Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 eagleye Sep 13, 2005 8:56:23	I was wondering, would it be best to purchase the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (which is quite costly), or the $5 download from RPG Now: the Greyhawk Player's Guide and World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting? Is it really worth bying the new product, or will I find all and need in the 1st/2nd ed versions?
#2 maldin Sep 13, 2005 9:45:33	The Player's Guide is really just a brief overview of the world, literally, so that players new to the campaign world can get an overview of the general stuff an average country-bumpkin-turned-adventurer would know about their world. The "Setting" product, I'm assuming is the GH boxed set from way way back. It has a short paragraph about each country, and some additional information. The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer has an order of magnitude more information (alot of historical, geographical and political detail, very little "mechanics", so its pretty much edition-neutral) then the other two products. Its a great resource, and I'm not just saying that because my name is in the acknowledgements. :-) Yamo wrote a wonderful review of it at http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10074.phtml so you can get another opinion. Are the older products all you need? Most of us old-timers ran campaigns for 20 years with just the original GH Folio (later "updated", sorta, by the Setting boxed set), so it certainly can be done. But if you want alot of really cool GH juiciness, I'd encourage you to pick up the LGG if you can afford it. It pretty much covers everything published in all the older products, plus alot more. And don't forget the immense amount of information about Greyhawk on the web at places like www.canonfire.com and my own website (propaganda below). Denis, aka "Maldin" =========================== Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com Check out the ton of cool Edition-independent stuff on my website: New Spells, Magic Items, Campaign Notoriety, Artifacts, Kyuss, secrets of the Twin Cataclysms, the Codex of the Infinite Planes, the Dreadwood, the cities of Melkot, Greyhawk and Irongate, a guide to RPG mapmaking, a Grand Unified Theory for all of D&D, and much, much more!!
#3 ripvanwormer Sep 13, 2005 10:22:43	I was wondering, would it be best to purchase the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (which is quite costly), or the $5 download from RPG Now: the Greyhawk Player's Guide and World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting? Is it really worth bying the new product, or will I find all and need in the 1st/2nd ed versions? For a pre-Wars campaign, the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting is all you strictly need; of course it can be enhanced with online sources. Because RPGnow forces you to buy at least $10 worth of products, you're going to want to combine it with something else. Some suggestions: WoGFGS with Greyhawk Adventures (if only for the Mysterious Places and Hall of Heroes chapters) WoGFGS with Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins (updates the setting and details the City of Greyhawk) Or you could forget about the WoGFGS and buy From the Ashes boxed set, a darker, arguably richer, more detailed 2nd edition take by Carl Sargent that entirely replaced the original version of the setting. On the other hand, several interesting (or, at least, potentially interesting) nations have been essentially destroyed by the Greyhawk Wars, and they still haven't been rebuilt even in the current continuity - but that's a problem even the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer faces. Even if your campaign doesn't go that way, Carl Sargent's material is well worth looking at for inspiration. Then the combo might be something like FTA and Iuz the Evil (detailing the lands conquered by Iuz after the Wars), FTA and The Marklands (detailing Furyondy, Nyrond, and I forget what else), or FTA and Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins. In any case, make sure you download the Living Greyhawk Deities list from here - it provides and updates the gods info from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and the Living Greyhawk Journal - and several other things on this page, like the Keoland download. And, no matter what, make sure you get a copy of Ivid the Undying (whether from the site I linked to, WotC's Previous Editions Downloads page, or wherever else you find it. (It's free)