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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint" data-source="post: 2008700" data-attributes="member: 2283">The Living Greyhawk Gazeteer is a book describing the world of Greyhawk. Greyhawk is a typical D&D campaign setting of low-fantasy, where the world is described as "tough".Physical Description / Criteria for Review:The book has a nice picture of an iconic Greyhawk character on the cover. It is a perfect-bound softcover, and 192 pages long. I paid cover price, $27.My group has been playing in Greyhawk for one year now, and I have been using this book as the guide.To love:* The writing in this book is modular in nature. I have had no problems stripping out parts and adding in others as I need. I consider this to be exceptional, considering the depth and detail provided. Barring all other points, it fulfills a large piece of "maximum value criteria" for me.* The text density is high, and the writing is remarkably clear.* The "Gazeteer of the Flaeness" and "Geography" sections collectively takes up over 80% of the book. Within are hundreds of well-described countries, states, cities and locations. Each country description provides detailed history, as well as notable peoples and interactions. They provide a huge variety of countries and landscapes to frame your story in: Feudalistic Monarchies, Militant Theocracies, Undead Despotisms, Evil Monk Jungles, Evil Demigod-ruled Empires, Lands of Humanoid Hordes, Barbarian Lands, Free Cities, and everything in between, as well as virtually every environment setting you can imagine. Thanks to the detailed history and descriptions, it all feels natural, from the sweaty jungles in the south to the ice wastelands in the north. To top it off, most entries have a useful little section called "Conflict and Intrigue" which provides useful ideas on how to involve PCs in that region.* The "Greyhawk's Gods" section contains a well-rounded pantheon of deities, with brothers and rivalries. In my campaign, we had to pare it down to 45 gods.* The "History" and sections are interesting and detailed, but again, modular enough that you can take what you like.* The graphic design and layout is good.To like:* The inside covers provide 58 full-color coats of arms of the major countries. Very nice touch to be able to describe a guard in its country's garb.* The artwork is sparse, and of middling quality. I prefer sparse artwork, especially when it is of middling quality.* The subjects of the "Power Groups" section are interesting and fit well in the world, but are not essential to the world.* It is nicely organized, with a good (if sparse) table of contents.* The map is a full-color detachable foldout map which is of decent quality, although I would have liked a larger one.To dislike:* The class selection for NPCs is suspect. While the personalities and their roles in the world are perfect and well-described, the fact that this book was developed concurrently with the ruleset shows. An example of this are leaders which are high-level Rogues, when their description clearly calls for a high-level Aristocrat. Furthermore, multiclassing is not used as much as I would like, and prestige classes are completely absent.* With so many gods, I would have liked a table clearly illustrating the relationships between and within the multiple pantheons.To hate:* The book has no index, which is a big miss on a book of this nature (an encyclopedia). The 2 pages describing the Living Greyhawk Campaign rules could have been sacrificed for this.Conclusion:I feel that I got incredible value out of this book. In short, if I had to pick one world-framework to run a D&D 3e game in, and I wasn't creating it myself, this would be the world, and this book would be my guide. Even if I didn't, I'd be mining this book for ideas left and right.</blockquote>

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