D&D General The Greyhawk Pantheon: How Greyhawk Approaches Deities (& Demigods)

[grodog]

I was thinking maybe Hyboria could be Gonduria, but the TSR Conan & Red Sonja adventures are not on PDF, expensive, and probably don’t have much source material.

I was surprised to learn TSR also made an unrelated Conan RPG ~1985. Same issues, except they do apparently have some pages about the setting.

I’ll have to look, but my recollection matches yours. There’s some high-level summary info about the Conan line at Conan Archive and the two Conan 1e modules at Conan the Barbarian (CB) Series Modules

And there’s always Hyborian Age d20 Campaign Site - hyboria.xoth.net and xoth.net publishing - sword and sorcery roleplaying adventures if you’re looking for more inspiration!

Allan.

 

[haakon1]

Sounds like fun! My Primes are sketched out at Planar Architecture for grodog's Current Greyhawk Campaigns

Allan.

Good stuff! I like the concept of collecting many settings into a Greyhawk centric multiverse.

As far as gates go, the ones that matter in my Greyhawk:

- Gate near the Keep on the Borderlands, in the Yatil foothills NE of Thornward in my campaigns, from an arch to a stone circle near the southern edge of the Dim Forest. A PC party has used this, and don’t know who built it or why - neither do I.

- Gate from under the fallen dwarven hold of the Forge of Fury, IMC in the Yatils NW of Thornward, to the fallen dwarven hold under the City of Cauldron. They’re in the form of platforms, primarily for cargo transport. When PC’s cleared both dungeons and reopened these gates, a Cauldron entrepreneur started importing ice and making ice cream. So big campaign change.

- In the ruins of Blackmoor Town, in the basement of the Come Back Inn, is a Stargate, which of course can go to many places - something close to it is described in the 3e Blackmoor book. The god Balder, in Rel Astra as you saw, is trying to use it to trade with Stargate command. So far, just Coca-Cola imported in exchange for healing potions. Balder uses his godly powers to make them permanently chilled. (It seems high magic for refrigeration is a theme with me!)

 

[haakon1]

I’ll have to look, but my recollection matches yours. There’s some high-level summary info about the Conan line at Conan Archive and the two Conan 1e modules at Conan the Barbarian (CB) Series Modules

And there’s always Hyborian Age d20 Campaign Site - hyboria.xoth.net and xoth.net publishing - sword and sorcery roleplaying adventures if you’re looking for more inspiration!

Allan.

Nice. I wasn’t aware of xoth. Nice for me that it’s d20, as I run 3.5e.

From TSR Archives, it sounds like Red Sonja Unconquered has a Hyboria map, but in 32 pages probably not room for much more setting material.

Red Sonja Unconquered (RS1)

A complete list of all Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game adventures and accessories

www.tsrarchive.com

 

[grodog]

Nice. I wasn’t aware of xoth. Nice for me that it’s d20, as I run 3.5e.

Excellent! I’m glad that’s useful

From TSR Archives, it sounds like Red Sonja Unconquered has a Hyboria map, but in 32 pages probably not room for much more setting material.

I also have a copy of the old Starmont House book, A Gazetteer of the Hyborian World of Conan by Lee N. Falconer, which is quite good!

Allan.

 

[Voadam]

I felt GURPS Conan gave a decent overview of the setting. I have but have not read the 2d20 Modiphius Conan line from a bundle sale so I cannot comment on their use here. I have also seen various guides to Conan stuff in bookstores but have not picked them up.

Along the lines of Xoth there is also the 1e based hyborian adventures I believe it is called and primeval Thule which is for multiple systems.

 

[haakon1]

It occurred to me tonight, one of my players is a big fan of “Beastmaster” (he has 15 birds himself) - I wonder if anyone ever created a setting for that, if we’re looking at fantasy movies contemporary with the Greyhawk Folio or Gold Box. So far as I can tell, nothing like that exists.

Nor for “Willow”, another movie of that era, with a recent sequel series.

I’ve been thinking about the characteristics that make a setting potentially a good fit as another continent on Oerth, or region of Oerik. Or I suppose, places on alternate primes or other planets of the PMP. Some ideas:

- Direct links in the setting to Greyhawk. E.g., Chainmail in its own lore is Western Oerik.

- Indirect links in the setting to Greyhawk. E.g., D&D the Animated Series apparently mention Warduke. The movie “D&D: Wrath of the Dragon God” mentioned multiple classic modules.

- Something that influenced the creation or early growth of the game. E.g., Conan, Middle Earth, Cthulhu mythos, Fahrd & the Gray Mouser, Arneson’s version of Blackmoor.

- Fantasy that feels very Greyhawk, especially if that’s intentional in tone or by former Greyhawk authors. E.g., Raging Swan Press settings feel like a Greyhawk region settled by folks from the Flanaess.

- Fantasy that feels Greyhawk compatible in tone, but is considerably different with no links to a Greyhawk-like place. For me, Kozakura from Oriental Adventures.

- A place with low population, and tech including magic tech, less than or equal to Greyhawk. So all of the above, possibly yes, but Forgotten Realms - higher magic, huge cities - certainly not on Oerth, but perhaps a Plane Shift or Spelljammer away.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that one stood against all of them. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me the strength to kill all of those bards! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you

Crom never answers prayers. He gives people the strength to solve their own problems.

 

[Zeromaru X]

In the Nentir Vale (which is very like a 2000s update of Greyhawk without so many gazzetteers in many ways) this is explained; in the Dawn War the deities behaved like literal adventuring groups (which leads to the "Better keep Erathis on side with her experiments in civilisation").

There is also the fact that in the Nentir Vale, the gods that make up the current pantheon are the survivors of the Dawn War, and so they all have combat abilities and such. The "weak" gods (as in, combat weak) didn't survived the Dawn War.

We have explicit mentions of such instances, like the God of the Word being among the first casualties of the war. The gods of harvest and the hearth, and that stuff, may have shared the same fate.

On topic, I'm wondering, isn't Rao the god of Krypton in the Superman comics?

 

[JEB]

On topic, I'm wondering, isn't Rao the god of Krypton in the Superman comics?

Yep, albeit a god of the sun rather than a god of peace. (Still always suspected the name was a shout-out, though.)

 

[Azzy]

On topic, I'm wondering, isn't Rao the god of Krypton in the Superman comics?

Huh. I never knew about that bit of Superman lore.

Whether that was the influence for the GH god, I have no idea.