What didn't people like about Gygax's Greyhawk?

ColonelHardisson said:
They weren't bad, mind you; I still like the City boxed set. It just wasn't Gygax's work.
It was a different city, with a different layout (the authentic layout was shown in Gary's novel City of Hawks), different buildings, inhabitants, rulers, different feel, with only (some of) the handful of information that had been published about the City in common.

Both TSR versions of the Greyhawk Castle dungeons ditto.
 

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SWBaxter said:
Perhaps not, but OTOH I don't really think Greyhawk shows much evidence of such knowledge being applied.

I was only talking about the walled-city maps, not the village maps. The credibility gap for me is far larger with the walled cities containing lightly scattered detached houses, than a village that doesn't exactly fit the medieval Englisg paradigm with three-field strip farming etc. A modern US small farming town (village) could at least function without mechanical transport, though it ought to be more compressed.
 

The folio had those, page 7, bottom map. Not sure why they were dropped from the box set (which does in fact display the page 7 top map I mentioned above, it's just in the Glassography by the weather info...).[/QUOTE]

To be fair the later boxed set always implied the borders with the maps on pps 44 and 45 for Regional alignments and products. I never had difficulty in translating this implication to the main maps. The p7 folio map was exactly the same as these others, but explicitly labeled the countries.

As for what I did not like........ I came across Greyhawk in '83 with the release of the boxed set. As a young teenager I was blown away by the detail (Wow I get a whole bunch of encounter tables detailing the composition of patrols!), but actually found it very difficult to create campaign themes and plots. It was then that I realised the detail was the wrong sort for me. What I needed was adventure and campaign ideas, rather than the crunch. The modules gave some tantalising glimpses of what could be done, but my imagination was not up to creating that sort of detail in those days. Overall the setting then came across as grand, but too empty of actual gaming material. Even more frustrating were the teasing references made in the DMG etc, which promised much, but whose details were elusive. Finally, I tried, really tried to like the whole Dungeonland thing but ........ no. And Merlynd's six shooters......

Ironically, now I've come back to looking at Greyhawk I appreciate it much more as an established gamer with years of playing behind me, appreciate the scope and can make much more of it. I much prefer the Gygax era to any other interpretation, but still wish that some of the back story and implied connections (eg what was the whole Elder Elemental God thing, where did Maure castle fit in etc.) had been detailed. The books and mods always promised so much.....
 

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