Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[Paul Farquhar]

That was standard practice. When TSR published a module they added a few lines suggesting a Greyhawk location for it, but unless it was actually written by Gygax it wasn't intentionally written with Greyhawk in mind.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

one example would be City State of the Invincible Overlord.

For some reason this was very popular in the UK.

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Paul Farquhar]

I did not know that! My knowledge of UK gaming of the era, outside of Fiend Folio, the UK modules, and Warhammer FRPG is pretty pretty limited.

Well, I only have experiential evidence for that, no sales figures or anything. It could have been simply a consequence of very few outlets selling D&D, or maybe it's cynicism appealed. But it is the only "campaign setting" that I saw used in those early days. Not that it was used as much as homebrew (my world was imaginatively called Erf!) or simply sitting down and playing a module as a one-off without any references to setting.

 

[Hussar]

There was no need to be terribly specific about the setting. There was only one TSR setting - Greyhawk. EVERYTHING was made for Greyhawk unless it specifically wasn't.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Hussar]

I don't understand why you would say that. Every module that I listed was placed in Greyhawk. They have hex references for their placement. The references to non-canon Greyhawk dieties in Tomoachan can be chalked up to it simply being very early in the development of the setting. No different than references to orcs in Dragonlance.

Like I said, it was ALL Greyhawk, all the time, unless it was specified otherwise. The planar cosmology in the PHB was for Greyhawk - and, note, because of the multiple Primes, you could easily have crossovers from other settings or even the real world in Greyhawk, and frequently there were. The Warden II appearing in Greyhawk wasn't a mistake.

They didn't actually have to say, "Well, this material is for Greyhawk. What else would it be for? There WAS only Greyhawk. The City State of the Invincible Overlord was never part of TSR D&D. It was, in today's parlance, a 3rd party product. As was everything else. Unless it was for The Known World, until the publication of Dragonlance, it was set in Greyhawk. EVERYTHING - Monster Manual I and II and the Fiend Folio. Lolth and the Drow. The demon lords. The arch devils. Everything that wasn't specifically called out as NOT Greyhawk, was presumed to be in Greyhawk somewhere.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Maxperson]

Trial by ordeal.

And not just any ordeal. Tiddlywinks, the worst of the bunch.