D&D General Greyhawk did what? A partial list of Greyhawk Personalities

[Snarf Zagyg]

I took a trip to Iceland a few years ago. The PSA video on elves on the flight over there was fantastic. As was the tour guide's stories about trolls as we did the Golden Circle tour.

Weirdly, I've never been to Iceland, but I have been to Russia a few times, including once right before the fall of the Soviet Union! The Hermitage and the Winter Palace are amazing.

....but they didn't have a PSA on Baba Yaga's hut, alas.

 

[Cadence]

Between the old Dragon issue with the great(?) illusion trap in her hut, Books of Magic #3 by Gaiman and Vess, and the Fables comic series, I've got a lot of fondess for the character and her trappings... and thinking about how she is in so many planes of existence... she'd be a great choice of planeswalker to tie GH into MtG at some point. And of course, then they'd have an excuse to do a 5e version of it.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If there's a dog in Baba Yaga's hut, you're probably in the wrong Baba Yaga's hut:

 

[grodog]

Furthermore, the old 1e DMG artifacts I'm not sure were pure Greyhawk right from the start, I think they were examples of artifacts for DMs to use as they saw fit. [snip]
Artifacts like the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd or the Rod of Seven Parts which make references to a background I'm not sure were specifically Greyhawk. Even the infamous Hand and Eye of Vecna don't seem to be Greyhawk specific at that point.

Agreed per the original info published in EW and the DMG. We do learn some additional details/lore about some of these from Gygax, Rob Kuntz, and others at various points:

• Invulnerable Coat of Arnd featured in Kuntz's Dark Druids adventure set in the Gnarley Forest
• the Vecna/Kas artifacts were from Blume's home campaign, and were explicitly added to Greyhawk later via the Vecna Lives module
• the Rod of Seven parts was non-Greyhawk originally (from Skip Williams' campaign, per his "A History of the Rod of Seven Parts" article in Dragon #224), and was then later incorporated into Greyhawk too via the Tomes boxed set

And while the Cup and Talisman of Al'Akbar were clearly Greyhawk-related in the DMG, they didn't originate that way either: they were first published in SR#7
as "Cup and Talisman of Akbar" by Neal Healey. Like tRo7P, they were absorbed into Greyhawk too.

Allan.

 

[Orius]

Agreed per the original info published in EW and the DMG. We do learn some additional details/lore about some of these from Gygax, Rob Kuntz, and others at various points:

• Invulnerable Coat of Arnd featured in Kuntz's Dark Druids adventure set in the Gnarley Forest
• the Vecna/Kas artifacts were from Blume's home campaign, and were explicitly added to Greyhawk later via the Vecna Lives module
• the Rod of Seven parts was non-Greyhawk originally (from Skip Williams' campaign, per his "A History of the Rod of Seven Parts" article in Dragon #224), and was then later incorporated into Greyhawk too via the Tomes boxed set

And while the Cup and Talisman of Al'Akbar were clearly Greyhawk-related in the DMG, they didn't originate that way either: they were first published in SR#7
as "Cup and Talisman of Akbar" by Neal Healey. Like tRo7P, they were absorbed into Greyhawk too.

Allan.

Right, I know some of those old artifacts go back to EW, while some first showed up in the DMG. By 2e, a lot of them had been assigned to Greyhawk but some were always there or had a long association with the setting, while I think some others got dropped there in the Book of Artifacts which I think tried to link as many artifacts as possible to TSR's published settings at the time. I'm not certain there, because I don't make a lot of use of artifacts myself, given that they tend to be tied to particular settings, and they're also things that a DM bases whole adventures and campaigns around.

I suspected as much about Vecna Lives, but I wasn't sure about any earlier references. That adventure was early 2e though.

I have Dragon #224 and I've read that article. I also know about the adventure (IIRC wasn't Skip's article in #224 a promotion for the upcoming box?) but he also did another Dragon article later in 1996 (I think #233, but I'm not entirely sure) where he had suggestions for placing the adventure in some of the published settings including the Realms.

Anyway, a lot of it feels like the early 1e modules that had a loose tie to Greyhawk. They had more or less official locations in the setting, but DMs were free to use them however they wanted. The Tomb of Horrors for example, is given 6 different suggested locations in Greyhawk, but there's little else tying into the setting. A few years later, The Temple of Elemental Evil is much more tightly integrated into the setting (to be fair, I've never compared it to T1 to see what kind of differences there are between the two though). D1-3 are the only other early 1e adventures I've looked at, and while they too are Greyhawk, I wasn't particularly interested in the setting ties myself, as I was researching material on the Underdark. So I don't remember exactly what Gary did to tie that in with Greyhawk, I was much more interested in his descriptions of the drow, kuo-toa, and Underdark in general.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Anyway, a lot of it feels like the early 1e modules that had a loose tie to Greyhawk. They had more or less official locations in the setting, but DMs were free to use them however they wanted. The Tomb of Horrors for example, is given 6 different suggested locations in Greyhawk, but there's little else tying into the setting. A few years later, The Temple of Elemental Evil is much more tightly integrated into the setting (to be fair, I've never compared it to T1 to see what kind of differences there are between the two though). D1-3 are the only other early 1e adventures I've looked at, and while they too are Greyhawk, I wasn't particularly interested in the setting ties myself, as I was researching material on the Underdark. So I don't remember exactly what Gary did to tie that in with Greyhawk, I was much more interested in his descriptions of the drow, kuo-toa, and Underdark in general.

I think it was later determined that Acererak had built a Tomb of Horrors at all six locations - after all, none of them were the true Tomb! (One of them contained a portal to the true tomb, which was revealed in Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Lyzandred also borrowed this idea from Acererak, and built fake tombs all over the Flanaess. In Acererak's case, the fake tombs existed to consume souls to power his ascension - in Lyzandred's case, they existed to lure adventurers to confiscate their magic items, as Lyzandred wasn't actually an evil megalomaniac like Acererak, but a highly lawful wizard who had become a lich in order to continue his eternal mission of decreasing the amount of destructive magic in the hands of troublesome freebooters - a kind of magical anti-proliferation operation!)