Are the Scarlet bro's and Iuz holding GREYHAWK back?

[CruelSummerLord]

GH has potential. It just needs a nice shake up to remove a lot of the old dross and allow a nice injection of new potential and interesting features.

Yes, it does. Rewind the timeline to 576 CY and clean out a lot of the garbage that passes for canon (e.g. anything by Sean K. Reynolds, any of the arbitrary destructions of nations from FtA, etc.) Incorporate the history in the LGG, take historical references and things like that, but don't advance the plot or anything like that. Provide a fertile field and seeds, and let the DM grow his or her own garden.

Give the whole thing the look of the FRCS, and voila. The bad canon is gone, the setting is fresh, started anew for DMs and players. The timeline is not advanced; modules are simply released for players to play in, with options for linking them together. There is no overarcing plot, no "canon" events that take place except as determined by modules.

Give the DM and players the tools, and let them do the work. Don't force them to renovate their projects if they don't like what you're doing.

Blow off everything from FtA and afterwards, and things should be fine.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Yeah, that's exactly my feeling on it, but apparently there are lots of people who want a setting with an advancing storyline. Trouble is, what works for a fiction series doesn't necessarily work for a RPG world. Or at least it doesn't work as well. Complaints about the world being static or frozen miss the point - a game world changes because the individual DM and his gaming group cause it to change. But I guess that line of reasoning is unwanted.

No, it is wanted. These are words of wisdom.

I LIKE my Greyhawk frozen in amber, or at least advanced with small, gradual changes, not the roller-coaster stuff we've had to deal with since FtA.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Iuz and the Scarlet Brotherhood haven't done much? It's up to the DM to make 'em. IMHO, a setting should provide a "snapshot" or "zero hour" of the setting, and future supplements should refrain from officially advancing the timeline. For instance, look at Eberron. When it was released in 2004, it was the year 998. We're now in 2007 and the books being released are still set in 998.

You can have years of Greyhawk books simply by describing the Flanaess (which would require quite a few books), the extremes (Bright Desert, Crystalmist Mountains, etc), the religions, the Islands, Hepmonaland, Amedio Jungle, before proceeding to expanding the map (something that should've happened a long while ago). And then you'll have a book on the City of Greyhawk, an Expedition to Castle Greyhawk, a Races of Oerth book, a Dragons of Oerth, a Magic of Oerth... Really, if you release six Greyhawk books per year, you have enough material for the first three years, easily. An official "advancing" timeline is hardly necessary.

See, this is what it's about! Sourcebooks and further development, not an overarcing campaign story!

 

[cnath.rm]

What I want for Greyhawk is a 5-year compilation of all of the general plotlines from Living Greyhawk so I can understand what's going on in the campaign should I decide to get back into LG. I'd also like it as a potential timeline of development that I can use in my own campaign.

I agree on this, would be nice for me as I think I might enjoy reading over it (were it written well) and it would make it easier for me to consider trying out LG.

 

[haakon1]

Anyways, I think it's time for a new FtA-type product . . . The setting is doomed to continue in the shadows because of it's inability to grow. Iuz is holding GH back because of his boring stranglehold on the north and the fact that he's a demigod. Well, there's an endless and useless plotline...yawn.

I disagree completely. As Greyhawk's creator will tell you, once a setting is published, it belongs to the people who use it. The timeline is up to the player's and the DM's out there, not the arbitrary whims of the author or the publisher.

To quote Samuel Johnson: "If a man is tired of London, he's tried of life." The fault, I think, is not in Greyhawk. If you're bored of the setting, you're jaded with D&D, so you might want to try another non-D&D game, like say Eberron.

The Scarlet Brotherhood has come and gone too. They were cool way back when. Now their uniqueness is gone. Remember when they were mysterious monks and assassins? Well, the mystery is gone. They need to be replaced or retract.

I was never interested in them, and they only matter much in From the A**es, not real Greyhawk.

Where would you go with Greyhawk..or should it continue in the circle of balance leftover from FtA?

Re-set to the original world, or leave it be in Erik Mona's partially recovered version (the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer). Don't make change for the sake of change.

 

[haakon1]

I always thought of Greyhawk as being a snapshot in time of a setting, which is then developed at the gaming table by individual DMs. One of the things that turned me off of settings like FR was that they became ever-changing at the hands of someone other than individual DMs. Personally, I'd like to see Greyhawk remain as that snapshot, with supporting material simply detailing the setting at that moment in time. Yes, eventually you'd run out of stuff to detail, or end up detailing down to a ridiculous degree, if WotC felt the need to release a constant stream of GH material. Maybe at that point they could release "alternate universe" versions of GH, detailing how it would be if, say, Iuz was gone, or the timeline was advanced (maybe like the Greyhawk 2000 articles in Dragon and Dungeon years back), or there was an alien invasion, or whatever.

Exactly. This is the approach taken in Harn and it's how MERP (Ice's Middle Earth RP) dealt with their settings too. One or two alternate date settings is an interesting way to go.

 

[haakon1]

I truly despise FtA because it violated one of the most basic tenets of Greyhawk-that it was the DM and his or her players, and not official canon and metaplots over which the DM has no control that dictated how the setting would go.

Countries were trampled over without the PCs getting a chance to either save them, or a chance to carve out a piece of the action for themselves if they were evil or amoral.

Right on, brother!

 

[haakon1]

Yes, it does. Rewind the timeline to 576 CY and clean out a lot of the garbage that passes for canon (e.g. anything by Sean K. Reynolds, any of the arbitrary destructions of nations from FtA, etc.) Incorporate the history in the LGG, take historical references and things like that, but don't advance the plot or anything like that. Provide a fertile field and seeds, and let the DM grow his or her own garden.
. . .
The timeline is not advanced; modules are simply released for players to play in, with options for linking them together. There is no overarcing plot, no "canon" events that take place except as determined by modules.

That would be totally awesome!

 

[Klaus]

I'd go as far as rewind the setting back to prior to the Greyhawk Wars, back to the timeline of the City of Greyhawk boxed set. Greyhawk, being the basic setting it is, should be a toolbox for the DM. In this regard it should be closer to Eberron (which has lots of toolbox-style books) than to FR or DL (with its myriad novels and products advancing a... ARGH!... "metaplot").

In fact, I think one of the worst things TSR did was try to make Greyhawk into Dragonlance, with the Greyhawk Wars and From The Ashes boxes advancing the timeline.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi there Emirikol!

I don't actually believe there is any kind of significant number of people 'just getting into Greyhawk,'

Thats because WotC are no longer supporting it. They should really have licensed it to some thirdparty publisher rather than letting it go to waste.

and at the current rate we can expect complete and totall execution of the product (sans names of spells and deities that no kid understands). BTW, the LGG is OOP. My way back when was in the early 80's of course. If you love this world as much as I do, you may be reaching that point too. When is your House Rulebook for Greyhawk more "foreground" than the actual campaign setting?

But that was always going to be the case unless you are consistently DMing a low/mid-level game where the heroes simply don't have the power to make sweeping changes.

There are cooler things than SB. I think they were cool when they were secret and evil.

...and how is that any different from saying "There are cooler things than Drow*. I think they were cool when they were secret and evil"...?

*or Zhentarim.

Now they are like the Rome of southern Oerik (as Iuz is to the north). It's time for them to go.

Utter nonsense. Unless you have a plan to replace them with something better, then there is no reason at all to remove such iconic villains.

Man, this campaign needs new life and new non-LG members and rehashing old stuff isn't going to sell products..and that's what happened when the LGG came out..and the D&D gaz... They were never "best sellers."

The gazetteer wasn't a great product by any standards, stack that side by side with the FRCS for instance and you could tell which product line they were planning to support.

I can see why WotC simply turns to a new world like Eberron. There's no entrenched unmovables out there yet Perhaps it's because everybody's afraid of screw-ups like Castle Greyhawk, or Carl naming Orc tribes after human, demihuman and goblinoid races..or someone thinking that rivers are flowing backwards. Lord knows, you can't have a product with errors

I think the reason why Realms is supported and Greyhawk isn't, is purely because of novels.

When you have luminaries like R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood each cranking out a novel a year, one FR novel is released practically every month and theres something like a 200+ novel back catalogue, you just have that added layer of familiarity.

I totally get someone who has put time into "their" campaign and thinking that they own this world and nobody else can touch it, but let's be realistic about Greyhawk's future. Some people would rather continue to see it dead than change to attract new members and sell products to the older ones.

I fully admit to not keeping up with the current Forgotten realms timeline, but have there been any major changes to the political borders of Faerun since the beginning of 3rd Edition? What countries have fallen?

I am only on the periphery of keeping an eye on the Realms (so I could well be wrong), but it seems to me that they pretty much keep the status quo with regards no big changes, but simply make lots of little changes.

The Greyhawk Wars/From the Ashes made a lot of major changes.

But the point I am trying to make, that Klaus also mentioned, is that the changes to the Forgotten Realms timeline are mostly superficial. So you have product after product which is simply detailing a different geographical area, or either a society or group.

Books I'd love to see...

Greyhawk: The Chaos Wastes...the North

Iuz, Furyondy, Barbarians, Nomads.

Greyhawk: Legions of the Damned...the East

Aerdy (updated Ivid the Undying), Nyrond

Greyhawk: Cloaked in Terror...the South

Scarlet Brotherhood, Amedio Jungle, Hepmonaland

Greyhawk: Seas of Blood...the Seas

Sae Princes, Sea Barons, Wild Coast, Pomarj

Greyhawk: Playground of the Giants...the West

Crystalmist Mountains, Sterich, Geoff

Greyhawk: Mages of Power

Circle of Five, Rary, Jazirian, Iggwilv, Philidor, Zagyg, Vecna, Slerotin, Acererak etc.

Greyhawk: Beyond the Flanaess

Overview of everything outside the Flanaess.