Reviving Greyhawk: A letter-writing campaign.

[The Blue Elf]

Revive Greyhawk? Ha. Laugh. Been there, done that.

People farted when FtA came out because there was too much danger. Not enough eunich unicorns and dominant maidens..oh, and some autistic jerk gamers who thought they were Greyhawkers decided that they couldn't handle Carl Sargeant naming orc tribes after flan names for differen humanoids and FREAKED OUT in typical autistic gamer style. Iuz the Evil, the Marklands, and Ivid the Undying were great..but we all know what happened after that. Ever read Ivid the Undying? You've got 50 campaigns in that book if you have an ounce of creativity.

THEN...
Nobody_and I mean NOBODY_ bought The Adventure Begins and The Greyhawk Players Guide, Scarlet Brotherhood, Pomarj/Slavers.

THEN 2000+
Nobody bought the Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer. Worst, nobody bought the Greyhawk Gazetteer which was the best product ever for Greyhawk. More, 14,000 people play Living Greyhawk and there's a webpage for every country and 60+ scenarios released every year..and they don't even all suck, but did people buy the LGG? Nope.

..and you wanted what again? How can you ask Hasbro to put out a product that doesn't need to be put out and that gamers won't buy.

Boy, I'd sure be happy to see the LGG put back into print, but everybody (and I mean everybody knows though that the future of gaming supplements for Greyhawk will always remain NIL because gamers won't buy another greyhawk setting. Those of us who are real fans already have all that crap sitting on our shelves from when it was released BACK THEN. Why would we need ANOTHER revision? Check the web, EBAY and your local game store (there are local game stores..and we can spend money at them???) and you'll find everything you need.

Hint: Ivid the Undying...use it.

Jay of the Return of the Eight
Wasted the best years of his life on this crap



..

Its a good point also I like to add in some fans don't trust D20 system for D&D, or I could be wrong because it seems some fans want to jump too 4th edition wanting a better system in the new 4th edition. I think it seems 3rd editions direction by Wotc/ Hasbro was the the main problem.

Thank you Jay

 

[Melkor]

I think what amuses me most about these 'whining for greyhawk' threads is that I see very few people posting in the that I recognize as being part of any of the actual efforts to promote and support the setting. It takes more than just raising a fuss once a month to bring about a change, folks.

Why the hostility ?

A single hardbound sourcebook similar to the FRCS wouldn't sink WoTC, and would be enough to make me (and several others from what I have read) perfectly satisfied, even if there wasn't further support.

Does that mean I should be writing Greyhawk material 60 hours a week to keep the setting alive ? No, it just means I would like to see the book I mentioned above..

I would hardly call the posts I've seen here 'whining for greyhawk'.

 

[jester47]

Greyhawk, wheew. Whats the big turnoff?

Where to begin? Lets start at presentation. We have a really cool map, so that is not the problem. We have detailed locations and regions, so that can't be it either. We have cool gods. So we are all set there.

Where greyhawk fails in my opinion is not any of these. It is the canon that shoots the setting in the head. (pun intended) Largely because I think at some level it does not make sense. I think this is because the the world comes off as very political. The history is very specific. But there are not small little things to develop like you see in the Wilderlands CS or FRCS. We are given either everything, or nothing. And I think that is one of the big failings of Greyhawk. Developmental discord between generations of developers makes it even harder to set up as a really useful setting because the already broken canon gets even more broken by dicrepencies, changes, and developers going into left field.

Furthermore, the setting is broken in that no one really knows what it is. If you listen to Gary Gygax, the setting is full of magic. If you listen to others, its low magic. If you listen to one its high fantasy, if you listen to another its supposed to be gritty. I have heard constant contradicitons about greyhawk and what kind of world people think it is supposed to be. This is the other problem, no one can agree on what is "Greyhawk." Apparently, greyhawk is what you want or need it to be.

So my advice is this: If you want to use greyhawk, go back to the first products. Pay no attention to anything after the first boxed set and some of the original modules. As for the new gazetteers, I would say that the D&D Gazetteer combined with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (only paying attention to pp.17-21 of Ch.4) should give you a pretty decent campaign setting. Even if it is not officially supported.

However- after looking it over, I have found that Kenzers Kingdoms of Kalamar comes off as a very useable CS and has a very Greyhawk feel to it, whatever that might be. If you want a supported Greyhawk, I would highly recommend it.

Aaron.

 

[Maggan]

Sniff... I did...

THEN...
Nobody_and I mean NOBODY_ bought The Adventure Begins and The Greyhawk Players Guide, Scarlet Brotherhood, Pomarj/Slavers.

THEN 2000+
Nobody bought the Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer. Worst, nobody bought the Greyhawk Gazetteer which was the best product ever for Greyhawk. More, 14,000 people play Living Greyhawk and there's a webpage for every country and 60+ scenarios released every year..and they don't even all suck, but did people buy the LGG? Nope.

..

I did.

I'm not using any of the books though.

Not even the golden Greyhawk box I bought used, for nostalgic reasons.

As a side note, I think you are on to something. A lot of people want Greyhawk back, but their views of what they want back differs so much that if it would come back, it wouldn't sell that much.

But, to get back on topic, I give my deepest good luck wishes to a letter writing campaign. I'm not pining enough to actually join in, but I'd buy any material that was released.

Good luck!

Cheers

Maggan

 

[johnsemlak]

Did the Living Greyhawk Gazatteer really sell poorly? I thought it was a great product.

 

[Maggan]

True

This is the other problem, no one can agree on what is "Greyhawk." Apparently, greyhawk is what you want or need it to be.

I also believe that to be true. So the best thing to do would might be for WotC to leave it alone, apart from very basic information that people can agree on, like countries and gods.

But maybe they could release a hardback called, "D&D Campaign Toolbox" where they would go through the process of building a campaing world, and use Greyhawk as a running example. That would be cool, and would lay the groundwork for Greyhawk, and appeal to customers not into Greyhawk as well, as they could use it to develop their own campaign settings.

Cheers!

Maggan

 

[Thresher]

Wizards of the Coast should follow these steps

• 
  [1] Don't ever let James Wyatt or Skip Willams write moduals alone.
  [2]Don't let Monte Cook Crossbreed Monsters ever again in a Modual.
  [3] Make adventures moduals under 6 dollers the Mega Moduals for 20 dollers.
  [4] Kill Iuz now!

Does anyone got anything to add?

1: rofl!
I cant write here what our gaming group thinks of J Wyatt modules... but it involves sheep and a few bits out of the BoVD.

2: Aww but why? Its WoTC doctrine, "thou must add templates to make things 'challenging'" aside from the fact that the conception between druids X treants X devil and their resulting offspring is either funny or the product of a sick mind depending if youre as drunk as the writer.

3: Woot! With the south pacific peso on the way up above the laotion dong vs US dollars it'll only be half a weeks salary!

4: We did in our epic game. It was a good fight but he died ...eventually.
And there was much rejoicing.
And mincing
And some other things came out of the destruction which are even worse..

 

[Aeolius]

Nobody_and I mean NOBODY_ bought The Adventure Begins and The Greyhawk Players Guide, Scarlet Brotherhood, Pomarj/Slavers...

Some of us were 1e AD&D diehards who skipped happily over 2e, only to return to the fold with 3e. My campaign "skipped" 12 years, Wars and all, to jump from 1e to 3e.

 

[The Blue Elf]

1: rofl!
I cant write here what our gaming group thinks of J Wyatt modules... but it involves sheep and a few bits out of the BoVD.

Tell me something I don't know?

2: Aww but why? Its WoTC doctrine, "thou must add templates to make things 'challenging'" aside from the fact that the conception between druids X treants X devil and their resulting offspring is either funny or the product of a sick mind depending if youre as drunk as the writer.

Well,what are the odds of a Dragon mating with a Gorila,monkey,bear,Chicken,Dinosar,Hafling,Kinder,Human,Fiend,Orc,Elf,Dwarf,Half-Elf, Celstral or any of the D&D monsters in the game?

The Concept is nice, I like the Half-Orc and the Half-Elfven races are ok, but when you have Half-Dragons running around in a Normal game I think some DM might get annoyed by them,and try to kill them off because they are too powerful to handle in a Game.

3: Woot! With the south pacific peso on the way up above the laotion dong vs US dollars it'll only be half a weeks salary!

Wow, and that would mean a Lower price of a Modual In the US makes the price will go up in other countrys, I didn't know that.

4: We did in our epic game. It was a good fight but he died ...eventually.
And there was much rejoicing.
And mincing
And some other things came out of the destruction which are even worse..

I just hope Vecna is next on the list of people you would like to kill?

 

[Nightfall]

Blue,

I like Vecna. But if you kill him I want his other hand and eye. That way I can complete the collector set.