But it wasn't always this way.
In the early days of 1E Greyhawk was a setting of fantastic adventure. The old AD&D modules went to strange, fascinating locales, and Flanaess politics were a distant concern.
I think back to modules like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Ghost Tower of Inverness and the Against the Giants/Descent/Vault/Demonweb series and I wonder - what ever happened to high fantasy?
The late 1E/early 2E stuff was just lame. The Falcon modules were corny and made Greyhawk look like some kind of hick town. continental wars were clearly inevitable to anyone who was paying attention in 1E. But in the aftermath why did the focus shift so much?
Greyhawk used to be a setting where characters looked forward to reaching high levels because the adventures kept getting bigger and bigger. Yet somehow it became a setting where low- to mid- level was optimum because the adventures centered around having powerful NPC's using PC's as errand boys.
Does anyone else see this?
Originally posted by Psionycx
I think back to modules like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Ghost Tower of Inverness and the Against the Giants/Descent/Vault/Demonweb series and I wonder - what ever happened to high fantasy?
They weren't 'high fantasy' they were dumb fantasy, ie. open door, monster, kill, get treasure, rinse'n'repeat...
The absence of politics in a setting does not make it high fantasy, it just means you don't have the option of playing a politically charged game. Whereas with established politics, you can just as easily ignore them as take advantage of them.
If you want high fantasy, either ignite a spliff or become a better DM.
What I truly despise is the whole concept of the 'good old days'. Gaming and RPG's have, as a whole, gotten a LOT better, not worse. You might like driving around in a Model T Ford, but I'll take my Mustang with ABS, cruise control, airbags, CD-stacker, eight speaker surround sound, 12" sub, climate control, engine immobilizer, extractors, 19" rims, 3" exhaust, sportsrider suspension, traction control and six-speed clutchless manual (ok, ok... I don't have that, but I'm just providing an example) over it any day :P
Greyhawk used to be a setting where characters looked forward to reaching high levels because the adventures kept getting bigger and bigger. Yet somehow it became a setting where low- to mid- level was optimum because the adventures centered around having powerful NPC's using PC's as errand boys.
2e GH adventures were relatively few, but there were more sourcebooks than in 1e. I used those sourcebooks and the original boxed set to create my own adventures. While my longest running 2e campaign only featured chars. of up to lvl 9, the players earned every lvl, and they were never "errand boys."
So I don't see it and wonder if this is more of a personal or "local" phenomenon -- where certain DMs (perhaps influenced by the Realms?) created many adventures where PCs were "errand boys."
I don't know.
The SETTING had a cool factor that it lost in later years. Once upon a time Greyhawk was dripping with signature characters, cool artifacts, neat history and bizarre adventure locations.
At some point that got buried under worrying about whether or not orcs were coming up the Wild Coast.
Not that I don't like a well-defined setting. But politics can get a little onerous. And what happened is that the adventures started focusing so much on the city of Greyhawk itself, which was also dumbed-down to make it more user-friendly to low-level characters.
I'm not going to start a Gygax-esque rant about the merits of dungeon crawling, but I do think that one reason Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance shot ahead of Greyhawk was because they started thinking big, and the Greyhawk writers were thinking small.
I just think too much thought goes into what the political climate is between Nyrond and Ahlissa and not enough into what kinds of fantastic locales await adventurers.
"...too much thought goes into what the political climate is between Nyrond and Ahlissa ..."
There is an enormous amount of regional politics generally managed by high-level NPCs (kings, Queens, etc.).
I am not saying it's good or bad, just that I can see how that point of view can develop. I will say I like 1st ed. adventure modules (The Caverns of Tsojcanth, Needle, The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, e.g.) much better than their 2nd ed. counterparts. As a side note, I like 3.5 ed. a lot and I don't have any complaints about it at all.
Of course, like Delglath and Tizoc asserted, a DM and his or her gaming group can work around or with currently published material in the 3rd ed. world. But there are DMs who don't have time to develop their table-top settings to the paradigm they have enjoyed in the past. So, an emphasis on more "meaty" adventure material will be helpful for people who can't devote time to developing GH from extant source books and the like.
I am certainly not praising the 1E rules system over 2E or 3E. However, if you've been paying attention (I'll assume you haven't) as long as I have, you will notice that for years now most Greyhawk products are repetitive.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for me as a player was the fact that a lot of the published material was just updates of exisitng products. From The Ashes was little more than an update to the orginal boxed set. Truthfully that's all The Living Greyhawk Gazeteer was too. Greyhawk, The Adventure Begins was just a follow up to the City of Greyhawk boxed set. Pages and pages were just updates and clarifications to things we already knew.
Consider the City of Greyhawk itself. For the "Gem of the Flanaess: it is curiously bland. Mostly it's dirt-road Medieval city with a couple of pieces of novel architecture. Disappointment city. The city of Suderham in te original Slavelords modules was a neat place, on an island in the middle of a lake in a old volcanic crater.
The latter-day urge seemed to be that the Flanaess should be just an emulation of Medieval Europe, but with magic. They seemed to dismiss the notion that magic would enable the fantastic. Oerth also went from being a well-travelled world in a planar sense to being an insular place whose only contact with the planes was having fiends summoned to it.
I'm taking this harsh stance because people keep wondering why Greyhawk is relegated to background status while people adore FR and DL. This is why!
At some point Greyhawk became a setting for low-level "town" adventures. Accessories spent more time focusing on politics that players don't care much about more than adventures. Yell at me all you want but it's the truth.
If we want energy back in Greyhawk we need to remember it's about adventure and not politics.
As I noted above, I understand Psioncyx's point of view, whether it's right, wrong or indifferent. I don't think he's trolling. It's his opinion and I respect it. I don't get into the authorship debate. I usually find elements I like in everyone's commercial GH writing.
Beside The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, I use "third-party" adventures to fill in for the current dearth of GH specific adventures. Malhavoc Press' © The Banewarrens and AEG's © River of Blood are two of my favorites. They work well and are easily adaptable. Ignoring GH's political atmosphere is easy, too.
LOL, I like Temple of the Frog, but I did not initially. It grew on me. I thought it was ridiculous when I first saw it, but I still put my money down for it. Finally, after a few readings (and a few years) I thought, "Hey, what the heck," and we played it in 1989. It was fun.
Anyway, I'm mostly trying to keep the peace and be objective. GH rules in most forms and 3.5 ed. rules are my favorite. Merry Christmas!
This is not an author thing per se. I'm not a celebrity cultist, not even in music or movies. I don't generally care who produces a piece of entertainment as long as I enjoy it.
It's more of a concept thing. For some reason latter-day Greyhawk materials focused more on urban lifestyle, or a-fighter-a-wizard-a-cleric-and-a-thief-and-they're-detectives.
Greyhawk has had, in my opinion, a better, more coherent history, and one that relates to adventures than any other setting. Ancient pre-migration civilizations left behind enough cool stuff for great fantasy. And once upon a time Greyhawk players aspired to greater heights (like becoming big names like the quasi-deities).
In other words, Greyhawk used to be perfectly fit for Epic stuff. Now it's designed with less ambitous goals in mind. This is what killed it. While FR went uber-twink (to the point of absurdity), Greyhawk, which had a much nicer feel, got dumbed-down to make it more of a "beginner's" setting. The political obsession added a false sense of sophistication that did little for the average player.
But it's no excuse for the kind of junk that did manifest in the scant products that came out. The Falcon stuff was just dumb. It made Greyhawk look like some kind of border town inhabited by yokels.
It just seems like everything began to revolve around town adventures or border disputes.
I can agree with Greyson, but I've noticed that the 2e modules that putatively were less fantastic than 1e mods. have not been named. It's that lack of specificity that makes me question your argument. You claim that a change in the kind of adventures caused (contributed to) the decline of the popularity of the GH setting.
However, relatively fewer adventures were published for GH. While some may have been low-level, e.g. Patriots of Ulek or Borderwatch, City of Skulls was also published. I contend that due to a set of corporate decisions, GH was inadequately supported by a range of modules. Also, the modules intended to support FtA included some egregious errors (like an entire missing section in Borderwatch); to me this suggests that less care was given to the setting due to corporate decisions.
In later years, GH'98, Return of the Eight was intended for high-level play. GH'98 presented that module and two sourcebooks before starting the Lost Cairns series. Are these the modules to which you direct your critique?
Remember, each time the setting was relaunched some of the modules published were intended to introduce new players to the setting/game. Thus, of a small set of modules (relative to DL or FR), fewer could be "epic."
Ultimately, I think I agree with the gist of your critique, i.e. that historical and political detail may not contribute greatly to the "average player." However, I dispute your assertion of causality and instead agree with Rob. Also, as I indicated originally, I believe that a DM can utilize the history and politics of the GH setting directly to amplify the experience of the "average player."
The idea of a "false sense of sophistication" is interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Paz y Luz,
y ¡Feliz Navidad!
The G series assumed a political backstory. The party was sent by the local authorities to clear out the giants. The only thing missing was details on those authorities, so that individuals could use whoever they liked.
The D series likewise had such an assumption, though specifically tied to elves.
The supermodule version narrowed it down to Sterich and Keoland, but still did not go overboard on details. Nevertheless, the political angle was very much there.
Ghost Tower of Inverness had the players sent by the Duke of Urnst directly, and involved his court wizard in politics.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks had the Grand Duke of Geoff organizing the mission because of the demands of the border Barons.
Just what early modules are you talking about that didn't feature any politics?
Now if you are trying to criticize how the focus of some modules shifted from the deeds of the players to the machinations of super-powerful patrons, you'd have a point.
Until Isle of the Ape.
Or are you criticizing how certain DMs are unable to properly utilize the background of a module, and integrate it with the deeds and desires of a party? In that case, the problem is with DMs, and not with the material.
But the political subtext of all the early adventures was one of their strengths. It allowed a good DM to use a simple 8-16 page module, and turn it into the basis for a major campaign. It was a minimalist approach in writing modules that favored the superior DM.
And such is still present in something like the LGG. With all the political flavor included, it still remains for the DM to do something with it, including making it relevant for the players.
Little attention, it seems, is given to more fantastic areas of the Flanaess. The detailed drill down of Castle Greyhawk in Greyhawk Ruins is about it. I did, by the way, reference the 2E Falcon series as a an example of bad setting. There was more, like Puppets . City of Skulls was diverting but still lacking.
At least as originally written, the Flanaess was filled with fantastic locales and big weird mysteries. There were cross-overs into planar adventurers (granted, the Vecna stuff went there, as it should). Even the sci-fi crossover which Delgath seems to hate. But c'mon, this is the world where a well-known hero-deity likes to dress as a cowboy and use six-shooters!
You'll note that at novel time there is an almost pathological obsession witha voiding the "named" Greyhawk characters, which proves to be a weakness against Forgotten Realms and it's army of colorful personalities. We have the Circle of Eight, why doesn't anyone write about them?
You also almost can't get someone to seriously look at Blackmoor, the Sea of Dust or anyplace that isn't Furyondy, Nyrond, Iuz or the Aerdy states.
There just seem to be a lot of apologists around making excuses for these shortcomings, and then turning around and wondering why the setting keeps fading into the background against the other settings.
Actually it does.
All of those early modules are heavily tied into the background in that manner.
Endless pages detailing the intrigues between nobles Marklands, Ivid the Undying are politics.
So you mean you want modules and not sourcebooks.
Why didn't you just say so?
But that still leads to confusion on my part.
Endless sourcebooks, detailing endless political, and other, detail are what drove FR. If you are saying you don't want that, then the reason for the decline/failure/fading/whatever of Greyhawk is obvious. Fans like you simply don't want the material that sells the best. And so of course no material is published. Why? Because at best they inspire endless shouting matches between people who want that background material and people who never want to see any background material ever again.
I've stated that repeatedly in the past. People just don't seem to want to accept it.
I'm also not accepting complaints as I buy Greyhawk products as a rule. Therefore, I'm entitled to complain about the contents as I paid good money for the items in question.
The difference between FR and Greyhawk was that FR could afford endless sourcebooks. They dropped new stuff in almost everyone that amde them hugely attractive to buyers. Greyhawk books got to be repetitive. From The Ashes and Living Greyhawk Gazeteer are really just updates to The World of Greyhawk boxed set. More to the point, they were updates about politics.
The Scarlet Brotherhood was excellent but too generalized. Some more detail would have been nice, especially about Hepmonaland. But I would like usable information, not the persistent vagueness. I can customize but I like more to work with. If I have to invent it all from scratch I might as well have my own world.
I'm not some crank newbie here. I'm one of those "embittered 30-something" Greyhawkers. What amazes me is the hostility to input. And then everyone wonders why people ran en masse to FR and DL.
As for the whole politics deal, well...what do you expect to change about a creepy magic place that's been around for ages versus Yeomanry which, I believe, is some form of democracy? Fact is, the politics of a world are very fluid with wars changing borders, kings dying and being replaced etc. But the Sea of Dust will most likely always be there, as will Blackmoor, and the Pinnacles of Azor'alq or however you spell it.
Also, FR is just as full of politics as any other setting so I don't think it's the issue. Besides, what kind of setting would Greyhawk be if it was full of fantastic places with no realistic and political underpinning to give it a basis in reality? I don't know about everyone else, but what attracted me to Greyhawk was that it was a little of everything, deep politics, high adventure, fantasic places, seemed to have a place for em all in Greyhawk.
If Greyhawk was simply a ton of fantastic locales then it'd be like running generic module after module with each fantastic place "outside town with ::insert whatever here:: inside"....pretty cheesy and lame if you ask me.
I like my politics and kingdoms and high fantasy all in one thankyou. And yes, many say Greyhawk isn't high fantasy, well ha! I made it high fantasy in my game! so n'yah!
Have a nice day!
That said...
It's easy to see how FR got popular. It's has support of novels, computer games, trademark characters and simply look at what Dragon has been putting out for it in the last decade or so.
I also understand how DragonLance got popular, after the huge success of the Novels and, consequently, their iconic characters. Note, however, that DL never really got close to FR in popularity.
Greyhawk, it seems, lacked most of the above. Novels were few, iconic characters are almost non-existant and the overall support was mild, even on Dragon magazine.
We could also look at it from a theme aproach. FR is clearly focused on Magic. DL is focused on Dragons. GH isn't really focused on any particular theme.
Bottom-line is that when you have three Fantasy settings out there, one of them has to give. I believe what's lacking in GH is focus. GH was very popular in the eighties, but had little in the ways of competition.
That's what's driving GH into the background, IMO - there are simply more focused options out there now. If someone picks up GH and fills it with "personality", I'm 90% sure the whole setting would rise in popularity quite a bit.
The City of Greyhawk boxed set was an attempt to present Gygax's fantastic city without Gygax. From the Ashes came out five or more years after that, and about a decade after the first boxed set, meaning that they _needed_ to re-cover ground just to get players up to speed on the bare setting details.
The Adventure Begins is the same deal. "The Adventure Begins" is actually a good theme for Greyhawk on a publishing level, because since about the mid-1980s, that's all that the "adventure" has been doing--beginning.
The Adventure Begins was meant to be a jumping-on point that would be supported by adventures, soucebooks, and more adventures. Ultimately, Roger Moore was set to write a massive Greyhawk setting product that would have resembled the LGG, while all the while more adventures would be coming out. Enter the TSR collapse, the birth of Third Edition, and the current situation.
The LGG was meant to be another jumping-on point, but for the entire Flanaess (it's set in the same time period as TaB and the Player's Guide to Greyhawk for a reason), a sort of "last word" on the politics and history of the world by caring and patient authors who did their best to cram 20 years of out-of-print continuity into a single volume. WotC was to follow with adventures set in Greyhawk and, of course, the Living Greyhawk Campaign would release (and _has_ released) hundreds of Greyhawk-themed adventures for people wanting an even more in-depth Greyhawk experience.
But the "Adventure Path" adventures shied away from Greyhawk due to a corporate policy that believed all that anyone really cared about was a basic outline, a collection of capitalized names that gamers would hold in common, and little else. In-house designers, editors, and magagers referred to the setting as a "proper noun generator," caring little to nothing about the sort of deep continuity that had become so important to the hardest core of Greyhawk fans.
I believe somewhat in fear of the reaction of those hard-core fans, the designers, editors, and managers in charge of the "Adventure Path" and other core products decided to take an approach so "hands off" the setting that it might be called a "no-hands" approach, leaving us with a bunch of historical and political background without any meaningful adventure support outside the RPGA Network.
If you love and are interested in the Living Greyhawk campaign, there's a great deal of adventure to be had. If you're not into the campaign (for whatever reason), it seems like Greyhawk is about only somewhat dry historical and political minutia, because that's all that's been officially published for it in several years.
Now that I'm at the helm of Dungeon Magazine, I'm trying my damndest to bring a sense of adventure back to the world by publishing adventures more than nominally set in the World of Greyhawk (which is, after all, the "core" D&D setting). To date these things have been portable to other campaign settings, but deal with issues familiar to fans of the "political side" of the setting.
I think the adventures "Racing the Snake" (not sure what issue number, but relatively recent) and "Tammeraut's Fate" (issue #106) best exemplify my approach to presenting good Greyhawk adventures. They build off of information found in the LGG, but they're every bit as full of monsters, fighting, and action as some of the classic adventures.
And as for those classic adventures, I've got some plans in that arena, too.
--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine
thanks for posting what you did.
Ive been more than a tad bit miffed at WotC for seemingly dropping the ball with regards to The World of Greyhawk. I was happy when D&D 3.0 returned Greyhawk to being the base setting....but at the same time SEVERELY dissapointed when there was no expansion made of the basic gaming material.
For example....when the 3.0 edition of Dieties and DemiGods came out...I expected the ENTIRE Greyhawk Pantheon (Suel, Flan, Oerid, Olman and even the underdeveloped Baklunish) to be included. It seemed only natural since the Player's Handbook listed only the most common gods of the setting. I was majorly p.o.'d to find a simple update (well...maybe not update) to what was essentially the core of the original AD&D Dieties and DemiGods (minus the Melnibone, Cthulhu and Lankhmar Pantheons
). The fact that the majority of the Gods of Greyhawk were missing really baffled me at first. Why would WotC make Greyhawk the base setting if they didnt intend on following that up with new materials for the land so as to showcase the richness of the setting?I have tried, endlessly it seems, to get my DMs to allow me to use a god from the Living Grehawk Gazetteer...only to stupidly have them tell me that I can only use the base gods listed "because we arent playing Greyhawk". Pointing out that Greyhawk is the base setting (which the DM claims what we are playing is only the base setting) seems to produce nothing but arguments. I practically jumped for joy when we switched to playing DragonLance so I could at least have a fragging background I could give my character.
The idiot savant (or maybe its Pavlovian) response from WotC as to why they only pursue FR (or so it seems) because "it sells....Greyhawk doesn't"....should be met with a "No d'uh, moron! The only thing you sell IS FR source material!". (I've gotten that same kind of jack%$$ response from the owners of another creative world....and why only part of it is supported).
Im at least partially molified with the fact that now regional feats for Greyhawk have been included in Dragon Magazine....hopefully they will be adopted for Living Greyhawk. I must admit that I am putting more faith in what Rob Kuntz and Gary are planning on releasing through Pied Piper than I am with WotC....even if Rob and Gary cannot set their stuff in Greyhawk any longer.
My dear boy, in Ghost Tower, and most of the old modules, those "politics" as you conside rthem rarely lasted past the introduction page.
Which is because they were modules, and not sourcebooks. In a sourcebook, the politics occupy the bulk of the product, with the adventure ideas perhaps getting the summary page.
The difference between FR and Greyhawk was that FR could afford endless sourcebooks. They dropped new stuff in almost everyone that amde them hugely attractive to buyers. Greyhawk books got to be repetitive. From The Ashes and Living Greyhawk Gazeteer are really just updates to The World of Greyhawk boxed set. More to the point, they were updates about politics.
As they were sourcebooks, of course they were updates about politics. Were you expecting them to be new modules?
Further, despite containing a majority of information related to political updates, both contained direct adventure information, particularly From the Ashes. Even the LGG has a significant amount of adventure seeds in it.
Further, perhaps you weren't aware, but not everybody could afford those endless FR sourcebooks, particularly the boxed sets. That's why TSR went bankrupt.
The Scarlet Brotherhood was excellent but too generalized. Some more detail would have been nice, especially about Hepmonaland. But I would like usable information, not the persistent vagueness. I can customize but I like more to work with. If I have to invent it all from scratch I might as well have my own world.
Which are found in modules, not sourcebooks.
I'm not some crank newbie here. I'm one of those "embittered 30-something" Greyhawkers. What amazes me is the hostility to input. And then everyone wonders why people ran en masse to FR and DL.
That's nice, neither am I.
I am not embittered though. I was at one point, but as it never generated any additional product releases, I gave it up as a waste of effort and emotion.
As for hostility to input, again I am confused. What input has been rejected here?
As for why people ran to FR and DL, that is obvious. Sourcebooks and modules were produced for those settings, and the fans of them enjoyed having them, and did not spend most of their time complaining about the content of specific products. Which, as I pointed out, was why new Greyhawk material from WotC was unlikely to ever occur. If you do want to see new material specific to the setting, the way to do it would be to praise the products you like without putting down any others. I am always amazed by the hostility to that input, which is why I don't wonder about what is and is not on the product schedule.
Originally posted by Delglath
Gee, really, never would've guessed that you're an ass who has to rant in a pro-Sargent/Mona era Greyhawk forum about how lame Sargent/Mona Greyhawk is. You shouldn't be amazed. People like me who have seen your ilk, time and time again, come and poison forums like this are sick to death of your kind. Unlike others, I'm just more verbal about it and am not willing to put up with it.
GO AWAY!
Psionycx has as much right to post his opinions about Greyhawk here as anyone, even those who are more vocal and less civil.
Ultimatly it is up to players and DMs to create the epic, high-level adventures that appear to be sought. The political machinations of lords and empires are already well defined within.
.............................Omote
Take for example, the current DRAGONLANCE setting. In the course of 60 years of so withing the actual setting there has been many world-chagning events. The War of the Lance, the Dragon Purge, The beginning of the 5th Age, the lost of Magic, the intervention of the Gods, the War of Souls, etc, etc.
Each one of those events dramatically shaped and re-shaped the DL world. When that happens in a short span of time, to me at least it seems like the setting developers don't really know what direction they want to take the world in. To me, that can be worse then NOT developing the setting any firther. Sometimes, the lack development is better, as may have been in this case.
..................................Omote
2) Delgath, I am officially ignoring you since you seem interested in little except for name calling and (falsely) assuming that I have an animus against specific authors, while favoring others.
Back on topic.
My point has been that much of the material about Greyhawk has been about the nations of the Flanaess, who rules them, how they all feel about each other, who trades with whom and whose little fiefdom produces grains as opposed to dairy or meats.
It's all charming really, but to a large extent kind of onerous after a while.
I would prefer a slightly less broad overview of the continent and a more detailed drill down on some of the more interesting locales.
I agree that novels helped catapult FR and DL. But why is that surprising? Greyhawk was originally the setting for interesting big name characters, none of whom showed in the long ago Greyhawk novels. Instead we got some Wolf Nomad magic-user (even weirder than a drow ranger when you think about it) and a big name villain we all know (Iuz) reduced to flunky status for a no-name villain whom we've all since forgetten.
The key to FR success was accessories that simply spewed the kinds of juicy, gossipy details that kept people running to the stores to buy more accessories of marginal value. It was an amazing thing. A typical FR accessory had enough backstory to fill a novel and so little useful game data it was astounding. Oh, and the all-important instruction to DM's regarding the spells and magic items found within: "Under no cicrumstances should player's get their hands on one of these - Greenwood signature characters only!"
Greyhawk could have benefitted from a little of this. The proud tradition of Greyhawk is to drop lots of juicy, tantalizing tidbits - and then never talk about them ever again.
*sigh*
Okay, so I'm bitter. I LOVE Greyhawk, but I have to admit that most of the products from the last decade or so have not been sufficient to excite me. Most have been National Geographic style text books.
For Greyhawk to be exciting it needs to reach back to the fantasy. At least that's my thought.
There have been 5 products that discussed the grand sweep of nations:
the Folio
the Boxed Set
From the Ashes
Player's Guide
Living Greyhawk Gazzetteer
Of these, only two have been published in the last decade, with FtA barely making the "or so".
In that time, nothing was published with the LGG.
4 modules, 1 city guide, 1 sourcebook, and 1 supermodule were published with the Player's Guide.
8 modules, and 3 sourcebooks were published with From the Ashes.
So where is this horde of political books that downed out modules that you are talking about?
And where is your appreciation for those sourcebooks that you seem to say are so awesome when done for another setting? You totally dismissed the Scarlet Brotherhood book. Do you likewise dismiss The Marklands, Iuz the Evil, and Rary the Traitor as less than worthwhile?
And how do you rate the city guide (Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins), the supermodule (Slavers), and the 12 modules of that era?
They all contain juicy tidbits that are mentioned then never addressed again.
If you never got them it might be understandable that you speak as though they never existed. In that case, you are now informed of such, and that the ratio of setting books to supplements is not as unbalanced as you seem to believe.
If you simply don't like them, then I return to my question about why you would expect a company to release products for a line when previous ones are so poorly received.
Greyhawk has had everything you say you are looking for. And while I would have liked to have seen more, I don't begrudge what there is.
Lendor help me but I feel old!
The Marklands and Iuz the Evil actually were pretty bad. Not so much that the writing was bad, but that they tried to stuff too much into relatively small books, which meant that a lot of things that bore closer scrutiny only got a paragraph or two. Ivid the Undying (which was never published but which was a killer download) was also great but suffered from the same malaise. So much effort was put into trying to provide a great degree of detail about the Aerdy lands overall that in the end most places only got a short write up.
From the Ashes and Living Greyhawk Gazeteer were just follow-ups to the orginal boxed set, and whole swathes looked like they had been cut and pasted. The Adventure Begins was definitely like this, with much of it being a rehash of the City of Greyhawk boxed set. The Player's Guide was just a cut-and-paste from the previously mentioned sources for player consumption, so not much there. That's pretty much what the 3E Gazeteer was as well.
The Scarlet Brotherhood was good, but again a trifle generalized. More quantity versus quality. Less overview and more drill-down would have been nice.
I found Rary the Traitor to be a rather interesting book and very enjoyable. Amazingly, despite some considerable detail about his actions and plans, he seems to have mostly vanished off the map in later products. Mordenkainen must be better at his job than we realize. I would have loved to have seen his automatons in action.
Maybe I'm in the minority (in fact I know I am), but I would happily have plunked down $40 for a big, fat, juicy hardcover equivalent to the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting and then plunked down even more for more big books as long as the content was there.
I do in fact own copies of all the accessories except for the very first Greyhawk booklet Gygax put out in the dark ages. I have also owned at one point or another nearly all the modules, including the late 2E ones. Some were amusing (like Greyhawk Ruins), some were so bad I can barely remember them (Border Watch). They're all stuffed in a box in my attic somewhere.
The problem is that so much stuff that has come out is generic and repetitive. I've watched three editions come and go and bought what are essentially new versions of the same books with each one.
Granted, I enjoyed Slavers a great deal. And Markessa is an old favorite. That's just another point that killed me. She was a way more compelling villain than a lot of the FR twinks. The Scarlet Brotherhood is vastly superior to their Zhentarim or Red Wizards. But how long did it take to do a book about them? Almost two decades! The drow? Stolen whole and hog and thus almost no longer mentioned in Greyhawk.
It really is a tragedy.
I agree that GH lost its corporate support thru the mid 80;s and into the 90's and has virtually fallen off the planet recently despite WoTC telling us that its the "core" setting. I would have been happier if they would have used FR as the core and sold the rights for GH to another company who could do it justice rather than tease us with bits and pieces. Or hell since they love to re-release their core books, why not have D&D v3.55 and revamp everything to Oberon.
As I see it the current "Argument" stems from the fact that GH started as a small scale setting in Gary's basement, where he ran various adventures that he had written. As the world took shape, one glaring idea was aparent to me...Many of the most fantastic adventures with hideous monsters and powerful magic were nearby settled and civilized locations. While this did make it easy for the PC's to rest between "delvings" it also presented problems for those of us who wanted to have a more politically based campaign. I think that is one of the reasons FR took off. It was designed from the ground up and had (for the most part) clearly defined areas of "wilderness" and "civilization."
As far as DL goes, it had the advantage of being a setting that essentially came from a fantastic set of novels. Unfortunately, since the gods took such an active roll, the next event always had to be greater than the last. They can never go back to just a simple dungeon crawl style adventure that many gamers enjoy. Its become TOO epic and heroic.
When it comes to a home campaign as opposed to an official LivGH event, my advice to both sides of the GH argument is what I've always told any of my players who choose to become DM's..."Use what you like, discard what you don't. Your setting doesn't have to be the same as mine or anyone else's. There's enough material in print so that you don't have to do alot of work on your own. However, customizing the socio-economic-political aspects to fit your style will make for a better game. It'll take a little more time but it's worth it." This is not to say that I don't want to see more material in print, just put out a product that caters the largest segment of the GH fan-base and then let us use what we want and throw the rest out.
In closing, WoTC PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, make an active attempt to re-invigorate GH. If the LivGH concept is being supported as well as I've heard, why not begin writing and releasing published adventures to support the setting. Don't have the staff, try using free-lance writers who truly love the setting. If their material isn't up to your standards, then don't use it. Just stop BSing us. Greyhawk is not, despite what you claim and the use of some deity names, the default campaign setting for 3E.
You seem to have liked about half the sourcebooks. That doesn't speak for a successful product line.
Marklands and Iuz the Evil had the little bits you said you wanted but too many? Without excessive detail? I thought you said you liked that?
Scarlet Brotherhood was too generalized.
Rary was never again dealt with, again something you said you liked.
So I'm still trying to understand what your complaint is about.
Maybe I'm in the minority (in fact I know I am), but I would happily have plunked down $40 for a big, fat, juicy hardcover equivalent to the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting and then plunked down even more for more big books as long as the content was there.
If you mean instead of the LGG, so would many people. But that was a decision based on non-competition with the FRCS, as well as the number of complaints people had made about the previous products.
So there has been no "shift" in the direction of GH products, just no more GH products at all. But that is not going to change.
I was disappointed specifically because Rary the Traitor was not followed up on. The way everything in it was dropped did not make me a happy camper.
When I complained about "excessive detail" it was in regard to the political aspect of the Flanaess. Talk about overdeveloped, the Flanaess is more built up than New Jersey!
And that is the problem. Iuz the Evil, Marklands and Ivid the Undying all had one common shortcoming:
Too much stuffed into too few pages.
Given limited space, it really is not necessary to outline every last petty fief in the area covered. It really isn't needed. We can use the blank spots on the map for other things.
Because, due to limited space, including so many irrelevant bits of geographica did nothing except take away page space from the more interesting parts.
Instead we get dozens and dozens of individual entries with only one or two paragraphs of detail. Pointless.
I know we've lost out, perhaps forever. It disappoints me. But nobody wants to understand why. They just defend what happened. It's a cute show of loyalty but doesn't serve our beloved setting well.
Originally posted by Psionycx
Samwise, you really need to stop speed-reading my posts because you're not getting what I'm saying and based on your reply it's because you haven't read what I wrote.
I have indeed read all that you have written. It simply contradicts itself.
I was disappointed specifically because Rary the Traitor was not followed up on. The way everything in it was dropped did not make me a happy camper.
But to do so would require one to reissue a sourcebook that covered the same territory. If you don't like the setting books doing that, why then a sourcebook? And given the nature of that supplement, it would obviously have to include politics. Rary planned to build an empire. If that is not political, I can not imagine what you mean by the term.
When I complained about "excessive detail" it was in regard to the political aspect of the Flanaess. Talk about overdeveloped, the Flanaess is more built up than New Jersey!
Really?
Tell me then the names of all the province rulers of Keoland.
Tell me what nobles Houses they belong to.
Tell me what alliances exist between those noble Houses.
Tell me the names of all the Barons that serve the greater nobles.
Tell me the relations between all of them and the nobles or rulers of Geoff, Sterich, the Gran March, Bissel, the Uleks, the Yeomanry, and the Hold of the Sea Princes.
Tell me in detail the political history of the Sheldomar. The names of the Kings, lengths of the rule, and why each was chosen.
Tell what factions there are in Keoland, and what the goals of each are.
Overdeveloped?
And that is the problem. Iuz the Evil, Marklands and Ivid the Undying all had one common shortcoming:
Too much stuffed into too few pages.
Given limited space, it really is not necessary to outline every last petty fief in the area covered. It really isn't needed. We can use the blank spots on the map for other things.
Because, due to limited space, including so many irrelevant bits of geographica did nothing except take away page space from the more interesting parts.
Instead we get dozens and dozens of individual entries with only one or two paragraphs of detail. Pointless.
In which case those areas are most certainly not overdeveloped, but horribly underdeveloped.
If so much is devoted to such side issues, then there could hardly be sufficient left to properly address so much else.
Further, perhaps I read a different Rary the Traitor than you did. I recall one that contained a great deal about the geographic features, several entries regarding political divisions among the tribes, and numerous NPC descriptions. How is this good there, and bad elsewhere?
I know we've lost out, perhaps forever. It disappoints me. But nobody wants to understand why. They just defend what happened. It's a cute show of loyalty but doesn't serve our beloved setting well.
Neither does downplaying what does exist. It contributes nothing to understanding, and does a disservice to the setting by demonstrating to those who might issue more support for it that nothing will please those asking for more.
I know we've lost out, perhaps forever. It disappoints me. But nobody wants to understand why. They just defend what happened. It's a cute show of loyalty but doesn't serve our beloved setting well.
I think that you've raised some interesting points. However, I disagree strongly with your assertion quoted above. People in this thread are responding to your points -- engaging the conversation you started. However, when points are raised in response to your argument, you fail to respond adequately to them. Specifically, you have not responded to the point that corporate decisions rather than flawed products caused the relative failure of the Greyhawk product lines (as compared to FR and DL).
Instead, you've chosen repeatedly in this thread to make assertions like:
nobody wants to understand why. They just defend what happened. It's a cute show of loyalty but doesn't serve our beloved setting well.
While some posters may have reacted defensively, most of the posters did not. Instead we've responded point by point, and some of us have offered counter-arguments. Since you raised this issue by starting the thread, it's frustrating that you are not responding adequately to the counter-arguments that have been raised.
You're playing stupid pointless word games in an effort to dodge the issue without actually answering any of my concerns.
As an example, a person with a brain would assume that Rary was building automatons in order to actually do something with them, as opposed to for his own personal entertainment. Therefore, a follow-up would not constitute another Bright Desert books because presumably he would use the damned things to attack somebody, Greyhawk or Urnst most probably. Let's see Mecha-Godzilla attack Leukish and see if that pulls the Lorinnar court out of their political ennui!
We have Ivid the Undying. Just as well it was never published, because it had some great plot threads that are still dangling. More's the pity.
But a lot fo what went into it could have been explored in more detail if we didn't have a paragraph or two on innumerbale pointless fiefdoms. The thing reads like bloody tourist guidebook. So does Iuz the Evil and Marklands. The only reason I can't give the canon data the part of the Flanaess you chose is because (mercifully) nobody ever got around to writing one of these Fodor's guides for it. Or actually, the Keoland write-up the Living Greyhawk folks came up with is pretty close. And it has a a fair amount of the stuff you requested.
Yes Rary the Traitor contained raw information about the Bright Desert, but not so much of it that the real topic, Rary, was left underdeveloped. That's the key.
But maybe I just don't enjoy politics enough to play this setting. That wasn't what it was about 20+ years ago. We had a rough idea who ran what countries and for the most part cared little about them. We didn't care who's towns were on the Windmarch trade procession or who produced the best brew in the central Flanaess.
What was about fantastic characters and locations has become about whose having a border dispute or is trying to hold back the money King Belvor needs. It's like Washington D.C. only with spellcasters.
How, precisely, have I not been responding "adequately" to the counter arguments?
I have been naming specific products and refercing specific points. And what I have been getting in reply is attempts to play semantics.
Samwise,
You're playing stupid pointless word games in an effort to dodge the issue without actually answering any of my concerns.
As an example, a person with a brain would assume that Rary was building automatons in order to actually do something with them, as opposed to for his own personal entertainment. Therefore, a follow-up would not constitute another Bright Desert books because presumably he would use the damned things to attack somebody, Greyhawk or Urnst most probably. Let's see Mecha-Godzilla attack Leukish and see if that pulls the Lorinnar court out of their political ennui!
In other words, politics.
Which you said we already had too much of.
We have Ivid the Undying. Just as well it was never published, because it had some great plot threads that are still dangling. More's the pity.
Because people had derided previous releases.
But a lot fo what went into it could have been explored in more detail if we didn't have a paragraph or two on innumerbale pointless fiefdoms. The thing reads like bloody tourist guidebook. So does Iuz the Evil and Marklands. The only reason I can't give the canon data the part of the Flanaess you chose is because (mercifully) nobody ever got around to writing one of these Fodor's guides for it. Or actually, the Keoland write-up the Living Greyhawk folks came up with is pretty close. And it has a a fair amount of the stuff you requested.
A lot of what info?
You keep making this generic claim to some bit of information or other that is essential, yet you never identify any of it.
What did we need more detail about?
As for what I requested being in the Living Greyhawk information, I know. I wrote a fair amount of it. That's how I know how little of it was defined in canon, despite the overabundance that you assert is there.
Yes Rary the Traitor contained raw information about the Bright Desert, but not so much of it that the real topic, Rary, was left underdeveloped. That's the key.
But maybe I just don't enjoy politics enough to play this setting. That wasn't what it was about 20+ years ago. We had a rough idea who ran what countries and for the most part cared little about them. We didn't care who's towns were on the Windmarch trade procession or who produced the best brew in the central Flanaess.
But you said above you wanted to know more about what Rary would do with those automatons! And if it would pull the court out of its political ennui.
And I recall seeing a lot of FR background dedicated to telling us what town's were on a trade procession, and where the best brew came from. Yet you called them a good example of what you wanted.
And you may not care about those things, but a lot of people do. And they are certainly not political in nature.
What was about fantastic characters and locations has become about whose having a border dispute or is trying to hold back the money King Belvor needs. It's like Washington D.C. only with spellcasters.
Not at all. That is what sourcebooks are about. Adventures are still about the characters and locations. They always have been.
Greyhawk, not being the beloved child that FR is, could not afford the indulgences that FR could. More to the point, FR also didn't bother with them as much as Greyhawk did. Sure, they toss in some political stuff. They can afford to, given that they're cranking out 20x the page count.
My remark about the Lorrinar Court was tongue-in-cheek, why do you insist on playing word games?
The point was that sending that gigantic metal dragon he was building to trash the joint would be a nice, straightforward peice of action. It would be wholly independent on what idiot current sits on the Urnst throne, or whether the courtiers are still distraught over the failure to get Bellisica into the picture via marriage (*yawn* - let me know if it actually happens, otherwise I do not care).
Stirring things up generates interest. Also, people care more about what Mordenkainen does than they do about King Lynwerd does. Sad but true. Players and DM's alike care more about Elminster's latest bed conquest than on anything any ruler on Toril was up to other than perhaps King Azoun, and again only because they'd be curious who he was bedding.
Tell-all biographies of the real great and powerful (and I don't mean people like Prince Carwend of Rel Deven) sell. Simple fact. Countless people willingly forked over fistfuls of cash to get the latest update on Greenwood's seven silver-haired super trollops. The general sense was that if you genuinely cared about what was going on in a particular patch of real estate, you were hopelessly provincial and had probably lived there too long. Adventurers are meant to be mobile. Ready to hop off to another plane at a moment's notice. We could have stood a little more detail on the folks that play the big games, and in interaction with them. The half-hearted (and depressingly low-powered) write-ups we had were weak. Return of the Eight was years too late to do any good. Not a bad module though.
Pulling Sir What's-His-Name out of Iuz's dungeon is novel but realtively ho-hum. Especially when attached to Furyondian court politics (*yawn*). One can have more fun stabbing at Iuz in some kind of plane-hopping quest for an artifact or the underwear his dad Graz'zt was wearing the day he got jiggy with Iggwilv.
Exploring crashed spaceships was fun. Not that I'm advocating littering the landscape with crashed spaceships. But mobility is healthy.
So is the bizarre. Secret of the Slaver's Stockade was on many levels one of the most eerie modules, courtesy of Markessa and her cavelings. The only thing that bothered me about Slavers was that they barely went into that. Granted, I have assume Markessa's gotten better at it, based on all her duplicates, but her old hangout with hordes of deformed victims was in it's own way as scary as anything out of Ravenloft.
I miss stuff like that. We barely cared about who was running the Flanaess. We had more interesting things to worry about. The FR people had reams of accessories packed to the gills with cool spells, magic items, and gossip about everyone from Elminster to the gods themselves. We ought to have had the same. Instead we got tourist brochures.
All you want are modules. Anything else is a waste of effort unless it directly provides an adventure.
Or endless so-called "crunchy bits" to clutter up the game. Items, spells, classes, whatever.
None of that has anything to do with politics, and could have been stated very simply, and without putting down other products.
I recognize that in your subsequent posts, you have specified the majority of FtA era campaign sourcebooks. From these posts, I now understand that you do not like these products -- primarily because they offer "false sophistication" (adopting your phrase) rather than fantastic adventure.
This point is almost tautological since the products you critique are not modules. Even with your references to FR products, I cannot envision a sourcebook that could please you. Therefore, Samwise's restatement seems correct -- that you prefer modules to sourcbooks.
I find your critique of Sargent's products interesting because I cannot recall hearing a fan of the setting critique them for the reasons you do, i.e. for covering too much in scope rather than in detail (what you called quantity instead of quality). The majority of fans with whom I've "talked" enjoyed Sargent's products because he included many seeds for adventure. (Also, FtA itself included more adventure cards, which many DMs have incorporated and thereby created fun parts of their campaigns.)
My assertion that you fail to respond adequately to counter-arguments goes to the leap you make when you claim that the shift from modules to sourcebooks caused the failure in popularity of GH. Other posters have taken issue with this assertion and argued instead that a set of corporate decisions -- not the products themselves -- are the causal factor. You have not addressed the point at all.
While I don't demand that you do so, I have felt frustrated because you seem interested in sharing your opinion and in other threads have actually engaged in online discussion. Here, however, your real point seems to be a general criticism of GH sourcebooks and a desire for fantastic modules. As has been stated elsewhere and in this thread, Wizards reportedly does not find modules adequately profitable and therefore produces far fewer of them than did TSR.
I too would like to see new GH modules and like many other fans (not few as you assert) would love to purchase a high quality, hardcover GH setting book. (I'd also love to see the best of the LGH modules revised and published by Wizards.)
Ultimately, I'm merely asking you to distinguish your personal preference from a generalized explanation of the contemporary lack of new GH products.