Are the Scarlet bro's and Iuz holding GREYHAWK back?

I've been a Gh fan for years and years, but have found it getting pretty dry after many campaigns. It's so static. So grey. So "balanced" and neutral.

I know a lot of people got all worked up when FtA came out because there was an unbalancing, but I personally found that product to be completely refreshing.

Anyways, I think it's time for a new FtA-type product..one that does away with Iuz and the Scarlet Brotherhood. Blashphemy? Not any more than FtA. The setting is doomed to continue in the shadows because of it's inability to grow. Iuz is holding GH back because of his boring stranglehold on the north and the fact that he's a demigod. Well, there's an endless and useless plotline...yawn.

The Scarlet Brotherhood has come and gone too. They were cool way back when. Now their uniqueness is gone. Remember when they were mysterious monks and assassins? Well, the mystery is gone. They need to be replaced or retract.

The death of the overking Ivid, was a start, but nobody really ever played in the GK anyways..and now with the PG-13 approach, it has surely become a little, well, "pink."

I think the coolness of Greyhawk in the beginning was not that it was the only world available, but it was in the balance of many nations and many cultures that gave DM's lots of directions and bad guys. FtA, for it's temporary coolness has allowed the exact opposite to happen..which was fun for a while too. There are no more warlords in the north and south..just countries who's actual coolness are in question.

Iuz needs to die like an evil god should.

The Scarlet Brotherhood needs to have it's family tree cut down.

..or Greyhawk is doomed to mediocrity and lack of growth.

Where would you go with Greyhawk..or should it continue in the circle of balance leftover from FtA?

Jay Hafner

Change is invigorating; every time I start to get bored with my campaign world, I kill off my favorite country/race or have something invaded. So long as a massive change in Greyhawk canon contains options for folks who'd rather not make a drastic change, I don't see much wrong with it.

I really don't understand what you're getting at here. You think that having a marauding demigod in the north, and a racist brotherhood in the south, makes the setting balanced?

Frankly, I like that there are such uber-evils in the setting, with no clear over-arching forces of good arrayed against them. It's much better than, say, FR, where the Chosen of Mystra et al seem overshadow the PCs with their very presence, and any evil organizations seem puny by comparison.

Having Iuz rule the north is great, because your PCs can be the ones to rise up in levels enough to eventually challenge and defeat him. Ditto for rooting out the Scarlet Brotherhood if you prefer more intrigue-based games. I say that getting rid of them, having no real established good or evil is what would make the setting "balanced and gray" as you put it.

Alzrius said:

I really don't understand what you're getting at here. You think that having a marauding demigod in the north, and a racist brotherhood in the south, makes the setting balanced?

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I think he's saying that a marauding demigod in the north and a racist brotherhood in the south, who haven't done anything for several years, makes the setting stagnant.

Yep. Interesting evil shouldn't be static. Either do something cool, or get out of the way for someone who will.

Emirikol said:

I've been a Gh fan for years and years, but have found it getting pretty dry after many campaigns. It's so static. So grey. So "balanced" and neutral.

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Jay, the whole point of keeping Greyhawk static was to give DMs maximum flexibility. GH was never designed to be a world in the vein of Eberron or FR where it was detailed down to the barest microcism. It was designed to be a background for a DM's adventures. Nothing more. If you feel the need to spice it up, do so. The setting (at least pre-FtA) can handle it.

BTW, I loved FtA, too. As it finally hung some meat on the skeleton that was GH. But since then, my understanding of the setting has matured a bit.

Where would you go with Greyhawk..or should it continue in the circle of balance leftover from FtA?

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Back before the 1998 relaunch, when the AOL Greyhawk forums were going full steam, I was a big advocate of jumping forward a century or two and doing a sort of "Greyhawk: Renaissance" setting. The idea was probably a bit closer to the Restoration than the Renaissance, and involved moving the setting forward to something closer to sixteenth or seventeenth century earth. The focus of the campaign would be discovery, exploration, colonization, and world-scope intrigues. You could still keep some of the older villains, but a whole new host of conflicts could be designed. If I was going to do something radical to the setting to shake things up, that would STILL be my plan.

Tom

The only thing holding back GH is WotC. With any luck, sales of the GH expedition book in August will change that.

The solution to the Iuzian Problem is elegant in its simplicity:


Iuz needs to go away.


Not die. Not ascend. Not be defeated. He simply needs to disappear, and nobody, not even the highest of his inner circle knows why. The effect is immediate - a fire gets lit under asses all across the north. His lands are no longer unassailable now that they lack the penultimate trump card of being ruled by a demigod. The new de facto rulers, recognizing that it's only a matter of time before someone catches wise to the vacant throne, step up a campaign of renewed aggression against their neighbors to keep anyone from noticing and trying to invade in the Old One's absence. Homeostasis is broken, new questions and possibilities arise.

Sejs said:

Not die. Not ascend. Not be defeated. He simply needs to disappear, and nobody, not even the highest of his inner circle knows why. The effect is immediate - a fire gets lit under asses all across the north. His lands are no longer unassailable now that they lack the penultimate trump card of being ruled by a demigod. The new de facto rulers, recognizing that it's only a matter of time before someone catches wise to the vacant throne, step up a campaign of renewed aggression against their neighbors to keep anyone from noticing and trying to invade in the Old One's absence. Homeostasis is broken, new questions and possibilities arise.

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Even better, it's easy to reverse when needed -- and the power play when he DOES return will be as interesting as his absence.

I think a lot of its staticity (is that a word?) stems from the fact that nothing official has come out from WotC to develop Greyhawk since 2e other than the gazetteers and Monte's RttToEE. Sure it's the Core world, but all they do is introduce the concepts into 3e rules rather than change or develop them. I would think you would need follow-up products to start to carry out the story line. Erik and company left a lot of hooks to play with in LGG, but other than a few adventures in Dungeon by Paizo, I don't know of much that's been with the setting on a developmental level.

The new Expedition adventure looks to be very refreshing, but I don't know how world-changing it will be. Heck, even the novels have been rehashes of their old products.

I'm all for a more vibrant Greyhawk, and I don't know that it means doing away with Iuz and the SB (though it could). I think the problem with GH isn't GH, it's that WotC hasn't really done anything with it in a number of years.