The Fall of Castle Zagyg?

[GQuail]

Five years after the publication of C&C, the game created to facilitate the publication of Gary's Castle Greyhawk, and we have one dungeon level from TLG. Not what I would call a stellar track record.

I'd say it's about time someone else got a shot at doing this thing the right way. I'm anxious to see what GG has planned.

I've got to confess, as down as I am about it no longer being guaranteed as a D20-compatible game, there is the fact that so little of it had seen print that, really, what am I missing?

I didn't buy any of the released packs because, while I wanted Castle Greyhawk to finally see a released form, I wasn't interested in the tertiary products they were starting with. I get the logic: work from the top and go down, which necessitates the info on faux-Greyhawk and the castle ruins..... but that wasn't the party we waited years for! Heck, if even the classic team didn't explore the ruins much, what makes you think I'll care for them?

I know Gary was old and sick (didn't shingles force him offline for a bit?) and prone to rambling, so I shouldn't be too surprised by this - nor that Troll Lord Games, with a bit of a spotty record on releasing the products people are super-psyched for, should leave me hanging. Still, I can't help but feel that Castle Zagyg has been a bit of a wash as far as "finally releasing Greyhawk" goes.

 

[JeffB]

Here's a bit I posted over at the Necro forums re: CZ and GG. I'm really upset by this, mainly I guess, cos Gary din't want things this way and can't do a damn thing about it now

I don't know Gail's motivations obviously, but as a consumer, TLG is pretty frustrating. Now, the PEOPLE behind TLG are awesome, every single one of them, but everything gets strung along for ages..whether it's the CKG or CZ, the layout is...to put it politely, not so great (Yggsburgh e.g.) there are tons of errors/editing issues, and while Peter's art is good (very good in many cases), the books are just physically bland (IMO, of course). I'm not sure why, but I've seen plenty of B&W books from other companies that are just beautiful, so I'm not sure why TLG has to continue to be that way. It's like I'm reading old copies of Gamelord's Thieves Guild modules- which was fine 27years ago. From the original D20 modules and Codex of Erde, up to the East Mark, things haven't changed drastically for the better with the products I've purchased. The consumer side of me has a hard time continually telling myself "well, cut them some MORE slack, they are a bunch of cool guys"- after awhile , great people or not, you want to support someone who gets things done in a timely, well executed fashion.

So I could see someone like Gail looking at the physical product, and delays, and other production related issues with TLG and saying "it's time to move on". Mongoose has very good production values (though they've had their issues too with editing and choosing some less than stellar binders), and they are a big company with lots of staff and resources, so they def can give us a great looking and well done physical product, and do it quicker/stick to deadlines.

However, and this is a BIG however- as I stated over @ EnWorld, Gary chose to work with The Trolls, Gary chose to work with the C&C ruleset, and Gary chose to work with Jeff T- and those things are FAR more important than worrying about poor layout or poor editing- to me, and I'm sure to the majority of fans who care about CZ.

Bad news all around

 

[JohnRTroy]

I don't like people attacking Gail, because I know her and I know Gary loved and trusted her. Gail was always the legal owner of Trigee, not Gary.

Part of the frustration I've had with the prior publishers--and this is not an attack on them or anything like that--is that completed works have been really slow to ever be published. Gary wrote so much for LA and a lot still hasn't been published--Elder Worlds and Lejendary Asterouges. There is a huge campaign-sourcebook-module called The Key of Sand / Maladicted Plateau that has been completed over a decade ago in 1997-1998! It still hasn't been published. This is not in outline format like CZ, it was feature complete for LA, etc. It extremely frustrates me as a fan to see these items get delayed.

I think Gary had a trait to trust a publisher--once he made a deal with somebody he trusted he was very hesitant to back out, even if the performance was less than stellar. I think it's time for Gail to consider the options of other publishers. For instance, I'd love to see all the Gord books reprinted by Paizo instead of TLG--Paizo has shown quality support when it comes to novels.

Gail is probably not doing everything 100% Gary would have done, but I think it's a necessary step. Gary was able to live comfortably not on royalties and deals but in part from Gail being the breadwinner of the family--let's face it, the RPG business is not that lucrative for anybody. Gail has a very hard job ahead of her, she enjoyed casual games but wasn't a game geek, and probably can't dedicate the same amount of attention Gary could, so she has to leave it in the hands of somebody she trusts.

As far as Castle Zagyg goes--I'm hopeful but realistically we will never get a very pure Gygax form of it. I have a feeling any attempt will be like the Giant Rat of Sumatra--a story A.C. Doyle referenced a lot but never wrote for Sherlock Holmes, which means the imagined version would be better than the real one. There is no "huge bible" from what I remember--it would probably fit in a 32 page module if published "as is". I think any hope for getting a pure Castle Zagyg died when Gary had to cut his workload a few years back due to health reasons. This is my personal opinion, and I never really contributed to CZ outside Yggsberg because of this. (And just to correct--Gary retained all his faculties, he just had to cut back to keep his health up). So I think the castle will never be 100% what we wanted, but that is the "Greyhawk Curse" in my opinion.

As a Gygax fan I want to see more of Gary's pure work, and I am very hopeful that LA, CZ, and other stuff will get the proper treatment. I wasn't as excited about the GFW series since a lot of it was co-written (except Living Fantasy, that was pure Gary). I want to finally see Key of Sand published. From what I see, people who Gary trusted like Greg Timm, Jon Creffield, and others have gotten involved, so I'm sure Gail and Spenser are doing a good job.

 

[GQuail]

(And just to correct--Gary retained all his faculties, he just had to cut back to keep his health up).

I didn't mean to imply anything else otherwise up above. When I said he was prone to rambling, I meant the same rambling he'd done all throughout D&D's history, I.E. The first ed DMG.

 

[Grimstaff]

I hate to be negative, but my honest feeling is that if TLG had handled CZ properly it would have been on shelves years ago, and this wouldn't even be an issue.

 

[Nikosandros]

I don't know how much it was TLG's fault and how much it was Gary's. Let's face it: starting with Yggsburgh and then doing the Upper Works was not a good plan.

That one always puzzled me...

I actually like Yggsburgh. I mean, I agree about the atrocious editing and everything, but the town itself is well conceived. Still, why publish it before the actual dungeon?

 

[messy]

worst. news. ever.

messy

 

[PeelSeel2]

Not surprising. We will see what happens.

I loved Yggsburgh. It is classic Gygax. I have also enjoyed The Upper Works. We will see what Gygax Games does. Mongoose was a good move for them. I am waiting to see about Castle Zagyg, that is my main interest.

 

[S'mon]

Upper Works is great. Yggsburgh is poor. Dreadful editing, an economic system that just doesn't make sense, and a bunch of other flaws.

There are good things about Yggsburgh, but it doesn't excuse the copy & paste errors and the lack of care.

Cheers!

Oh? Ok, maybe I haven't looked at my copy closely enough. I heard the economics was totally screwed (due to the whole $/gp conversion plus EGG's use of 50sp=1gp) and was planning to ignore that and use default of C&C/LL/etc. The plentiful plot hooks looked good, and that's more the kind of thing I care about.

 

[T. Foster]

Even leaving aside the terrible editing and production I found Yggsburgh to be very lackluster and bland. There were a ton of plot hooks, sure, but most of them were both completely obvious and not very interesting; very mundane stuff that's not at all what I want to spend my limited rpg-playing time on. To me, Yggsburgh was a whole lot of unneeded detail about a completely uninspiring place (and the fact that they took something that I felt was already overkill of useless mundane info and decided to multiply it twenty-four-fold with the Yggsburgh Expansion Project strikes me as pure, unmitigated folly -- imagine if that level of effort (a team of a dozen+ freelancers working hard under Gary's supervision for a year or more) had gone instead into detailing the actual dungeons what we could've seen instead!).