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Luke Gygax Brings Back Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg
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<blockquote data-quote="timbannock" data-source="post: 9172865" data-attributes="member: 17913"><p>Seconded.</p><p></p><p>Expanding on those thoughts for those that aren't familiar with this book:</p><p></p><p>The town is certainly serviceable, but very, very pedestrian. Gygax seemed to double down on his "Medieval simulationism" more and more by the time he came around to writing this stuff. And because the castle and its environs were worked on separately, there are very few cross-connections: just a few historical elements (like Zagyg himself), and one or two wilderness encounter areas referencing specific areas that appear in Upper Works.</p><p></p><p>But that said, the wilderness stuff in the Yggsburgh book are often really good. There's maybe 2-3 that are pretty barebones and specifically call out "you can design this your way," but the vast majority -- and there are a LOT of areas! -- are really fleshed out, often feature cross-connected pieces with other areas, and hold many fully formed dungeons, a bunch of secrets, and other cool features.</p><p></p><p>The benefit of all of this is that if you are <em>only</em> interested in the castle, it's a separate product and you don't need this book at all. Just toss it into Greyhawk and it fits seamlessly, or any other setting with about 5 minutes of thinking who Zagyg is to that campaign world, and you're good to go. No issues. On the flip side, if you want a fully featured large town/small city that feels really fleshed out, in a vein similar to the old Judge's Guild City-State style, you get that plus a ton of wilderness locations that will make a great, fully-developed hexcrawl campaign.</p><p></p><p>The cons are mostly that it just doesn't hold a candle to the personality you see in most modern OSR and D&D things: fantastic environs, really dialing up the weird or grim or hopeful or alien, and terse, easy-to-use organization. It is, however, about as "Gygaxian" as you can get, and quite a bit bigger than any single release of his for mainstream D&D in the past.</p><p></p><p>/review-rant ;-P</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="timbannock, post: 9172865, member: 17913"] Seconded. Expanding on those thoughts for those that aren't familiar with this book: The town is certainly serviceable, but very, very pedestrian. Gygax seemed to double down on his "Medieval simulationism" more and more by the time he came around to writing this stuff. And because the castle and its environs were worked on separately, there are very few cross-connections: just a few historical elements (like Zagyg himself), and one or two wilderness encounter areas referencing specific areas that appear in Upper Works. But that said, the wilderness stuff in the Yggsburgh book are often really good. There's maybe 2-3 that are pretty barebones and specifically call out "you can design this your way," but the vast majority -- and there are a LOT of areas! -- are really fleshed out, often feature cross-connected pieces with other areas, and hold many fully formed dungeons, a bunch of secrets, and other cool features. The benefit of all of this is that if you are [I]only[/I] interested in the castle, it's a separate product and you don't need this book at all. Just toss it into Greyhawk and it fits seamlessly, or any other setting with about 5 minutes of thinking who Zagyg is to that campaign world, and you're good to go. No issues. On the flip side, if you want a fully featured large town/small city that feels really fleshed out, in a vein similar to the old Judge's Guild City-State style, you get that plus a ton of wilderness locations that will make a great, fully-developed hexcrawl campaign. The cons are mostly that it just doesn't hold a candle to the personality you see in most modern OSR and D&D things: fantastic environs, really dialing up the weird or grim or hopeful or alien, and terse, easy-to-use organization. It is, however, about as "Gygaxian" as you can get, and quite a bit bigger than any single release of his for mainstream D&D in the past. /review-rant ;-P [/QUOTE]
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