Tell me about the Communist dwarves from the Chainmail setting

[Fifth Element]

Question: why are we capitalizing "communism"? It's not a proper noun. (If it were, we would be discussing real-world politics).

 

[Henrix]

Now I may be wrong here, but wasn't the Chainmail setting actually on Oerth, west of the Flanaess?

Theoretically, yes. There was, however, no connection. No gods in common, nothing.

Here's the Sundered Empire map. As you can see, not much connects it with the rest of Greyhawk.

 

[kilamanjaro]

Wasn't Stern Alia, the main human goddess of the setting, supposed to be the mother of all three Greyhawk war gods (Stratis, Hextor, and Heironeous)? I know Stratis is only mentioned in Chainmail stuff, but I thought she was named as mother of all three somewhere.

 

[Henrix]

That's possible, but it doesn't ring a bell. Nor can I find it in the rulebook.

There was more material in Dragon at the time, however.

 

[Pramas]

Wasn't Stern Alia, the main human goddess of the setting, supposed to be the mother of all three Greyhawk war gods (Stratis, Hextor, and Heironeous)?

Yes.

I know Stratis is only mentioned in Chainmail stuff, but I thought she was named as mother of all three somewhere.

She was named the mother of Hextor and Heironeous in previous sources, but not Stratis, as I made him up for the Chainmail setting, the Sundered Empire.

 

[Henrix]

Hi, Pramas, good to see you!

Wasn't the Sundered Empire at first meant to be a stand alone setting, and only later incorporated into Greyhawk?

And for Claudio, and anyone else interested in the commie dwarves or other parts of the Sundered Empire, I've found a list of Chris Pramas' GH publications (in the GH wiki), where you can find what he wrote about the Chainmail world, and which issues of Dragon to look for them in.

The Mordengard article was in Dragon 291, for instance. It has a little more than I quoted above.

 

[Pramas]

Now I may be wrong here, but wasn't the Chainmail setting actually on Oerth, west of the Flanaess?

It was indeed.

When the original minis team at WotC was first given the task of doing a game to support D&D I assumed we'd be setting it in Greyhawk. Then I was told that Greyhawk "belonged" to the RPGA so we'd have to set the game somewhere else. I thus began designing the Sundered Empire as its own campaign setting. Sometime later, after another of the management and vision shifts that were to plague Chainmail for its entire existence, I was asked if I could put my setting into Greyhawk. I said that I could, as there were huge parts of Oerik that hadn't been detailed. This is why ties to original Greyhawk setting were sparse in the beginning. I was able to do more later, particularly when we added the drow faction of Kilsek to the game. Their origin story went all the way back to D3, Vault of the Drow.

 

[Pramas]

I remembered this morning that I designed a "People's Champion" prestige class as part of a Celebrity Game Table article on the WotC website way back when. It's still up at: Wizards of the Coast - Dungeons & Dragons - Celebrity Game Table

 

[Klaus]

I remembered this morning that I designed a "People's Champion" prestige class as part of a Celebrity Game Table article on the WotC website way back when. It's still up at: Wizards of the Coast - Dungeons & Dragons - Celebrity Game Table

Thanks, Chris!

Mordengard is my favorite take on dwarves, throughout all D&D history.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

This thread helped remind me of the awesomeness of Mordengard.