Spoiler Alert!
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I would utilize the supplement Ivid the Undying extensively and the series would take place primarily in the former Great Kingdom with brief excursions to Ratik, the ruins of Chathold, and Irongate. The adventures would begin in 586 CY in the small Adri village of Elversford and progress outward from there. Along the way, there are a few notable villains I wish to present to the PCs, although not necessarily always directly. Among them are Prince Reydrich, Duke Szeffrin, Drax the Invulnerable, Ivid the Undying himself, Karoolck his court wizard, and Baalzephon, the pit fiend to whom Ivid is beholden.
So I'd like to pick your collective brains for ideas. If I use anyone's ideas I will be sure to list you in the credits. What locations do you think are iconic to the Great Kingdom and deserve visiting in this series? What NPCs should I utilize and for what purpose from low levels into high? Assuming that Baalzephon and Karoolck are the arch-villains of the campaign, what sort of dark plot do you imagine would be their ultimate agenda and what tools (i.e. powerful items) will the PCs need to utilize/destroy to defeat them? (For this last one, bear in mind the PCs should not be able to easily unveil the plot until they are nearing the end of the series. The various schemes will have to be picked apart and analyzed like layers of an onion to ascertain the true mastermind and his endgame.)
Also, since I am no artist, it would be really nifty to have volunteers to do some artwork and/or maps. I have Dundjinni but confess I am short of being a master of its applications. Any offers will be considered.
Right now the project is just in the brainstorming phase, but I've been pouring through Ivid the Undying looking for ideas and know that many heads are better than one. Much thanks to anyone willing to contribute!
I'm sorry I didn't get back to you soon enough, the email came through from Duicarthian, had to get your email and have been swamped at work getting my PbP character ready, as well as my own campagin notes finished.
From your notes, which others may not quite understand, I can understand the dilema that you are in. You are hoping to walk that fine line between fan and professional. Writing for the RPGA allows you to write Greyhawk Specific adventures and get paid for them, albeit $50 isn't much for the time spent in writting them. Free fan work pays even less, and likely has even less credibility, especially if you are looking for future name recognition, unless you happen to have been around when Holian and Mona started The Thursday Group.
Sure I knew Steve Greer long before he was writting professionally, and pointed him to the GreyChat's, but I'd say he's a rare exception to the rule of most posters and fan authors.
Using your RPGA contacts to write the adventure gives you the greatest ability to be seen by those RPG companies that might be willing to purchase your skills. Writing and offering your stuff on RPG Now means that you can't use WotC material that isn't in the SRD or by d20 publishers that which isn't listed as OGC. Thus if you would like to sell your work as a PDF via RPGNow, you'd have to do some serious work to modify the adventure, background and so forth.
If that is the case, what I'd propose is to get the background of Path-Hawk from Paizo by proposing your adventure in their lands. Even if it is free fan work, you'd be on the ground floor of a new world setting that many people would find "semi-official."
By "semi-official" I mean work that many players, and more importantly DM's find and use as if it were WotC material. A lot of Green Ronin's stuff (Advanced Players Manual (skip "the sage" williams), Game Masters Guide, Advanced Bestiary and so forth ), of course Monte Cook's Malhavoc press with Wolfgang Bauer (Roguish Luck), sean k. reynolds' Skryens books, David "Zeb" Cook, and so many other's that have WotC credits.
To me, Campaign Worlds are a dime-a-dozen. Troll Lords Erde - which is kinda 'hawkish in their attempt, and furhter 'hawkish with their EGG stuff, and couple Kuntz items. Kenzer paid a furtune for the D&D logo to be applied to their Kingdoms of Kalamar stuff, but it was excellent, awsome and what not. AEG's Accordlands came out after a 2 yr delay, but to very little hype (I know this from 3yrs at GAMA, and talking to Kenzer people last year about how hard it is with the D&D logo - everything needed to be approved by WotC if it was to have the logo, and AEG had promised Accordlands in 2004 (or 03), and with 3.5 had to postpone it).
Heck, Farland is a free home-brew campaign world that someone thought was cool enough to post a free 200ish page book. Heck, EN Worlds own Morris has his campaign, Dusk, with a 300 page home brew campaign. But what I'm getting at is there are TONS of campaign worlds in which you could write and even get paid a bit for. However, there are only a handful that are not produced by WotC that are "semi-official" - those being Kalamar, Ptolus (because it's Monte Cook), Freeport (because for a while there, it looked like it was going somewhere), and Paizo's new world.
With so many people upset with the Dragon/Dungeon issue, many will be moving towards their world, and it being Erik Mona, you know it'll have enough things that people will recognize that it'll be able to be converted to Greyhawk. They might have the best opening oppurtunity to modify your adventure plan towards. They already have the concept of Adventure Path's down, and sure they'll be selling Pathfinder, but they'll want "side adventures" and side oppurtunities that they might even be able to use your work.
What I think will happen with Pathfinder's world is something like Goodman Games' Known World. They produced 40 some odd adventures and wanted a place to tie them togeather (wait, isn't that how Greyhawk got started), and then produced a world from that (or partial world, I've not yet had room to put up my maps). They might be a good option for you to post your module if your after the concept of selling it.
I'm not trying to get you away from Greyhawk in any means, but if selling the work is important to you, then I don't see any other oppurtunity open for you, unless you wait for the new digitial Dungeon to come out and then you attempt to sell your work to them.
With AP's being so popular now (EN World's Burning Man Party will be over soon enough) there is plenty of place to place your adventure - and to sell it, you'd have modifications to make, that it wouldn't matter which world it was on. At which point, you'd have to determine - is it all worth it. The time and effort you've placed into doing the adventure as-is, along with any modifications you'd have to make to fit into X world/'hawk.
Make it Fan work, keep it "real" Greyhawk and post it on CanonFire, GreyhawkOnline (I'd make a special place for it), or modify it to fit someone elses fake-hawk.
Be Well. Be Well Modified.
Theocrat Issak
PS - no matter what you do, can I have a copy of the Greyhawk version?
Anyway, I have been leaning more and more towards doing this as a fan work. If I could get away with writing it based on some WotC material, as long as I do not reprint it in entirety, and using some of the ideas within Ivid the Undying, I would be happy. One major goal of the project is to develop a campaign set in the Great Kingdom, something that has never really been done (unless you count LG, but not everyone does). I have my own campaign world that I've developed some adventures for and negotiated a contract with a d20 company to publish, but to be honest, they are not having much luck pushing fantasy stuff right now anyway, and I imagine my time could be better spent.
You could also include Goldbolt, Karn Serrand, and Hierranea, the storm giant prophet who predicted that Chathold would sink into the bay. That might elude to a great magical event as presented in DMGII.
Blacksplinter and Prince Ferrenan might be a great side quest, too. Perhaps a roleplaying encounter in which the PCs try to gain his aid with some particular effort.
Regarding maps, I would solicit the community in the Dundjinni forums. Since they can't post anything with IP on the forums, you could suggest they contact you directly for the details of the project. If you provide a sketch of what you want, they should be able to duplicate it fairly easily. Luckily there's even a couple of third-party art packs for ruins, too.
As an aside, this is very similar to a high-level campaign arc I was trying to plan sometime back. The campaign never reached that far, but I might still have a lot of notes that you might be able to use.
Other supplements you could use in this campaign might include Heroes of Horror for the badlands (taint rules might be fun to use), Book of Vile Darkness, Fiend Folio, and Fiendish Codex I for the remaining fiends in Almor, Heroes of Battle for a great epic battle among Ahlissa, Nyrond, and or the Great Kingdom as they fight for Almor territory, and Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (wondrous architecture) for particular fortifications.
Also, don't be afraid to reference bits of Eberron's Mournland. That could certainly apply to Almor, and refugees of Almor could be the equivalent of the refugees of Cyre.
Any more on this?