Whereas I'm saying that Wizards of High Sorcery evokes a mental image of the Krynn version when people who know about Krynn hear that name used. Using a name that evokes a specific mental image in a setting other than it was created for is what I consider to be poor DMing.
What if none of the players are familiar with DL/Krynn?
Or what if the players
enjoy having a mental imagine of another setting evoked, much as mind flayers evoke the Lovecraftian Mythos, classic rangers evoke Aragorn, etc.
The only reason you consider it poor GMing is because you wouldn't do it. But that's not a standard for judging something poor. You have to actually articulate some way in which it made the game worse and not better. Which you haven't done, and haven't even tried to do - eg you haven't engaged with my point that many PCs in this campaign were WoHS, many memorable NPCs were WoHS, politicking among the wizards in the context of broader Great Kingdom politics (itself an established GH trope/theme) was a focus of the campaign at higher levels, etc.
That he removed that one aspect of Wizards of High Sorcerery is as bad, or even a bit worse than keeping it would have been. It jerks that mental image around a bit more. The first mental jerk is when he uses it on Greyhawk instead of Krynn, evoking the image of the Krynn wizards. Then there is a second mental jerk when the players find out that there are further changes to the mental image.
Which players? The occurrence of "mental jerks" is an empirical fact. You can't know it a priori. Does my report that the campaign was enjoyed by its participants, and that the WoHS were a popular component of it, not count as relevant evidence to you?
Also, in the context of the relationship between classic rangers and Aragorn, discussed at some length upthread, you seemed to think that the two mental jerks (first, they don't have to be Dunedain in line for the kingship to use palantiri, and secondly they can also use Medallions of ESP) was a good thing rather than a bad thing, because it
distanced classic D&D rangers from Middle Earth. Why is it a good thing in relation to Aragorn and rangers but a bad thing in relation to WoHS? Why does double-jerking enhance the borrowing from Middle Earth/LotR but worsen the borrowing from DL/Krynn?
Which is why I don't consider what he used in GH as the WoHS... he didn't use the name, changed some of the defining concepts of it and transported it to another setting.
I would have assumed that other wizards are considered renegades, they hunt other wizards down, and in order to do this are either pretty old and powerful, pretty widespread or (as the cas with DL) both. In other words for me this is a big part of their lore and characterization in DL.
The idea that "transporting them to another setting" makes them not WoHS pretty much puts the kaibosh on borrowing anything from one setting for another, doesn't it?
Otherwise - they are a powerful and ancient order (check), of wizards (check), whose headquarters are towers (check), who are divided into three sub-orders (check), who are white, red and black robes (check), who have control over semi-discrete spheres of magic (check), who each drawn their power from a different moon (check), with said power waxing and waning with the phases of the moon (check), each of which is on a different cycel (check), and who govern the order jointly via a conclave (check).
The only "defining concepts" that I have changed is that they don't attempt to enforce a monopoly over wizardry (as soon as they become an ancient Suloise order that is going to follow: the Baklun, at least, are obviously going to have their own traditions; and in any event the name itself suggests that there might be some other extant forms of sorcery that are not High), and the colours and cycles of the moons are not identical.
It baffles me that that is enough to make the not WoHS. I don't think anyone who was familiar with WoHS from DL and who encountered them by joining, or observing the play of, our campaign would be confused. I think all the points I noted above would make it pretty clear to them.
As far as the name is concerned, AS I POSTED UPTHREAD, they were called, both at the table and in the fiction,
Wizards of High Sorcery (quite often "Wizards" for short).
My understanding has been that he called it a tiger(same name), gave it orange and white stripes(red, white and black robes), put it in Asia(3 moons to power things), and then said they were vegetarians(don't hunt renegades).
The question of whether the hunting of renegades is as central to the concept of WoHS as being carnivorous is to a tiger is an open question. For instance, a tiger's whole physiology makes no sense if it is a herbivore (it has the teeth, body type, forward-facing eyes, etc of a carnivore); whereas none of the features of WoHS that I ran through, and which were features of the order in my GH game, depend upon the wizards claiming a monopoly over magic.
I must of missed where he changed the name. He has been calling them Wizards of High Sorcery this entire time and was astonished that I would consider a name change as helpful.
It would be a pinch, rather than a punch. Not too bad and has much less impact on the fabric of the setting.
I'm astonished that you think a double-jerk is bad, but a third jerk (ie changing their identity by sticking on a Groucho Marx moustache) would make it all better again.
I also don't understand "the impact on the fabric of the setting". Both GH and DL have rangers. Both, therefore, have some characters whose level title is
Stider - which is the folk name of Aragorn in LotR. If no settings' fabrics were harmed in the making of that pastiche, then I'm not sure how my GH game also having an order of WoHS is damaging any fabric.
I mean, what particular bit of the fabric was torn? What is it about canon GH that implies that there are
not ancient orders of wizardry whose powers might fluctuate with the phases of the moon? As I've already posted, this is stock-standard S&S stuff, and exactly the sort of thing that GH points to with its ancient magical empires, its in-fiction emphasis on the signifance of astrology and heavenly bodies, etc.
Whereas with a different name and some changed defining characteristics, I would eventually discover that they are similar, but different
By "eventually" do you mean "within about 30 seconds"?
If [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] had named his order of Wizards something like "Wizards of the Celestial Towers", and then explained all of their characteristics, I still would have arrived at "Oh, like the Wizards of High Sorcery, but on Greyhawk", but with a lot of wasted discussion.
My only quibble with this would be the discussion would take less than a minute, I think.
But anyay, on top of your point, WoHS is a cool name. There's a reason the DL authors used it.
The AD&D PHB wouldn't have been better if Gygax had decided to call rangers
wilderness warriors so as to try and disguise their derivation from JRRT.
It can be hard to keep up at points.
It would probably be easier for you and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] to keep up with the details of my campaign by asking (and then accepting my answers) rather than guessing and imputing and disregarding the things I actually tell you about it (such as eg the fact that noone who actually played the campaign, or observed the play of it, seemed to suffer any "mental jerks").
And [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], I have never asserted that WoHS are part of canon GH. Of course they're not. (As I have also said upthread multiple times.) But that's nothing special -
every GH game
must depart from canon, because it will include events, refinements of detail (eg about locations, the colour of Tenser's socks, etc) and the like that are not themselves found in any canon source.
What I am asserting is that my campaign is aptly described as a GH campaign, and doesn't cease to be one just because, instead of deciding that Tenser's socks are brown and that the door to the Green Dragon Inn has a square window with a grill in it, I decided some new stuff about astrolonomical phenomena and ancient Suloise magical practices.
