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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7757077" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the Circle of Eight is a later creation, isn't it? I thought Gygax had the "Citadel of Eight".I'm not sure how reliable Wikipedia is on these matters, but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Eight" target="_blank">it gives us the following</a>:Gygax had the eight characters form an alliance that he called the Circle of Eight. Gygax had the Eight construct a stronghold in the middle of an evil land so they would not have to travel far to find adventure. After three years of game time, the resulting structure was the Obsidian Citadel, a massive and impregnable octagonal castle from which Gygax could direct any of the Eight to sally forth in search of adventure. After Gygax was ousted from TSR in 1985, the company took over creative control of the published Greyhawk setting, including the names of any characters who had ever been named in TSR publications. In 1988, The City of Greyhawk boxed set by Carl Sargent and Rik Rose remolded Gygax's old "Circle of Eight" into a new plot device. ,. . . The mandate of this new Circle was to act as neutral referees between Good and Evil, never letting one side or the other gain the upper hand for long.None of the Gygax-era treatments of Mordenkainen that I know (eg in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, or the "reports" of RPGing with Monty Haul and gang in some early Dragon magazines, present Mordenkainen as fighting to "preserve neutrality". Which makes sense: Gygax's presentation of neutrality in his PHB and DMG is precisely not as something that one can work towards - according to True Neutrals (as described by Gygax), human action and striving produce imbalances in the natural order that undermine natural harmonies and result in suffering.</blockquote>

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