New Greyhawk Hardcover

I'm torn. I'd love to see a Greyhawk hardcover, but I'd like to see Gygax involved with it even more. After all, he created the setting. But some of the material produced for the setting after Gygax was actually pretty good, in my opinion. I didn't care much for the massive changes that came in From The Ashes, but some of the Iuz and Marklands material, as well as Ivid the Undying, was worthwhile and interesting.

But then, Gygax's "Yggsburgh" material is, essentially, his take on the Greyhawk setting with numbers filed off.
 

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Ripzerai said:
Also, I forget: do we know it's a WotC book, or could it be something for Malhavoc?

excellent question. i thought he was implying it was a WotC book, but i could have read that wrong.
 

Welverin said:
I'm sure I'll see her at the next Zapp Brannigan convention.
:lol:

And since my first post should've been on-topic, here goes.

I would also love a GHCS hardcover book (& I'd buy it). My main DM has always shied away from GH in 3rd Ed. because there wasn't enough (3rd Ed.) source material & what there was seemed bland. I like the plain-Jane aspect of it (plain-Jane as compared to FR & Eberron) because there's nothing special to have to worry about, since it uses the purest version of the game (the standard cosmology, no Weaves to worry about, etc.) & allows for any of the splatbooks/creature books/alternate-system-books with little to no fuss.
 

BOZ said:
excellent question. i thought he was implying it was a WotC book, but i could have read that wrong.
He mentioned not being able to say anything about it until WotC announced it, so yeah, sounds like a WotC book to me.
 


I will buy it if I find there a lot of ideas which I can use in other setting (Birthright). I have FRCS for such reasons and this is one of my favourite rpg books (all these NPC, organizations, adventure ideas etc.)
 



Ripzerai said:
Planescape seems thoroughly part of Core, now. It was briefly its own campaign setting because the paradigm of the late '80s to middle '90s was campaign settings - I don't think the paradigm is likely to shift back, as they've seen the danger of that.

The problem seems to have been - so Ryan Dancey claimed - that people bought stuff relating to their favored campaign setting and nothing else, and avoided things relating specifically to settings they weren't into, and the market wasn't big enough for that. I think the problem can be avoided by limiting new settings to a single hardcover, preventing people from getting "addicted" to just one line. The Forgotten Realms is close to Core, and they tried, with Eberron, to create a setting into which any new supplement could be integrated. I imagine you could even fit most of the Fiendish Codex I into Eberron, excepting of course the chapter on layers. Obyriths could be minions of the Rajahs, and loumaras could come from the Dreaming Dark, while tanar'ri and their lords would all be from Sheverath (Juiblex's power level even makes sense there). So while there's a problem with FR fans not buying Eberron books, it's not as bad as Ravenloft fans not buying Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Greyhawk, FR, Planescape, or Birthright.

I think the Planar Handbook killed the chances of a true Planescape hardcover for the foreseeable future, introducing a lot of the Planescape elements but not all of them. By bringing Sigil and many of the factions into the "mainstream," it made most of what would have been in a Planescape hardcover redundant, removing any platform for presenting the rest of the setting - I mean, what would it be, Planar Handbook II? Maybe if Planar Handbook I had been a better book, there'd be a demand for that, but I doubt it. It also stripped all the factions of the context in which they made sense - when they're introduced as "clans" that most PCs will belong to, as part of a larger philosophical war that stretches across the planes, they work. As a few scattered prestige classes, they seem not intuitively "planar," leaving a lot of people I'm sure to wonder why they were in the book at all. I think the designers of the book forgot they needed to sell the material in it to the uninitiated, which required a lot more contextual effort.

So anyway, no new Planescape books, at least not until 4th edition when maybe the material can be reintroduced in context.

Maybe a Greyhawk book, though - something that could tie all the proper nouns strung through the core books and Dungeon Magazines together might be popular, if it was done well and provocatively. I don't think it would get supplements, however.

But what do I know? Maybe they don't subscribe to Ryan Dancey's philosophy at all anymore. Maybe the market's big enough to handle it.

One can always hope. The manner in which planar material has been brought into 3E has been entirely unsatisfactory....as you say, without the context of *what* the factions are, the prestige classes are relatively meaningless, as an example.

That having been said, I do think there could be room for individual hardcovers. That model seems to work for Dragonlance....WotC published the initial hardcover, though it was written by another company, and then the other company has successfully launched some very good support books, which cost WotC nothing. There could be the contention that they detract money from being used to purchase more WotC books.....but then, on a personal level, given that WotC is not producing the settings I want, and only about half of the support books they create are of use to me (it used to be more, but it's been decreasing) they weren't going to get that money from me anyways. I'm sure it's similar with others as well.

If one was to use posts concerning that setting as an example of how much support remains, however, Dragonlance seems to have the most....though is that because it's being supported again, and fans of the Sovereign Press books are using the WotC message boards to discuss them? Or is Dragonlance outright more popular?

The order of popularity on the message boards appears to be:

1-Dragonlance
2-Dark Sun
3-Greyhawk
4-Planescape

I am thinking that production of even core books for a few settings might actually cause a short-term spike in sales.....whereas the way they're going, in order to maintain revenues, they're going to need to do 4E sooner rather than later, because they'll eventually run out of topics that interest consumers. Or maybe not. I think for myself, 3E will be the last edition I actively support. Can't afford to keep doing this, what with a basement full of 2nd Ed. books packed up in boxes.

So, I guess one can always hope......though I suspect you're right, unfortunately.

Banshee
 

Well dragonlance is popular because it has a lot of novel basis. Same is true for FR and Eberron is slowly creeping that way. We'll see. All I know is there's no reason to get a GH novel series just yet...until there's a reason for people to ressurrect it.

That say, I want my SLCS HC WotC!!! :p :)
 

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