I'd like to know other opinions about this subject: come on guys, gimme a shout! :D
This is just my own personal opinion of course but I thought it was incredibly Forgotten Realmish. In fact I think it would probably be a perfect match for Eberron given that settings reliance on magical machinery. Although it has some nice maps for the area around Diamond Lake if you are planning to run the Age of Worms. I guess the whole derro + magical 'earth juggernaut ship' with magical weapon points didn't jibe well with my version of Greyhawk.
Crypt of Lyzandred is simply a random collection of random encounters and traps. What meaning or relevance it has to Lyzandred or any Greyhawk plots is simply lost in the sheer randomness of it all.
Star Cairns has poor graphics, and needs serious conversion because of the power level, but is otherwise a fairly decent effort overall.
During the adventure, the characters have to board the war machine, slip inside the belly of this monster and fight all the way through the control chamber to finally stop its dreadful running!
Is it me or is this remarkably similar to stopping Lolth's "ship" in the old Queen of the Spiders mod.? :D
And that was before I even knew it was actually aimed at the Pomarj (and not Greyhawk City)! Ugh!
It ranks with Castle Greyhawk and Puppets in terms of the low ebb of Greyhawk material, IMO.
P.
It seems I've hit a bee hive! I was almost sure that someone could consider Doomgrinder adventure something "non-too-Greyhawkian", but i couldn't imagine 'til this point!
I've to admit Mortepierre is right: Doomgrinder is similar to Lolth's "ship" in the old Queen of the Spiders mod. but I don't think this is a bad thing. After all, the FR adventure is still one of the best you can find around (if you like the setting, of course!).
Responding to Lassiviren: it's true, you can surely use the Doomgrinder as a part of an Eberron adventure, but Greyhawk setting is poor of magic, not magical items. Gigax slipped magical items in every corner to mantain the magic level low but still provide the setting with magical devices in order to help or trouble his players. Gosh, some artifact are literally frightening! But as you said, YOU are the DM, and if in your personal campaign the magical level and use of magical devices is low, I totally respect your point of view.
Woesinger, I don't think Doomgrinder is a stoopid clockwork toy; I consider it an effort (that could be enhanced) to give "an atmospheric eldritch artifact possibly fortelling the doom of the Oerth" a new vest, to transform it in something DMs can use inside an adventure... If you think about it, the prophecy isn't too much wrong: if that colossal war machine starts, only the bravest PCs could stop it! :D
I agree with you about Castle Greyhawk and Puppets, but if you read The adventure Begis accessory, it clearly states that Castle Greyhawk is something created for fun and it could be ignored if you play a more serious campaign. As for uppets, well... not all the adventures could be great! ;)
After all, the FR adventure is still one of the best you can find around (if you like the setting, of course!).
What?!?
Queen of the Spiders is a GH adventure! Not some FR
!:hoppingma
Woesinger, I don't think Doomgrinder is a stoopid clockwork toy; I consider it an effort (that could be enhanced) to give "an atmospheric eldritch artifact possibly fortelling the doom of the Oerth" a new vest, to transform it in something DMs can use inside an adventure... If you think about it, the prophecy isn't too much wrong: if that colossal war machine starts, only the bravest PCs could stop it! :D
It was an attempt to do that alright - but a badly botched one. The Doomgrinder as described in FtA seems to hint that it's basically a Doomsday clock for the entire Oerth, fortelling some massive cataclysm or perhaps even the Fading of Magic.
The Doomgrinder adventure stripped away the portentous wonder of this and revealed it as the conning tower of a big clockwork engine, the activation of which has some very local effects (compared to what was intimated in FtA), which are only bad if you're in the City of Greyhawk (or anywhere else on the path of the juggernaut). Woo.
It's like wandering into Mordor and discovering that the Eye of Sauron is just a bonfire for the annual orc jamboree and marshmallow toasting fest.
My get-around is to either (a) completely ignore the whole abberation or (b) (slightly more constructively) to assume that the clockwork was built later to draw on the power of the pre-existing and still mysterious Doomgrinder - so that when/if the clockwork is activated, it wanders off to where ever it is it's meant to go and the 'Grinder is left behind, as enigmatic and eldritch as before.
How you could use the Doomgrinder more constructively is to use it as a hook foreshadow some great disaster that the PCs have to stop. They need to understand what the DG is, who built, why and to foretell what. Even if you prefer a kick in the door style of play, you can use it as a bit of flavoursome background to add a bit of depth to the world.
Alternatively, you could take a really dark turn and - drawing on the idea of the City at the Edge of Midnight from the original D&D cartoon - discover that the only way to avert the disaster is make blood sacrifices to hold the 'Grinder back. Therein you have a moral dilemma - do you sacrifice innocents to save the world or spare the innocents and doom the Oerth to whatever disaster the DG portends?
So - just a few minutes thought gives you a couple of (what I think are) better uses for the DG in a campaign than the one presented in The Doomgrinder adventure. Your milage may, of course, vary.
P.
What?!?
Queen of the Spiders is a GH adventure! Not some FR !
Excuse me, Mortepierre, it was all a bad mistake!
I just wanted to explain that some NEW FR AdventureS are very beautiful compared to other adventures bounded to similar settings. I prefer adventures with low-level magic, because I like PC try to solve problems with their heads instead to use some powerful magic, ruining all the struggle to reach the goal. That's all. I admit my explanation sounded awful, but believe me it wasn't my idea to classify QotS as a FR adventure! Excuse again for the misunderstanding! :D
Excuse again for the misunderstanding! :D
As long as we set things straight, no harm done. But I'll die before seeing one of "our" adventures stolen by another setting :fight!:
In fact, many years ago, my brother DM'd an adventure of his own devising (gives me a break once in a while) where we had to stop a Dreadnought that was attacking coastal settlements with a variety of magical weapons, disrupting local economies and swallowing up ships. The Dreadnought itself was gigantic and magically propelled, and obviously based on the Liparus in The Spy Who Loved Me, so an adventure like The Doomgrinder is not without precedent in my campaign (and yes, we did sink it at the end too!).
We end up doing a lot of adventures drawn from ideas in various source materials, and do include the occasional module (the most recent was The Liberation of Geoff). Perhaps it's time to return to Greyhawk and deal with the Doomgrinder menace once we finish our current adventure in the dungeons below Castle Blackmoor...
And don't understimate the power of this artifact: it's almost unstoppable, full of deadly weapons, able to destroy whole villages and cities at its passage, full od evil derro ready to use it to conquer Under-Oerth and also the surfece world... For me this is enough to be considered a major threat for all Oerth, and not only Greyhawk City.
A good question is: this adventure should be considered canon? There are adventures (like "Castle Greyhawk") born as comedy versions of more serious and straightforward adventures, and this kind of stuff is putted in a sort of "not-to-use" list. Since Erik Mona was one of the Greyhawk Sages with Steve Wilson, I'd like to know his personal idea about this thread, and possibly how he could better or enhance the story to better fulfill the spirit and the rules of a 3.5 version of this adventures :D
I would be more willing to accept the "Juggernaut" story (instead of "Windmill of the Apocalypse") if they had bothered to include more info about the lost civilization that supposedly built it in the first place.
There have been other instances of "techno-magic" on the Flanaess but not in this particular area, so the concept doesn't settle too well with me.
If I wanted to ruin the region, I would rather go with the Wight-plague from the AoW path.
If things start to go bad, you can let the PC fail and use some Circle of the Eight member (or more than one! :D ) to minimize damage done to the City (the story has to left some visible scars on Greyhawk if the PC let the machine enter through the city walls).
I agree with you when you say we have poor information regarding the now-lost civilization that bilt the Doomgrinder thousands of years ago.
For the Wight-plague from the AoW path, I have to admit it: THAT is a very great mess. If the PC fails, there surely will be 15,000 killings between population... and the consequent transformation into wight!
. I understand this was intended in the story because the PC at this point of the adventure are very powerful and they have to feel the pressure of their growing reputation. Now it's not only a matter of a big bad boss they have to kick-asss... now, if they fail a lot of people can die... or worst became wight and start to run free in the city, killing other people and creating other undead for the army of darkness! This is what I call a "Domino-effect"! 
The characters are all ultra-high level, and I figured they'd find a way to stop it eventually, but they immediately took advantage of the one serious flaw and incredibly devastating weakness in the Doomgrinder: the arrow slits. One of the wizards became astral, entered the Doomgrinder, and found the rear hatch in short order (even though the juggernaut is 100% magic resistant, I ruled that an astral traveller could pass through the hull; even if it was a bum call, it made little difference to the outcome, since he or someone else would have slipped through an arrow slit anyway). Although they can be be closed to make it watertight and cannot be entered by normal means since they're obviously so small (especially with arrows, crossbow bolts and boiling oil raining down on anyone attempting to board it), a shapechanged druid with a wizard using the psionic ability of reduction riding along were able to slip through one at the rear with ease, enter the stairwell, and open the hatch for the others.
The rest evaded the derro's weapons, since they could fly and become invisible (approaching from above and behind was too easy), and once the stairwell was secured (one of the two drow aboard, Daneel, randomly happened to be in the stairwell and was assassinated by the fighter/ninja before he could react, and a wish was used to wizard lock all the doors into the stairwell), they captured two slaves, dispelled their charms and got a good idea of the layout of the Doomgrinder (they were more than happy to help the adventurers). They made their plans over the next several hours and early the next morning, they teleported into and seized the Control Room. Some well-timed flamestrikes from outside distracted the derro (while it couldn't damage the hull, flame did erupt through the open arrow slits and scorched some of them), and a cloudkill down into the lower control room slew Delarnev Ralim, his two protegés, and the rest.
The fear aura from a magical sword that affects only the adventurer's enemies was used to drive the derro away towards the rear of the Doomgrinder, and several cloudkills finished them off. The juggernaut had barely travelled 2 miles, and once they took control of it, the party drove it over the next several days to Greyhawk and parked it outside the city walls to the northeast, between the Grand Citadel and the Duke Gate. The derro bodies had been disposed of, the treasure collected by freed slaves and prisoners (much of which was returned to them, since it was theirs anyway), and most of the weapons were seized, but three were given to the Wizards' Guildhall for study: a bone melter, a shadow-thrower and a flesh eater. The dao and efreeti were freed, and they escaped back to their respective planes through two gates cast for that purpose (so as not to wreak havoc in the countryside around Greyhawk).
Of course, when dealing with characters who are mostly 18+ level, things will go rather smoothly, but the arrow slits present an incredible weakness to characters of almost any level. Even a low level character with invisibility and a potion of gaseous form could easily slip inside, locate one of the two hatches and open it for his or her buddies, and even if it couldn't be stopped before it reached Greyhawk, the higher-level defenders of the city could have used that information to penetrate it and start eradicating the derro.
I had kinda hoped they'd stop the Doomgrinder just before it hit Greyhawk, which would have made for a really cool climactic ending, but, as usual, the players came up with something I hadn't counted on and, in this case, nipped the adventure in the bud before it really got started! It was OK though, since their tactics were original and outstanding, and The Doomgrinder was kind of an interlude to their current adventure anyway, which required some weeks of waiting before certain other events happened...
Excuse again for the misunderstanding! :D
Lock him into Rauxes' darkest dungeon!
