D&D General Luke Gygax Brings Back Gary Gygax's Castle Zagyg

Luke Gygax is bringing back his father's creations starting with the Castle Zagyg.

Luke Gygax is bringing back his father's creations starting with the Castle Zagyg, Yggsburgh Campaign Setting. Written by Gary Gygax and first published by Troll Lord Games in 2005 and dropped from publication in 2008. It is available now in preorder. The intent is to ship in September/October.

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For the near future this is the first of three planned products, the second being The Hermit followed up by the Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds series, probably via Kickstarter or other crowdfunder, maybe in January. The executor of the estate seems to have granted access to just these things so far. If they do well then more will be available and Luke intends to get the entirety of the Castle printed.

If you preorder the Yggsburgh book you will get a PDF and a docx with conversion notes to D&D 5E. The book is as it was in 2008 and they currently intend to leave it that way, other than updating the PDF via new software, and change the logo on the cover and the product number on the spine.

They intend to make the PDF available as a separate product, via their store and DriveThrRPG.

This book uses Castles & Crusades as its system--you can get the 7th edition Player's Handbook in PDF for free.

Other items mentioned:
  • They don't intend to print Gary's notes, as his wishes were they not to be published.
  • They will see about other creations of Gary's if they can show the executor of the estate they are good stewards. Good sales will absolutely work towards that goal.
  • Luke doesn't want to attach this to anything he's doing separately, like his own setting.
  • Gord the Rogue books are also on the list of things they'd like to bring back.

The transcript of the youtube video is in the spoiler block.
 

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timbannock

Hero
Supporter
Exactly. I've run it both ways, with Yggsburgh as a small city/large town between Greyhawk and the castle, and simply replacing Yggsburgh entirely with Greyhawk. Either works, and notably keeping the other wilderness stuff from the Yggsburgh book still works just fine, too.

There's maybe a couple really small connections (mostly just name drops of characters living in Yggsburgh) that you might have to change to Greyhawk NPCs, but that's about it. Most of the sites are self-contained enough to work as-is, and even the invading barbarian horde at one edge of the wilderness map can easily just be swapped with monsters (goblins or orcs) living in the hills or marsh to the East of Greyhawk, used as-is, or ignored without changing more than 1 or 2 encounter areas.

I think you can fairly easily port some of the city NPCs and locations into Greyhawk city and not notice any gaping plot holes or anything. I'm certain this is by design.

It's a true sandbox. Use as much or as little as you want.
 





Is this the Troll Lords' responsibility?
No it's not Troll Lord's responsibility to bring new players to the game or to provide the products that would encourage them to come. And I never said or implied it was. It's Troll Lord's responsibility to ethically make money. And hopefully this product provides them enough money so that they can release previously unreleased creations. Even if those products are also niche old school / old written products.
 

dead

Explorer
I wonder why they don't just do a Kickstarter to produce the full 7 volumes. I'm sure there would be sufficient interest.

The titles that were meant to be released were:

Castle Zagyg, Volume I: Yggsburgh
Castle Zagyg, Volume II: The Upper Works
Castle Zagyg, Volume III: The Dungeons
Castle Zagyg, Volume IV: The Deeps
Castle Zagyg, Vol V: Chambers of Stone
Castle Zagyg, Vol VI: A Lightless Lake
Castle Zagyg, Vol VII: Zagyg’s Way

Only the first two were completed. I wonder how far into completion the others were. Or if Troll Lords only have rough notes and need to add a lot of their own content.
 
Last edited:

darjr

I crit!
I wonder why they don't just do a Kickstarter to produce the full 7 volumes. I'm sure there would be sufficient interest.

The titles that were meant to be released were:

Castle Zagyg, Volume I: Yggsburgh
Castle Zagyg, Volume II: The Upper Works
Castle Zagyg, Volume III: The Dungeons
Castle Zagyg, Volume IV: The Deeps
Castle Zagyg, Vol V: Chambers of Stone
Castle Zagyg, Vol VI: A Lightless Lake
Castle Zagyg, Vol VII: Zagyg’s Way

Only the first two were completed. I wonder how far into completion the others were. Or if Troll Lords only have rough notes and need to add a lot of filler.
They’ve mentioned a Kickstarter for the third product.

This was already done and could be brought to print and was green kit by the executor of the estate.
 

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