It's been my long-standing beliefs that a major reason for the decline of Greyhawk as a campaign setting has been the lack of focus on the High Fantasy style elements present in very old Greyhawk campaigns in favor of more traditional Sword & Sorcery type stuff.
In discussions I've had with some people over the years I've heard terms like "low magic", "political" and worst of all "low level" associated with Greyhawk.
But these terms don't describe my early years (decades past now) playing in Greyhawk, although I agree wholeheartedly that much of the garbage spewed out in 2E met this description. The legendary and epic elements of Greyhawk were indeed sorely neglected in favor of focus on what nations were doing with PC's acting as glorified scouts and spys, as opposed to the kinds of cosmic stuff from the olden days.
What are some thoughts on this?
What are some thoughts on this?
I enjoy playing high fantasy and I DM in Greyhawk. I like the Lord of the Rings, "fight against the big bad" type fantasy. But I also like the flavour of Greyhawk. To me the "flavour of Greyhawk" isn't in "grittiness" or "low-level/magic". It's in the NPCs, the gods and the history.
Right now I finished running my players through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which incorporates all those things I like. And we aren't done yet. After they go through Maure Castle, they should be about 20th level or thereabouts and will be ready to tackle the "end game" where the leader of Tharizdun's cult in RttoEE tries one last time to free the big T.
There's no "right" way to play it. Just the way in which you have fun.
Greg
I also agree any style of play depends more on the DM and players for enjoyment, then the magic level.
I enjoy the challenge and danger, of a low level campaign rather then the PCs walking around as portable magic hoards slaying yet another evil tyrant, dragon or god for the tenth time.
That for me gets really boring, real fast.
Further, it's magical levels are much more fluid depending on the DM Preferences. In FR everything is high magic with nations based exclusively around that and the cheeseball portal system. In GH you can have the higher magic nations if ya want, just dial things up a bit somewhere if that's your fancy so that the Great Kingdom conquored more by spell than sword, or vice versus.
For me personally, I too like the low magic where it's rare and there aren't magic item shops around. I like wizards and sorcerers to be rare and feared for what they can do. They should be. If a single guy can blow a village off the face of the earth then people should be scared as hell of'em and it'd only get worse in the retelling. I like having an empire ruled literally by an evil demigod to provide an example of what "evil" really is. Finally, I _REALLY_ like the cosmology of it. I like the racial pantheons that transcend race and the dynamics between the gods, especially the ones that overlap.
All in All, Greyhawk just suits me well and my DMing style well. I like being able to ditch alignments and make doing bad things with magic do bad things to you, and have a world where the PC's don't have these giant books telling every little freakin detail about the world. Greyhawk lets me insuiate mystery into the world while still keeping it familiar.
I enjoy the challenge and danger, of a low level campaign rather then the PCs walking around as portable magic hoards slaying yet another evil tyrant, dragon or god for the tenth time.
That for me gets really boring, real fast.
Really? In my campaign, the highest level characters are between 18th-24th level (this campaign has lasted 26 years after all), and we deal with ultra-powerful baddies quite often (and usually kill them too). The challenge and the fun is in the planning and execution of strategies, discovering more about the history and various mysteries of Oerth, and just good old-fashioned role-playing. We all use an incredible amount of restraint as well, considering that any major action on our part (or inaction, as the case may be) could have planetary repercussions. Personally, I see little point in retiring characters that reach high levels of experience... they help influence the fate of the world, and even evil demigods like Iuz sometimes go to bed wondering if they're the next one to be taken out... in other words, it's an amazing feeling knowing that, in the grand scheme of things, you're not only pretty good at what you do, but that you matter and can make a difference to an entire nation rather than just a small village.
Plus, it's fun knowing you can challenge and defeat most anyone (except the gods). I love being able to cast 9th level spells, especially since I worked long and hard to get there... why not enjoy it???
I'm also trying to adopt a lot of the background from LG but the magic really needs toning down, since every nation seems to have an multiple arch mages running around (a side effect of making sure all classes are widely avaialble in each region unfortunately).
I loved the article on magical societies in the Flanaess and started off with those being the only ones but every major town has a wizards guild now, and every army has a phalanx of battle mages grumble grumble. Once my notes are complete I can go back and strip out most of it, toning down the wizardly influence in most towns and cities.
The campaign is building towards showdowns with ToEE, Vecna, Kyuss (AoW), Iuz, Tuerney, and Lolth so there is plenty of scope for it to become high fantasy as they move further up the power scale.
Now I am sure there are widely differing opinions on how 'Greyhawk' the campaign arcs are, but they cannot be accused of not being epic in scale. If that is what you are looking for, I would recommend you get hold of some of the back issues if you get a chance. Currently characters are preparing for a face-off with demogorgan, and travelling the planes to get hold of allies. The last campaign pitted players against the god-priest Kyuss.
In terms of what has changed? IMO adventures are less site-based events now than in the past (from WOTC at least), but that is more about where the industry is headed.
No elements of high fantasy in Greyhawk now? I would have agreed with this a few years back (although I don't think that this is the main reason for the setting's current situation) until the recent Campaign Arcs published in Dungeon.
The thing about this is that, if one looks at the original DMG (I mean the one from the '70s) weren't most of those artifacts actually used by PCs in Gygax's game? The lead up to Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure (later Maure Castle in 3rd Ed), written by Kuntz/Gygax (can't remember who's actually credited on the original), has the players getting the Key of Dalt from Mordenkainen. A key that can open any door. And that was probably one of his lesser magic items. In Isle of the Ape (also written by Gygax) the goal is to go get the Crook of Rao. So to me, having a high magic campaign isn't contrary to Greyhawk, it's actually the root of the setting.
Greg
The hard part I have is in imagining what the Epic NPCs are up to that the PCs have to still do all the work. They wonder - why won't Tenser help take out that Temple. They are powerful enough to demand an answer when he sends them off to risk their lives.
Currently we are running through Darnakurian's Doom thanks to Rick Miller and OJ22!
ROB
It is worth remembering that much high fantasy required protagonists to wade through petty lower politics and self interested subplots which were often used by the proerbial "Dark Overlord" (Iuz?) as part of a world spanning nefarious plot.
Greyhawk had both with the potential for relatively lower level PCs to be part of the great things afoot. Temple of Elemental Evil and Queen of Spiders way back in 1E started the ball rolling and I see no reason an imaginative DM couldn't use any of the local problems as a pathway to a final confrontation with the dark powers behind events,
The thing about this is that, if one looks at the original DMG (I mean the one from the '70s) weren't most of those artifacts actually used by PCs in Gygax's game? The lead up to Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure (later Maure Castle in 3rd Ed), written by Kuntz/Gygax (can't remember who's actually credited on the original), has the players getting the Key of Dalt from Mordenkainen. A key that can open any door. And that was probably one of his lesser magic items. In Isle of the Ape (also written by Gygax) the goal is to go get the Crook of Rao. So to me, having a high magic campaign isn't contrary to Greyhawk, it's actually the root of the setting.
Greg
I completely agree. The 1st ed GreyhawK did have a great many elements of published high fantasy (not forgetting that equally it had the opposite; eg Lendore series, Homlet , The Gaunlet UK series etc.). It was from the 2nd ed onwards that, until recently, this appeared to disappear - notably not in the setting, but in the published adventures. I think that Paizo with Eric at the helm has intentionally looked to address this.
It seems like 2E tried to quash this, making Oerth more of a "fishbowl" world where the planes were something unknown to be feared and kept at a distance and characters were meant to play detectives in urban settings. Campaign materials even contradicted each other in that regard. The City of Greyhawk stuff presented Greyhawk as cosmopolitan, multi-religious and having a large enough spellcasting population as to require separate buildings for the Wizard's Guild and the University of Magical Arts. But the Falcon adventures conversely depicted Greyhawk (and it's population) as rather provinicial, superstituous and backwards.
This just never sat well with me. Early Greyhawk was a land of high fantasy adventures where you could look forward to a future when you got to high levels. The fact that high-level NPC's tended to become embroiled in more "cosmic" affairs simply allowed more opportunity for PC's to distinguish themselves. This as opposed to Forgotten Realms where for some reason NPC's above 20th level seem positively obsessed with meddling in every aspect of day-to-day life, and might as wlel do so since they seem to have nothing better to do with their time.
The adventure progression of PC's leaned this was as well, with the Against the Giants series eventually leading in to Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The PC's, crossing from mid to high level find themselves starting out on a hunt and destroy mission against marauding giants and end up on a world-hopping planar adventure. This is how quasi-deities are made. And certainly opens more adventure hooks.
It was from the 2nd ed onwards that, until recently, this appeared to disappear - notably not in the setting, but in the published adventures.
It was the "high fantasy" aspect that was among the frequent criticisms of the 2nd edition From the Ashes-era material. For example, ubermagical castles like Bloodcrystal and Permanence, or the Causeway of the Fiends, or the Fading Lands, or the magical dirawaen roads.
There is certainly no lack of demonlords and similar foes out there. Castle Greyhawk, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, White Plume Mountain, and the GDQ series all feature them or other 'epic' elements. But what you don't see is dozens of high powered NPCs in every town and village.
Btw, its not true that most of the artifacts in the DMG were used in Gary's campaign. Few, if any, of them were. Brian Blume invented a number of them from whole cloth and others were simply hinted at in stories and such. Also, Gary's PCs tended to fade out of active use around lvl 10-12, brought out afterwards for special events and custom adventures. I may be misremembering, but I think only Isle of the Ape was geared towards characters above lvl 12 in all the early era adventures. Actually, I'm not even sure Isle was early era, come to think of it.
Certainly nothing prevents a DM from running the campaign as they see fit and having as much or as little "high fantasy" involved as they wish. Its the DM's campaign, not Gary's or anyone else's.
I don't know which artifacts Brian Blume invented, but there were quite a number named for Gary's family. Queen Ehlissa's Marvelous Nightingale, Ring of Gaxx, Recrder of Ye'Cind. The fact that so many appeared in the DMG made it seem like they belonged to Greyhawk, including the extensive backstories. Codex of Infinite Planes specifically mentioned Greyhawk and the Nyr Dyv. I believe there is a list running around that listed the Artifacts, and labelled them as being Definitely, Probably, or Possibly Greyhawk.
Ah - here is a much more advanced version....
http://melkot.com/arcane/artifact.html
ROB
Again, this is why early Greyhawk had more high fantasy. Yes, the bulk of artifacts from the DMG were linked to the Greyhawk setting or characters therein. It was late 1E/early 2E before the TSR Gygax split and other factors drove the shift away from Greyhawk. And truthfully the magic level of Forgotten Realms was not significantly different from that of Greyhawk in those days. Some of us still remember when Elminster was just a 26th level Magic User with some psionic extras, not the juggernaut of power-gaming he is today. The Realms and it's NPC's weren't quite as epic back then.
I do know that some aspects of Greyhawk are considered disconcerting to some folks. Many of the old 1E adventures were very odd. Crashed starships don't sit well with many fantasy gamers nowadays, although back in the 70's and 80's crossovers between Sci-fi and Fantasy were rather popular.
Early FR had a lot more high level magic users than GH did, but it had hardly any high level warriors (or anything else) mentioned. And those few with details had complete junk for equipment. It was pretty amusing, actually.