D&D General For the Love of Greyhawk: Why People Still Fight to Preserve Greyhawk

[TwoSix]

I guess, but it seemed by the others that it couldn't be explained without that knowledge, which would tell me I need a rather in-depth knowledge of the subject matter to even start getting an idea. Far more than a simple summary.

They might have been wrong about how much I needed to understand Greyhawk, but I would say that to understand the Genre I probably need more.

Honestly, you probably don't really need to understand it. It's pretty much a dead genre at this point, at least in terms of having mainstream fantasy published in that genre. People keep recommending Howard, Lieber and Moorcock because no one else is writing stuff in that vein anymore.

 

[Bupp]

The Greyhawk wars stuff, which offer a solution on how the grand scale conflict might play out, is imho not the deciding material needed for a good GH campaign, it is mainly a framework for the aftermath, which could be much grittier (or brighter) also.

I like From the Ashes, but not all together. Like you said, a framework. I've used pieces of it in my games. They each provide a possible path for each region, just not all at once.

The old guard appreciates that it it's a relatively loose setting that a DM can make his own, but those guys have all made their own unique Greyhawks. That's why they're so invested in it, and they enjoy sharing stories about what they did with it, but that makes it harder to commercialize the setting, and was probably a big obstacle for Sargent's material.

Agreed here. The broad strokes gives a DM a lot of freedom.

I haven't run a game in Greyhawk in ages. Been using homebrew worlds. I was about to start running Ghosts of Saltmarsh and just place it in my world, but this thread is inciting some nostalgia, so I'm thinking of just running some Greyhawk.

I was going through some of my Greyhawk Stuff and rediscovered a great piece by Chris Kutalik (Hill Cantons blog), The Howling Emptyness of the World of Greyhawk, (and the postscipt).

 

[Cadence]

Honestly, you probably don't really need to understand it. It's pretty much a dead genre at this point, at least in terms of having mainstream fantasy published in that genre. People keep recommending Howard, Lieber and Moorcock because no one else is writing stuff in that vein anymore.

Is there anything about S&S being perfect for a short story or a novella, and neither of those really being big things anymore? A lot of the things I've liked in recent short story collections feel closer to S&S than high fantasy. A Google search turns up a variety of places that recommend some modern authors writing in more of an S&S tradition, but their regular mention of the Black Company makes me wonder if I really know the definition of the genre, or if it's just being gritty, with one character as the focus. Anyway, the short story collection "The Best of Glen Cook" has several that feel like they have the right vibe (along with some under rated sci-fi).

 

[pemerton]

I never thought of Greyhawk as low magic or low powered.

Here are the magic-users/wizards I think of when I think of Greyhawk

Acererak
Bigby
Drawmij
Iggwilv
Mage of the Vale
Melf
Mordenkainen
Nystul
Rary
Otiluke
Otto
Serten
Tasha
Tenser
Vecna
Xagyg

There are others

Warnes Starcoat. The casters in the PC charts for the G-D-Q modules and ToH (I haven't gone back to check their names and exact levels, but they're not weak and some are strong).

That's all before we get to later 80s/early 90s material, where we have members of the Boneheart, the Hierarchs of the Horned Society, etc.

 

[TwoSix]

Is there anything about S&S being perfect for a short story or a novella, and neither of those really being big things anymore? A lot of the things I've liked in recent short story collections feel closer to S&S than high fantasy. A Google search turns up a variety of places that recommend some modern authors writing in more of an S&S tradition, but their regular mention of the Black Company makes me wonder if I really know the definition of the genre, or if it's just being gritty. With one character as the focus. Anyway, the short story collections "The Best of Glen Cook" has several that feel like they have the right vibe (along with some under rated sci-fi).

That definitely might play a role; most of the big S&S authors had their major works originally published in fanzines.

 

[Voadam]

Warnes Starcoat. The casters in the PC charts for the G-D-Q modules and ToH (I haven't gone back to check their names and exact levels, but they're not weak and some are strong).

That's all before we get to later 80s/early 90s material, where we have members of the Boneheart, the Hierarchs of the Horned Society, etc.

Yeah, I have Isle of the Ape so I know Warnes is from there and I have a lot of the 2e stuff so I know he joins the Circle along with Jallarzi and others, but their names do not immediately come to mind when I think Greyhawk wizards. For me it is mostly the 1e PH, DMG, UA, and WoG references. I am sure if I looked through my City of Greyhawk and From the Ashes boxed sets I would get a bunch more names that did not exist in 1e. I had to pull up From the Ashes to remember the name of its new big guy magic-user, Philidor the Blue Wizard.

 

[pemerton]

The exact rule is: Khelben Blackstaff is at a minimum of 27th level and he is always 5 levels above any PCs in any cases. That is the kind of power you see in FR that you don't in Greyhawk.

<snip>

Mordenkainen in the original box set is only level 18th (and coincidentaly, the same level in CoS). Tenser is also level 18th. The mage of the Vale is 19th but in the original box set he was rumored to be 12th... (2nd edition tended to upgrade the power spike quite a bit for some reasons, but even then, it was not that big.)

Mordenkainen is 12th in the module Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, In the Rogue's gallery he's 16th.

I just checked the Folio: the Mage of the Valley is 18th level. In the smaller book of the boxed set he is a question mark; but the list of rulers in that book includes two elven F/MUs who are 11th level mages and multiple clerics above 12th level (Almor, Ekbir, Verbobonc, I think some others I've already forgotten). That book also has a chart for determining the level of high level PCs that goes from 10th to 19th level.

I get your point, but I wonder if, from the perspective of an actual campaign, this is a meaningful distinction.

I agree, though maybe for a slightly different reason. The presence or absence of high level PCs is a background feature which I don't think varies very much based on whether there are three or six of them, or whether they are 14th or 24th level. What's relevant to the play experience is how they figure in game play.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I have Isle of the Ape so I know Warnes is from there and I have a lot of the 2e stuff so I know he joins the Circle along with Jallarzi and others, but their names do not immediately come to mind when I think Greyhawk wizards. For me it is mostly the 1e PH, DMG, UA, and WoG references.

Sure, but Isle of the Ape is by Gygax and so Warnes is surely canonical on any measure.

I am sure if I looked through my City of Greyhawk and From the Ashes boxed sets I would get a bunch more names that did not exist in 1e. I had to pull up From the Ashes to remember the name of its new big guy magic-user, Philidor the Blue Wizard.

Yep. And there are AD&D/Gygax ones too - see my post just above this one.

I'm happy to accept the demographics are a bit different from FR, but I don't think that in itself makes a fundamental difference to play. A GM who wants to use a 16th level MU to boss around the players (via their PCs) can do so as easily in GH as in the FR. So if GH is different in this respect the difference results from expectations of play, not in-fiction demographics.

 

[Azzy]

Heh. I'm a Greyhawk fan that has never read Howard, Moorcock, or Leiber

 

[Azzy]

I read Piers Anthony when I was a teen as well, and enjoyed it, but there is a lot of creepy subtext that I missed at the time so that I would not recommend it to my son.

Stuff like:
-relationships between young female teens and much older men (Adept series),
-an obsession with the underwear of female teens (one of the Xanth series is literally called ‘The Colour of her Panties’, but it is constant in Xanth),
- the idea if a young woman is attractive or teasing, a man is exhibiting extraordinary self-control in not sexually assaulting her (Adept series again)

Overall, knowing that a middle-aged man wrote these novels really makes it feel skeevy in retrospect.

Yeah. I've only read his Incarnations of Immortality series and came away with the impression from how he writes and presents his female characters that he's a sexist pervert.