World of Greyhawk Folio - 30 years on

[rogueattorney]

Jeff's Gameblog had a post about a year ago on the fonts used by Darlene on the map, with some cool close ups.

Jeffs Gameblog: The Pekulish Script

 

[haakon1]

"High plains plateau"? This is not obvious from the map. Is this in the text descriptions?

I'm not sure if it's mentioned or not. I'm posting all this offhand without looking at the map or the folio myself. I assumed it from the map, but it's possible it never said so specifically.

And for some reason, absolutely nothing flows west of the Crystalmist or Hellfurnace mountains.

In the West, I believe the Tuflik River flows down from the Fals Gap region (between Thornward in Bissel and Molvar in Ket) to the Dramidj Ocean, in the middle-north of the Baklunish region. IIRC, there's also a river draining a small lake at the "navel of the world" in the Dry Steppes.

In general, though, the West is dry. Which makes sense for a Central Asian/Middle Eastern culture. And the southwest is bone dry -- the Sea of Dust is a (post-nuclear, IMHO) wasteland of desert, following an ancient war, in a mountainous basin like Great Salt Lake in the US.

What's odd is, the areas to the West of the mountains are dry, while those to the East are wet. That doesn't usually happen in geography I'm familiar with. I live in Washington state, and the prevailing westerlies dump rain on the Olympics and the coast, but the eastern half of the state is near desert, in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range. I assume that why areas like Keoland aren't deserts is that the prevailing winds there sweep up from the Azure Sea . . . kind of like how China is not a desert, even though Xinjiang/Sinkiang, Mongolia, etc. to its west are -- it gets rain from the South China Sea instead of from "prevailing Westerlies" like we're used to.

Which either makes the Greyhawk map stupid, or brilliant and unexpected. I choose the latter interpretation.

It's an A in my book. Just not an A+.

Fine. Let's not quibble about that fine distinction!

 

[Hussar]

Prevailing winds are not always from the west, even in the real world.

The only reason I was quibbling here is because of BOTE's claim that this was the gold standard to which all fantasy maps should aspire. At that level quibbling becomes important.

 

[Orius]

And to my eyes most modern campaign setting products look bloated and full of unnecessary fluff that I would never use in my games, particularly forced meta-plots.



Nor does any other campaign setting ever published. Those are provided by the DM him/herself.

Different approaches really. Personally, I would probably prefer the approach Gary used with the Folio in presenting a framework for the DM to work with rather than a fully-fleshed out world. The framework gives me more creative freedom as a DM, that's probably why I usually homebrew my games. But the other approach is understandable as it has its benefits for DMs that aren't comfortable with world creation or simply don't have the time.

Superior utility.

Mike Mearls: How Hammerfast got a Hex Map

I've learnt how horrible non-hex wilderness maps are over the years.

I'll agree with you again on maps. A nice artistically done map might be aestetically appealing, but the DM has certain needs from a map when running a game. Thus we need a good clear grid of squares that snaps well to the dungeon when doing dungeons. We need it for stuff like movement, and tactical placement in combat; having an unruled map requiring rulers is cumbersome, and a badly placed grid makes things a pain in the ass to run. I suppose hexes perform a similar purpose in wilderness adventuring. There's the downside to occasionally mapping stuff that looks like it was obviously mapped to hexes, but at least distance is easy to track.

Just a point about the rivers. Again, I admit freely that I'm nothing more than an interested viewer. I stand in awe of those artists like Anna above, who actually do this. But, from reading various sites and whatnot, I have picked up a few things about how you can tell a good map from a great one. And the difference is generally adherence to science.

One of the easiest things to pick up is rivers, because many, many fantasy cartographers draw rivers where they "look good" rather than where they should be. Another point is the rain shadows of mountains. The Darlene maps are consistent here - you can tell that the prevailing winds are from the east simply because the heavy forests all line the right side of the mountains.

Well, maps for a professional setting maybe should be held to a higher standard, but as a homebrewer, there's simply do many details in how the real world works for me to keep track of when creating a setting. I'm aware of quite a few basics, things like rain shadows, prevailing winds, plate tectonics, and trasitional terrain, and try to take these things into account. But there's things that will probably be wrong here and there because I don't understand how everything works, and besides it requires knowledge from a number of disparate scientific fields.

 

[Beginning of the End]

The only reason I was quibbling here is because of BOTE's claim that this was the gold standard to which all fantasy maps should aspire. At that level quibbling becomes important.

Oh look. Hussar is misquoting people. Must be Tuesday.

 

[Hussar]

/snip, my bad.

 

[Hussar]

Oh look. Hussar is misquoting people. Must be Tuesday.

Heh, I'd like to keep letting the irony pile up here, but, I've gone back and edited my original reply. This is getting nowhere and I have a strong suspicion that no matter what I said, I'd just get accused of something else - so far it's been accusations of hating the map (blatantly false, and elementary reading skills would bear that out) and now I'm being accused of misrepresenting BOTE'S first post.

It would be nice to actually discuss something and not the poster. Ah well.

 

[jaerdaph]

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Conway Twitty.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og1QRtcWdEY]YouTube - conway twitty - hello darling[/ame]

 

[Aeolius]

It would be nice to actually discuss something and not the poster. Ah well.

C'mon.. it is a well established fact that GH fans never agree about anything!

The other day, when I was trying to nail down a proper spot for the Sinking Isle, I looked at the old maps and saw a nice bit of deep water a bit further inland that it should have been, over by the Sea Barons... thanks, Darlene!

 

[Marc_C]

40 years since the release of the Greyhawk Folio. Such a great learning tool for fledgeling DMs way back when. It's vague and it's grand! Lots of room for any DM to insert his own material. It's not plug & play. It's DIY. Half the home-brew job is done. Plus it has all the iconic 1e NPCs, locations, modules, magic items and artifacts. Plus the beautiful map Darlene maps.

I was looking at my folio yesterday and decided to locate my next campaign in Greyhawk. Haven't done that in ages. I'll be using Freeport (Green Ronin) as one of the pirate cities.