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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5652616" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon magazine annual 1997part 6/8Founding greyhawk: Gary's back! Now this is a way to make this special really special, and a good sign in general. Now the people in charge of TSR are gone, the new folks start the reconciliation process with the old guard who'd been driven away by Lorraine's ( single raindrop, chihuahua yaps, kazoo tootles) policies. And he's going right back to the start, to talk about his early campaign before D&D was even published. This demonstrates that even before it was finished, the game had plenty of people enthusiastic about it, and was already growing via word of mouth, as people told their friends about this fun new game Gary was running, and they wanted in as well. And as a result, the castle was built up from session to session, with big chunks made up in play or just before it. And so when it was released, it was thoroughly playtested, and ready to surprise people wherever they wandered in it. And so the stage was set for years of people dying horribly in conventions, and speculating what the full map of Castle Greyhawk might look like. A question that never would be answered in full, with Gary's death and legal crap leaving it unpublished, and so much of the details being cryptic notes that were merely guidelines to be played around with and changed on the fly in response to a party's actions. Really, this shows that D&D wasn't meticulously planned from the top down, and much of it's best work was created in a social context. This is more evidence that sequestering yourself away to work on something for years in the hope it'll change the world and make you a fortune isn't a particularly natural or easy method of creativity. You've got to immerse yourself in the world if you want to change other people's lives. This article is pretty cool, but it's really what it represents that's critical. It says that the new company is really drawing a line in the sand and making an effort to change things. And hopefully it means we'll be seeing more articles from classic writers in the future as well. That's worth a lot in terms of making me anticipate reading through the rest of the magazine. Pox of the Planes: We've had a whole boxed set on fiends, plus another book on top of that recently. But they've been pretty light on details about Night Hags. Which is probably just how they want it. For all the Yugoloth work behind the scenes to orchestrate the flow of the blood war while pretending to be purely mercenary, it's the hags that are really making the huge profits, despite not having any overarching organisation or plan, beyond a mean spirited vindictiveness against anyone else who tries to muscle in on the larva trade. Still, they have some pretty nasty tricks up their sleeve, and can call in favours from all sides, since without them, the lower planes would go into a serious recession. And the most important of these is that they hold the key to turning Yugoloths into singular badasses to rival Baatezu and Tanar'ri lords. So this article actually fills in details on the setting that are rather important in the larger picture, including bringing back Anthraxus from the original 1st edition MMII. Whether these details will stick in future supplements I'm not sure, since unlike the demiplane of shadow, Yugoloths & Night Hags never really got much spotlight time in 3e. Still, this is another ambitious and rather good article from Ed Bonny. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to keep the planes alive and growing.</blockquote>

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