I want to Run/Read Castle Greyhawk. Is This Possible?

[mattcolville]

Here's what I know of the sordid history of this famed dungeon.

1: It was among Gary's central works, adding levels to it at the rate of one a week as early as 1973.

2: The first appearance of anything called Castle Greyhawk in print was the joke-module, which I've actually played through. It was a lot of fun. Looking at the list of freelancers who worked on it, I do not subscribe to the hypothesis that it was a deliberate attempt to make Gary look stupid. Indeed, in his absence, I suspect it was a logical decision after the two Lewis Carrol modules to make the Castle, which the two modules were meant to be offshoots off, a central parody adventure.

Regardless, not what I'm looking for.

3: There was then an adventure called Greyhawk Ruins which was A: apparently really nasty (yay!) and B: only detailed the surface, the three Towers.

4: WotC released Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, which appears to cover some of the same ground, but is nowhere near complete. I have no sense of what people think of this adventure.

5: I thought someone once told me that the Maure Castle content published in Dungeon was originally supposed to be Castle Greyhawk, but I cannot now find a source for that.

6: Castle Zagyg, which is also supposed to be Castle Greyhawk and was originally going to be like 400 seperate books but only one was ever published? 2? Was it in print or just a PDF? Are there plans to finish it?

So my question, it seems, is twofold. IF I pretend to be an archeologist, and imagine that there's a real place called Castle Greyhawk, is it possible to use some combination of these products to reconstruct it?

Or, failing that, will there at some point in the future be a comprehensive adventure called Castle Greyhawk?

Also posted on RPGnet.

 

[Mark]

You could use this -

http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2010/07/castle-of-mad-archmage-final-release.html

- under the other stuff that has been published.

 

[Odhanan]

Ruins of Greyhawk is not an EGG product. It's a bunch of memories of the original castle put on paper by ex-players of the original campaign and glued together by a bunch of new content. It's not an accurate depiction of the original castle. Neither are any of the later products.

My advice would be to start with Castle Zagyg and the Castle of the Mad Archmage, which conveniently starts off where CZ stopped (at level 2).

You could then research amongst EGG's and Rob Kuntz's (Greyhawk's original co-DM) modules that were connected to the original campaign: Maure Castle is one, as are EX1 - Dungeonland, EX2 - Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, S1 - Tombs of Horrors and others. Rob Kuntz recently published materials from the original campaign, like the Living Room, the Stalk, and the Bottle City. Check them out at Pied Piper Publishing.

Also check out Allan Grohe's (Grodog) Greyhawk website for more context.

Reading more around, you should bit by bit get a fairly good idea of what the original Castle was like. Good luck!

 

[Ourph]

IF I pretend to be an archeologist, and imagine that there's a real place called Castle Greyhawk, is it possible to use some combination of these products to reconstruct it?

I can't pretend to read Gary's mind, but I suspect if he were still with us and you were to ask him this question, he would suggest your time would be better spent creating your own dungeons (with ideas borrowed liberally from any source you want) and filling them with your own play experiences and memories rather than spending effort in tracking down details about and trying to be "true" to someone else's dungeon. Castle Greyhawk isn't special because in room X there were exactly 10 monsters with Y amount of treasure. It's special because hundreds of people adventured there, creating interesting stories and having fun experiences with a great DM over years and years of play. No collection of cribbed together notes is ever going to capture that magic, no matter how thorough it is.

 

[Odhanan]

What Ourph says is true.

I can understand the impulse to want to know more about the original campaign, though. I went through that phase (and still am going through it to some extent). What must be resisted indeed is an obsession with somehow playing an absolutely "true" or "canon" version of the Castle. It's not going to happen. And in fact, trying to do so would indeed be counterproductive to the campaign. If you want to experience the "feel" of the original campaign, getting obsessed about "canon" Greyhawk would get you going in pretty much the polar opposite direction from where you want to go.

However. Getting to know details about the original castle, how some things came into play, what the general campaign was like, or some of its most iconic features and areas, may inspire you to come up with your own stuff and create from there. I know that's what it did, and still does for me, to this day.

So don't feel like you have to give up on your desire to know more about the original campaign. Just don't get obsessed about stuff like "canon" up to the point where your campaign would be some sort of reenactment of stuff that never was. Just let this stuff impact your imagination, and roll from there. You'll have a blast.

 

[mattcolville]

I can't pretend to read Gary's mind, but I suspect if he were still with us and you were to ask him this question, he would suggest your time would be better spent creating your own dungeons (with ideas borrowed liberally from any source you want) and filling them with your own play experiences and memories rather than spending effort in tracking down details about and trying to be "true" to someone else's dungeon.

Under no circumstance would Gary say anything of the sort to me. Because were he alive, I would only put the question to him after he'd gotten to know me, and understood the context in which I was asking.

He would understand, in other words, that I'm perfectly capable of constructing my own adventures and, indeed, have been doing so for nigh on 30 years. And that I am a professional designer with no shortage of outlets for my creativity.

And that my interest is primarily in the legacy and history of the game, and that the fun, in this endeavor, is derived from the exercise of trying to piece together the original content, as though it were describing an objectively real place.

Gary wasn't in the business of talking people out of having fun.

 

[Ourph]

Gary wasn't in the business of talking people out of having fun.

Sorry if that's the way my comments came across. That wasn't my intent. Good luck with your researches.

 

[Ariosto]

I seem to recall that the outline of the projected Castle Zagyg, which was (is?) at the Troll Lord Games site, looked like what I have read elsewhere. I don't think it included Rob's levels, though.

 

[Mexal]

Brings back memories...

... as I've actually had the pleasure of 'visiting' said castle with Gary as DM! Gen Con UK in Manchester, 2000.

Unfortunately I don't remember too much of the surroundings as the combat-orientated members of the party were wiped out by a large number of goblins, and I was too busy running for my life to sight-see - until, that is, the goblins caught me!

That's when the game session ended and everyone went to bed.

Next morning I met Gary and he sat down at a table & got his dice bag out.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, and proceeded to play out an interview with the goblin chief. With a quick Charm Person spell and a lot of fast-talk, I managed to get appointed 'Most Valued Counsellor' to the goblin chief... a position which continued for over a year by e-mail.

The odd thing was the audience this session generated. As Gary said, what do they expect people to do at a role-playing convention but role-play?

 

[Thanael]

Ruins of Greyhawk is not an EGG product. It's a bunch of memories of the original castle put on paper by ex-players of the original campaign and glued together by a bunch of new content. It's not an accurate depiction of the original castle. Neither are any of the later products.

My advice would be to start with Castle Zagyg and the Castle of the Mad Archmage, which conveniently starts off where CZ stopped (at level 2).

You could then research amongst EGG's and Rob Kuntz's (Greyhawk's original co-DM) modules that were connected to the original campaign: Maure Castle is one, as are EX1 - Dungeonland, EX2 - Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, S1 - Tombs of Horrors and others. Rob Kuntz recently published materials from the original campaign, like the Living Room, the Stalk, and the Bottle City. Check them out at Pied Piper Publishing.

Also check out Allan Grohe's (Grodog) Greyhawk website for more context.

Reading more around, you should bit by bit get a fairly good idea of what the original Castle was like. Good luck!

Those are good recommendations.

From Allan's site this is the Castle Greyhawk section: grodog's Greyhawk Castle Archive