Where to start with Greyhawk

mattcolville

Adventurer
I'm staring a vanilla D&D, greyhawk game here at work. I'm looking for the best product to start a 1st level Greyhawk game, set someplace close enough to the City of Greyhawk that the players could ride there in a few weeks.

Though I'm playing 3.5, I don't care what edition the product is from, I'll hunt it down and buy it.

As a GM, I prefer Birthright style maps that uses hexes and shows me nation boundaries.

Where should I start?
 

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I'd go with the Living Greyhawk book for you, and the Gazeteer to have at the table to let the players look through.

As for where in the game world I'd start them, the north end of the Wild Coast is always good, since it's geographically close to the free city, but also close to a lot of great adventure locations, including the old Slaver series. The Wild Coast is civilized enough that the players can find a safe place to sleep most nights, but not so civilized that adventurers aren't needed.

EDIT: From memory, look up RtToEE, N1 and A1-4 as possible early/starter adventures. The A series is a little later on, but not so much so that you can't start laying the groundwork early.
 


Davelozzi said:
Whatchoo talkin'bout Matthew? Birthright maps ain't got no hexes.

No, but they should have. In fact, when I was designing the Book of War, I whipped out my Birthright map to see how easy it would be to Hexify it and I soon began to see "hexes" there, as though there were an earlier, hex-based map from which the published map was based.

EDIT: to make clear that I meant "Birthright style maps that show me national boundaries, but with hexes."
 

Check out Dungeon 114, there´s a great adventure called "Mad God´s Key" that deals with Greyhawk and it surroundings.


Asmo
 

I see. Well, unfortunately I think the two things (borders and hexes) are mutually exclusive when it comes to Greyhawk maps. If I remember correctly, the original folio, '83 box, and From the Ashes all have hexes, as does the new maps currently being published in Dungeon magazine (which are excellent, by the way). The stuff from the Greyhawk '98 line and the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer have borders but no hexes, and the map from the D&D Gazeteer has neither.

So, moving on to other criteria, I personally like From the Ashes more than many people seem to, but I don't recommend it if you're looking for a vanilla D&D game, as it's much more dark and political. So you probably want to stick with either the early stuff (folio or '83 box) or the newer stuff (LGG or D&D Gaz). The original folio has bare sketch of details, not even including names of rules, and leaves the DM to fill in the gaps. The '83 box expands this a bit but still leaves plenty of room for th DM to do his own thing. The D&D Gazeteer is somewhere in between in detail, though closer to the folio, and is set in the current timeline. The LGG is your pick for one stop shopping with the maximum level of detail, and is also set in the current timeline.

As for adventures, really it's pretty easy to make almost any generic D&D adventure fit, though certainly there are plenty of classics to choose from. Folks seem to like the Village of Hommlet a lot as a starting adventure, and it's not too far from Greyhawk City. Dungeon is a great source of easy to use Greyhawk material, and somewhat recently (issue #114), published "The Mad God's Key", a 1st-level adventure set in the city.

Additional details about the area around the City of Greyhawk are available in the City of Greyhawk boxed set, From the Ashes, and The Adventure Begins. Also, Dungeon recently published a cool article about the neighboring city of Hardby. I'm not sure what issue it was in off the top of my head, but it was probably one that came out around this past summer or so.
 

Wow! Nobody has mentioned the Village of Hommlet?!?!?!


Isn't that the paradigm of Greyhawk starter modules? I think so - check it out, I'm sure you can find a copy somewhere.
 

I'd begin in the city of Hardy, cos there was a recent-ish Dungeon which gave a really good write up about it. That's where I'd start.
 


I used to play in Greyhawk a lot in the 2ed days. I LOVE the City of Greyhawk and From the Ashes boxed sets. They certainly aren't easy to find though (and they aren't cheap on ebay).

The Adventure Begins is definitely a good start. There are a lot of good modules in Greyhawk, you just have to hunt for them a bit. The Star Cairns is decent if you want some dungeons. You could even go old school and play the original ToEE (again, try ebay).
 

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