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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 4545122" data-attributes="member: 16574">The most famous, iconic dungeon in all of D&D-dom has, alas, never been (and very likely never will be) published in anything resembling the form in which it was actually played for about a dozen years in Lake Geneva, WI -- Gary Gygax's (later Gary Gygax & Rob Kuntz's) Greyhawk Castle. We do know lots of details about it, though, from numerous magazine articles and internet posts by both its creators and some of the many (hundreds, possibly thousands) of players who adventured in it both in its original run (1972-85) and more recent "retro" runs that Gary ran at conventions and in his home campaign from c. 1999 to earlier this year (according to Gail Gygax, Gary's last D&D game was an expedition into Greyhawk Castle at Winter Dark Con II in January 2008).The original version of the dungeon, designed by Gary late in 1972, was either 9 or 13 levels deep (accounts differ -- it may have started out at 9 and expanded to 13) and at the very bottom there was a "slide to China" which 3 different players discovered separately, all within a couple days of each other (to Gary's amazement).In mid-1974, Gary brought Rob Kuntz in as his co-DM and they greatly expanded the dungeons, merging material from Gary's original dungeon, Rob's dungeon (El Raja Key), and newly-created material. Level 1 was quadrupled in size and there were 4 different sets of levels beneath, each guarded by a different "gatekeeper" -- a group of elves, a group of dwarves, an ogre, and an unguarded (but very hard to find) gateway. Thus there were 4 different levels 2 (level 2 North, level 2 East, level 2 South, level 2 West) through 8. There was also a secret stairway on level 1 that led all the way to level 9, and the "dozen or so"  levels below, which also included numerous gateways to other planes and demi-planes (including the "Alice in Wonderland"-themed Dungeonland and "King Kong"-themed Isle of the Ape (both of which were later published as stand-alone AD&D modules) as well as Jack Vance's Tschai, a Greek Mythology-themed area, and many others).  This 40+ level dungeon was deliberately designed to be able to handle massive amounts of play -- different groups adventuring in the dungeons on a more-or-less daily basis. By digging around in the old rulebooks (particularly OD&D vol. III and Supplement I), various old fanzines, Gary's "Up on a Soapbox" column in Dragon from the early 00s (and a particularly juicy article in Dragon Annual #2 from 1997), and various online warstories and Q&A with Gary, Rob, and other early campaign participants (as well as more recent vintage session-logs of people who played in the retro-version), it's possible to piece together lots of miscellaneous info about what was in the dungeon and the types of adventures people had there. The best source of collected info on Greyhawk Castle is <a href="http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle.html" target="_blank">Grodog's Greyhawk Castle Archive</a>.Four extracts from Greyhawk Castle have been published as stand-alone adventures:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror by Gary Gygax (published by TSR in 1983): both cover a demi-plane based on a D&D-ized version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Isle of the Ape by Gary Gygax (published by TSR in 1985): based on King Kong and Skull Island, a total meatgrinder based on pure attrition (per Gary, nobody in the original campaign ever "beat" this level)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Original Living Room by Rob Kuntz (published by Pied Piper Publishing in 2007): a single room with lots of special features -- basically, all of the furniture is alive and will attempt to kill, or at least humiliate, anyone who enters</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Original Bottle City by Rob Kuntz (published by Pied Piper Publishing in 2008): in the dungeons of Greyhawk Castle there was a bottle containing a miniature city within it (inspired, presumably, by the Bottle City of Kandor from the Superman comics) that characters could be transported into to have adventures and try to escape</li> </ul>After Gary and Rob parted ways with TSR (at the end of 1985), several "official" versions of Greyhawk Castle have been published:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Castle Greyhawk (TSR, 1988): an anthology "joke" module by a team of freelancers -- opinion is divided whether this was an honest attempt to capture the whimsical tone of the original or a deliberate insult at the ousted former boss, but either way the module doesn't work well -- the jokes are forced and mostly not funny, and it feels more like a series of separate adventures than a cohesive whole</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Greyhawk Ruins (TSR, 1990): TSR's attempt at a "serious" treatment of the castle, but still created more or less out of whole cloth with no more than coincidental resemblance to the original -- this dungeon is very big but, IMO, awfully bland</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (WotC, 2007): updates the 1990 TSR version of the Castle, but also tries to restore more elements from the original (without stepping on the toes of Castle Zagyg)</li> </ul>Lastly (at least for now), Gary Gygax announced in 2004 that he was teaming up with Troll Lord Games for Castle Zagyg, which was billed as a reimagined "best of" version of the original Castle -- the 40+ levels trimmed down to 20 or so and the whole thing reworked to a more professional/traditional standard (as opposed to the minimal notes Gary and Rob used while DMing BITD). Rob Kuntz was originally tapped to co-write this project with Gary. Unfortunately, as Gary's health went south progress was slow, and a disagreement with Rob led to his leaving the project in 2006 with none of the actual dungeons having been published (the town of Yggsburgh and the prelude-module Dark Chateau were both newly created). He was eventually replaced by a guy named Jeff Talanian and work re-commenced in earnest in 2007, but Gary passed away before anything more was released. Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works by Gary and Jeff was released at GenCon 2008, consisting of 80% new material (covering the above-ground fortress and a set of surrounding caves) and 1 dungeon level, based on the original Greyhawk Castle dungeon level 1. More sets were supposed to follow, detailing the remaining 19+ levels, but things have pretty much fallen apart -- Jeff Talanian was removed from the project, then the project was pulled from Troll Lord Games by Gygax's estate. If this project does continue to move forward, it will be in a different (and, as of now, undetermined) new format and approach.</blockquote>

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