(Living) Greyhawk

Starfox · Jul 23, 2010

I've been playing the Savage Tide arc in the Greyhawk and become interested in learning more. I bought the Setting back in 1981(?), but was never a member of Living Greyhawk (didn't see much point in it, living in Sweden) and don't own a lot of the important works. I am mainly interested in geography, history, politics, and in using the setting for adventures; not so interested in game canon, iconic dungeons, or iconic characters except insofar as they have an impact on politics and history.

I have a couple of questions:

What was the most important parts and publications of Living Greyhawk as far as the setting was concerned? (I'm not so interested in organized play) Looking at an old issue of Dungeon, I saw an ad with a Living Greyhawk booklet; that is all I know. Can Living Greyhawk materials be found on the web? On Ebay? There is a scarcity of information on the web.

What books/articles contain setting info describing areas outside the dungeon?

Thanael · Jul 23, 2010

I'm not sure if I understand why you distinguish between Living Greyhawk and Greyhawk. LG had very few publications, but of course it built upon the Greyhawk material available.

The first book that comes to mind is the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (LGG), which is the 3E publication that gives a broad overview of the setting. There was also the excellent Living Greyhawk Journal (LGJ). Issues 0 to 5 were published separately, the rest was folded into Dragon and later Dungeon magazine. Part of issue #0 is available for free. These are all 3rd Edition.

There are also several useful pdfs available online for LGH, most notably the Living Greyhawk Deities document and the Living Greyhawk Campaign Sourcebook which has their houserules and clarifications. Every LG site had more material on their respective sites with interesting but specialized info. The LG modules alas are not readily available anywhere. There are some nice LG articles available on WotC site in the Complete Living Greyhawk Archives.

As for general Greyhawk setting material aside form the LGG and LGJ the main sources are mostly 2E material. Here are a few threads about what sources are best:
Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Which Modules(accessories) make for the best Canon
Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Essential 2E Greyhawk products.

There's also a lot of great material available for free on the internet. Some examples:

WGR7 Ivid the Undying is an unpublished sourcebook that WotC has made available for free. It details the Great Kingdom and there's a polished pdf version available here.

The Oerth Journal has the fanmade Oerthjournal magazine with which Erik Mona started his publishing career. The latest issues have really raised the production quality by a lot.

Canonfire! World of Greyhawk on the Web is the home of Greyhawk on the web. Check out their forums and articles on the main site.

Canonfire also hosts the Greyhawk Wiki a great source of information.

Starfox · Jul 23, 2010

I'm interested in Living Greyhawk because I don't know much about it and because I hope to use some of it as source material for my Greyhawk game. It is an untapped resource for Greyhawk materials as far as I am concerned.

Thanael · Jul 23, 2010

So are you interested in LGH material exclusively or Greyhawk material in general? Because most material about history, geography and politics is available in the 2E and 1E material.

Starfox · Jul 24, 2010

I'm interested in both. I have some of the published material but not all. I'm afraid some of that was PDFs bought at Pazio that I might have lost the files for. It is possible to find the names of published Greyhawk supplements, tough some are clearly more useful than others and its interesting to know which is which.

About Living Greyhawk, I barely even knew what there was to look for. That's why I asked about that specifically.

AdmundfortGeographer · Jul 24, 2010

The only thing to look for was the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. That was the only published product for the public.

Everything else was available as downloaded adventures from through the RPGA. They were produced by the regional volunteers.

There was a single professionally printed adventure in the beginning of LG called, (I think), The Fright at Tristor. Only available to RPGA members at that time.

Thanael already pointed you towards the Living Greyhawk Journal info, a briefly-lived, yet excellent source of flavor and material.

Some of those regional volunteers maintained websites with downloadable material to aid players in developing their characters to fit the theme of the region, full of things called meta organizations, "metaorg" for short. Sort of roleplay groups that may or may not affect outcomes or decisions during adventure play, or offer conditional skill bonuses while playing adventures set within the region.

Not sure of the status of those websites or the material available from them.

Then there are all the Core, Meta-regional, and Regional adventures over the years. Acquiring them now is a scavenger hunt.

I've heard there are some 3.x-LG aficionados who took it upon themselves to advance the stories they loved most from the LG years and continue it among themselves. Many of them had played (and thus acquired) the published LG scenarios, and they share among themselves. They have continued to write more scenarios for each other and run them online. If you do a web search you might come up with info. Some were calling it Lich Greyhawk. A friend of mine had participated in the "Lich" Greyhawk groups. I got to play a few of his adventures, that's how I learned there were people who self-organized and kept some things going. They had a huge collection of saved-acquired scenarios they shared with each other!

Thanael · Jul 24, 2010

Starfox said:
I'm interested in both. I have some of the published material but not all. I'm afraid some of that was PDFs bought at Pazio that I might have lost the files for. It is possible to find the names of published Greyhawk supplements, tough some are clearly more useful than others and its interesting to know which is which.

About Living Greyhawk, I barely even knew what there was to look for. That's why I asked about that specifically.

Ah, I see. Living Greyhawk actually had only the LGG and the LGJ as fas as publications go. Finding the actual modules is harder but they are modules and don't provide so much insight into the GH history. The 2E and 1E products provide the most of that.

The two canonfire threads I linked to above should help you identify which books are meatiest. Erik Mona's post in one of them sums it up nicely.

There's a 2E boxed set called Greyhawk Wars, which itself is not that interesting -being a board game actually! - but it contains a history of the Greyhawk Wars. This document is available online in different versions.

Personally I'd advise you to get the LGG if you can get it in a dead tree version for around $ 10. Then perhaps keep an eye out for the World of Greyhawk boxed set and/or the From the Ashes boxed set. The City of Greyhawk boxed set is also great but it concentrates more on a single city. The LGJ magazines are great esp if you're using 3E. If you can get them cheap on ebay go for it. They are going to rise in value.

Definately check out the free WGR7 Ivid pdf. If you like it you will probably also like the other WGR books and From the Ashes by Carl Sargent.

A few more links:

The TSR archive has a list of all Greyhawk books from 1E and 2E.

Duicarthan's site (he's the current editor of Oerth Journal) has several interesting resources including a 3E conversion of the magic items from the 1E Greyhawk Adventures HC and lots of 3E NPC conversions.

Maldin's Greyhawk site is notable for having a great Greyhawk city map and of course his Live the Multiverse and Epic Mysteries, some of which got included in canon.

This site has archive several GH freebies that used to be on WotC site. Among them is the Greyhawk Wars booklet. The main site has a list of Greyhawk relevant books which includes some of the more obscure stuff which is not on the TSR archive site and/or not labelled Greyhawk - with some comments on what's essential.

This site has another list of Greyhawk relevant books by year of publication.