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New Greyhawkers

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
Amaril
Mar 21, 2005 11:37:54 In the spirit of the testimonial thread "A Council of Greyhawkers: All you Oerthians, unite!", I'd like to know how many new gamers were introduced and fell in love with Greyhawk as of 3e or 3.5e.

I've seen a lot of posts from old-timer Greyhawkers, but what about those of us who are just now digging into this wonderfule campaign?
#2
scoti_garbidis
Mar 21, 2005 12:47:17 I was introduced to Greyhawk in 2edition but not long before 3edition. I consider myself a 3edition Greyhawker because I didn't start GM'ing in Greyhawk until after the LGG came out. But i have since started collecting the older 1st and 2nd Edition materials to help increase my knowledge of Greyhawk and add depth to my game.... I just wish i had time to catch up on 30 years of information.
#3
Amaril
Mar 21, 2005 21:58:32 I guess I should add my own story.

I was introduced to Greyhawk as a player through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. When my DM mentioned we'd be playing in the Greyhawk campaign setting, I thought, "What the heck is Greyhawk? I thought Forgotten Realms was the official D&D setting." At this time, my only real experience with D&D was Baldur's Gate and a very short-lived homebrew game.

We played a little over halfway through the module before we all died. The DM didn't really dig into Greyhawk beyond the name of the world and the deities used. I then decided that I wanted to run this module myself with a group of players new to 3e/3.5e D&D.

After reading a little bit of the module, I grew more curious about its history and about the names of deities, people, and places. The more I searched, the hungrier I became. A simple search in these forums will show my a small trail left behind in my quest.

Now, I am completely sold on Greyhawk. I glanced at Eberron and found the setting extremely intriguing, but almost too rich for a DM and new players to absorb. Greyhawk was simple enough for new players to jump into without having to learn new rules alongside the core rules. I can read the rich histories of the different regions and organizations without having to understand new rules, technology or cultuires. Elves are elves, drow are drow (although different than FR drow), dwarves are dwarves, and halflings are halflings except they now looked like small children (not the hobbit look-alikes they once were back in the day).

My new players picked up Players Handbooks and read through the History of the Greyhawk Wars. Having never heard of Greyhawk, just as I hadn't when I first started, they quickly became engrossed and immediately purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Their character backgrounds were some of the most detailed I had ever read (they were instructed to consider the possibility that the Greyhawk Wars would have directly influenced their character's lives and to incorporate that influence into their stories.

I have two players' characters who are refugees from Pomarj raids along the Wild Coast, a third who is a Paladin of Hieroneous who was raised in Almor before Chathold was destroyed, and a fourth who is a half-elf raised in Celene and whose father was a Knight of Luna and had the PC and his mother leave Celene before the Queen closed its borders to the outside world.

I still may run an Eberron game in the future; after all, it looks like it will have more support with new products sooner than Greyhawk will. The good thing about Eberron is it has just as much unexplored territory as Greyhawk has and doesn't have the over developed history and NPC influence that FR has.
#4
zombiegleemax
Mar 22, 2005 1:40:01 I started in the summer of '04 at Gen-Con. I am now in a group that meets once a week, though we don't normally play LG. We have played one adventure which I DMed and are going to play again in two weeks.
#5
ivid
Mar 22, 2005 3:42:16 My story is a bit complicated, too:
As a child, I frequently played and DMed D&D (and of course, read the famous novels!), but with much smaller frequency than today, especially Dragonlance. Then I tried a couple of other settings and rule systems, which all came to annoy me...
At the age of 16 (aka 1998), while being a very active Middle Earth player, I started DMing some shorter hombrew campaigns in Dragonlance and some beginner D&D adventure for my youth group. Those adventures were later *relocated* in the West of the Flanaess, using only overall info from the core books.
So, my interest in Greyhawk was spread again and finally I decided to dig a bit deeper in the setting, as I didn't want to use FR *like everyone else*

I am the *classic* 2e player, still praising oop settings like MotRD and Birthright and being kind of unfamiliar with the 3e rules, being a bit sceptical about the newest developments.
However, my *adult* Greyhawk game started in the same year 3e was released... Everything that was before, might have been fun, but was just *the five dorky adventurers run from a city because they butchered everyone... What was the name of that city? -Dyvers? - Doesn't matter...*

About E I must say that AFAIK Keith Baker is great guy who did excellent work while working for Atlas Games. The setting itself doesn't attract me - NOT because I'd feel tied to old school, but because at the moment I am very happy with my current campaigns for DL, RL and TRoB. As my TRoB campaign isn't supposed to be very long any more, I am currently planning my return to the Flanaess with the ToEE modules... Also had a Birthright campaign in the making, but until that one is to be played, we may very well see 4e, 5e or even 6e... :D
#6
Steel_Rabbit
Mar 23, 2005 23:36:50 I've been playing D&D for ten years (though I actually started with AD&D2E, and not the black books. I got 2E at a garage sale), but mostly in a generic fantasy setting (I'm a big LotR fan, and back then I was really into Magic: The Gathering, as well. Still kinda am). When 3.0 came out I immediately got into it more than I ever had before and picked up a used copy of LGG a few months after getting the Monstrous Manual (the third book to be released for 3.0 if I'm not mistaken). I've been insane ever since.
#7
zombiegleemax
Mar 24, 2005 19:05:11 I've played D&D since 1990, I never read any GH stuff prior to 2002.
#8
zombiegleemax
Apr 01, 2005 2:47:48 I've played D&D since 3.0 came out, and never really given Greyhawk much thought, until 4 months ago, when Dungeon Magazine came out with the Masterpiece, as I call it. The gigantic, humongous, 4-part Greyhawk map, with every dungeon, town, forest and city. As of last week, it's laminated and taking up the majority of my wall space :D .

(Dungeon issues #118-121 if you didn't get it)
#9
oarthias
Apr 08, 2005 16:59:55 I am all new to the world of Greyhawk, in fact I am new to the world of D&D. A small group of us have just started to play about a month ago. I am finding myself counting down the days until the next game. I am finding myself trying to learn more about GH and having a hard time of it.

http://dnd.benandliz.com/ a link to our groups journals about our adventures so far
#10
zombiegleemax
Jun 08, 2005 13:31:32 I starting playing D&D over ten years ago being first exposed to forgotten realms. Believing this was the official setting I DM'd and played this way for years. I got away from the game for a few years and when 3E came out me and some friends started playing again with a co-worker who had all the new books and guides and I was once again hooked. GH came to me via LGG and upon reading it I was so upset that I did not discover Oerth earlier. I have just started to DM once again starting with an adventuring party in Furyondy who are battling against the evil forces of IUZ. My next area I would love to explore would be the Nyr Dyv.
#11
zombiegleemax
Jun 09, 2005 20:35:21 While I was a little late to buy the original Greyhawk Supplement to the white box, I did get on board with the first Greyhawk folio, 1981 (and still have it), which is where Greyhawk begins anyway. So yes, I guess I'm an old-timer when it comes to the Flanaess. However, I didn't play from 1985 to 2000, so I feel that I'm rather new to the From the Ashes vision of Greyhawk. Frankly, I like both, though I play in FTA. At some point in the future I intend to run an campaign set in the pre-twin apocalypse period.
#12
zombiegleemax
Jun 10, 2005 13:19:32 I started playing D&D in the 90s when I was in middle school with some friends of mine. We had played a couple other roleplaying games when one of our players volunteered to DM a D&D game for us. For several years we played off and on in his Middle-Earth campaign. Though I loved D&D and saw great potential, I was never that taken with Middle-Earth. The Hobbit was, and still is, my favorite book of all time, but I felt the world was much better to read about than to game in.

Eventually I decided to start my own D&D campaign using a mesh of rules I had found on the internet along with those from the PH and DMG. I used a homebrew world I had created for another role-playing game when I was 10 (a world I continue to develop today). My players found it quite intriguing for a while. And then 3e came out. My players were not very high level so conversion was relatively easy. However I still knew very little about the rules and a lot was made up off-the-cuff. It was around this time I purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, mostly because of the beautiful map it contained.

Well the rest is history. The LGG spurred my love for GH so much that within a couple years I had amassed a vast collection of old AD&D GH sourcebooks. My collection continues to grow, and for the past four years I have been running nothing but Greyhawk campaigns and occassionally playing Living Greyhawk. I have been a Dungeon subscriber for over two years, own the old GH folio, FTA, a vast number of sourcebooks, and almost every 2e GH module made, though I'm shy on a number of 1e mods. I even own a number of Greyhawk novels (found a ton of them used at my FLGS). I don't think I'll ever go back.
#13
zombiegleemax
Jun 10, 2005 18:51:07 I started with 2e, and the Temple of Elemental Evil

Kevin
#14
ivid
Jun 11, 2005 4:12:09 Some of you might want to check here:

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=370149&origin=

After all, some of you don't seem THAT n00b...
#15
Prof._Pacali
Jun 26, 2005 13:17:57 While I have been aware of the Greyhawk campaign for years, I only started to play in LG this winter. There is a fairly large group that meets every Thursday night at the Neutral Grounds game store in Manhatten to play LG modules, which I joined after my latest gaming group fell apart.
#16
zombiegleemax
Jun 26, 2005 17:05:05 My interest in Greyhawk started with the LGG and 3rd Edition. It was also right after I had purchased the LGG that I found Canonfire.com and immediately signed up as a member.

That's about it, no long story...no duels...no nothing, just me buying a book...
#17
zombiegleemax
Jun 27, 2005 13:53:16 This is encouraging to see all of you guys coming on board. I've played GH since the Summer 1985. (I walked in to my friend's house and saw our DM's Darlene maps spread out on the table...I was hooked.) It does get stale after a while though. What recharges us is two things:

1. Stepping back from it for a bit and playing something else, Shadowrun, Star Wars, Twilight 2000 etc. but rarely any other world in D&D.

2. Playing with newbie Hawkers. We'd been playing for a few years with some guys 50 miles away that hadn't ever played before. We had a campaign go all the way to Epic levels with them. It was a blast.

Spread the word. GH is for the creative. E & FR are for the lazy.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Amaril Mar 21, 2005 11:37:54	In the spirit of the testimonial thread "A Council of Greyhawkers: All you Oerthians, unite!", I'd like to know how many new gamers were introduced and fell in love with Greyhawk as of 3e or 3.5e. I've seen a lot of posts from old-timer Greyhawkers, but what about those of us who are just now digging into this wonderfule campaign?
#2 scoti_garbidis Mar 21, 2005 12:47:17	I was introduced to Greyhawk in 2edition but not long before 3edition. I consider myself a 3edition Greyhawker because I didn't start GM'ing in Greyhawk until after the LGG came out. But i have since started collecting the older 1st and 2nd Edition materials to help increase my knowledge of Greyhawk and add depth to my game.... I just wish i had time to catch up on 30 years of information.
#3 Amaril Mar 21, 2005 21:58:32	I guess I should add my own story. I was introduced to Greyhawk as a player through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. When my DM mentioned we'd be playing in the Greyhawk campaign setting, I thought, "What the heck is Greyhawk? I thought Forgotten Realms was the official D&D setting." At this time, my only real experience with D&D was Baldur's Gate and a very short-lived homebrew game. We played a little over halfway through the module before we all died. The DM didn't really dig into Greyhawk beyond the name of the world and the deities used. I then decided that I wanted to run this module myself with a group of players new to 3e/3.5e D&D. After reading a little bit of the module, I grew more curious about its history and about the names of deities, people, and places. The more I searched, the hungrier I became. A simple search in these forums will show my a small trail left behind in my quest. Now, I am completely sold on Greyhawk. I glanced at Eberron and found the setting extremely intriguing, but almost too rich for a DM and new players to absorb. Greyhawk was simple enough for new players to jump into without having to learn new rules alongside the core rules. I can read the rich histories of the different regions and organizations without having to understand new rules, technology or cultuires. Elves are elves, drow are drow (although different than FR drow), dwarves are dwarves, and halflings are halflings except they now looked like small children (not the hobbit look-alikes they once were back in the day). My new players picked up Players Handbooks and read through the History of the Greyhawk Wars. Having never heard of Greyhawk, just as I hadn't when I first started, they quickly became engrossed and immediately purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Their character backgrounds were some of the most detailed I had ever read (they were instructed to consider the possibility that the Greyhawk Wars would have directly influenced their character's lives and to incorporate that influence into their stories. I have two players' characters who are refugees from Pomarj raids along the Wild Coast, a third who is a Paladin of Hieroneous who was raised in Almor before Chathold was destroyed, and a fourth who is a half-elf raised in Celene and whose father was a Knight of Luna and had the PC and his mother leave Celene before the Queen closed its borders to the outside world. I still may run an Eberron game in the future; after all, it looks like it will have more support with new products sooner than Greyhawk will. The good thing about Eberron is it has just as much unexplored territory as Greyhawk has and doesn't have the over developed history and NPC influence that FR has.
#4 zombiegleemax Mar 22, 2005 1:40:01	I started in the summer of '04 at Gen-Con. I am now in a group that meets once a week, though we don't normally play LG. We have played one adventure which I DMed and are going to play again in two weeks.
#5 ivid Mar 22, 2005 3:42:16	My story is a bit complicated, too: As a child, I frequently played and DMed D&D (and of course, read the famous novels!), but with much smaller frequency than today, especially Dragonlance. Then I tried a couple of other settings and rule systems, which all came to annoy me... At the age of 16 (aka 1998), while being a very active Middle Earth player, I started DMing some shorter hombrew campaigns in Dragonlance and some beginner D&D adventure for my youth group. Those adventures were later relocated in the West of the Flanaess, using only overall info from the core books. So, my interest in Greyhawk was spread again and finally I decided to dig a bit deeper in the setting, as I didn't want to use FR like everyone else I am the classic 2e player, still praising oop settings like MotRD and Birthright and being kind of unfamiliar with the 3e rules, being a bit sceptical about the newest developments. However, my adult Greyhawk game started in the same year 3e was released... Everything that was before, might have been fun, but was just the five dorky adventurers run from a city because they butchered everyone... What was the name of that city? -Dyvers? - Doesn't matter... About E I must say that AFAIK Keith Baker is great guy who did excellent work while working for Atlas Games. The setting itself doesn't attract me - NOT because I'd feel tied to old school, but because at the moment I am very happy with my current campaigns for DL, RL and TRoB. As my TRoB campaign isn't supposed to be very long any more, I am currently planning my return to the Flanaess with the ToEE modules... Also had a Birthright campaign in the making, but until that one is to be played, we may very well see 4e, 5e or even 6e... :D
#6 Steel_Rabbit Mar 23, 2005 23:36:50	I've been playing D&D for ten years (though I actually started with AD&D2E, and not the black books. I got 2E at a garage sale), but mostly in a generic fantasy setting (I'm a big LotR fan, and back then I was really into Magic: The Gathering, as well. Still kinda am). When 3.0 came out I immediately got into it more than I ever had before and picked up a used copy of LGG a few months after getting the Monstrous Manual (the third book to be released for 3.0 if I'm not mistaken). I've been insane ever since.
#7 zombiegleemax Mar 24, 2005 19:05:11	I've played D&D since 1990, I never read any GH stuff prior to 2002.
#8 zombiegleemax Apr 01, 2005 2:47:48	I've played D&D since 3.0 came out, and never really given Greyhawk much thought, until 4 months ago, when Dungeon Magazine came out with the Masterpiece, as I call it. The gigantic, humongous, 4-part Greyhawk map, with every dungeon, town, forest and city. As of last week, it's laminated and taking up the majority of my wall space :D . (Dungeon issues #118-121 if you didn't get it)
#9 oarthias Apr 08, 2005 16:59:55	I am all new to the world of Greyhawk, in fact I am new to the world of D&D. A small group of us have just started to play about a month ago. I am finding myself counting down the days until the next game. I am finding myself trying to learn more about GH and having a hard time of it. http://dnd.benandliz.com/ a link to our groups journals about our adventures so far
#10 zombiegleemax Jun 08, 2005 13:31:32	I starting playing D&D over ten years ago being first exposed to forgotten realms. Believing this was the official setting I DM'd and played this way for years. I got away from the game for a few years and when 3E came out me and some friends started playing again with a co-worker who had all the new books and guides and I was once again hooked. GH came to me via LGG and upon reading it I was so upset that I did not discover Oerth earlier. I have just started to DM once again starting with an adventuring party in Furyondy who are battling against the evil forces of IUZ. My next area I would love to explore would be the Nyr Dyv.
#11 zombiegleemax Jun 09, 2005 20:35:21	While I was a little late to buy the original Greyhawk Supplement to the white box, I did get on board with the first Greyhawk folio, 1981 (and still have it), which is where Greyhawk begins anyway. So yes, I guess I'm an old-timer when it comes to the Flanaess. However, I didn't play from 1985 to 2000, so I feel that I'm rather new to the From the Ashes vision of Greyhawk. Frankly, I like both, though I play in FTA. At some point in the future I intend to run an campaign set in the pre-twin apocalypse period.
#12 zombiegleemax Jun 10, 2005 13:19:32	I started playing D&D in the 90s when I was in middle school with some friends of mine. We had played a couple other roleplaying games when one of our players volunteered to DM a D&D game for us. For several years we played off and on in his Middle-Earth campaign. Though I loved D&D and saw great potential, I was never that taken with Middle-Earth. The Hobbit was, and still is, my favorite book of all time, but I felt the world was much better to read about than to game in. Eventually I decided to start my own D&D campaign using a mesh of rules I had found on the internet along with those from the PH and DMG. I used a homebrew world I had created for another role-playing game when I was 10 (a world I continue to develop today). My players found it quite intriguing for a while. And then 3e came out. My players were not very high level so conversion was relatively easy. However I still knew very little about the rules and a lot was made up off-the-cuff. It was around this time I purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, mostly because of the beautiful map it contained. Well the rest is history. The LGG spurred my love for GH so much that within a couple years I had amassed a vast collection of old AD&D GH sourcebooks. My collection continues to grow, and for the past four years I have been running nothing but Greyhawk campaigns and occassionally playing Living Greyhawk. I have been a Dungeon subscriber for over two years, own the old GH folio, FTA, a vast number of sourcebooks, and almost every 2e GH module made, though I'm shy on a number of 1e mods. I even own a number of Greyhawk novels (found a ton of them used at my FLGS). I don't think I'll ever go back.
#13 zombiegleemax Jun 10, 2005 18:51:07	I started with 2e, and the Temple of Elemental Evil Kevin
#14 ivid Jun 11, 2005 4:12:09	Some of you might want to check here: http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=370149&origin= After all, some of you don't seem THAT n00b...
#15 Prof._Pacali Jun 26, 2005 13:17:57	While I have been aware of the Greyhawk campaign for years, I only started to play in LG this winter. There is a fairly large group that meets every Thursday night at the Neutral Grounds game store in Manhatten to play LG modules, which I joined after my latest gaming group fell apart.
#16 zombiegleemax Jun 26, 2005 17:05:05	My interest in Greyhawk started with the LGG and 3rd Edition. It was also right after I had purchased the LGG that I found Canonfire.com and immediately signed up as a member. That's about it, no long story...no duels...no nothing, just me buying a book...
#17 zombiegleemax Jun 27, 2005 13:53:16	This is encouraging to see all of you guys coming on board. I've played GH since the Summer 1985. (I walked in to my friend's house and saw our DM's Darlene maps spread out on the table...I was hooked.) It does get stale after a while though. What recharges us is two things: 1. Stepping back from it for a bit and playing something else, Shadowrun, Star Wars, Twilight 2000 etc. but rarely any other world in D&D. 2. Playing with newbie Hawkers. We'd been playing for a few years with some guys 50 miles away that hadn't ever played before. We had a campaign go all the way to Epic levels with them. It was a blast. Spread the word. GH is for the creative. E & FR are for the lazy.