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Key elements of the World of Greyhawk include: -- a sensibility drawn from early to mid-20th-century fantasy, mainly sword and sorcery -- moulded by conventions of wargaming and inseparable from the original ethos of D&D: treasure-hunting in dungeons, hirelings, searching for traps, etc. --...

What RPG has ever given advice contradicting these?

Or better, pick up The New Essential Chronology.

Barely. The "blank rooms" complaint is a complete crock -- what person who'd actually read or run Ruins of Undermountain would object to having some extra map areas pasted on to use or ignore as he/she prefers? It's "within the craggy slopes of Mount Waterdeep", "in the mountain above", which I...

And this referred to Ed's original Anchorome, rather than the Maztica version TSR replaced it with.

There are penguins on the Sea of Moving Ice, per FR5 The Savage Frontier p. 36. It's real and in the possession of Maskar Wands.

The original D&D combines large amounts of the historical Middle Ages and Renaissance (both) with 20th-century sword-and-sorcery fiction and wargaming/roleplaying. Those are its three pillars, if you like. The medieval is very visible in the prototypical World of Greyhawk background, while the...

Can you explain why you want this done 'officially', rather than doing it in your campaign? Especially since no one else's set of changes will match what you want.

Mike Harrison isn't a 'sci-fi' writer in the sense of someone who writes stories set in the future with spaceships and rayguns; he uses some of the tools and approaches of science fiction. Much of his work is set in contemporary Earth, and he doesn't go in for long novel series. Otherwise, his...

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Or here.

Can't provide on its own as a final mechanistic judge*, but perhaps can help to provide as part of the GMing process. Theory aside, lots of campaigns which include competent GM fudging work very well. * Which isn't how the rules of D&D, at least pre-3E, are intended to be used. Designing a...

From a post by Ed Greenwood to REALMS-L in 1997: That's all I know.

TSR artificially expanded the published maps by pasting on additional map areas the cartographers had lying around, from places like Empire of the Petal Throne. Exactly why hasn't been explained. As you say, reverting it to the detailed areas is no more trouble than drawing in lines here and there.

The idea that a GM could cheat suggests that her prerogative ends at defining NPCs' and monsters' capabilities in advance and then obeying the game rules as a higher authority than themselves. Where does this idea come from? Tournament play? It seems to me a gross inflation of the role of rules...

Speak for yourself; I haven't met anyone like that. I believe they exist, but let's not confuse anecdotal impressions with knowing the answer to PwrMnky's statistical question.

Stylization is good, but the more you do it, the more aesthetically specific you get and the narrower in appeal. Most of Wizards' would-be 'cool' imagery and kinaesthetics just looks flashy and superficial to me. For instance, costumes like this that look concept-designed to within an inch of...

Ed Greenwood's had a lot of success with this. I suggest getting in touch with him via the Candlekeep.com forums.

'The Mythos', as a codified structure, is Derleth's idea. Lovecraft's work is better appreciated outside that conception. There are lots of good writers with Lovecraft elements in their work, including Robert Bloch, Hugh B. Cave, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, A.A. Attanasio, Jorge Luis...

The equivalent to those things isn't a whole chapter but, say, an NPC, a building, an adventure hook or plot idea, which are generally (I think) no less easy or easier to adapt. It was a brilliant idea that initially filled a big gap among the finite but clued-up population of wargamers...

Yes, his story which was first posted to REALMS-L: I was pointing out that Sean didn't say they sold better. My guess would be that Lords of Darkness sold less well than Magic of Faerûn largely because it was DM-only. I'm not sure about a lot easier; it would be a lot of work to integrate all of...