Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="evildmguy" data-source="post: 3411576" data-attributes="member: 6092">GH with some FRAt the time, I really didn't like Greyhawk.  And, I have really only come to understand why in recent years.  I was around 8 years old when I started playing DND and 12 years when I started DMing.  Reading through Greyhawk, at the time, was very tough to read.  I didn't understand it.  The only things that were of any use to me were the graphs of what countries were good or evil and the gazeteer, which still seemed quite lacking to me.  I don't have it in front of me, and I could be wrong, but I remember getting no ideas of adventures or what to do from the books.  The few ideas I did have didn't go over well with my players, so I looked for other sources of inspiration, which wasn't Greyhawk.  I don't remember any ruins that weren't in the middle of an uninhabited desert, with no real reason to go there.  Why would anyone go to the Barbarian areas, when all they do is attack any outsiders?  And there didn't seem to be any reason to go there.  So, for me at the time, it was a very difficult world to understand.  I couldn't find adventures easily and the descriptions were so boring to a 12 year old.  (And someone who liked and read history books)  Then, around 1987, FR came out.  Here was a setting I could grok as a 15 year old.  It had novel concepts like "current events" and "adventure hooks" right in the descriptions of areas, which GH didn't have.  The maps had ruins just off of major roads.  There were hooks for adventures everywhere, it seemed.  (I personally didn't get the sense of Elminster being "munchkin" or too powerful until several years later.)  The setting seemed to evoke adventure to me, on a scale that GH didn't.  Now, it was still a 15 year olds version of it, and I would shudder to play in one now, but it worked for me then.  A few years later, FtA came out and for me, I could finally understand the setting.  There were obvious adventure hooks and things just wrote themselves.  The descriptions were more clear about what certain countries were, what they had been and what had happened.  I understood them better.  Alas, it was too late, as I was firmly enjoying FR and wasn't about to go back to GH.  Now, 18 years later, I do understand what the point of GH was.  And, had I been introduced to it now, I would probably like it.  I would find it easy to make adventures in it and would appreciate it more.  Having said that, I prefer metaplot over nothing.  True, I think ALL designers have taken it too far and too many things have happened in too short of a time, but I still prefer the feeling of things moving forward.  I have no problem, as the GM, of saying "I am using the timeline until year X and nothing beyond it is canon for me."  Further, I also have no problem running several campaigns against canon but continuing what my groups have created and running with it.  I have also reset things back to canon and gone forward, using those ideas as new ways of looking at the campaign world for myself and my players.  YMMVHave a good one.  Take care.edg</blockquote>

Verification