D&D General For the Love of Greyhawk: Why People Still Fight to Preserve Greyhawk

[Hussar]

Phew. Read through all of that.

What I would like to see is Greyhawk being moved forward the way Greyhawk has always moved forward - through modules. Yeah, sure, we can talk about the boxed sets and all that, but, let's be honest, what set Greyhawk apart from most other settings was that it was the only setting built primarily through adventures. You didn't get honking big books detailing the shapes of windows in halfling towns the way you get in Forgotten Realms.

Forgotten Realms is a place you can pretend to live.

Greyhawk is the place where you adventure.

You don't want WotC telling you the high altitude stuff in Greyhawk. Who cares about that? No, I want ADVENTURE. I learned about Greyhawk from the A series, the G series, Lost Temple of Tharizdun, Isle of the Ape, Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror.

I learned about Greyhawk from snippets in Dragon which gave me rules for playing a child of Kord.

I don't want another nice neat setting where every country is all laid out for you and now you have to do all the work of making adventures in someone else's setting. Naw. Just give me the adventures. Paizo showed how to do it with Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide.

THAT'S what I want. I want a sequel adventure to the one where intelligent swords continue to fight a war long after the original bearers have died. THAT'S Greyhawk to me. Let's see an actual updated Slave Lords series. Or something completely new. I'm groovy with that.

Forgotten Realms is the setting you read about. Greyhawk is the setting you play.

 

[Coroc]

If I had my way no named (living) npcs in any setting would ever be above 9th level...


Elminster can be a 7th level bard 2nd level warlock(chosen of Mystara) and still be a quest giver and sage

It is a good trick to pull out if your PCs rely to much on NPCs like city watch etc.

I once had the situation that PCs (being level 3 or so) were confronted with having to bypass a stone golem. Combat was not really an option it was to be resolved by a little puzzle. They called the cityguard and a valiant captain went in - just to get squished. They got the option to have him raised later and did that, but they learned from that that unlike in RL they are the ones who need to do the action.

So be free with adjusting NPC levels to your needs. If you are a fan of being consistent, and e.g. all your city guards are low level but you need to get the party arrested/subdued then operate with numbers, have just more of them arrive if needed.

 

[pemerton]

Fafhrd the Barbarian helps their group in all pillars of play.
Conan the Barbarian excels at combat, which is cool, but is being carried by their party in all other tiers.

To be fair to Conan, wasn't he a thief early on, managed pretty well as a pirate, and held on as king? Kind of feels like he got lucky on the die roll instead of using point buy though.

Yeah Conan would honestly be a barbarian, fighter, rogue mutliclass. No magic but that is one dangerous PC.

Conan (as written by REH) is a remarkable athlete and warrior. He is incredibly stealthy. He is a charismatic leader and an intelligent general,. He is charming, and makes friends easily and inspires great personal loyalty.

There's nothing to the suggestion that Conan needs to be "carried" outside of combat.

As literary character, Conan wasn't constrained to a particular niche like many player characters in a role playing game. From various stories, Conan is a polyglot (including ancient languages), literate, and able to effectively rule a powerful kingdom. Stat wise, he certainly wasn't deficient in any one area and excelled at several.

I think that statting Conan in D&D requires rebuilding him at different periods of his career.

In The Tower of the Elephant he makes some sense as a mid-level AD&D thief-acrobat with high STR and CON. In stories set during his mercenary and kingly period he is something like an AD&D ranger but without being obviously Good. (In DDF Fafhrd was primarily a ranger.)

In 4e I would probably build low-level Conan as a STR?DEX ranger, and higher level Conan as a STR/CHA warlord.

The 5e build I'll leave to others.

In any context, playing a character built to emulate Conan will probably not produce quite as puissant a character as he is in REH's hands, given how generous his author is towards him!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Conan isn't a point buy character. He is a random roll character who rolled very well.

 

[DnD Warlord]

Conan isn't a point buy character. He is a random roll character who rolled very well.

No like many protagonist he has 1 in a million stats

 

[wingsandsword]

To be fair to Conan, wasn't he a thief early on, managed pretty well as a pirate, and held on as king? Kind of feels like he got lucky on the die roll instead of using point buy though.

Yes.

When they made official D&D stats for Conan, back in 1st Edition for some officially licensed Conan products, they made him a multiclassed Barbarian/Thief.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

When they made official D&D stats for Conan, back in 1st Edition for some officially licensed Conan products, they made him a multiclassed Barbarian/Thief.

No they didn't, because barbarian hadn't been invented at the time. I posted it earlier.

Barbarian Class was in Dragon and Unearthed Arcana, right at the end of 1st edition.

 

[pemerton]

Barbarian Class was in Dragon and Unearthed Arcana, right at the end of 1st edition.

This isn't quite right either. Barbarians were published in Dragon 63 in 1982, and then again in UA in 1985. AD&D began with the MM in 1987; the 2nd ed PHB was published in 1089. So the barbarian is published in the middle of AD&D's 1st edition, not right at the end.

 

[JZavoda]

I read some of this thread but I think I can just post my opinion without having to reply to dozens of others.

There are 2 Greyhawk campaign philosophies. Gygax wrote that he didnt originally believe that DMs would want any other setting than the one they designed themselves. He was convinced to take his rather wild Greyhawk home campaign and create a bare-bones campaign to publish that DMs could flesh out. He added adventures, at the beginning mostly tournaments, which either started as set in Greyhawk or fitted to the campaign. Gygax wasn't thinking like a businessman, he was still thinking mostly as a hobbyiest. This can be called the Gygaxian Greyhawk campaign.

The next Greyhawk Campaign philosophy is the Corporate One-World design. After Gygax was kicked out of TSR they decided to make Greyhawk a single campaign with TSR then WotC creating material that altered (greatly altered such as Greyhawk Wars) the setting. This One-World Greyhawk design aged the campaign, defined some areas in great detail, and took control of the setting in the same way that the other settings were controlled. But unlike Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, Greyhawk languished and in comparison it received less attention and fewer products, especially fiction.

What the Gygaxian campaign allows is complete diversity. There is a bare-bones starting point that can be altered limited only by a DMs desire and imagination. You need buy no other product than the Folio or '83 boxed set or you can use material from anything. This Greyhawk has no limits, no solid ground underfoot that the DM does not place. This Greyhawk is not good business but this is what made Greyhawk well-loved and different.

The Corporate One-World design is less time consuming. It offers solid ground and a DM can easily choose to make what they want of it. The problems are that the quality of the material can vary, and with Greyhawk the quantity of published material is low. The direction of material can make a hash out of a DMs campaign and it seems to inspire less imagination on the part of DMs and more dependency on published material.

Im a big believer in the Gygaxian do it yourself Greyhawk and dont care for the published material. I wouldnt mind if WotC never published Greyhawk supplement or adventure again. The quality of the fan material for Greyhawk far surpasses the published material in both quality and quantity. If current Greyhawkers want to bring in new people to the setting they need to write quality material, excellent adventures, run great games. Show them the folio or boxed set where it began, but you cant force people to like Greyhawk or get excited about the setting. Either the quality of the setting shines out to new players or it doesnt. Do what you love and hopefully find other people who love it too.

 

[Todd Roybark]

There's nothing to the suggestion that Conan needs to be "carried" outside of combat

Permerton, based off our prior conversations I am presuming you have read both the Fafhrd and Conan stories.

Conan was whatever REH needed. Conan,(as all REH protagonist were), was a natural killer and warrior. If REH needed Conan to be a general, Conan was a General..with a full command of tactics, logistics etc. If Conan needed to be a freebooter..then he was.

Outside one of the early Conan stories...Temple of the Elephant.(I think)..I forget the actually story name, Conan rarely sneaks, and almost never bluffs.

A Min/Maxed Conan type character, that does not have an 18 in every stat like REH Conan, but only high stats in the Physical stats, and combat feats will play different then a Fafhrd type character. Fafhrd was gregarious and good hearted, with a playful sense of humor.
Fafhrd was a Skald.

Conan is just not a funny dude.