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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saracenus" data-source="post: 9883975" data-attributes="member: 47839">There is a vast difference between the Greyhawk (and Blackmoor for that mater) that Gary ran at his table that was a play test for OD&D and what he later published with TSR. Yes, Gary's home campaign was a genre blending of many different IPs as well as maps and ideas from the fantasy minitures campaign he was a part of in Lake Geneva. It was also like so many home games, mostly notes and keyed maps that are not fit to publish as is. When it came time to publish there were IPs they had to remove because TSR didn't have the rights to those works. Also, in the proccess of expanding on bare notes things are expanded and changed.The book The Making of ORIGINAL DUNGEONS & DRANGONS is a dry but fasinating look at that very process. There is a picture of the original Hommlet used in Gary's Temple of Elemental Evil campaign that looks familiar but didn't have a church of St. Cuthbert or the Tower of Rufus and Burne. Those were added later to the publication of T1 The Village of Hommlet and were based around player characters that various family members and friends played at his table.[ATTACH=full]432894[/ATTACH]A later example of this in the AD&D days was the publication of the super module Temple of Elemental Evil where Gary handed Frank Mentzer his notes so that the long awaited follow up to T1 could finally published. There were no maps in that pile of notes because Gary was testing out dungeon geomorphs and the origional temple layout was random, those maps are Frank's.All the layers of officially published Greyhawk material after the exit of Gray Gygax from TSR in 1985 for good or ill has taken that campaign world farther and farther away from Gary's home game. In fact it has taken it farther and farther away from my version of Greyhawk that I have run off and on since 1980.I am glad they went back to the box set era of 576 CY in the 5.5e DMG while updating it for a modern audience as it is not hard to intergrate into my already existing campaign material.I see the Melf's Guide to Greyhawk as just another look at how Greyhawk could be run. I also hope that Luke is going for the feeling he felt at his father's table while bringing it forward to what D&D is today. If I want books that scream this is not my Greyhawk (and I do not want these books) there are plenty of options on DMs Guild already.</blockquote>

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