A "youngbloood's" take on Greyhawk - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

A "youngbloood's" take on Greyhawk

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
terraneaux
Jan 28, 2006 3:24:58 And by youngblood, i guess i mean n00b.

So I've been playing DnD since May of 2001, and my experience with any edition older than 3rd is limited to Baldur's Gate.

I started out running some prepackaged adventures, some out of dungeon and some i found online etc. I ostensibly set these in greyhawk and i picked up that 9.99 pamphlet that came with a color map of greyhawk. (The one thing I can't stand about the WoTC maps is no national borders. Urrg!) After a bit i realized that i didn't really know enough about the setting and moved into some homebrew stuff with a bit of planescape mixed in; i managed to track down a copy of the old planescape box.

After a brief hiatus i got in to living greyhawk; i'm from Northern California so I played in the Pale, a setting that i really enjoyed as i liked the religious flavor of the area. I quit with the living greyhawk because i felt the campaign was too restrictive for my tastes, but kept a liking for greyhawk and Pholtus in particular. Pholtus rocks, you get to play a good-aligned cleric and be an ass about it.

Later I was finally introduced to Forgotten Realms, which I had stayed away from for a number of reasons that I don't want to list here (ridiculous level of magic without incorporating it into the infrastructure, lots of meddling gods and uber npcs from novels) and this isn't really the thread to get into them. Long story short, a few play experiences told me that FR was defnitely not the setting for me for exactly the reasons i mentioned, and I moved on. I played in Eberron around this time too, and i really liked it, because it was high action and actually thought out how magic would change economies and nations. It really isn't what i would call traditional fantasy. It's a very strange breed of setting, and I definitely dig it, but I got a bit burnt out on that setting and moved on.

So I started playing the Age of Worms adventure path, which my dm set in greyhawk, and am enjoying that. A little bit later I picked up the Shackled City adventure path compilation book, and decided to get that and run it. I tracked down a copy of the living greyhawk gazetteer in the bargain bin at my flgs and managed to borrow the adnd "greyhawk adventures" book. Putting this stuff together with Living Greyhawk material online I managed to get a lot of information about greyhawk together. While I do fully sympathize with the authors of the adventure path material and their being forced to make the adventure paths workable for all settings (and greyhawk is probably not their favorite setting, really), I did really want to set Shackled City in Greyhawk, not the bastardized "core" thing that WoTC has going on. I put Cauldron in between Ket and Highfolk, for those of you looking at your maps, and am trying to give it as much of a dark ages feel as possible.

To me, that's what makes Greyhawk interesting. It's Dark Ages Europe, with the elements that make role-playing interesting thrown in. Magic isn't common enough to greatly influence the economy the way it should in FR and does in Eberron, and the social structure is still very dated. There are very few democracies, which seem to spring up all the time in other setting with fairy-tale like descriptions of how all the races would just "get along." Really, there is Highfolk, but I imagine that place as more of an example of militant survivalists of some kind.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've developed a deep appreciation for the Greyhawk setting, I like that it *feels* like fantasy, I like that it is dark and gritty compared to other settings, I like that I can throw around capital punishment (Off with his head!). It just feels right. I'm enjoying running Shackled City there, and afterwards hope to run some more games in the setting. It's not all roses, of course, but I was really surprised at how coherent this setting was after slogging through page after page of canon npcs in the FR books.
#2
max_writer
Jan 28, 2006 5:56:10 Welcome aboard. Enjoy the adventure.

Greyhawk was the only setting when I got into D&D in '79 and I've never turned back. My own world has such a rich history both thanks to the campaign setting and my own campaigns that I can't even imagine running anything other than Greyhawk.
#3
zombiegleemax
Jan 28, 2006 13:25:05 Good choice on the LGG. It's a great book. It's what got me into GH back in 2002. I had the misfortune of starting in D&D twelve years before, when TSR was really pushing the Realms and so I knew nothing about GH before I found this great book.

Welcome!
#4
grodog
Jan 28, 2006 22:03:34 Welcome to the fold, Terraneaux. If you're looking for pointers to other GH resources, let us know, and I'm sure we'll all chime in with our favorites :D

I just moved from NCal, and if you're interested in some GH gaming, I know of a DM in the Oakland/Berkeley area who runs a great GH campaign! There's also a lot of LG at the local cons, which are worth checking out (DunDraCon celebrates it's 30th anniversary this spring).

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 terraneaux Jan 28, 2006 3:24:58	And by youngblood, i guess i mean n00b. So I've been playing DnD since May of 2001, and my experience with any edition older than 3rd is limited to Baldur's Gate. I started out running some prepackaged adventures, some out of dungeon and some i found online etc. I ostensibly set these in greyhawk and i picked up that 9.99 pamphlet that came with a color map of greyhawk. (The one thing I can't stand about the WoTC maps is no national borders. Urrg!) After a bit i realized that i didn't really know enough about the setting and moved into some homebrew stuff with a bit of planescape mixed in; i managed to track down a copy of the old planescape box. After a brief hiatus i got in to living greyhawk; i'm from Northern California so I played in the Pale, a setting that i really enjoyed as i liked the religious flavor of the area. I quit with the living greyhawk because i felt the campaign was too restrictive for my tastes, but kept a liking for greyhawk and Pholtus in particular. Pholtus rocks, you get to play a good-aligned cleric and be an ass about it. Later I was finally introduced to Forgotten Realms, which I had stayed away from for a number of reasons that I don't want to list here (ridiculous level of magic without incorporating it into the infrastructure, lots of meddling gods and uber npcs from novels) and this isn't really the thread to get into them. Long story short, a few play experiences told me that FR was defnitely not the setting for me for exactly the reasons i mentioned, and I moved on. I played in Eberron around this time too, and i really liked it, because it was high action and actually thought out how magic would change economies and nations. It really isn't what i would call traditional fantasy. It's a very strange breed of setting, and I definitely dig it, but I got a bit burnt out on that setting and moved on. So I started playing the Age of Worms adventure path, which my dm set in greyhawk, and am enjoying that. A little bit later I picked up the Shackled City adventure path compilation book, and decided to get that and run it. I tracked down a copy of the living greyhawk gazetteer in the bargain bin at my flgs and managed to borrow the adnd "greyhawk adventures" book. Putting this stuff together with Living Greyhawk material online I managed to get a lot of information about greyhawk together. While I do fully sympathize with the authors of the adventure path material and their being forced to make the adventure paths workable for all settings (and greyhawk is probably not their favorite setting, really), I did really want to set Shackled City in Greyhawk, not the bastardized "core" thing that WoTC has going on. I put Cauldron in between Ket and Highfolk, for those of you looking at your maps, and am trying to give it as much of a dark ages feel as possible. To me, that's what makes Greyhawk interesting. It's Dark Ages Europe, with the elements that make role-playing interesting thrown in. Magic isn't common enough to greatly influence the economy the way it should in FR and does in Eberron, and the social structure is still very dated. There are very few democracies, which seem to spring up all the time in other setting with fairy-tale like descriptions of how all the races would just "get along." Really, there is Highfolk, but I imagine that place as more of an example of militant survivalists of some kind. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've developed a deep appreciation for the Greyhawk setting, I like that it feels like fantasy, I like that it is dark and gritty compared to other settings, I like that I can throw around capital punishment (Off with his head!). It just feels right. I'm enjoying running Shackled City there, and afterwards hope to run some more games in the setting. It's not all roses, of course, but I was really surprised at how coherent this setting was after slogging through page after page of canon npcs in the FR books.
#2 max_writer Jan 28, 2006 5:56:10	Welcome aboard. Enjoy the adventure. Greyhawk was the only setting when I got into D&D in '79 and I've never turned back. My own world has such a rich history both thanks to the campaign setting and my own campaigns that I can't even imagine running anything other than Greyhawk.
#3 zombiegleemax Jan 28, 2006 13:25:05	Good choice on the LGG. It's a great book. It's what got me into GH back in 2002. I had the misfortune of starting in D&D twelve years before, when TSR was really pushing the Realms and so I knew nothing about GH before I found this great book. Welcome!
#4 grodog Jan 28, 2006 22:03:34	Welcome to the fold, Terraneaux. If you're looking for pointers to other GH resources, let us know, and I'm sure we'll all chime in with our favorites :D I just moved from NCal, and if you're interested in some GH gaming, I know of a DM in the Oakland/Berkeley area who runs a great GH campaign! There's also a lot of LG at the local cons, which are worth checking out (DunDraCon celebrates it's 30th anniversary this spring).