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Of all media, RPGs, a medium which you do yourself rather than consume, perhaps least require additional books inherently. And indeed, most D&Ders don't buy them. The nature of what is published is severely twisted by the (perceived) commercial needs of publishers, such as the selling of...

I wouldn't identify 'iconic characters' as Wizards conceives and uses them, as planned marketing devices, with earlier, more democratic parallels to the idea.

To avoid arguing over rules, just establish in advance that players don't argue over rules during the session. I've found that reducing out-of-character discussion is mostly a matter of seeing your friends enough outside the game. And, of course, discuss the campaign in advance to get the...

I like supplements to have as much additional rules content (beyond the basic rules) as is needed to represent their ideas, which for me is rarely more than 'tiny elements of the other'.

As far as I know, the term 'Underdark' originated in Doug Niles's Dungeoneers' Survival Guide. The original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set doesn't use the word, instead 'Realms Below' -- see here (search for 'Realms Below') for notes on Ed Greenwood's original Realms underworld. The word...

It was a different city, with a different layout (the authentic layout was shown in Gary's novel City of Hawks), different buildings, inhabitants, rulers, different feel, with only (some of) the handful of information that had been published about the City in common. Both TSR versions of the...

By the way, for any of you who like Gary's work but haven't read Living Fantasy, I recommend it strongly. It's Gary's exposition of D&Dlike quasi-medieval/Renaissance society, drawn from historical models and his own quirky imagination, and spells out a lot of the assumptions that Greyhawk and...

Monopoly is about imaginary money. D&D is about imaginary characters, places and events, some of which are supported by numbers.

T1 The Village of Hommlet showed us that (and S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Artifact of Evil, and more recently Castle Zagyg: Yggsburgh). Much of what's distinctive about the World of Greyhawk isn't the brute geographic and historical details, but the literary and game sensibility that underlies...

See Ed Greenwood's "Up on a Soapbox: Players don’t need to know all the rules" in Dragon #49.

I don't have quotes to hand, but Gary has often talked about how he dislikes the idea of a detailed, limiting 'canon' and timelines. He isn't into detailed world-building for its own sake. On the other hand, there were plans to publish supplements on areas such as the Wild Coast.

Great wistful might-have-beens, both. But he did shift the campaign to the published setting as soon as he wrote it. I forget exactly where that claim is (ambiguously) made, but it's misleading. Ærth is only closer to the pre-1980 World of Greyhawk than is the published Oerth in its use of Earth...

Millions of people play D&D, while the books sell in tens of thousands.

Yet there are Cormyte adventurers! Charters (which are used in other places than Cormyr) are not an inhibition to Cormyrean adventuring but a spur to drive the PCs to earn their legitimacy and a chance for guidance from their sponsor: thus it was that the king charged the fledgling Knights of...

FRQ1 Haunted Halls of Eveningstar is the big one, an ideal Cormyrean starting setting and dungeon. Ed's "Irongard" in Dungeon #18 is a good addition. Then I might lead the PCs to Arabel or Suzail for some city adventuring. The big advantage to starting at 1st level is that it lets the players...

I first seriously read Greyhawk materials in the early 90s, from both the Gygax and the Sargent eras. It took me a while to realize that what I liked about the setting was Gary's world-building sensibility, and that Carl's was very different and, in the context of Greyhawk, much less appealing...

If you tried applying this to Vance's Dying Earth, Averoigne, Glorantha, Tékumel, Middle-earth, the Hyborian Age, the Star Wars galaxy, Wolfe's Commonwealth, etc., you might see what nonsense it is. Who does? Having to accommodate the whims of the core D&D designers would shatter any chance a...

Only a minority of players buy these supplements, so that can't really be so.

The Epic Level Handbook is where Iyraclea was finally detailed in print. She's also mentioned in Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, The Ruin, and a couple of other places.

In the World of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, most wizards are jealous of and careful with their spells, and would resent someone copying from their spellbook without permission, and potential copiers know that's the case.