhawk fandom -- the third Greyhawk, is, simply put, Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz's own elaboration and development of Greyhawk #2, the codification and expansion of the Greyhawk #1 material within the Greyhawk #2 setting/milieu. This, and only this, is the Greyhawk that has a specific canon -- the 1983 boxed set, the G, D and EX series modules and WG1-6 (counting T1-2 as WG1-2 and S4 as WG3, as was originally intended), various Greyhawk-related articles by Gygax and Kuntz in Dragon magazine, the Gord novels, and occasional bits of Greyhawk and crypto-Greyhawk from the pens of those authors post-1986. This is the Greyhawk of Iggwilv and Graz'zt, Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God, the Rhennee and the Circle of Eight, uskfruit and bronzewood trees, iron drabs, copper commons, and platinum plates, elves as olve and gnomes as noniz, Xaene and the Lost City of Elders, Hextor and Incabulos, Celestian and Fhlarlanghn, Heward and Keoghtom. In other words, no longer either the "anything goes" primarily dungeon-oriented game-world of the 70s-era material or the wide-open and deliberately vague "DM's toolbox" of the 1980 folio, but rather the specific, detailed, and self-consistent creative vision of a single author (well, two single authors, but even RJK's role in this Greyhawk is distinctly secondary to Gygax's). This Greyhawk is of continuing interest the same way any other detailed fantasy world -- be it Tekumel or Middle Earth, the Young Kingdoms or Glorantha -- is, because it's imaginative and flavorful and is the expression of its author's creative vision. But while people study, play in, and perhaps even add their own personalized bits and pieces to Tekumel and Middle Earth, they'd never claim to "own" those worlds, which are inextricably tied to profs. Barker and Tolkein, and the same goes for this Greyhawk and Gygax/Kuntz -- it's their world, and any attempts by other authors to "use" it will come off at best as tribute/pastiche, and at worst as a complete bastardization (I'll leave which later works come off as which as an exercise for the reader  ).



(note: "Greyhawk #1" in this essay is the original Greyhawk Campaign of the 70s, which isn't germane to this particular discussion)

IMO a lot of the miscommunication and rancor among various factions of Greyhawk fans stems from a failure to sufficiently differentiate between these two conceptions.  People who see Greyhawk #2 either don't see what the big deal is with other authors continuing to detail the world or think even Gygax himself betrayed the original world by overdetailing (and eventually destroying) it in the 1983 set and Gord novels. Fans of Greyhawk #3, OTOH, take offense at the very notion of anyone other than Gygax (and perhaps Kuntz) continuing to develop the world, and the idea is so offensive that the actual quality of the development is almost immaterial.


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## grodog (Mar 22, 2007)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> That's the best of the first 6 folders.  It looks like they -still- haven't put up the next 6 BoGs.




Hmmmm.  Not having been there, I'll take your word for it, Nell.  Have you pinged Gary about or Issak about the missing files?  IIRC, Issak's in charge of CF! downloads (or at least hosting).



			
				Nellisir said:
			
		

> For those who weren't there...the original AOL folders closed after (500?) posts and were "auto-archived" in AOL's download library (they're no longer there; don't bother looking).  There were 30 folder logs in all, then AOL switched to an unlimited post message board which was not auto-archived.  There were a few desultory attempts to manually log the posts after that, but I don't think any suceeded or survived.
> 
> Of the original 30 folders, #27(26?) and #30 are corrupted.  To the best of my knowledge, no intact log of these folders exists.  I have all but the earliest logs (#9 or so, I think).  I'm not sure who, if anyone, also have copies.  Grodog might, or Blusponge - also Erik Mona & PSmedger.  I haven't come across them archived anywhere online (I haven't looked recently either, though).




I definitely have some archived AOL logs that I snagged bitd while they were still available, though I don't know that I have the corrupted logs.  I'll have to go dig into floppy archives, though, to look, I think, if no one else is able to bring them to light.



			
				Nellisir said:
			
		

> The Best of Greyhawk files are excerpts from the folders, with posts compiled into articles.  ("Someone who's name escapes me") did 1-5; I did 6-12 or so before stopping.




Ah, so the Best of AOL are just that---not everything.  Hmmm.  Maybe I just have those???


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## grodog (Mar 22, 2007)

Cthulhudrew said:
			
		

> If you can track them down, there were a number of articles (by Carl Sargent as well, I believe) in Dragon Magazine that followed up on events introduced in FtA and provided a lot of interesting information and hooks. Don't know if those articles have been collected anywhere, but they should have been.




Actually, Sargent's Dragon articles were excerpted from Ivid the Undying after it was killed as a published product---chunks of it were salvaged as articles in Dragons 204, 206, and 208.  

I haven't ever compared the text of the Dragon Ivid articles to the content from the Ivid downloads---has anyone else done so, to determine if there were any differences between the two?


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## Nellisir (Mar 22, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> Ah, so the Best of AOL are just that---not everything.  Hmmm.  Maybe I just have those???




Those are what most people have.  So far as I know, the folder logs were only ever available via the AOL library.  No one ever bothered hosting them elsewhere.  I tried getting them to Smedger & others a few times, but I think there were file size issues or something on both ends.  I'll take another look when I get a chance.

The original folder logs are plain text files.

...OK, I just checked.  I have logs #13-28 &#30.  #27 is a partial, #29 was the corrupted log.  Folders 1-12 were collected in the Best of Greyhawk files.
...I just uploaded a zipped file containing the above folder logs here.  Let me know if there are problems downloading it.


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## Mechanurge (Mar 22, 2007)

I didn't like the Greyhawk Wars and FtA because they polarized a world that had heretofore been a greyscale, finely-balanced and very interesting equilibrium. Suddenly it became black-and-white with Iuz's Empire overrunning everything interesting in the North, the Great Kingdom disintegrating and practically every kingdom ruined by war and famine. All that was hidden and interesting - the machinations of the Scarlet Brotherhood, the rot at the heart of the GK, the secret wars in the occupied Shield Lands, the power-politics between tiny statelets - became overt, obvious...and hence boring. 


			
				00Machado said:
			
		

> Was it that they changed things? Meaning essentially any material that wasn't an adventure would have been unwelcome?



No, a series of good sourcebooks for say, the Horned Society, would have been very welcome. Please don't assume that all GH fans "hate change" as that is both denigrating and untrue. A lot of them just don't like _this particular_ change. 



> Did you find the products themselves of poor quality, as opposed to having any real issue with the ideas?



It wasn't the execution, it was the ideas. I don't want a destroyed world with the forces of good and evil all nicely lined up for megabattles (especially since this was partly done to support a crappy new product line).


----------



## zoroaster100 (Mar 22, 2007)

I liked From the Ashes a lot.  I liked having the static original campaign setting and a detailed outline of a campaign-shaking series of transformative wars.  It created the possibility of using the wars as the background for a campaign where the world was dynamic, with much work done for me, or a campaign involving the wars, or an example of how to plot out a different world-shaking event of similar scale.


----------



## haakon1 (Mar 22, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> The problem with Greyhawkers is that they do not want their timeline advanced.  . . .  I think old-timers forget that.




The problem with (some) non-Greyhawkers is they get mad at Greyhawkers for wanting Greyhawk to be Greyhawk.  Is that so wrong?   :\


----------



## haakon1 (Mar 22, 2007)

diaglo said:
			
		

> diaglo "i was on the lists too" Ooi




Word, homes.


----------



## haakon1 (Mar 22, 2007)

S'mon said:
			
		

> Neitther, of course.  They/we would have wanted more detail on 576 CY, like how Wilderlands and Harn do it.  No timeline advancing - that's fine for comics and novels, IMHO it's consistently terrible for RPG settings.  We GMs want a world we can bend to _our_ will, not have our campaigns bent to someone else's will!




As many others have said, yup.


----------



## haakon1 (Mar 22, 2007)

SWBaxter said:
			
		

> If FtA had been a brand new setting, it might've done better; certainly would've had more of a chance, at any rate. Greyhawk Wars, IMHO, doesn't really have much upside potential.




I agree with that.  Greyhawk Wars entering into FTA as a metaplot was really the problem with FTA.  FTA wasn't necessarily a bad setting (and I, for one, like Ivid the Undying), but it didn't have a lot to do with original flavor Greyhawk.  TSR learned nothing from New Coke.


----------



## haakon1 (Mar 22, 2007)

Mean DM said:
			
		

> Or is the Gazetteer sufficient?  I have been eying the older supplements, but don't know if the are worth it (not monetarily wise, since I can get the pdfs cheap).  I also ask this because I was thinking of running at an earlier time (prior, during or just after the Greyhawk Wars).




I think the Gazetteer is actually pretty darn good.  I use it all the time in my "old schooler" Greyhawk campaign, proving I think that we're not against new products.  What I appreciate it about is the loving care and knowledge of the setting that obviously went into it.

My other frequently referenced sources are the World of Greyhawk boxed set (1983 copyright) and The Adventure Begins (the Greyhawk city book from 1998.  I like it better than the City of  Greyhawk boxed set from 1989.  I also like Ivid the Undying, but my campaign is set in western Greyhawk, so it doesn't much matter.

My campaign is set at a similar time.  It's spring 588 CY for me.  The big local news is the continuing war between Ket (with Uli and Perrenlander mercenaries, and secret monetary and military help from Iuz) and Bissel (with backing from Gran March, the Knights of the Watch, and to a lesser extent Veluna).

On the sidelines are:
- Iuzian threats.  Pressure on the Vesve Forest, where he conflicts with Highfolk.  Rumors in the Sepia Uplands and lands of the Tiger Nomads (allied with Iuz) and Wolf Nomads (more independent).  Watch fires on the Veng River, as Iuz and the Horned Society threaten Furyondy.

- Great Kingdom civil war.  Ahlissa and the North Kingdom are separate and Rauxes and Medegia are devastated and overrun with humanoids, but it's the result of a 30 Years War-type letting out of the Four Horsemen, not supernatural bogeymen.

The result is to make a "traditional" Greyhawk campaign that has some compatibility with the modern materials, while ignoring the worst of Wars/FTA, like the elimination of the Wild Coast and Hardby as independent states, "demons stalked the land" being repeated ad nausem, and the all the good powers generally acting Lawful Stupid, like warlike marcher state Bissel sending off its army so it was defenseless.  Um, no.


----------



## Krolik (Mar 22, 2007)

haakon1 said:
			
		

> The problem with (some) non-Greyhawkers is they get mad at Greyhawkers for wanting Greyhawk to be Greyhawk.  Is that so wrong?   :\



The problem is two-fold:

The first problem is economics. For Greyhawk material to get produced on a regular basis it needs to sell enough copies to justify the expense and manpower being put into it rather then it being used in a Realms or Eberron product. To sell the needed volume Greyhawk products need to be broad enough to be attractive to non-Greyhawkers but there aren't enough Greyhawkers to support the line on their own. 

The second problem is that Greyhawkers are divided into at least three groups: The 'I've been using it since 1980 and Gary is the only canon' group. The 'I like Greyhawk and I can make anything fit into it' group. And the 'From the Ashes ruled!' group. Greyhawk has been around so long that the sub-groups are now more important than the idea of the world itself.


----------



## Shroomy (Mar 22, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> The problem is two-fold:
> 
> The first problem is economics. For Greyhawk material to get produced on a regular basis it needs to sell enough copies to justify the expense and manpower being put into it rather then it being used in a Realms or Eberron product. To sell the needed volume Greyhawk products need to be broad enough to be attractive to non-Greyhawkers but there aren't enough Greyhawkers to support the line on their own.
> 
> The second problem is that Greyhawkers are divided into at least three groups: The 'I've been using it since 1980 and Gary is the only canon' group. The 'I like Greyhawk and I can make anything fit into it' group. And the 'From the Ashes ruled!' group. Greyhawk has been around so long that the sub-groups are now more important than the idea of the world itself.




Krolik, you also forgot the "I Love Living Greyhawk," "I Hate the Living Greyhawk," "I Love What Paizo is Doing to Greyhawk," and "I Hate What Paizo is Doing to Greyhawk" sub-groups.


----------



## howandwhy99 (Mar 22, 2007)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> ...I just uploaded a zipped file containing the above folder logs here.  Let me know if there are problems downloading it.



Downloaded.  Only it comes out as "corrupted" when I try and open it.  Could be my machine.


----------



## Ghendar (Mar 22, 2007)

Thulcondar said:
			
		

> It was a reaction to the success of the Forgotten Realms products, where everthing was set up and presented in nauseating detail, for the benefit of lazy DMs who either couldn't work up those details on their own or couldn't think them up on the fly as needed. There was no room for individual DM creativity any more.




Or maybe DM's who don't have the time to devote to fleshing out an entire campaign world. 
I've been accused of being elitist from time to time, but WOW.


----------



## Cthulhudrew (Mar 22, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> Actually, Sargent's Dragon articles were excerpted from Ivid the Undying after it was killed as a published product---chunks of it were salvaged as articles in Dragons 204, 206, and 208.




Sorry, I should have clarified. Those weren't the excerpts I was talking about (though they do deserve mention). I meant a series of Campaign Journal articles where he described rumors, events, etc taking place in Greyhawk post-FtA. I'm not sure if Campaign Journal was the right name or not, but it was something like that.


----------



## XO (Mar 22, 2007)

*Truth & Reality*



			
				00Machado said:
			
		

> Was it deliberately left vague, or was that simply driven by the typical supplement length at the time? These days we have 200+ page setting books like FR and Eberron, and similar lengths from other publishers. Back then, books were like 64 pages or 96 pages. I'm open to the idea that details were not filled in by design, but personally I'd guess that it was a combination of the newness of setting material as an idea, and the amount of space they had to work with. Are there any quotes from Gary about the intent behind the level of detail?




We've been appraised of the fact that the author (Gygax) had slight tendencies to inflate what was available, ready and consolidated. And I use the word "inflate" lightly. Greyhawk, city and world, was a wonderful foundation for adventuring. It will always be a classic. Anything that draws away from that classic is a bad thing. In fact, as a parallel to From The Ashes, with the Times of Trouble, the Realms knew a similar episode (trouble indeed: the passage from one edition to the next in D&D is pure hell).

A larger book may not have changed much to the initial GH. It was a setting, whereas we now want a setting to be a gigantic module. I myself have been guilty of that concept: for a bried moment (before sanity returned), I needed to know what was in each Hex of that map, in as much detail as possible. In the end, it is neither useful, nor desirable.... Just make it up, and have a laugh...


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## Nellisir (Mar 22, 2007)

howandwhy99 said:
			
		

> Downloaded.  Only it comes out as "corrupted" when I try and open it.  Could be my machine.




<sigh>  They're like twenty tiny albatrosses around my neck; I can't give them away!

If anyone else had problems opening them, I'll see about redoing the file and/or uploading them in a different format.  I could just put the individual text files online, I guess....


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## McBard (Mar 22, 2007)

I'm an old enough fart to have bought for myself at my FLGS the folio set of Greyhawk back in 1066...er...1980, and I didn't like it then for its lack of detail. Heck, Gygax's own simple introduction to T1 The Village of Hommlet provided more brilliant campaign background than the entire folio.

I loved From The Ashes, and thought Sargent a great writer..but anyhoo...I'd rather have too much "official" information to sift through for my homebrew Greyhawk campaign, than less or no information at all. The "don't-offend-my-take-on-Greyhawk-with-published-Greyhawk-material" complaint is silly.


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## Christian (Mar 23, 2007)

diaglo said:
			
		

> the Greyhack Wars and the lead up to them and following didn't make me very happy with T$R.




Wow. And diaglo's usually so comfortable with change ...


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## Thulcondar (Mar 23, 2007)

There are several different points here (great response, btw), and I will address them separately...



			
				Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> This post kept nagging at me.
> The argument, summarized, is that DMs who use the setting now have too much information and have to either ignore it or their campaigns because "lazy DMs" can't make stuff up.
> 
> But if the DM is not lazy then why is he using a published campaign setting instead of a homebrew, even  thought "up on the fly as needed"?




That's a fine objection. I will respond by saying that:

a) I have indeed done many a home-brew campaign (one or two entirely on the fly), and
b) There is a difference in using a cohesive framework for a campaign and a campaign wherein every jot and tittle is given in exhausing detail. Such a setting gives a feel. A texture. It allows for a certain amount of shared culture (among those who share the setting), without requiring that each and every detail be replicated ad nauseum amongst the participants. It's one thing to have Beory and Verbobonc in common; it's entirely another to have the complete details of every village between Dorakka and the Nyr Dyv common across every campaign...

(I would point out that the same problem arises for the Judge's Guild campaign material; much to the chagrin of those who might claim it is mere nostalgia that drives my ideas, I find the same shortcomings with the Wilderlands of High Fantasy that I do with the Realms, Harn,  and later Greyhawk. Too much detail. Where can I put my dungeon without wrecking the whole scheme? 



			
				Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> The main problem is if the setting has few details there is NO choice. You have to make stuff up. So if you are a "lazy DM" (read: rushed, distracted, etc) even though you're paying for the world you still need to invest a large amount of creative energy and time into background. But if the world is detailed (or has sections of detail in-between the blank patches) you can choose to use as much or as little as you want.




Well fine, then choose the setting that provides a lot of detail. Choose FR over GH. But don't change the nature of Greyhawk just to suit the needs of those who need more hand-holding. 



			
				Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> And, as someone who has made his share of homebrews, in addition to reading published settings, I know there's also an brainstorming effect. Other writers will ALWAYS think of ideas that would never, ever have occurred to you. These ideas are not always good but can start you thinking in different directions.
> 
> Reading through this thread, as a relative newcomer to Greyhawk and the argument, much of the dislike seems to boil down to change=bad.
> 
> ...




Actually I played 2nd Edition for years and years, and in a FtA-era setting, too. (I was actually kinda a fan of kits, and had kits for each class worked out for most nations of the Flanaess). But when it comes down to it, I made a conscious decision to revert to AD&D 1E, and to launch campaigns in the era of the original folio and boxed set. I might use certain elements of Wars/FtA as background (Turrosh Mak, the machinations of the Scarlet Brotherhood, etc.). But it's not history just yet. 

And I'm *this close* to going back to OD&D. The only thing holding me back is that my players don't have the boxed sets... (And AD&D is so close to the boxed set and the supplements that it's hardly worth the bother.)


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## grodog (Mar 23, 2007)

Cthulhudrew said:
			
		

> Sorry, I should have clarified. Those weren't the excerpts I was talking about (though they do deserve mention). I meant a series of Campaign Journal articles where he described rumors, events, etc taking place in Greyhawk post-FtA. I'm not sure if Campaign Journal was the right name or not, but it was something like that.




Aha, thanks for the reminder on those, Cthulhudrew---those two Campaign Journals appeared prior to the Ivid excrepts, in Dragons 191 (March 1993) and 195 (July 1993), and they do in fact introduce the new setting.  I'll have to go check them out, haven't read those in ages


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## grodog (Mar 23, 2007)

McBard said:
			
		

> Heck, Gygax's own simple introduction to T1 The Village of Hommlet provided more brilliant campaign background than the entire folio.




Can't argue with that:  T1 is a masterpiece that can launch years of game play, without ever using T1-4.  I think it was designed as such, since it has more story hooks per square inch than many novels; the folio, on the other hand, wasn't about introducing a specific campaign plot, IMO, but rather a setting framework within which you could build many campaigns.  That said, Greyhawk best-known for the modules that originally developed it, modularly, and that openness obviously doesn't appeal to all potential buyers....


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## grodog (Mar 23, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> The first problem is economics. For Greyhawk material to get produced on a regular basis it needs to sell enough copies to justify the expense and manpower being put into it rather then it being used in a Realms or Eberron product. To sell the needed volume Greyhawk products need to be broad enough to be attractive to non-Greyhawkers but there aren't enough Greyhawkers to support the line on their own.




Ah, but per Lisa Stevens @ http://paizo.com/dragon/messageboards/compendium/aoWHCAndDragonCompendiumII that's a myth:



			
				Lisa Stevens said:
			
		

> Germytech said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## grodog (Mar 23, 2007)

Nellisir said:
			
		

> If anyone else had problems opening them, I'll see about redoing the file and/or uploading them in a different format.  I could just put the individual text files online, I guess....




Downloading them now, will let you know, Nell....


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## haakon1 (Mar 23, 2007)

*Economics*

Nod, that's why I buy everything that's Greyhawk, and I never buy anything that's labelled Forgotten Realms or Eberron . . . which pretty much leaves me buying DCC's and Dungeon, that's about it.


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## S'mon (Mar 23, 2007)

Thulcondar said:
			
		

> (I would point out that the same problem arises for the Judge's Guild campaign material; much to the chagrin of those who might claim it is mere nostalgia that drives my ideas, I find the same shortcomings with the Wilderlands of High Fantasy that I do with the Realms, Harn,  and later Greyhawk. Too much detail. Where can I put my dungeon without wrecking the whole scheme?




That seems weird - 90% of the Wilderlands is howling wilderness, it's designed so that interconnections are pretty limited and you can stick your dungeon pretty much anywhere!  It works even better if you expand the scale to Bledsaw's original 15 m/hex.  

Greyhawk is more likely to face problems here because it's a generally late-medieval type setting with powerful nation states, unlike Wilderlands' scattered city-states.  Wilderlands is more 8th century BC than 15th century AD.


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## GSHamster (Mar 23, 2007)

Jester Canuck said:
			
		

> This post kept nagging at me.
> The argument, summarized, is that DMs who use the setting now have too much information and have to either ignore it or their campaigns because "lazy DMs" can't make stuff up.
> 
> But if the DM is not lazy then why is he using a published campaign setting instead of a homebrew, even  thought "up on the fly as needed"?




For a lot of people, restrictions breed creativity. If you have a completely blank canvas, there are just so many possibilities that you freeze up and can't do anything.

However, if you have some restrictions, it gives you direction and you can be creative.

Of course, it's possible to have too many restrictions, and the restrictions interfere with your creativity, which is what some people feel happens in Forgotten Realms.

(for some people)

Homebrew = blank slate; too much freedom
Greyhawk = correct balance of restrictions and freedom
Forgotten Realms = too many restrictions

Hope that made sense.  Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone.


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## rounser (Mar 23, 2007)

> Homebrew = blank slate; too much freedom
> Greyhawk = correct balance of restrictions and freedom
> Forgotten Realms = too many restrictions



Have the GH enthusiasts here had a look at Thunder Rift?  It's a lot smaller (and therefore much easier to develop and keep tabs on), and a lot more "generic D&D" than even GH, Mystara et al.  It's also very easy for players to get a grasp of, with only two towns, one city, a castle and a dwarven hold for the population centres.  If you want a map with some names and a D&D-game-supporting history, that's it right there.

Just a thought; carry on.


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## grodog (Mar 23, 2007)

rounser said:
			
		

> Have the GH enthusiasts here had a look at Thunder Rift?  It's a lot smaller (and therefore much easier to develop and keep tabs on), and a lot more "generic D&D" than even GH, Mystara et al.  It's also very easy for players to get a grasp of, with only two towns, one city, a castle and a dwarven hold for the population centres.  If you want a map with some names and a D&D-game-supporting history, that's it right there.




Sounds interesting, rounser; is Thunder Rift a TSR product, or a d20 product, etc.?


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## Krolik (Mar 23, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> Ah, but per Lisa Stevens @ that's a myth:



Then I would say it's quite odd that Erik was posting in another Greyhawk thread about how the sales of the upcoming Greyhawk module will determine whether resources will be put into future Greyhawk products.


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## Shadeydm (Mar 23, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> To sell the needed volume Greyhawk products need to be broad enough to be attractive to non-Greyhawkers but there aren't enough Greyhawkers to support the line on their own.




I think this is a fundamental flaw in your position. I completely reject the idea that there aren't enough "Greyhawkers" and have never seen any imperical evidence to support this position.


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## Krolik (Mar 23, 2007)

Shadeydm said:
			
		

> I think this is a fundamental flaw in your position. I completely reject the idea that there aren't enough "Greyhawkers" and have never seen any imperical evidence to support this position.



 WotC is a business with X amount of resources. They are going to put those resources where they believe they are going to get the most ROI. If Greyhawk material routinely outsold Forgotten Realms material you would see the two campaign worlds in opposite positions with the Realms fans asking why the sale of a single adventure will determine the fate of their favorite world. There might be one million Greyhawkers out there but if only 5,000 are buying the material, whereas 8,000 Realms fans are buying their world's material, WotC is going to cater to the 8,000 every single time.


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## 00Machado (Mar 23, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> Then I would say it's quite odd that Erik was posting in another Greyhawk thread about how the sales of the upcoming Greyhawk module will determine whether resources will be put into future Greyhawk products.




Not necessarily odd. Perhaps the people concerned with not starting a proliferation of settings are now gone and replaced by people who only care about the dollars and cents, i.e. proliferation of revenue and profit.


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## rounser (Mar 23, 2007)

> is Thunder Rift a TSR product, or a d20 product, etc.?



TSR.  It's the introductory OD&D setting for most of those old level 1-3 boxed sets.  Paizo sells the pdf.  I think it suits the scope of 3E better than it does OD&D, because the number of areas seems to approximately echo the needs of a 3E "adventure path".


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## grodog (Mar 24, 2007)

Krolik said:
			
		

> Then I would say it's quite odd that Erik was posting in another Greyhawk thread about how the sales of the upcoming Greyhawk module will determine whether resources will be put into future Greyhawk products.




They're two separate issues:  


Per Lisa, historically, WotC didn't kill GH setting support because GH wasn't selling, they killed GH as a marketing decision to focus on the FR and Eberron settings (i.e., GH can pull its own weight in sales).  The market perception, however, has been that GH can't pull its own weight (especially in comparison to FR, and by extention Eberron [since, afterall, WotC published this new setting instead of reviving an older one]), which is why it was dropped like an Amazing Engine hot potato.  Your post above sums up this perception nicely:



			
				Krolik said:
			
		

> WotC is a business with X amount of resources. They are going to put those resources where they believe they are going to get the most ROI. If Greyhawk material routinely outsold Forgotten Realms material you would see the two campaign worlds in opposite positions with the Realms fans asking why the sale of a single adventure will determine the fate of their favorite world. There might be one million Greyhawkers out there but if only 5,000 are buying the material, whereas 8,000 Realms fans are buying their world's material, WotC is going to cater to the 8,000 every single time.




Lisa's quotation clearly refutes the perception that GH can't equal FR sales as 100% false.  I have no argument with your contention that WotC will always go with the higher-ROI product (hence their plastic miniatures lines...), just the assumption underlying it that GH is a second-class setting that can't go toe-to-toe with FR.  WotC testing those waters with a product like EttRoG obviously shows that they're willing to roll the dice with one book, at least, which segues to point #2 that
Obviously GH has an audience (Paizo's run-away success with Age of Worms, Maure Castle, Savage Tides, etc.), and WotC wants every possible member of that audience to buy the new Expedition to the Ruins of GH book, which---if it sells well/better than expected/goes OOP immediately/whatever the WotC success criteria beyond immediate ROI are for the book---_may_ mean that WotC revisits decision #1 and begins to support GH as a setting once more (it happened before in 1998, so it can certainly happen again).  That's my positive-spin on WotC's D&D Experience comments; my negative-spin is WotC's trying to get everyone to possible buy the book and to do so they're tossing out this "buy this book or else no more GH, ever" veiled threat to drive fans into buying additional copies as a show of faith or support for the setting they love).  

So, I'm certainly hoping that EttRoG sales skyrocket, and that Paizo continues to support the setting, and that WotC begins to do so once more.


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## grodog (Mar 24, 2007)

rounser said:
			
		

> TSR.  It's the introductory OD&D setting for most of those old level 1-3 boxed sets.  Paizo sells the pdf.  I think it suits the scope of 3E better than it does OD&D, because the number of areas seems to approximately echo the needs of a 3E "adventure path".




Thanks, I'll have to check it out.


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## MerricB (Mar 24, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> [*]Obviously GH has an audience (Paizo's run-away success with Age of Worms, Maure Castle, Savage Tides, etc.), and WotC wants every possible member of that audience to buy the new Expedition to the Ruins of GH book, which---if it sells well/better than expected/goes OOP immediately/whatever the WotC success criteria beyond immediate ROI are for the book---_may_ mean that WotC revisits decision #1 and begins to support GH as a setting once more (it happened before in 1998, so it can certainly happen again).  That's my positive-spin on WotC's D&D Experience comments; my negative-spin is WotC's trying to get everyone to possible buy the book and to do so they're tossing out this "buy this book or else no more GH, ever" veiled threat to drive fans into buying additional copies as a show of faith or support for the setting they love).




My feeling is that people want Greyhawk _adventures_ much more than they want Greyhawk _supplements_, but, even so, I suspect Paizo's "run-away success" with the Adventure Paths is due to them being, er, well-designed adventure paths than Greyhawk material (only Age of Worms is actually a Greyhawk AP); and Maure Castle - at least the first part - is exceptional as being an entire issue devoted to just one adventure.

Cheers!


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## jensun (Mar 24, 2007)

GSHamster said:
			
		

> Forgotten Realms = too many restrictions



I see this bandied about a fair amount but I am not at all convinced it is true.

Which part of FR makes you think it has too many restrictions.  Which parts of it scream too much detail.

Take a look at pretty much any published FR map and you will find huge blank areas on the map entirely suitable to whatever game you want to drop into it.


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## haakon1 (Mar 26, 2007)

rounser said:
			
		

> Have the GH enthusiasts here had a look at Thunder Rift?  It's a lot smaller (and therefore much easier to develop and keep tabs on), and a lot more "generic D&D" than even GH, Mystara et al.  It's also very easy for players to get a grasp of, with only two towns, one city, a castle and a dwarven hold for the population centres.  If you want a map with some names and a D&D-game-supporting history, that's it right there.
> 
> Just a thought; carry on.




Do people play campaigns that span all of the Flanaess?  I've played all my games in western Greyhawk.

Furthest east: Maure Castle and Star Cairns (hills between GHC and Urnst)
Furthest south: Vault of the Drow (under the Hellfurnaces, near Cauldron)
Furthest west: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (eastern Yatils between Ket and Highfolk)
Furthest north: Wolf Nomads.

90% of it has taken place within a month's ride of Thornward Castle, in Bissel.

Nevertheless, I still don't have a lot of details in place.  I only mapped Thornward recently, despite 3 parties having used it as a base for years now.  I knew several sites there, but I didn't feel a need for a map.


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## MerricB (Mar 26, 2007)

Hmm - let's see... I've adventured or run adventures in...

The County of Ulek
Furyondy
Veluna
The Vesve Forest
Perrenland
The City of Greyhawk
The North Kingdom 
The See of Medegia
Hepmonaland
The Bright Desert
Hardby
Geoff
The Wild Coast
Land of the Frost Barbarians

Cheers!


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## haakon1 (Mar 26, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> my negative-spin is WotC's trying to get everyone to possible buy the book and to do so they're tossing out this "buy this book or else no more GH, ever" veiled threat to drive fans into buying additional copies as a show of faith or support for the setting they love).




That's my guess as to what that comment is about.  It seems an unnecessary comment to make, though.  I'll buy it for sure, because I know already that if I don't, less GH stuff will get published.

I make every WOTC purchase on the basis of thinking about whether I want more books like it.  So, if you buy the book of unnecessary blah that you like 3 pages of, you're likely to get a whole stinking pile of blah before WOTC gives up on milking the subject.  Therefore unless you want to see more like it, don't buy it.

For that reason, I buy EVERY non-FR, non-Eberron WOTC module below about level 15, even if I have no current need for it, and I will buy d20 'Greyhawk".


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## haakon1 (Mar 26, 2007)

MerricB said:
			
		

> My feeling is that people want Greyhawk _adventures_ much more than they want Greyhawk _supplements_, but, even so, I suspect Paizo's "run-away success" with the Adventure Paths is due to them being, er, well-designed adventure paths than Greyhawk material (only Age of Worms is actually a Greyhawk AP); and Maure Castle - at least the first part - is exceptional as being an entire issue devoted to just one adventure.
> 
> Cheers!




Yup, that's what I want, and I agree that we Greyhawkers are lucky Paizo has chosen to set things in Greyhawk, even when they are not particularly Greyhawky (Shackled City, as opposed to Age of Worms or Savage Tide).  I think for Shackled City, it was probably placed in Greyhawk as the default setting, rather than having deep Greyhawk connections.

There have also been some great one-off Greyhawk adventures during Eric Mona's reign, not just the headline Adventure Paths: a series of 3 adventures set in Greyhawk's Blackmoor region that I enjoyed a lot.  "The Fiend's Embrace" is classic 'hawk.  There's also been several adventures set in the Geoff region.


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## haakon1 (Mar 26, 2007)

MerricB said:
			
		

> Hmm - let's see... I've adventured or run adventures in...




My PC's are a little more geographically diverse than my adventure settings.  I tell them we're playing in Bissel, but let them be from anywhere.

Current in person party:
- Dwarf & elf from Frost Barbarian lands (but not Frost Barbarian affiliated and don't speak Cold Tongue; both are played by first time players; I should work with them more on backstory).  Current backstory is pretty vague: the dwarf wizard saved the elf rogue from being killed when he was caught trying to rob a dwarfhold in the Griff Mts or Corusk Mts.  They were exiled somehow got teleported from Ratik to GHC.  From there, they went up river to the adventuring/war action in Bissel.
- Elf from Highfolk.  Came to the city/war looking for some action.
- Halfling from Ratik.  A cleric of Thor, he's on a mission from god to find and slay giants.  His dream says there's a hold Steading of them out there in the western mountains, and they're up to no good!

Any good ideas on pepping up the Ratik/Frost Barbarian angle?  These guys are only on their second adventure (Three Days to Kill, followed by Sunless Citadel).


Current email party:
- Two humans from Furyondy.  One is a cleric of St. Cuthbert who was carrying a message and is now on orders to help during the "emergency" (war with Ket).  The other is his oldest friend, a soldier who slept with the wrong wife and needed to get out of dodge.
- Two elves from Celene.  Both weavers.  One has secret connections to the Knights of Luna.  Rescued by humans while travelling near Verbobonc, they decided on noblesse oblige reasons to help humans fight evil -- and Bissel is the front line.
- One human monk of Rao from the Holds of the Sea Princes, though he hasn't been there in 200 years.  He was petrified for 200 years in the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the rest of his party long slain.  He's decided to stay in the are.
- One human ranger/rogue from the Sea of Dust.  She was sent as an explorer over the mountains, and has been wandering to and fro.
- One human from Bissel.
- One half-elf from the Vesve.

They've just returned The Standing Stones, set in the Dim Forest.


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## 00Machado (Mar 26, 2007)

grodog said:
			
		

> Actually, Sargent's Dragon articles were excerpted from Ivid the Undying after it was killed as a published product---chunks of it were salvaged as articles in Dragons 204, 206, and 208.




There was also the article Risen from the Ashes which was an overview of types of campaigns you might want to run, themes, levels, places to locate them that would work for those themes, etc. It was in issue 291.


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## 00Machado (Mar 26, 2007)

Mechanurge said:
			
		

> ... the secret wars in the occupied Shield Lands...




Was there information on this in the 1983 boxed set? I didn't think the sheild lands were occupied back then. It sounds interesting, and I'm wondering where to find stuff about it.

Thanks.


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## 00Machado (Mar 26, 2007)

Cthulhudrew said:
			
		

> Sorry, I should have clarified. Those weren't the excerpts I was talking about (though they do deserve mention). I meant a series of Campaign Journal articles where he described rumors, events, etc taking place in Greyhawk post-FtA. I'm not sure if Campaign Journal was the right name or not, but it was something like that.




FWIW, that's the article I mentioned in my post above from issue 191.


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## Thulcondar (Mar 27, 2007)

00Machado said:
			
		

> Was there information on this in the 1983 boxed set? I didn't think the sheild lands were occupied back then. It sounds interesting, and I'm wondering where to find stuff about it.
> 
> Thanks.




I assumed he was talking about the conflicts with the Horned Society, Bandit Kingdoms, and Iuz, with the Shield Lands standing as the bulwark, supported by Furyondy and Veluna. Sort of a Cold-War-era Balkans, with neither side willing to commit to overt aggression, but enough covert action and testing of strength and resolve on both sides to qualify as a low-level conflict...


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## Yeoman99 (Mar 29, 2007)

What didn't I like?
- Railroaded and over engineered plotline, not the fault of Sargent
- Lack of any subtlety - SB suddendly go from shadowy organisation to stormtroopers.
- Creation of power blocks; good v evil on a much larger scale which marginalised the regions.
- Lack of any grand scale modules following the change - Falcon series and Vecna mods looked rushed and lacked anything memorable IMHO.

I accept that the GW was brewing, but the feel of it was that it would be more localised and less continent shattering. Conflict in the West felt set-up and not well thought through. As for Sargent's work I am happy to say his style and imagination were great, but the subject matter Cook left him was poor. Greyhawk was never just the work of one creator, nor should it have been, but its style was consistent up to FTA/GW. I guess the change of pacing and direction is either something you warm to or not.

What would I have preferred?
- GW on a more regional basis (East and North always seemed likely), dropping the whole Vatun line. SB still a mystery, even if orchestrating conflict and attacks.
- A lot more thought and scale in the modules (Dragon mag. is giving this a much greater go) that create but not dictate plotlines.
- Focus on regional plot hooks and ideas with source books which can be taken and developped by the DM.

Whatever happens in the future I will still use Greyhawk, but bend it to what I want and ignore the rest. My key frustration was IMO the lack of quality work, or (as I exclude Sargent from this) limited use of products that were very metaplot focused.


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## rounser (Mar 29, 2007)

> Do people play campaigns that span all of the Flanaess? I've played all my games in western Greyhawk.



I have no idea, but like you, I don't do the road movie campaign thing.  That'd make an interesting topic for a poll.  "How much world area does your campaign use?"


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