Castle Zagyg by Gary Gygax

[Treebore]

I'm sure this has been posted before, but if your a gamer who loves Gary Gygax's writing of the 1E Greyhawk setting, then you need to get this book. I just got it today and all I can say is my appreciation of this book is very similiar to appreciating fine aged wine. I think Gary has definitely improved with age and experience.

When the Castle Greyh...er, ahem, Castle Zagyg project is finished it is going to blow us away.

Yeah, there are a lot of typoes, so you typoholic people stay away! You'll have siezures!!

Those of you who want to experience what Castle Greyhawk, and its nearby city/town, should have been back in 1982, well, the first installment is here, and it is fantastic!

As a bonus, those of us who use 1e, 2e, or Castles and Crusades rules sets will have a very easy time using the crunch too.

3E Dm's will have level suggestions, but from there you'll have to generate everything. Stats, feats, skill lists, everything, except of course name, class, and level, and community position, if any. Plus a suggested skill set.

Even if I was still a 3E DM I would buy this book. Just as happily as I have as a C&C player!

 

[Numion]

Troll Lords site for the product is a bit sprawling. Is the castle 8 books? What's the total damage for the complete caste? ($) How many pages?

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'm kinda interested in where the other books for the series are and how they're coming along.

 

[DaveMage]

Troll Lords site for the product is a bit sprawling. Is the castle 8 books? What's the total damage for the complete caste? ($) How many pages?

That's the downside.

Only 2 books of the 8 have been released.

They probably won't be finished for several years.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

You had me right up until this part...

3E Dm's will have level suggestions, but from there you'll have to generate everything. Stats, feats, skill lists, everything, except of course name, class, and level, and community position, if any. Plus a suggested skill set.

It's one of the reasons that I run pre-generated adventures instead of writing my own now. If I buy an adventure and have to stat it out myself then for me that's a waste of money. Great for all you C&C fans (and for the record I have no interest in C&C, the more evengelical fans have really turned me off and also there's a reason I stopped playing 2nd ED) but sucks for me I guess.

 

[green slime]

You had me right up until this part...



It's one of the reasons that I run pre-generated adventures instead of writing my own now. If I buy an adventure and have to stat it out myself then for me that's a waste of money. Great for all you C&C fans (and for the record I have no interest in C&C, the more evengelical fans have really turned me off and also there's a reason I stopped playing 2nd ED) but sucks for me I guess.

Sucks for you, I guess, but I actually have come to the conclusion that I'd rather just see a brief one-line suggestion about a character in a bought module than half a page of stats. When I buy a module, I want a good situation/story, with a few twists.

Stating out the NPCs is mostly unecessary, as they get tweaked anyway, to suit the attitude of the PC's, allowable feats in the campaign, suitable races.

It just strikes me as being more universally appliable if the NPC is briefly described in as few game-term words as possible. Every half-page statblock is a halfpage of descriptive flavour lost. What is even more frustrating that rule books now contain such a large percentage of descriptive fluff, and the adventures devote so much page space to rules-text. Guess I'm just wierd for thinking this way.

 

[Endur]

I actually have come to the conclusion that I'd rather just see a brief one-line suggestion about a character in a bought module than half a page of stats. When I buy a module, I want a good situation/story, with a few twists.

Stating out the NPCs is mostly unecessary, as they get tweaked anyway, to suit the attitude of the PC's, allowable feats in the campaign, suitable races.

For the most part, I agree with this. On occassion, I prefer to have all of the stats ... but they could be on the web somewhere, they don't have to be part of the module.

 

[Crothian]

There are ways to have stats take up reduced space and still be there. Stating things for d20 is something I perfer to pay for then do myself.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Sucks for you, I guess, but I actually have come to the conclusion that I'd rather just see a brief one-line suggestion about a character in a bought module than half a page of stats. When I buy a module, I want a good situation/story, with a few twists.

See I'm just the opposite. In regards to stats I like to see what I have to work with, then change what I need to than build from scratch myself. Less work for me. I like a good situation and story as well, but after that, there's actual work to be done to prep the adventure for actual playing. For me tweaking pre-existing stat blocks are part of that prep work.

Stating out the NPCs is mostly unecessary,
as they get tweaked anyway, to suit the attitude of the PC's, allowable feats in the campaign, suitable races.

Yeah, but like I said before theres a difference between stating something out your self from scratch and tweaking a pre-existing statblock. If I had my choice, which I do, I'd rather tweak and make changes than to build from scratch, that was kinda my point about dismissing the product because of the lack of usable stat blocks.

It just strikes me as being more universally appliable if the NPC is briefly described in as few game-term words as possible.

Which is great if you play more than one game. You can use it for what ever fantasy based game that you want. In my case I play one fantasy based game and that's D&D. Don't get me wrong I have plenty of older generic suppliments and suppliments and modules from previous editions. But you see, I ALREADY OWN those, I'm not spending money on a new product to do extra work.

Every half-page statblock is a halfpage of descriptive flavour lost. What is even more frustrating that rule books now contain such a large percentage of descriptive fluff, and the adventures devote so much page space to rules-text. Guess I'm just wierd for thinking this way.

I dont think youre wierd for thinking that way, I just dont agree with it.
For me D&D isnt some great narrative undertaking. It's a game. I need things that facilitate the playing of the game. I'm not gonna bore the crap out of my players with lines and lines of descriptive flavor, if I can just show them a picture, or get the point across in fewer words. In my experience players only take what they want from anything that's presented to them anyway. For me, for monsters and NPC's I need few things: who is it? What does it do? and Why does it do it? and I want it as concisely as possible without lines and lines of prose.

If I want lines and lines of prose, I'll read a storybook or novel. For me game books are reference books. Give me what I need to know to play and run the game. Everything else is gravy.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The CZ:Yggsburgh book is quite nice for a city with a very Greyhawkian feel, actually you could say it is a smaller version of Greyhawk city, since the institutions and feel is very close. I for one am very glad that no space was wasted on D20 stuff, that is just wasted space for my purposes. I don't know if I will ever really run the CZ stuff though until I have all of it, I'd have to have them go into the dungeon then have to make up some excuse why they can't go down a staircase since I lack the next levels of the set.