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

[Imruphel]

Names and naming conventions.

Yes some of these were (and are) truly horrible.

What soured me was the great lost opportunity that was T1-4. I realise that this close to heresy on these boards but here was a perfect opportunity to produce an order of clerics with some mechanical flavour that screamed ELEMENTAL evil... not just generic cleric #12 with the same spells as every other 1E cleric.

Of course, I also understand that T1-4 was yet another 1E product rushed into production before it was completed.

 

[Maggan]

I absolutely loved the map in the yellow boxed set. So I eagerly anticipated the information about all those strange names and little symbols and all that.

But when I started reading the setting I was almost instantly assaulted by several pages of information about the various kinds of trees that appeared in Greyhawk.

I never recovered from that initial onslaught of, for my 15 year old mind, intensely boring information. So I dropped Greyhawk and ended up playing in the Known World and in the WFRP setting instead.

So the thing that I didn't like about Gygax's Greyhawk was the way the information was presented textwise in the boxed set. It was enough for me to discard the setting.

Loved the poster map.

/M

 

[Felon]

Hmm. The main thing I disliked in the original folio was the population figures. They're generally too low for the land area given by a factor of at least 10.

You may be kidding yourself here. Look up some figures on world population over the centuries. It's pretty surprising to know how long the world moved along with only a hundred million or so on the face of the globe.

Of course, Greyhawk ain't the real world, but it is a pre-industrial pseudo-medieval simulation. The existence of magic and monsters has little beneficial impact, and potentially quite a detrimental one (there just never seems to be hordes of altruistic creatures sweeping the land).

 

[robertsconley]

But were there things that you did not like along the way (up until his resignation from TSR), be it product material or related articles?

The howling emptiness of the 30 miles hex. If they had even one regional type modules that showed how things looked like on the regional level. Remember when Greyhawk first came out we didn't have resource or the internet to show us how a campaign world can hand together.

As a consequence I switched to Judges Guild Wilderland where there more detail to see how it worked at the local level plus the Wilderness Books series.

Imagine like if all Traveller had was the Red on Black Imperium Map and its description along with no Spinward Marches map. That was the fundemental problem for Greyhawk via AD&D for me. Plus I had City-State where we had to wait for the City of Greyhawk for years.

Rob Conley

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

The howling emptiness of the 30 miles hex...As a consequence I switched to Judges Guild Wilderland where there more detail to see how it worked at the local level plus the Wilderness Books series...Plus I had City-State where we had to wait for the City of Greyhawk for years.

I've been playing since the late 70s and have always been a Greyhawk fan, but I never really checked out the Judges Guild stuff, back in the day. I wish I would have -- the Wilderlands rocks. I recently got turned on to the re-released JG stuff from Necromancer and Goodman (the Wilderlands boxed set, Caverns of Thracia, City State, Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor -- nice work on that, by the way, etc) and they are really great for the style of game I like. I'm looking forward to the C&C JG products from AGP, too, since C&C is my main system, these days.

As far as scale goes, I think the as-published scale of the Wilderlands map is a little on the small side (i.e. 5 miles per hex). I'm using a scale like this:

Campaign map = 15 miles per hex
Wilderness map = 0.5 mile per hex (rounded from 0.6)
Village/Ruin map = 125 feet per hex
Tactical map = 5 feet per hex

</threadjack>

 

[robertsconley]

As far as scale goes, I think the as-published scale of the Wilderlands map is a little on the small side (i.e. 5 miles per hex). I'm using a scale like this:
</threadjack>

Many of us old time DMs of the Wilderlands use an expanded scale. My own was 12.5 miles per hexes. I adopted that so I can use Harn as a reference for population, campaign rules, and demographics.

This what the maps to my personal wilderlands looked like.

http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/localantilmap.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/localcsmap.jpg

and even more local scale

http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands/Antil_SE.JPG


Rob Conley

 

[The_Gneech]

I hated that I was always the DM.

That, and some of the names are quite silly.

-The Gneech

 

[Drkfathr1]

Names and naming conventions.

Absolutely!

I have to change names when I run adventures for Greyhawk. Sometimes my players didn't believe that the published names were real!

 

[Drkfathr1]

The thing that always bugged me about Greyhawk was the one thing that I always hear the most praise about it for - the fact that it was basically just a map with an overview of the various nations. I never understood (and still don't) why people liked that. If I wanted to do all the work myself, I wouldn't need a boxed set like the orginal Greyhawk Campaign setting was in. I was so disappointed by that fact that I have never been able to really look it over with an open mind.

Well...that's absolutely what I liked about it. I could create my own storylines and plots without worrying about some later supplement contradicting anything I had done. Greyhawk gave DM's a sense of freedom that other settings didn't. (I'm looking at you Forgotten Realms)

 

[billd91]

The thing that always bugged me about Greyhawk was the one thing that I always hear the most praise about it for - the fact that it was basically just a map with an overview of the various nations. I never understood (and still don't) why people liked that. If I wanted to do all the work myself, I wouldn't need a boxed set like the orginal Greyhawk Campaign setting was in. I was so disappointed by that fact that I have never been able to really look it over with an open mind.

The thing is, you're NOT doing all the work. You've already got a decent framework as your starting point. But you are given a lot of room to connect the dots as you need to do them. It's one of the reasons it's my favorite published campaign. I don't have time to generate stuff from scratch, but I do have time to fill in the gaps.
Plus, every Greyhawk campaign is a little different. Keeps experiences with the setting fresh with every campaign you play it where it's in use.