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

[wingsandsword]

I personally think Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is enough for a great campaign, and to understand a ton about Greyhawk - though there’s always more to learn, especially with fans creating new materials.

I get you want it on paper, but I would consider also getting the PDF from DriveThruRPG. I treasure my hard copy, but the PDF is great for searching and cross reference checks.

Is there a similar comprehensive source for Forgotten Realms? I don’t care about edition, just looking to learn about FR, some day.

The single best book for Forgotten Realms is the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Of course, you will likely say that this is just me doubling down in my ignorance, but if nothing you say actually disputes what I said... then I don't really know how I am supposed to see how what I said was wrong.

That's exactly what it is. And illustrated how you were wrong, but you dismissed it, and said I was "just pointing out differences". Yeah, exactly. I was pointing out that you were wrong, and it required you to ignore a bunch of stuff to claim they're the same. Pointing out the differences is pretty fundamental to understanding how things are different, y'know? How is that unreasonable?

The structure of noir is fundamentally different - but much more similar to The Witcher. Typically, an attractive person asks the investigator to investigate something, there's a murky mystery involving a lot of twists, action, maybe sex and so on, everyone comes out of it dirty, including the original attractive person, who has often done something very wrong themselves.

Now that could describe tons of noir, and a lot of Witcher stuff. But it couldn't describe most S&S (it could describe a small proportion though)

I don't think Moorcock really belongs with the others. Especially in later books there is a strong, if unconventional, morality running through them: Extremes of anything, ether Law or Chaos (which represent political Right and Left) are "bad". Maintaining the balance is "good". The Eternal Champion fights to protect Tanelorn, the Utopian city of Balance.

Has Moorcock actually said that re: Left/Right, or is that your interpretation?

Now, full disclosure, I've written entire essays on way Law and Chaos represent, and how they present as themes in literature throughout human history. To me I see no match to conventional understandings of Left/Right politics. Rather they fit closely to the Authoritarian-Libertarian axis of politics (which cuts across Left/Right politics - you can be be Right and Libertarian, or Left and Authoritarian, or vice-versa). And Moorcock himself has strongly Left-wing politics by British definitions (with libertarian leanings like many from his era). I've heard people call Authoritarian/Libertarian Up/Down instead of Left/Right, which I think works (though I suspect there are other axes out there too).

(All that said I wouldn't be astounded if he did, because in the 1960s and 1970s there was a strong association between generally Authoritarian attitudes to governance and the British Right, and generally Libertarian ones, and the British Left, something which later got a lot messier.)

But to your general point re: strong morality, yes. Moorcock himself has said that he considers his work an heir more to REH and so on, and obviously many are familiar with "Epic Pooh" (Moorcock's 1978 takedown of LotR/Tolkien - available here). There are differences to earlier S&S - but there are differences with Fritz Leiber's stuff too - and they also have a sort of increasing morality as things go on. It's not a conventional one, but both of the heroes know when they've "gone too far". The general vibe is pretty similar though, and the Eternal Champion stuff only occasionally gets centre stage.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Has Moorcock actually said that re: Left/Right, or is that your interpretation?

Not that I know of, but The Dreamthief's Daughter is hardly subtle in equating "Lawful" with "Fascist".

As for "left", I think Moorcock is in line with Orwell's Animal Farm.

 

[Aldarc]

IMHO, Chaos for Moorcock is less Libertarian and more Anarchist.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not that I know of, but The Dreamthief's Daughter is hardly subtle in equating "Lawful" with "Fascist".

As for "left", I think Moorcock is in line with Orwell's Animal Farm.

But those are both about extreme authoritarianism/totalitarianism, and that ties in with Law in both cases - when Law gets out of control and creates an oppressive hierarchy.

Whereas Chaos renders things completely meaningless and well, chaotic, with no laws, no predictability, just things happening "because". That's more a criticism of anarchism/libertarianism if we look at it from an allegorical perspective.

Order, i.e. balance, comes from finding a place between the two.

IMHO, Chaos for Moorcock is less Libertarian and more Anarchist.

I agree, actually, though there's considerable crossover and the general direction of travel is the same.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But those are both about extreme authoritarianism/totalitarianism, and that ties in with Law in both cases - when Law gets out of control and creates an oppressive hierarchy.

Whereas Chaos renders things completely meaningless and well, chaotic, with no laws, no predictability, just things happening "because". That's more a criticism of anarchism/libertarianism if we look at it from an allegorical perspective.

Order, i.e. balance, comes from finding a place between the two.



I agree, actually, though there's considerable crossover and the general direction of travel is the same.

I think Moorcock's point would be that it doesn't really matter. Any ideology taken to it's extreme is a bad thing. And there is a suggestion that unless you actively try to maintain a balance there is a natural tendency to slide towards extremism. Tanelorn is always under threat.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That's exactly what it is. And illustrated how you were wrong, but you dismissed it, and said I was "just pointing out differences". Yeah, exactly. I was pointing out that you were wrong, and it required you to ignore a bunch of stuff to claim they're the same. Pointing out the differences is pretty fundamental to understanding how things are different, y'know? How is that unreasonable?

"These things have similarities."

"You are wrong, they have differences"

"But... none of those differences are about the similarities they share, so they still have similarities."

"Why are you dismissing my point?"


Football and Soccer are both sports that take place on a field, involving a ball, and between two opposing teams. That is true, whether or not the rules are different or one uses your hands more than your feet.

None of your differences addressed the similarities I was talking about, the only way your point makes sense is if you assume I was saying the two genres were identical. Which is an absurd point that I never made.

The structure of noir is fundamentally different - but much more similar to The Witcher. Typically, an attractive person asks the investigator to investigate something, there's a murky mystery involving a lot of twists, action, maybe sex and so on, everyone comes out of it dirty, including the original attractive person, who has often done something very wrong themselves.

Now that could describe tons of noir, and a lot of Witcher stuff. But it couldn't describe most S&S (it could describe a small proportion though)

Which again, changes nothing about the similarities I was talking about. Just because you can point to two things that are different having differences does not mean they cannot also have similarities. They are not mutually exclusive.

So unless you can prove that the similarities I pointed out are wrong, it doesn't matter how many differences you can come up with, because they don't erase the existence of the similarities.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Which again, changes nothing about the similarities I was talking about. Just because you can point to two things that are different having differences does not mean they cannot also have similarities. They are not mutually exclusive.

So unless you can prove that the similarities I pointed out are wrong, it doesn't matter how many differences you can come up with, because they don't erase the existence of the similarities.

This is a complete failure as a rational argument. I'm not even sure why you think it's a rational argument. It's bizarre.

Specifically your argument from the previous post appears to be that, to all intents and purposes, S&S and noir are either the same, or so similar that it doesn't matter. It is irrational and unreasonable, in that case, to claim that the number and kind of differences doesn't matter, if some similarities, however weak, can be identified. I'm pretty sure that, by that logic, we can claim any number of deeply disparate genres are "the same", because a lot of very different genres contain similar elements if you boil them down enough.

I've pointed out a number of pretty fundamental differences, in tone, in structure, in the information they convey and so on. They're genres with some crossover, but they also have considerable differences. Neither is a subset of the other, rather they're essentially two Venn diagrams, that where they intersect, we have The Witcher.

I also think that your reliance on other people (including me) telling you stuff here is completely proving my point about how, if you make zero effort to find out about something, you won't understand it very well. You're just leaping on any tiny thing you think you do understand, and trying to make it all about that. It's not helpful.

If you're not trying to argue that noir and S&S are essentially the same then I have no idea what you are trying to argue.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

Contributing your own edition warring rhetoric and propaganda hardly helps matters, particularly if it only serves to fan the flames.

Now that's rude and childlike gainsaying; I am not rehashing edition warring codswallop, just calling it out/labelling it for what it is; for posterity, if-you-will.

 

[Umbran]

Now that's rude and childlike gainsaying;...

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