Castle Zagyg - The Upper Works (review)

[MerricB]

Merric, any chance you could post this in the reviews section? Thanks!

I'll post it there when it's finished! There's just so much to review, that posting it in parts makes the job a lot easier. After I've finished that, I'll collate it all and repost as a regular review.

Cheers!

 

[EATherrian]

The silver to gold exchange interested me. In one of my old campaigns I used the silver system that was presented in an old Dragon (I think). Basically all of the economy was in silver, most costs were translated to silver. But not all, some were kept as gold to better model a medieval economy. It's a neat idea, and I'd like to use it again, but I don't think it would fit with 4E's economic model. By the by, I used the old British system (which I don't remember now), so I had some weird exchange rates.

 

[MerricB]

Book 3: East Wall Towers
This book, at only 20 pages, is the shortest of the five adventure sections. It details the two large (50 foot diameter, seven level) towers that flank the east wall of the ramparts.

One tower is inhabited by a mad druid and many animals and insects; the other by the "Crimson Hand Cult", which Greyhawk fans will recognise as an appearance of the Scarlet Brotherhood. Apart from these new inhabitants, remnants of the original inhabitants of the towers add character to the room descriptions: a priest's letter, a portrait of a soldier, and other such touches bring a sense of depth and history to these areas.

There's no doubt that the Crimson Hand Cult will be one of the more challenging foes for low-level characters, with 4th and 5th level NPCs amongst their roster and the group working together to repel intruders; in contrast, the druid's tower tends to be more individual encounters with some roleplaying.

 

[MerricB]

Book 4: Castle Fortress
This section of the adventure is probably the largest departure from the original Castle Greyhawk that Gygax's friends adventured through, for, as James Ward notes, they spent the majority of their time adventuring in the dungeons below. At over 100 encounter areas and 44 pages, it is the most packed of all the books for information, considering that both books 1 and 5 devote much of their content to introductions and appendices.

Continuing on with the "realistic" theme, the first part of the fortress is now controlled by a group of bandits. However, once they are dealt with, the rest of the fortress is a lot more monster-light, but full of fantastical inventions and magical encounters: exactly what you might expect in a castle once owned by a mad archmage!

My particular favourite encounter includes a magical version of "The Turk", the famous chess-playing automaton. It is enough for me to want my players to discover it immediately! There are also references to the arch-mage "Eneever Zig", who readers of Gygax's short-story collection Night Arrant may well recognise.

Although I say the rest of this section is monster-light, it is by no means monster-free, and some of the monsters are potentially quite dangerous. However, as with all this release, it is scaled to a moderately low-level party: a level 3 or 4 party would be able to deal with almost any encounter here.

 

[haakon1]

Thanks for the review, Merric. I'm looking forward to seeing this in stores.

Do we know how much more of it there is?

 

[MerricB]

Thanks for the review, Merric. I'm looking forward to seeing this in stores.

Do we know how much more of it there is?

From Jeff Talanian, the co-writer/editor of the set:

Castle Zagyg:

Castle Zagyg: The Dark Chateau -- in print and available.
Castle Zagyg: The Watery Caverns -- in development

Castle Zagyg, Vol. I: Yggsburgh -- in print and available.
Castle Zagyg, Vol. II: The Upper Works -- to be released this summer
Castle Zagyg, Vol. III: The Dungeons -- to be released next about next winter.
Castle Zagyg, Vol. IV (title to be announced)
Castle Zagyg, Vol. V (title to be announced)

"Right now we don't know if there will be a Castle Zagyg, Volume VI. That is not to say we are contemplating some truncation of the work; rather, we need to determine how many levels will be able to nicely fit (physically and thematically) into each set. This largely falls on my shoulders, as my publisher and Trigee are gracious enough to provide me ample latitude in this decision making processes."

###

However, with the death of Gary, the Gygax estate has recently removed the right for Troll Lords to produce Gary's Lejendary Adventures and Gary's Gygaxian Fantasy series. We're awaiting clarification of the status of the Castle Zagyg project. As you might imagine, this worries me greatly.

To my mind, Lejendary Adventures is now dead. I can't see a new publisher picking it up now that Gary's no longer with us.

Cheers!

 

[Nikosandros]

However, with the death of Gary, the Gygax estate has recently removed the right for Troll Lords to produce Gary's Lejendary Adventures and Gary's Gygaxian Fantasy series. We're awaiting clarification of the status of the Castle Zagyg project. As you might imagine, this worries me greatly.

To my mind, Lejendary Adventures is now dead. I can't see a new publisher picking it up now that Gary's no longer with us.

Yes, it really looks dead. It's rather strange that the license was removed in the way it was, with completed products being canceled.

Hopefully, CZ will be completed...

 

[Nikosandros]

You mentioned that a silver standard is used. Do you think that it would be enough to convert all silver to gold, in order to get a rough but decent result in a game like AD&D?

Bumping my own question... I'm really wondering if it's just a matter of converting coins or if I will have to reassess completely the treasure in the adventure.

 

[MerricB]

Bumping my own question... I'm really wondering if it's just a matter of converting coins or if I will have to reassess completely the treasure in the adventure.

I'll tell you more soon when I get a chance to go through it.

The main problem is that the value of the gold piece is extremely wacky: 50 sp = 1 gp.

Apparently, Gary gave all his values in $ (per LA), and then they were converted to this new scale. However, for this to work, you need a book with the values of all common adventuring items in the new scale. Hmm - that's what Yggsburgh is for, right?

A few item costs in Yggsburgh (adjusted after the initial misprint):
Battleaxe = 2 gp
Large Shield = 1.5 gp
Leather Armour = 2 gp
Chainmail = 50 gp
Full plate = 100 gp
Composite Long bow = 10 gp
Flail = 0.5 gp
Hand Crossbow = 1.1 gp
Mace = 1 gp
Long sword = 168 gp
Two-handed sword = 200 gp

Talk about wacky sword prices!

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I am going to be running CZ starting in two weeks for my group, from what I've reado so far (about half) it is classic Gygax old-school fantasy. Great stuff!