Enough Useless GH Stuff Already
I play in a long running (long running) greyhawk game. I just created a character from The Great Kingdom and went to buy the big Living Greyhawk book. Opened it up and. . .no table of contents. WTF? Whose bright idea was that? So it's totally useless to me. Having indexed books before, I can understand the impulse not to index a book. . .but not put in a TOC??
There should be a Big Greyhawk Book. And by that, I mean - like the FRCS, but for Greyhawk. In fact, seems to me it should have been the first CS book out, but that's just me.
I have *no earthly idea* how WOTC makes their scheduling decisions, and I was there for 6 months! In one meeting I had it very carefully explained to me (and others) that the guiding principle behind what made sense as a D&D game was the phrase 'Medieval Fantasy.' That's part of the whole 'Branding' thing they do up there. If you can't boil it down to two words, it's too complex. Hollywood calls this High Concept. The example that was given in the meeting was a Barrier Peaks book (that's the one with the spaceship, right?) No sci-fi stuff into D&D, because it's neither Medieval, nor Fantasy.
Then they come out with the Psionicists Handbook. I've read a lot of fantasy, and there's the odd book with psionic characters in it. . .just like there's the odd book with sci-fi elements to it. So when it suits them, WotC has no qualms violating their own guidelines. Fair enough, that's what guidelines are for.
So I'm not sure I can wrap my mind around the dedication Wizards has to the No Big Greyhawk Book principle. They seem. . .*really* dedicated to this idea and I don't know why. "It won't sell." You know, that's not a good enough reason for WotC. WotC has the muscle to *make* it sell on more than one front. Greyhawk is a brand they *own*, they could release stuff like a GHCS book, advertise it, and build its brand equity.
Instead they take advantage of Greyhawk's mid-level, generic fantasy functionality and use it as the backdrop for the generic (and therefore to many people, nameless) D&D setting.
I'm not a Greyhawk Fanatic. I like the setting, but I like lots of D&D settings. Why Hasbro isn't mining the depths of that creativity for action figures, cartoons, and movies, I'll never know.
