Logic behind sales of "Expedition to Castle Greyhawk"?

[pedr]

I was about to say that a regional focus might make a lot of sense - if the triads for each LG 'metaregion' were pooled and engaged to work on this kind of project a lot of the fragmentation which incorporating the LG 'canon' could cause might be alleviated. It might require some retconning as LG storylines were written for a different set of priorities, but an enormous amount of work has been done over the last 6-7 years detailing various parts of the Flanaess and it be sensible to tap into that in any future Greyhawk, even if that did require contract negotiations with an unusually large number of contributors.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

I wasn't giving him any sort of attitude. It was an honest and sincere question. Maybe he's a really busy guy and hasn't read much about FR, I don't know how he schedules his time, honestly.

But being in the position he is in, I assume he knows enough about FR to realize it's not exactly, nor entirely, a medieval-setting game.

And the thing is people who learn about FR by reading it will come to realize it's very different from GH. If they're told by someone else, that person should be able to show and tell them the big differences. I do all the time with new players when explaining what a campaign setting is and the different types of settings out there. When talking about GH and FR, there's more than just a subtle difference.

What I have problems with is explaining the differences between FR and Eberron. Those two confuse new people only because they're both described as "highly magical" and I get a lot of quirked eyebrows when I tell them Eberron is more "pulp-noir" (then I have to explain what that term means) and then they say something like "Oh, why can't you have that same style in FR?"

So, yeah, if anything Eberron and FR are rather hard to differentiate in terms than GH and FR. With Eberron, I just open a book and show them pictures and then show them FR pictures to compare, then they understand the setting differences

I know I shouldn't but reading tone into your post I detected a bit of a 'tude.

I am a busy guy in fact here is something I posted recently on the wotc boards about how busy I am.

I just wanted to let anyone know that I am going to be on the boards less and less up until GenCon. I came to this realization this week when I figured out that I had 45 1/2 hours of meetings and at one point was quintuple booked. Another indicator as to how busy I have gotten was when I archived my emails for the month of May. I had sent about 1500 and received over 2000.

This is the busiest time of the year for me at work because I am planning and presenting product and marketing plans for 2008 while executing the majority of 2007 marketing. It is also "convention season" so we are planning for BEA, ALA, San Diego Comic Con, GenCon Indy, and PAX.

I know enough about most of the settings to know I don't know enough compared to some of the people on the boards. My statement was broadly speaking about the average D&D player or fan of fantasy and not the guy who can tell you how long it will take the average party to walk from Waterdeep to Longsadle

 

[Razz]

Moonshaes is quite rooted in European legend that it should be lumped in with the list of regions considered medieval-esque. But there is so much more that is medieval to that list. Amn, Sword Coast and Western Heartlands, the North and the Silver Marches, Moonsea city-states, Dragon Reach and Sembia, the list goes on and on . . .

Needless to say Greyhawk has its non-medieval regions as well. Land of Black Ice, the Paynims, Amedio, Hepmonaland, northern Barbarian nomads, the Tilvanot Peninsula, Baklunish west including Ket, Zeif, Ekbir, and Tusmit.

Pardon for the attack of pedantry there.

Yeah, there're more places that're "Euro-medieval" in tone and atmosphere that I didn't list, though they still vary rather wildly.

I listed Moonshaes mainly because it's more "Celtic" than the typical "Euro-medieval" that an average person thinks of such as kings, queens, jesters, mounted knights, princesses, an old bearded-wizard, a green-colored dragon that breathes fire, and castles set in old England as opposed to any other area like Ireland, Rome, Spain, or China. Sembia's more Renaissance, I thought?

 

[Razz]

As for yor "understanding" that GH is "necessity for those who want to run very simple, very light, and very low-magic and low-level type games in such a setting," that's just a troll.

From everyone I've ever heard or talked to on Greyhawk, that is pretty much what they tell me it's like. From what I've read on Greyhawk, it's also what I've seen. Please, explain how I am trolling when I make that statement? Do you care to make a separate thread on that topic and tell me what Greyhawk is REALLY about if it isn't any of those I just listed?

 

[Razz]

I know I shouldn't but reading tone into your post I detected a bit of a 'tude.

Sorry it came off that way, but that's not the case. That's the problem with reading posts on forums, one can't truly tell if one is being sarcastic, happy, angry, jokingly mannered, etc. so assumptions should never be made.

Also, I tend to forget myself actually, that's what "smilies" are for.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

From everyone I've ever heard or talked to on Greyhawk, that is pretty much what they tell me it's like. From what I've read on Greyhawk, it's also what I've seen. Please, explain how I am trolling when I make that statement?

I don't think you really were. There are a lot of Greyhawk fans who view Greyhawk as a much lower-magic setting that the Forgotten Realms. This is very well epitomized by the (in)famous essay by Nitescreed called "Putting the Grey in the Hawk".

A ton of long-time fans see that Greyhawk is clearly a low(er) magic setting. Other long-time fans think Greyhawk can be equally high magic as FR. It is in the eye of the beholder, but IMO on a low-to-high-magic scale, Greyhawk has seemed to fit between Birthright (on the low) and FR (on the high) . . . not equally halfway between either. I'd slide it closer to the low than the high.

 

[JoeGKushner]

And throwing in 2-4 pages of lore in an adventure book does not a FR sourcebook make. I am very appalled, in fact, by the statements on the back of the Anauroch: Empire of Shade book coming out in November. That it's both an adventure AND regional info on Anauroch? In 160 pages? Wow. So sad what Forgotten Realms is turning into now.All the GH material in Dungeon, for example, I adapt for my Realms game. Heck, the adventure paths I use the FR conversions for. That doesn't mean I like GH. It means I like FR enough to swip GH material to throw into it.

Well, back in the day, an adventure used to be something like 24 pages and a sourcebook maybe 64 if you were lucky.

On the other hand, I'd like to keep my information sources seperate and tend to get more use out of sourcebooks than adventurers that I may not use and have no desire to pay for.

 

[GVDammerung]

From everyone I've ever heard or talked to on Greyhawk, that is pretty much what they tell me it's like. From what I've read on Greyhawk, it's also what I've seen. Please, explain how I am trolling when I make that statement? Do you care to make a separate thread on that topic and tell me what Greyhawk is REALLY about if it isn't any of those I just listed?

You opined that in your opinion, and now experience, Greyhawk is a "necessity for those who want to run very simple, very light, and very low-magic and low-level type games in such a setting." "Very simple?" "Very light?" "Low level type games?" And a "necessity" to boot? To me this sounds like you are making GH out to be the D&D for dummies setting, especially as you prefaced your "understanding" with the clear statement that you dislike Greyhawk. Sounds to me like you are looking to pick a fight, hence the troll. From the Wiki -"In Internet terminology, a troll is someone who intentionally posts derogatory or otherwise inflammatory messages about sensitive topics in an established online community such as an online discussion forum to bait users into responding." I'm not going to respond in kind nor attempt to discuss the matter with you at all. I call a troll a troll and choose not to rise to the troll bait.

 

[Pants]

Wow. So sad what Forgotten Realms is turning into now.

What? NOT overdeveloped? Seriously, FR has had huge amounts of support since second edition, one year off I doubt will ever impact your ability to run an FR campaign, especially since the CS book has more than enough info to run lots and lots of different campaigns.

One question, how many of these people actually use the material in Dragon/Dungeon because it's Greyhawk compared to those who just adapt the material to their own games or to FR and Eberron?

I use it because it's good. I also run GH because it's good. I adapt Eberron, FR, IK, and other 3rd party stuff to my GH campaign.

It being GH is only icing on an otherwise tasty cake, because, even though they're 'just' adventures, each adventure contains scads and scads of lore about that campaign setting which helps me run my GH campaign since I don't have a CS book to refer to.

From everyone I've ever heard or talked to on Greyhawk, that is pretty much what they tell me it's like. From what I've read on Greyhawk, it's also what I've seen. Please, explain how I am trolling when I make that statement? Do you care to make a separate thread on that topic and tell me what Greyhawk is REALLY about if it isn't any of those I just listed?

It may not be a troll per say, but the remark is an almost casual dismissal of Greyhawk as a setting that it can very easily be seen as a troll, especially with how you combine 'simple, low-level, and light' together. Greyhawk can succeed at all levels of play, just as FR, PS, and [most] other settings can.

It's fine if you don't care for GH, just don't dismiss it so readily. Obviously, I could dismiss FR as a munchkin paradise with a hodge-podge of lands and regions combined together without any sense of coherency lorded over by cheesy novels, crappy metaplots, and horribly powerful DM characters. But I wouldn't, because such a generalization would be demeaning to the FR fans, and I don't want hundreds of frothing fans beating down my door right now.

One option that has been mentioned by Scott Rouse and followed up by Eric Mona is the possibility of a license. A licensed GH would take nothing away from FR or Eberron as published by Wotc. To this extent, the cry that FR and Eberron will suffer is "wolf!"

I seriously doubt that GH will ever get licensed to another company, in my ignorant opinion, mainly because of the amount of 'brand naming' that is in the setting. All those core gods, the core planar cosmology, Mordenkainen, Iuz, Bigby, etc. That's probably the biggest stepping stone right there.

I could see some special license being given to Paizo or something, but if Greyhawk is going to be revived, it's prolly gonna be WotC that does it.

And I hope they do (at least as a oneshot Campaign Setting book).

For the past three years, Dungeon magazine has been the saviour of Greyhawk, and now they want us to believe that getting rid of the magazine is somehow a good thing for Greyhawk fans.

I don't recall anyone saying that. Care to quote for me?

Not everyone loves the RPGA. No one wants to drive for three hours to play in a one-off game with people they won't see again.

A valid criticism. Saying that material is available via the RPGA really doesn't mean much for the casual DM/group that doesn't want to join/be affiliated with the RPGA.

 

[MerricB]

Just a note:

All of my RPGA experiences have been with my own friends in the comfort of our homes. The RPGA supports home play very well, so that's no reason not to experience Living Greyhawk.

We've recently abandoned Living Greyhawk in favour of the Paizo adventure paths, but that was after two years of playing LG.

Cheers!