OSR There are TWO 'lost' Gygax castles crowdfunding right now

Two manuscripts, both unpublished works by Gary Gygax, are separately hitting crowdfunding sites.
Like buses, you wait ages for one, and then several turn up at once. Two manuscripts, both unpublished works by Gary Gygax, both featuring castles, are separately hitting crowdfunding sites.

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In one hand, there's the second part of Troll Lord Games' Castle Zagyg -- "This is the second of two crowdfunding campaigns. The first, Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage Act 1, was a huge success thanks to this incredible community. At last, we are back with Act 2, which includes all the dungeon levels, maps, and encounters needed to forge your way through the Mad Mage’s labyrinthine castle. These materials have never been published before; we are working tirelessly to produce the complete megadungeon that Gary envisioned." This one is for the Castles & Crusades game system, and is live now.

Castle Zagyg is a re-imagining of Gary Gygax's original Castle Greyhawk; Gygax lost the rights to the latter in the 1980s when he left TSR, and partnered with Troll Lord Games years later to produce his definitive version of the castle/dungeon.

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In the other hand, from Pulse Publishing, is Castle Wolfmoon -- "Back in the late 90s, when TSR was bought by WOTC, Chris Clark noticed there was a gap in the market for RPG adventures, so he contacted Gary Gygax and asked if he would like to collaborate. To his delight, Gary was available, and the two of them created and published the first two adventures in the Castle Wolfmoon series, A Challenge of Arm's and the Ritual of the Golden Eyes. After these two successful collaborations, they decided to form Hekaforge together, and the final installment in the Castle Wolfmoon series was set aside. Many years later, as Chris was tidying his hard drive, he found a forgotten file with "Gygax" in the name, and thought - why not finally bring the saga of Castle Wolfmoon to a close? And so now, a quarter of a century after it was first created, the world will finally receive the last unpublished adventure created by Gary Gygax and Chris Clark." This is not live yet, but there's a 'coming soon' page. Castle Wolfmoon is system agnostic and it has contributions from Luke Gygax, Frank Mentzer, Heidi Gygax, Erik Garland, actor Todd Stashwick, and more.
 

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Hmm. I gotta say, that southwest corner feels like it's giving relatively bang for the buck. Ditto the maze above it in the northwest quadrant. But I get that, at a certain point, most mappers get tired.
Yeah; though they make me wonder if those areas might facilitate particular monsters placed there. The upper left, for example, with all those short loops could be good for humanoids outnumbering the party to flank and encircle/envelop without having to take too many rounds to do it?
 

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Yeah; though they make me wonder if those areas might facilitate particular monsters placed there. The upper left, for example, with all those short loops could be good for humanoids outnumbering the party to flank and encircle/envelop without having to take too many rounds to do it?
Yeah, I assume something like that is happening in both places, but that makes those two large areas into, effectively, single encounter areas.
 

Although I understand why people may be attracted by these products, I’m not too keen on them. I would love to have experienced those adventures back in time, but I don’t think I would enjoy it today. I would rather prefer a book with the original notes with commentary by someone like Jon Peterson, giving a historical perspective, and some of the original players.
 


"...editing and proofreading is a casualty in many tabletop RPG products these days."

I think less so than when I was young. Despite all the complaints I have about autocorrect, it has certainly helped.
 


...anything published by the troll lords you have to read with a forgiving eye to appreciate; their value is more about the underlying ideas than technically-polished presentation...
 

Every time I see this thread it reminds me of my favorite memetic legend.

A man traveling to a game convention for the first time came upon a gamer who had two Gygaxes, both were the same size, and they fought one another continuously. The man asked the gamer which Gygax usually wins. The gamer furrowed his brow in contemplation, pausing to shove a handful of Cheetos into his mouth and wash it down with great gulps of Mountain Dew, and finally replied, "The one I feed." The traveler then ran into a Sphere of Annhilation and was never seen again.
 

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