What didn't people like about Greyhawk From the Ashes?

[haakon1]

Have the GH enthusiasts here had a look at Thunder Rift? It's a lot smaller (and therefore much easier to develop and keep tabs on), and a lot more "generic D&D" than even GH, Mystara et al. It's also very easy for players to get a grasp of, with only two towns, one city, a castle and a dwarven hold for the population centres. If you want a map with some names and a D&D-game-supporting history, that's it right there.

Just a thought; carry on.

Do people play campaigns that span all of the Flanaess? I've played all my games in western Greyhawk.

Furthest east: Maure Castle and Star Cairns (hills between GHC and Urnst)
Furthest south: Vault of the Drow (under the Hellfurnaces, near Cauldron)
Furthest west: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (eastern Yatils between Ket and Highfolk)
Furthest north: Wolf Nomads.

90% of it has taken place within a month's ride of Thornward Castle, in Bissel.

Nevertheless, I still don't have a lot of details in place. I only mapped Thornward recently, despite 3 parties having used it as a base for years now. I knew several sites there, but I didn't feel a need for a map.

 

[MerricB]

Hmm - let's see... I've adventured or run adventures in...

The County of Ulek
Furyondy
Veluna
The Vesve Forest
Perrenland
The City of Greyhawk
The North Kingdom
The See of Medegia
Hepmonaland
The Bright Desert
Hardby
Geoff
The Wild Coast
Land of the Frost Barbarians

Cheers!

 

[haakon1]

my negative-spin is WotC's trying to get everyone to possible buy the book and to do so they're tossing out this "buy this book or else no more GH, ever" veiled threat to drive fans into buying additional copies as a show of faith or support for the setting they love).

That's my guess as to what that comment is about. It seems an unnecessary comment to make, though. I'll buy it for sure, because I know already that if I don't, less GH stuff will get published.

I make every WOTC purchase on the basis of thinking about whether I want more books like it. So, if you buy the book of unnecessary blah that you like 3 pages of, you're likely to get a whole stinking pile of blah before WOTC gives up on milking the subject. Therefore unless you want to see more like it, don't buy it.

For that reason, I buy EVERY non-FR, non-Eberron WOTC module below about level 15, even if I have no current need for it, and I will buy d20 'Greyhawk".

 

[haakon1]

My feeling is that people want Greyhawk adventures much more than they want Greyhawk supplements, but, even so, I suspect Paizo's "run-away success" with the Adventure Paths is due to them being, er, well-designed adventure paths than Greyhawk material (only Age of Worms is actually a Greyhawk AP); and Maure Castle - at least the first part - is exceptional as being an entire issue devoted to just one adventure.

Cheers!

Yup, that's what I want, and I agree that we Greyhawkers are lucky Paizo has chosen to set things in Greyhawk, even when they are not particularly Greyhawky (Shackled City, as opposed to Age of Worms or Savage Tide). I think for Shackled City, it was probably placed in Greyhawk as the default setting, rather than having deep Greyhawk connections.

There have also been some great one-off Greyhawk adventures during Eric Mona's reign, not just the headline Adventure Paths: a series of 3 adventures set in Greyhawk's Blackmoor region that I enjoyed a lot. "The Fiend's Embrace" is classic 'hawk. There's also been several adventures set in the Geoff region.

 

[haakon1]

Hmm - let's see... I've adventured or run adventures in...

My PC's are a little more geographically diverse than my adventure settings. I tell them we're playing in Bissel, but let them be from anywhere.

Current in person party:
- Dwarf & elf from Frost Barbarian lands (but not Frost Barbarian affiliated and don't speak Cold Tongue; both are played by first time players; I should work with them more on backstory). Current backstory is pretty vague: the dwarf wizard saved the elf rogue from being killed when he was caught trying to rob a dwarfhold in the Griff Mts or Corusk Mts. They were exiled somehow got teleported from Ratik to GHC. From there, they went up river to the adventuring/war action in Bissel.
- Elf from Highfolk. Came to the city/war looking for some action.
- Halfling from Ratik. A cleric of Thor, he's on a mission from god to find and slay giants. His dream says there's a hold Steading of them out there in the western mountains, and they're up to no good!

Any good ideas on pepping up the Ratik/Frost Barbarian angle? These guys are only on their second adventure (Three Days to Kill, followed by Sunless Citadel).


Current email party:
- Two humans from Furyondy. One is a cleric of St. Cuthbert who was carrying a message and is now on orders to help during the "emergency" (war with Ket). The other is his oldest friend, a soldier who slept with the wrong wife and needed to get out of dodge.
- Two elves from Celene. Both weavers. One has secret connections to the Knights of Luna. Rescued by humans while travelling near Verbobonc, they decided on noblesse oblige reasons to help humans fight evil -- and Bissel is the front line.
- One human monk of Rao from the Holds of the Sea Princes, though he hasn't been there in 200 years. He was petrified for 200 years in the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, the rest of his party long slain. He's decided to stay in the are.
- One human ranger/rogue from the Sea of Dust. She was sent as an explorer over the mountains, and has been wandering to and fro.
- One human from Bissel.
- One half-elf from the Vesve.

They've just returned The Standing Stones, set in the Dim Forest.

 

[00Machado]

Actually, Sargent's Dragon articles were excerpted from Ivid the Undying after it was killed as a published product---chunks of it were salvaged as articles in Dragons 204, 206, and 208.

There was also the article Risen from the Ashes which was an overview of types of campaigns you might want to run, themes, levels, places to locate them that would work for those themes, etc. It was in issue 291.

 

[00Machado]

... the secret wars in the occupied Shield Lands...

Was there information on this in the 1983 boxed set? I didn't think the sheild lands were occupied back then. It sounds interesting, and I'm wondering where to find stuff about it.

Thanks.

 

[00Machado]

Sorry, I should have clarified. Those weren't the excerpts I was talking about (though they do deserve mention). I meant a series of Campaign Journal articles where he described rumors, events, etc taking place in Greyhawk post-FtA. I'm not sure if Campaign Journal was the right name or not, but it was something like that.

FWIW, that's the article I mentioned in my post above from issue 191.

 

[Thulcondar]

Was there information on this in the 1983 boxed set? I didn't think the sheild lands were occupied back then. It sounds interesting, and I'm wondering where to find stuff about it.

Thanks.

I assumed he was talking about the conflicts with the Horned Society, Bandit Kingdoms, and Iuz, with the Shield Lands standing as the bulwark, supported by Furyondy and Veluna. Sort of a Cold-War-era Balkans, with neither side willing to commit to overt aggression, but enough covert action and testing of strength and resolve on both sides to qualify as a low-level conflict...

 

[Yeoman99]

What didn't I like?
- Railroaded and over engineered plotline, not the fault of Sargent
- Lack of any subtlety - SB suddendly go from shadowy organisation to stormtroopers.
- Creation of power blocks; good v evil on a much larger scale which marginalised the regions.
- Lack of any grand scale modules following the change - Falcon series and Vecna mods looked rushed and lacked anything memorable IMHO.

I accept that the GW was brewing, but the feel of it was that it would be more localised and less continent shattering. Conflict in the West felt set-up and not well thought through. As for Sargent's work I am happy to say his style and imagination were great, but the subject matter Cook left him was poor. Greyhawk was never just the work of one creator, nor should it have been, but its style was consistent up to FTA/GW. I guess the change of pacing and direction is either something you warm to or not.

What would I have preferred?
- GW on a more regional basis (East and North always seemed likely), dropping the whole Vatun line. SB still a mystery, even if orchestrating conflict and attacks.
- A lot more thought and scale in the modules (Dragon mag. is giving this a much greater go) that create but not dictate plotlines.
- Focus on regional plot hooks and ideas with source books which can be taken and developped by the DM.

Whatever happens in the future I will still use Greyhawk, but bend it to what I want and ignore the rest. My key frustration was IMO the lack of quality work, or (as I exclude Sargent from this) limited use of products that were very metaplot focused.