*POLL* Do You Feel That Greyhawk is a Dead Campaign Officially?

[AdmundfortGeographer]

That's simply not true.

All of that RPGA material is *not* available to the public. I want information on Perrenland? I have to move to Australia, run gamedays to get mods, and then I can piece together some information about Perrenland from 9 different adventures.

Oh, and I need some information about Onwall. I'll just hop my lear jet over to England and repeat the process.

If you want some information on Perrenland or Onnwal, you won't get in the mods. You will get it in the freely available setting material on the dedicated websites.

But please don't insult the intelligence of the average Greyhawk plan by claiming that GH fans get tons of support via the RPGA. It's a totally different kind of material--and most Greyhawk fans don't get to see 99% of that material.

Don't insult the intelligence of readers yourself. Go to the websites and you won't get the adventures. But you will get piles information of the regions. History, organizations, geography, possibly major NPCs.

The adventures aren't where PCs learn about the regions, they are where PCs interact in in though. With the information freely available on the many regional websites, you can adapt the stuff for your own home campaign.

But if you just have a problem with adventures not being able to play the adventures don't hide behind falsehoods about everything being hidden from everyone outside the region. You are wildly off base with your "new math" of somehow adventures having 99% of anything about the region. For instance, the metagame handbook for the Shield Lands was over 100 pages long. The LG Deities document is over 200 pages long, you can get it from the RPGA webpage on the WotC site. It's free to anyone to download, just go to the page and download it, don't need to be a member.

Each region has done things differently and made different amount of information available to the public free on their websites.

 

[Melan]

It has been dead for a long time, and it is more respectful to leave it so than make it suffer more indignities.

 

[Robbastard]

That's the second time I've noticed you say this, though I would bet you have used this phrase more often. It's like you think it is clever or something. Is there some reason you don't think this is offensive and over the line?

I'm one of those Greyhawk fans that T. Foster would likely consider a "necrophiliac fan." However, I see Greyhawk as a "living" setting that grows & develops--it doesn't remain in stasis circa 1983 CE/ 577 CY. I would argue that the fans who absolutely refuse to acknowledge any good post-Gygax work on Greyhawk are more "necrophilic," given the fact that they want their Greyhawk to remain in a perfect Gygaxian state of repose. Or perhaps they're more "pedophilic," since they care for nothing but Greyhawk in its infancy. But the truth is we just have different tastes.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Paizo did its damndest. But as of this month - it's over.

Greyhawk is dead. And I don't think it's coming back.

 

[Drowbane]

barely supported...

Just cut the life support already, this vegetable is sour and rotten! (hehe)

 

[haakon1]

Ditto. I quit D&D when Greyhawk (and 2e) lost demons/monks/assassins, and only returned to D&D when they brought Greyhawk "back."

Ha, me three!

 

[airwalkrr]

Based on WotC's reports about 4e, plus their cancelling Paizo's license, it is safe to say official support for Greyhawk is over. I bet my money that there will not even be token support for Greyhawk as a "default" setting anymore and I would not be surprised if they dropped Greyhawk naming conventions from spells. Forgotten Realms will be the official setting (if there is one at all) and Eberron will be the alternate official setting and that will be all.

 

[GVDammerung]

Let's see.

PaizoHawk dead as of September 2007. Check.

Default Greyhawk dead as of the May 2008 release of 4E. Check.

Living Greyhawk dead at Origins 2008. Check.

No more GH products sheduled to be released by Wotc. Check.

No license for GH at present nor any encouragement in this line. Check.

So. Greyhawk is presently dying and will be officially dead come Origins 2008.

"Oh but wait! There will be support for Greyhawk in EDungeon and EDragon! Doesn't that count?" No; it does not count.

EDungeon and EDragon are too ephemeral to count as any kind of support. They are more akin to poking a dead body with a stick and making the corpse "move." In the same way that all the efforts of Living Greyhawk are/were not "canon" to Greyhawk nothing electronically displayed in EDungeon or EDragon will be canon either. In both cases, the medium was/is too ephemeral and limited in its distribution. If there be doubt as to this proposition one need only contrast EDungeon and EDragon "support" with the support given Eberron and the Realms - notice any difference? And THAT difference is actual support versus pretended support. Don't accept any substitutes or take any wooden nickels.

Soooo. Greyhawk is an officially dead setting come Origins 2008. And that is not necesarily a Bad Thing. The Default, PaizoHawk and Living Greyhawk have taken Greyhawk in different directions simultaneously. IMO, Greyhawk can only benefit from a few years time out to take a breather and see where the fanbase is at that time. The biggest question in my mind is - were the Living Greyhawk participants fair weather "fans" who will now jump in mass to Living Forgotten Realms and forget about Greyhawk or did they truly have/develop a lasting appreciation for Greyhawk? Time will tell and THAT answer will say much, IMO, about GH's future viability.

YMMV

 

[airwalkrr]

I would think it would be really interesting if the Exped 2 Ruins of Greyhawk outsold all the other exped books, and wotc still didn't get the message. Quizzing them about Expedition sales figures will be high on my priority list at WF 2008.

Well if Amazon.com sales are any kind of legitimate barometer...

Expedition series sales rankings on Amazon.com:

#4 Expedition to the Demonweb Pits ranked 120,975 in books
#3 Expedition to Castle Ravenloft ranked 38,912 in books
#2 Expedition to Undermountain ranked 12,924 in books
#1 Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins ranked 3,930 in books

And if you have no idea how good a ranking of 3,930 is on Amazon, here is a bit of food for thought.

The Hobbit ranked 1,543 in books
The Da Vinci Code ranked 3,471 in books
Player's Handbook 3.5 ranked 4,613 in books

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The biggest question in my mind is - were the Living Greyhawk participants fair weather "fans" who will now jump in mass to Living Forgotten Realms and forget about Greyhawk or did they truly have/develop a lasting appreciation for Greyhawk? Time will tell and THAT answer will say much, IMO, about GH's future viability.

Time will tell what by what measure?

I'm a huge Greyhawk fan, have been for decades. I played LG, wrote adventures for it, and helped run it as a triad because I felt some perverse sense of helping ensure Greyhawkisms weren't violated or forgotten.

When LG ends and LFR begins I will go there as well. I'm also a mild FR fan, and have been since the Gray boxed set, buying nearly everything that was published. I liked FR as well, for what it was. I'm heading to LFR because I've come to enjoy playing RPGA adventures in a massive Living campaign. It perfectly fits the casual gaming I am able to play because of the schedule of my life (being married, kids, home owners, employed, etc.), I don't have the luxury (it's a luxury to me) of being able game in a regular group after my last one disintegrated. My going to LFR should in no way be read as fair weather fandom. I'm going to game there because it's what there. Were LG still there, I'd be there, but it ain't, so I'm not.