This is a thread where you can talk about your wildest fantasies of owning the Greyhawk IP. This is really an extension of Greyhawk Grognard's video. Plus I'm also curious as to what each of you would do.
Whether you would follow Gary's vision, or follow your own. This is a scroll to speak up about what you would do. As the people on Candlekeep would say.
Gary's vision or my own? Yes. There is plenty to use from Gary's comments and plenty he didn't define. I would further define all the continents. I think there are ways to do it with Gary's notes.
I would probably make Oerth hollow because of Gary's influence by Burroughs.
I would also develop Yarth based on the Gygax-Dille Sagard books...assuming I could get Dille to sign off. Then I could have Yarth and Barsoom (utilizing the "Warriors of Mars" war games rules) which doesn't conflict with the Oerth-Spelljammer stuff.
1) make a proper campaign update to From the Ashes. Carl Sargent created incredible material that built on Gary's articles and novels, but it was dismissed more because players disliked of Zeb Cook's Wars than any flaws in Sargent's work.
From the Ashes was the last time Greyhawk was a dynamic and growing official setting. With the 1998 relaunch, WotC split the difference, rolled back half of FTA's changes and atmosphere, and begun GH's slow descent to stasis, irrelevance, and trying to appease everyone by never taking any chances.
For one year, I would publish a short series of sourcebooks building on FTA and present it as a one-off, alternate timeline.
2) after that, resume building on all of the hard work done by Living Greyhawk and Greyhawk Reborn. I would make it all part of the official timeline and release an updated gazetteer digestible for new players.
3) I would seek out the best authors, up-and-coming and invite back any classic writers interested. Greyhawk has attracted the best talent and collaborators since its inception.
4) Official products would be a modest trickle. Greyhawk should be supported, but the ball is in the DM's court. Keeping up with the official campaign shouldn't require a lot of money. Brand focus would be high-quality, short modules like the good old days: dungeons, hex crawls, tournament gauntlets, deathtraps, and sandboxes, not stupid supermodules or linear adventure paths.
5) every year would be one larger product, alternating between a module trilogy or a regional gazetteer for the Flanaess or other parts of Oerth, starting with Aquaria, then Black Moon Chronicles, then Sundered Empire.
6) expand Greyspace with Spelljammer-branded products and the Underoerth and Empire of Ghouls with generic D&D branded products. Greyhawk players can use or ignore them as they wish.
7) reduce the pimping of famous NPC's. Constant references of overuse of Mordy, Vecna, and others make the setting finite and overshadow the players. Meddling gods walking the earth and constantly-hovering archmages are the province of Forgotten Realms, not Greyhawk. Greyhawk is ready for new plots, new names, new heroes, and new wheels within wheels.
8) give Greyhawk modest novel and video game support. Nothing huge, just some good ones.
1) make a proper campaign update to From the Ashes. Carl Sargent created incredible material that built on Gary's articles and novels, but it was dismissed more because players disliked of Zeb Cook's Wars than any flaws in Sargent's work.
From the Ashes was the last time Greyhawk was a dynamic and growing official setting. With the 1998 relaunch, WotC split the difference, rolled back half of FTA's changes and atmosphere, and begun GH's slow descent to stasis, irrelevance, and trying to appease everyone by never taking any chances.
That's interesting and provocative. I greatly enjoyed the WoG gold boxed set and FtA (and Sargent's regional sourcebooks—Marklands, Iuz the Old, and Ivid the Undying), but I didn't have the same negative reaction you've noted about Team Greyhawk / GH'98.
At the same time, I recognize your point and know that a substantial number of GH fans have similarly critiqued its "roll back" of Sargent's development. However, GH'98 also provided a lot of new details regarding the setting, and I can recall my excitement reading its initial two publications—The Adventure Begins and The Player's Guide to Greyhawk.
Similarly, the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer provided an extraordinary amount of detail, particularly regarding the history of the Flanaess.
vestcoat wrote:
For one year, I would publish a short series of sourcebooks building on FTA and present it as a one-off, alternate timeline.
Very interesting. Depending on the authors / quality of the work, I would be interested in such a series.
vestcoat wrote:
2) after that, resume building on all of the hard work done by Living Greyhawk and Greyhawk Reborn. I would make it all part of the official timeline and release an updated gazetteer digestible for new players.
I've long been interested in Living Greyhawk but don't know much about Greyhawk Reborn. From what I've gleaned about the former, some sounds interesting. Other parts don't. E.g., the Ether Threat's decimation of Tenh. Notwithstanding my reservations, I'd be interested in an overview of what that living campaign developed. I know that a couple of regional efforts have been made, e.g., for the Bandit Kingdoms, but an overview of the whole campaign would be very interesting.
I'll stop here but hope to respond more in the near future.[/i]
GH 98 was in an almost impossible situation because it had to reconstruct an entire world in two booklets (the Player's Guide and The Adventure Begins) that previously would have taken up a box set and I don't believe that WotC did boxed sets anymore for their settings (I think there was a tie-in Diablo one?).
I am also going to say that the AOL Greyhawk message board of ye olde fame was not too fond of From the Ashes, and that's probably the reason Moore rolled back most of it.
In the era before older products were available on PDF, the secondary market was just about the only hope of finding a copy of From the Ashes or City of Greyhawk, and the likelihood of having a set of all the accompanying sheets in those box sets was not great!
But I agree on no more "Return of <insert classical adventure name here>" because that's only really attempting to get the nostalgia crowd and there aren't enough of those. Adventures taking inspiration from the older ones? Sure! But avoid anything that's explicitly a revamp of the classics.
This is going to be heresy, but I think Greyhawk needs to be developed as a system-agnostic world. The setting can all be developed independently of that, and there are people that can do the mechanics for each system, probably sold as a separate pdf, or maybe each version repeats the same setting information. An ideal launch would have Castles & Crusades, D&D, and Pathfinder 2e Remastered versions available, or maybe one at launch with the other two following soon after. Expansion into other OSR variants, Savage Worlds, and Fantasy Age might be on the table too, in addition to previous editions of D&D. This means everything's going to have to be a PDF or print on demand, except for...
A big, beautiful map needs to be available. Maybe get the Darlene map or maybe get Anna Meyer (I hope I'm getting her name right) to do her map. Ideally, you get one of them to do all the maps for the products.
A mixture of system-specific adventures, hitting low and high levels. Once every two years, make an Adventure Path that takes new characters to high levels. The Greyhawk NPCs with names we all recognize may cameo, but shouldn't play a major role.
Maintain a convention presence. Absolutely be at the big ones (GenCon, PAX unplugged, Origins, GaryCon). Hit as many of the others as possible, people have to see Greyhawk to realize it's out there.
Maintain social media to make people realize it's out there. Youtube videos every other week, maybe involving some of the Greyhawk creators (see Ed Greenwood's channel for an example of setting lore). Honestly, the Greyhawk Grognard has been doing this well, so ideally work out an agreement with him. Use this channel to not only talk about the setting, but also mention upcoming products.
Ideally, get some video games or novels for the setting. But, frankly, this is going to be hit or miss, and it shouldn't be the be all and end all.
The overall setting book, which is the first product, has to have a very important section that urges GMs and players to make the setting their own. It sketches the setting out at the 10,000 foot range, later products may do specific areas at the 1,000 foot range, but there should be enough in the initial book to play wherever the GM wants to set the campaign.
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