"in 1st Edition...every DM...assumed that Corellon Larethian put out Gruumsh's eye"?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The design diaries are full of unusual commentary. 'If you use Profession, your game probably was boring.' Stuff like that.

Just accept that they aren't the most adroit communicators on the planet, and think that the best way to hype us up for 4E is to make it sound like everything we liked about 1st Ed, 2nd Ed and 3rd Ed is lame and 'so last week.' Ignore the piddly detail that the people saying how boring or lame the current edition of D&D are happen to be some of the same people who *wrote it and sold it to us.*

It's like the political campaigns going on right now. If you don't have anything positive to say about your own candidate, tear down the current system, and hope no one notices that your candidate *is part of the current system.*

It's not malicious or even condescending, so much as just sloppy logic.

While I will not deny that your example might have some merit on its own, it doesn't fit this topic.

If I remember correctly, the article doesn't claim that 1E was stupid and should be forgotten, DMs then where lazy and used all the same stories or whatever else negative one could make up about 1E.
The context was explaining what the PoL and the fluff in the 4E is, comparing it to 1E implied setting. Even if his example wasn't entirely correct (since the core rules apparently did not make the implications about Gruumsh Eyes), it's unreasonable to interpret bad will into it. In fact, if anyone tried to do this with a quote from a poster on this board, I think he would at least be pretty close to violating our forum rules. (Which at least makes it questionable, though I am not saying it would be outright wrong to do so with external sources.)

 

[Beckett]

The design diaries are full of unusual commentary. 'If you use Profession, your game probably was boring.' Stuff like that.

That one struck me as particularly apt. My first time playing Exalted, one character was an Exalted blacksmith. A good portion of the day was spent with him making Craft checks to forge weapons for an army (an army we weren't affiliated with) while the rest of us waited around. Frequent use of Profession conjures up images of sessions just as exciting as that was.

 

[Voadam]

Well, to be even more pedantic, Gruumsh isn't always depicted as having a single, cyclopean eye. Dragon #62 on page 29 portrays him as having a single eye on the right side of his head, the left one being covered with a patch.
So if even 1st edition wasn't getting it "right", why does it matter so much whether or not Gruumsh started with 2 eyes or one? Personally, I prefer him with one put out. It's more interesting and implies a story. But the end result is ultimately the same... Gruumsh has one eye for all intents and purposes and everything that means symbolically. How he ended up that was is a bit of fluff that some campaign worlds will accept and others will not and many more will not care about.

I take different symbolic meaning from a cyclops' single eye than I do from Odin's.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

That one struck me as particularly apt. My first time playing Exalted, one character was an Exalted blacksmith. A good portion of the day was spent with him making Craft checks to forge weapons for an army (an army we weren't affiliated with) while the rest of us waited around. Frequent use of Profession conjures up images of sessions just as exciting as that was.

I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with this thread (which is vastly amusing by the way), but O. M. G.

There are likely two proper ways to handle that better in Exalted:

1) "Everybody grab d10s equal to that in Beckett's Craft pool. Roll, tell us how many success you get. Repeat these until you have enough superduper weapons for the army, and then we'll figure out how long it took, though, seriously, why the heck aren't you using apprentices?"

2) Someone sneaks up behind the Storyteller and beans them over the head with a rulebook.

Brad

 

[Desdichado]

Kenobi: Its not about being offended. I wouldn't be offended if they named me personally and tried. I'd find that flat out funny. No, its about being written off as a customer. I am not very happy about that, since in the past I liked and bought some WotC stuff. That seems unlikely now.

Saying that Gruumsh losing an eye to CL is an old tradition going back to 1e and is pretty well known in the gaming base means you are a lost customer?

Ooooo.. Keee dokey.

 

[Numion]

I recall a version in which Corellon deliberately missed Gruumsh's eye to teach Gruumsh a lesson about his vulnerability. Anyone else remember reading that? Maybe Complete Book of Elves?

Sounds like it could've come from the Complete Book of Cheese. "Elves (and their god) are too perfect to fail by accident, so we'll retcon this into missing on purpose."

As for the OP: sometimes mistake is just a mistake.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'd have to guess that he thought he was correct, and he didn't go back and research his point as he wrote the article. As you can see by the posts here, there's more than one 1E veteran who thought the exact same thing.



I feel like you're taking offense where there was none intended. Perhaps I'm wrong, but this really feels like a mountain being made out of a molehill.

I gotta agree with both of these points, although this isn't the first inaccuracy that the designers have come up with related to earlier editions (including 3e).

RC

 

[WizarDru]

Why is it inconceivable that, as far as Rich Baker knew, this was the case? It's equally possible that he's speaking from his own anecdotal experience or that he's speaking based on conflating 30 years of gaming. Neither TSR not WotC were terribly consistent about this sort of thing to begin with. When you factor in stuff like the idea that myths were, in fact, MYTHS...it gets murkier.

Just doing a quick google search, I find different accounts from different sources, regardless of whether or not they use the core mythology or their own version.

Even a cursory inspection shows that most of these entries take it as a given that Corellon put out Gruumsh's eye. This may date back to 2e, when it was pretty much made canon, but it was raised as a possiblity in AD&D. Given that the entry was a semi-pedantic account about it from an orc perspecitve, I'd assume they were covering it up, too. Either way, there has been no consistent treatment of the subject until late 2e into 3e. I'm not really sure how you could be sure what the majority of AD&D players thought, anyhow. I can say that for myself, I always thought this to be the case, but really it wasn't much of an issue until 3e, since it rarely came up in 1e for my games and we skipped 2e entirely.

Spoiler: Gruumsh with TWO eyes

Gruumsh losing his eye to Corellon

Spoiler

Spoiler

Gruumsh, Old School

Spoiler

Gruumsh, the new hotness

Spoiler

heck, if anything I can't help but notice that every picture gives Gruumsh a different weapon to use, which would probably bother me more, if such things actually bothered me.

 

[TerraDave]

I never used Corellon or Gruumsh in my 1E games.

Ditto

although this isn't the first inaccuracy that the designers have come up with related to earlier editions (including 3e).

And agree. To add to the nit-picking: What is most embarasing is when someone from WotC confuses OD&D and AD&D (and B/E D&D)...its not that subtle, obscure, or confusing. They really should get it right.

To add to the trivia-fest:

The demi-human deities where not originally part of the Oerth/Greyhawk pantheon(s). They where done by those other then Gygax in Deities and Demigods, and then expanded in Dragon by others (Roger Moore?), but always presented as "generic" alternatives to the human centric Norse, Greek, and other pantheons from Deities and Demigods. Of course, Col. Pladoh confused the issue by reprinting the expanded pantheons in Unearthed Arcana. But they where not part of the World of Greyhawk boxed set (any cross reference?), and he has noted on these boards that he did not use them, and that they where not needed for Greyhawk. Though he of course has no problem with people using them.

 

[Delta]

heck, if anything I can't help but notice that every picture gives Gruumsh a different weapon to use, which would probably bother me more, if such things actually bothered me.

But if you restrict the discussion solely to 1E, then the accounts are consistent on all those points -- Gruumsh had one middle eye; it wasn't shot out by Corellon; Gruumsh used a spear. No one can show any 1E quote to the contrary.

The only funny inconsistency is the Moore article saying Correllon missed the one eye, when DDG says Corellon never missed anything. There's the mythology.