What didn't people like about Gygax's Greyhawk?
- Thread starter Ranger REG
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khyron1144
First Post
I gotta agree with the trees thing
I picked up a copy of the Guide to the World of Greyhawk boxed set at a garage sale somewhere in my middle school to high school days, and that was at least eight years ago. I still haven't read either one of the booklets all the way through.
Part of it is the whole trees section.
Another thing is, my first RPG product ever was the Ravenloft Realm of Terror boxed set. I bought it because, being nine years old and familiar with boardgames, I expected D&D to come in a box and I liked the vampire artwork on the cover.
Once I had a PHB and DMG and understood what a campaing setting was:
I don't think there was a lot of setting there in that old Guide to the World of Greyhawk box compared to Ravenloft. There was some geography, a bit of history that was too boring to read through, some NPC descriptions and Comeliness rules. Ravenloft had an easy to follow history that was cool, loads of nifty NPCs, and new monsters, spells, and magic items (about three of each). Oddly enough, I've never tried to run Ravenloft, and I did run one Greyhawk session to teach some 3e newbs how to play with a module from Dungeon.
I picked up a copy of the Guide to the World of Greyhawk boxed set at a garage sale somewhere in my middle school to high school days, and that was at least eight years ago. I still haven't read either one of the booklets all the way through.
Part of it is the whole trees section.
Another thing is, my first RPG product ever was the Ravenloft Realm of Terror boxed set. I bought it because, being nine years old and familiar with boardgames, I expected D&D to come in a box and I liked the vampire artwork on the cover.
Once I had a PHB and DMG and understood what a campaing setting was:
I don't think there was a lot of setting there in that old Guide to the World of Greyhawk box compared to Ravenloft. There was some geography, a bit of history that was too boring to read through, some NPC descriptions and Comeliness rules. Ravenloft had an easy to follow history that was cool, loads of nifty NPCs, and new monsters, spells, and magic items (about three of each). Oddly enough, I've never tried to run Ravenloft, and I did run one Greyhawk session to teach some 3e newbs how to play with a module from Dungeon.
That's because the only things you can really interact with in D&D are micro level honest-to-goodness encounters, be they dynamic or status quo. Anything else is just a bunch of amorphous ideas that may or may not ever reach the gaming table - and if they do, it's only because they've been translated into encounters which PCs can interact with.
Thus the ridiculousness of Eberron promising vibes and feels that only an actual series of adventures can deliver, and the sanity of the Wilderlands presenting itself as a world-as-dungeon (although it's still too big for D&D purposes IMO). Greyhawk is indeed a void, as are the Forgotten Realms if not dealt with on a Volo's Guide or Shadowdale setting book level. Dragonlance's Chronicles module series is a case study in how D&D worlds are generally too big for their own good for purposes of running an actual game (as opposed to a novel). Anything else requires hundreds of hours of DM prep time to articulate the setting, such that apart from as inspiration you may as well come up with something that fits your needs exactly, rather than trying to shoehorn someone else's ideas into your adventures...thus the popularity of homebrew, I guess.
Greyhawk's (and Mystara's) killer feature is one that Paizo has tapped into - nostalgia-based legacy material. They're so clever they even moved the Isle of Dread to Greyhawk for these purposes. If they can do that, why bother with canon at all? Maybe just borrow the good bits from each setting, maybe mess with the names a bit if it's hard to accept Vecna, Lord Soth and the Cult of the Dragon having a tea party, and dump them in your homebrew. The canon police won't arrest anyone because they don't exist.
Fifth Element
Legend
dcas said:
COME BY CHANCE and CONCEPTION BAY, Newfoundland.
Henry
Autoexreginated
Fifth Element said:
Let's not get too far out there with those -- after all, this isn't some Circvs tent, here...
But yeah, there are some truly wacky names out there in the real world. Heck, even Warhammer's creators followed suit in the 80's: "The Empire" is almost a straight knock-off of the HRE, the "Tilean City-State" is very much Italy in practice and in a slightly-morphed name; it's not unusual, or out of place for designers to do it, as well as real people deciding what the heck to name their neck of the woods...
...I'm thinking of naming the starting town of my next campaign "Bunghole" or "Claptrap" or something off the wall, and set all the adventures locally, but keep everything serious, just for verisimilitude.
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Re 1983 box, I agree with evilsmguy that it's lacking in "Jump right in and start playing here" stuff, ie adventure hooks, other than the high-level adventure outlines - Werewolves of Menowood etc, which are good but not for starting a campaign! I somewhat dislike the Greyhawk maps' vast blank 'plains' areas filling most countries, and the tiny, tiny population figures, I guess that's what happens when a guy from the Mid West creates a world!
Felon said:
Naw, the GH populations are totally ridiculous for the kind of high-medieval society that dominates the Flanaess. As said, they're out by a factor of at least 10. If the world were a prehistoric wilderness then, sure, 1 person per square mile might be plausible. A medieval feudal nation needs at least about 30/sq m at the low end, even the Scottish Highlands type barbarian clan society needs ca 10/sq m to function.
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