TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
I mean, if IAB throws out his gnome wizard because Hussar said mean things about him here, that would be a disruption. But that's probably giving our little forum too much credit.
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D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."
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Quite. On both counts.
I haven't taken [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] to be mean - and I hope I haven't been. But knowing nothing of [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION]'s character other than what has been posted, I can see where Hussar is coming from. I can see how it's something of a quirky or even avant garde spin on the idea of a gnomish lifequest, but it doesn't scream DL to me.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
You said...
Those "details" comprise the vast, vast majority of canon. Keeping just the maps and a very broad detail or two about those maps is a trivial amount of lore.
"Adding" by changing cannon is not adding. Canon establishes two moons, so three moons would be a change, not an addition. To be an addition and not a change, no canon can be altered by it. It has to fill a hole. There is no hole in two moons that would allow a third moon to happen. Wizards of High Sorcery are tied explicitly to the Krynn moons, not moon in general. Also, magic in Greyhawk does not come from moons.
What you could do is invent all new subclasses that use the DL knights and Wizard of High Sorcery mechanics, but tie them to something that simply doesn't exist in Greyhawk. For example, create three pillars buried in the sea of dust that three sects of wizards draw from. White, red and black. Then you aren't bringing in something specifically from another setting, but are truly ADDING to the Greyhawk setting.
If by no one, you mean lots of people, I agree. I know of 0 people(and I know tons of people who play the game) who would view a game supposedly set in Greyhawk, but had Lunitari, Nuitari and the third moon from Krynn, Wizards of High Sorcery tied to them, and the Knights of Solomnia running around. They'd look at me like I was crazy. I COULD get away with changing the lore attached to those mechanics as described above, though.
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Sadras
Legend
I have to agree with Max here.
I can only imagine the type of looks I'd get at my table if I stuck Drizzt in my Mystara campaign or the types of looks our Westeros DM would get if he had Vecna, warforged and members of the Zhentarim walking around King's Landing while Durotan as leader of the Horde ruled Essos.
Nonsense.
The core of GH canon is found in a a few pages at the start of the Folio boooklet: the timeline, the migration maps, the description of the history of the world including the Invoked Devastation and the Rain of Colourless Fire, the Sueloise and Oeridian migrations, etc.
The names of rulers weren't provided until the boxed set split the original booklet into two books and added those details (Glossography, p 17).
The names of streets in the City of GH weren't provided until the CoGH boxed set, which some people regard as silly and non-canonical in any event.
This is why I asked, upthread, what view you would take of someone who started with Grey Box FR, added details to the blank spots, and then stuck to those details either in ignorance or in disregard of subsequent publications. You said that would still count as a FR game.
Well, the vast bulk of details that you describe as "canon" were not part of the GH folio. Or even the boxed set. The Suel wizard Slerotin may have created a tunnel through the Crystalmist mountains ("Although apocryphal, . . ." Glossography p 26; "ancient Suloise folklore", Glossography p 27). What happened to his body after he died? Where did he die? As far as the boxed set is concerned, who knows? So when I place Slerotin as a mummy in the catacombs of Hardby, reinterred from a pyramid in the Bright Desert, how is that a disreard of canon?
Here is the total lore on Hardby in the boxed set:
[T]he heir [of the Landgraf of the Selintan] was wed to the daughter of the Gynarch (Despotrix) of Hardby, a sorceress of no small repute. Their descendants ruled a growing domain . . . In 498 it [Greyhawk] was declared a free and independent city, ruling a territory from Hardby . . . to the Nyr Dyv . . . These holdings have been lost over the intervening decades . . . The Despotrix of Hardby now pays tribute to Greyhawk to avoid being absorbed into the growing city state once again . . . Portions of the [Wild Coast] have been under the control of . . . the Gynarch of Hardby . . . at various times. (pp 23, 25, 41 of the Boxed Set Guide to the WoG).
So when I give Hardby catacombs, how is that a disregard of canon? When I decide, as described above, that Slerotin's mummy has been interred there, how is that a disregard of canon? And if in another campaign I decide that Hardby has no catacombs, how is that a disregard of canon either? Why do I have to fill in the blanks the same way every campaign?
To give another example: when I first got the GH folio, in 1984, I drew roads and additional settlementss onto the Keoland portion of the map, filling in details that weren't given but that had already been established as part of our Saltmarsh campaign (which is, canonically, in Keoland), and I have continued to use those home-made details without looking to see (or caring) how the Living GH Triad for Keoland might have done it differently.
When, 9 or 10 years later, I needed details for a city in Keoland (I can't remember which one, now) I had the temerity to use an ICE-published Rolemaster book called Norek: Intrigue in a City-State of Jaiman, because (i) it was ready to hand, and (ii) it had a city map that seemed to fit in tone and culture. I didn't put my campaign on hold waiting for something canonical to be produced by TSR. And around the same time I even used the Rolemaster module Sky Giants of the Brass Stair, placing the eponymous stair in the Crystalmist Mountains, even though the GH booklets don't themselves mention any such stair (confining themselves to the observation that the Crystalmists contain "many giants, ogres and the like".
A setting isn't a work of art to be admired. It's a set of elements for playing the game. If the elements, as published, are incomplete, I'm going to fill them in! And in filling them in, I will draw on the stuff that I have. This doesn't make my setting something other than iteslf.
Well, WotC thinks you can have Purple Dragon Knights in Krynn. You just have to relabel them Knights of Solamnia! So on this occasion I'll trust WotC over you.
The Knights of Holy Shielding are a chivalric and (obviously, given their name) religious order of knights. The folio doesn't tell us which god they serve (later books specify it as Heironeous; before I bought those books, as best I recall I had already specified it as St Cuthbert). What better way to give the Knights some mechanical heft, plus flesh out their rules and so forth, than to borrow the Oath and the Measure from Dragonlance Adventures?
What canon is that changing? How is fleshing out the details of a chivalric order by borrowing from one of the most mechanically and fictionally detailed mechanical orders in AD&D altering, as opposed to fleshing out?
As far as the moons are concerned, everyone knows that they are called Celene (the handmaiden) and Luna. The presence of a third, invisible black moon doesn't contradict anything. The presence of wizards whose power is tied to the phases of the moon doesn't contradict anything. The folio glossography actually has a rather lengthy discussion (relative to its overall size) of astronomical phenomena; and there are at least two GH deities of stellar/astronomical phenomena (Celestian and Pholtus). So how do you possibly take it that it is stated, or implied, that Oerth contains no orders of moon-dependant mages?
Canon establishes two known moons. Two visible moons. Nothing says there can't be a third one, small and orbiting rapidly like a modern-day satellite about the earth.
I find it very odd that someone who says that making the Celestial Emperor just a minor major domo in his own back yard is not sort of change to OA canon is now protesting that adding a compltely plausible astronmical phenomeon to Oerth is a wild change to the established canon!
Well obviously they WoHS in my GH campaign aren't tied to Krynn moons. They're tied to GH moons. And in my GH game, also fairly obviously, magic can come from moons. Why shouldn't it? Nothing says it can't, and the discussion of astronomy in the Glossography suggests that it can!
I'm quoting from p 4 of the larger book from the boxed set, because it is readier to hand than the folio booklet, but the text is identical:
The heavens are far more important and intersting [than lands beyond Oerik]. We must study the stars . . . When both Mistress [Luna] and Handmaiden [Celene] are full, things of great portent are likely to ocur . . .
To me, that strongly implies that the moons do exert influence over events. By deciding, for one of my GH games, that that influence is channelled by an ancient Sueloise order of wizards who survive and flourish in the Great Kingdom (which has a high degree of Suel influence - see p 14 of the same book), I am adding but not contradicting anything. (Neither text nor theme - how are moon-channelling wizards of an ancient tradition possibly at odds with GH's S&S theme?)
Thanks for telling me what I can and can't do. Fortunately for me I worked these things out over 30 years ago, even without the benefit of your advice and permission!
I have no idea why you think pillars - which are nowhere mentioned in the core GH books - are more canonical than moons, which are called out as rather special and having an important astrological influence. But in my case I went for moons. Including adding one. I think a black, invisible moon is more interesting than pillars, myself.
In a recent thread, [MENTION=6776548]Corpsetaker[/MENTION] was taken to task for suggesting that Bigby was not part of FR canon.
Given the "multiverse hypothesis" that is being defended in these lore thread, why shouldn't Drizzt have made his way to Mystara (perhaps catching the return planar bus that took Mordenkainen to hang out with Elminster)? If he takes a brief stop at the GH platform he could even pick up some six-shooters from Murlynd.
We used to setting mashup like that all the time.
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
I feel like if you directly borrowed the mechanics of the Wizards of High Sorcery from Dragonlance, tied them to a distinct and recognizable astronomical feature from Greyhawk, and named them something else (Wizards of the Tides, or something), [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] would say that you obviously brought the WoHS into Greyhawk, and you would be equally as adamant that you did not, and created something new.
Imaro
Legend
Yes... but you readily admit it's a setting mashup (Unless of course you're running a Planescape game). So let me ask you this would you consider it a GH game... a DL game... a homebrew or something else?
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Right. "A rose by any other name . . ." and all that.
GH has a clear implied distinction between the central (primarily Oeridian, feudal, chivalric) regions (Furyondy, Veluna, Knights of the Hart, cities of Greyhawk, Dyvers and Verbobonc, Knights of Holy Shielding, etc) and the Oeridian/Suel east (the Great Kingdom and it satellites of current and former provinces), which I have tended to present as having a roughly Roman/Byzantine complexion.
Having a distinct order of wizards from the east that contrasts with GH's wizard's guild - and in respect of which Nyrond forms something of a cultural buffer or region of overlaps - seems to me to be consistent with that, not at odds with it. And if one wants a mysterious order of wizards with an ancient past, why make something up when I can borrow a clever idea already worked out, with a superficially neat (although, I can testify from bitter experience, painful in actual play) power-cycle mechanic?
How would it preserve the integrity of GH in any fashion to not use the moons - which are one of the more distinctive GHisms - and to instead use something like pillars? How would changing their name from WoHS make any difference to this? What is anti-GH abour having WoHS? What does that contradict in setting tone or content?
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