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Message: <blockquote data-quote="grodog" data-source="post: 8080296" data-attributes="member: 1613">I'm still catching up on the thread (and will be for another day or two, it seems!).I think that you raise excellent points [USER=6801228]@Chaosmancer[/USER] .  Greyhawk should be able to stand on its own merits.  We should be able to craft a solid elevator pitch for it.  But perhaps, without an understanding and appreciation for its context*, Greyhawk really can't stand on its own merits any longer.  It's worth considering.   An analogy using the failed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(film)" target="_blank">John Carter</a> movie may be apt here. The film failed on several fronts:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The marketing campaign for John Carter completely failed to define the film, the character of John Carter, his adventures, the romance between JC and Dejah Thoris at all, even going so far as to fail to even mention "Mars" in the title as a possible clue that the story falls in the F&SF genre. (Burrough's Barsoom novels not only fall in the F&SF genre, they helped to defined that genre at/near its point of origin).   </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The film also assumed too much familiarity with ERB's original source material and/or some understanding/appreciation of ERB's/Barsoom's importance to F&SF as a whole, despite the books having been first published in the 1910s and that the film didn't connect the dots for the potential movie viewer.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Many of ERB's core ideas/concepts from the Barsoom novels had already been retold/reimagined by later film properties, so some of the "best" ways to describe John Carter to those who were not already familiar with Burrough's fiction were like, "Barsoom was a huge inspiration for Star Wars" (as it was to the creators of Avatar and Babylon 5, among many others).  Fun, but it still doesn't tell you anything meaningful about John Carter unless you're already familiar with ERB and Star Wars' common literary hertiage, and if you are, you might just as soon prefer to rewatch Star Wars anyway, right?</li> </ol>The film's failures sound to me like how you would probably characterize how much of this discussion about Greyhawk has been going in the thread thus far (remember I'm still 10+ pages behind the present).  Is that correct?Allan.* I'm already up way too late, and will reply with more on why/how that context may (or may not?) still be relevant, along with my version of the elevator pitch, after I catch up on more reading in the thread.PPS - Canonfire! is still alive and kicking!:  <a href="http://www.canonfire.com/cf/index.php" target="_blank">Canonfire!</a> and <a href="http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=Forums" target="_blank">Canonfire!</a> <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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