I enjoy taking monsters from other settings and throwing them into WoG Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy being thrown into WoG is a prime example (one of my players darn near had a stroke at this encounter). Does anyone else do that and if so, do you feel it enhances WoG or diminishes it? If you do add monsters, what is your favorite? Yep, I'm lookin for ideas.
I unashamedly borrow from other settings, with my favourite at the moment being Golarion for the incredibly rich background and the Adventure Paths.
As to monsters specifically, I have converted to 4E and carried forward my 3E based assumption that anything not placed in a published setting (in the case of 4E that's FR, Dark Sun or Eberron) has a place in Greyhawk.
I have made dragonborn a former slave race of the Suel and airbrushed the horns from tieflings to make them pureblood Suel. It hasn't come up yet but I intend genasi to be Baklunish and goliaths to be Flan. I like shifters as Wolf and Tiger Nomads but given my Baklunish commitment above I'm not sure how that's going to work.
I'm just debating now where to place all the Paizo APs and their associated settings. I've got plans for most but not all so should you have any ideas for these I'd welcome them as well.
I loved a lot of the Warhammer stuff including the Skaven but haven't done anything with those yet.
I've never done that and I'm working on a Greyhawk game now. For me, there's too much "untouched," or "little used," Greyhawk goodness to bring in anything from other settings.
Hey,
Lord of the Rings plastic minis by GW. What better way to have actual men-at-arms represented for certain kingdoms in Greyhawk. At least 4 different kingdoms of men, pirates, halflings, lots of dwarves, high elves and wood elves, goblins!, orcs (with two distinguishing races), ogres, worgs/large wolves, etc...
As well, the scaven, lizard folk, etc from GW's WH and add the D&D plastic mini's, with an older collection of metal and the table top will never look the same.
Cross pollinate away! Spread the joy!
I've seen old model railway track converted for a mine and throw in a bunch of kobolds or goblins or dwarves and you can create a cool diamond-mine adventure.
Your imagination is the limit... I borrowed the concept of gate travel (think StarGate) where PC's (and monsters/npc) can travel to other worlds... if they have the location of a gate (more than one) and the address, also if gate travel isn't available or you like the idea, then SpellJammer ships can cross the void and that in itself can be a series of adventures just to get from say Forgotten Realms (Dragonlance-Ravenloft-Darksun-Ebberron-etc..) or another game systems world (Harn/HackMaster/Gurps/Pathfinder/RoleMaster/MiddleEarth/etc...)
... to the awesomeness of Greyhawk!
May take a little creative conversions for PCs from different game systems if you don't already go with the 3.5/d20 system already and just convert the worlds.
As for the Pathfinder Adventure settings... I would play them out in the Pathfinder setting of Golarion. Maybe throw in a few Greyhawkian adventure bits and a means to travel there... how new and unexplored GH would be then to these brave ventures from Golarion!
I've had a few campaigns that had "world hopping"... even time travel events ...think of the cool Warhammer 40K bits you could throw in here?... the possibilities are endless! The worlds are your oyster!
I am working on a huge campaign that involves travel between Greyhawk to FR to Ravenloft and back to GH.
I grew up with 1st Ed AD&D and its GammaWorld/BootHill "mix kits", have had my PC's in their most early games indeed, fly their mountainous flying castles from Dragonlances World of Krynn to Greyhawk before SpellJammer ever came about.
In short, do not limit yourself. You can still maintain a uniquely Greyhawk campaign with a dash or have plausible reasoning for that specific and way cool monster from either another game world (ie-DarkSun) or system (Warhammer's Old World).
Any idea, mod, figure, map, can be used to some extent, with a little bit of conversion work/explaination.
Like M-S, I stick to a more traditional setting. I agree that there's plenty in the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and MM2, along with various supplements from WoG itself to keep me more than busy. I guess it depends on your own philosophy and those of your players. In a case like that, I'd ask my players if they'd mind or not before I started infusing creatures from other worlds and settings.
Of course, there's room for "growth." For instance, in the LGG, page 147, subheading "Seas and Lakes," we get this:
"Lake Abanfyl: Aquatic monsters never before described descend from here . . ."
There's much "juicy" information to be found in the LGG. And that leaves room for monsters from other game settings.
But as Lanthorn pointed out, there's a whole bunch that have never been used. Because creating new monsters, classes and kits is all that WotC has been good for -- for years.
No gaming material, modules, story, just "new" monsters, kits and classes. So I don't need anything from "other" game settings to flesh out my Greyhawk. There's plenty of "original" Greyhawk monsters for me.
Hell, yes. I don't see any reason for "purism" unless you're writing for WotC. Your version of Greyhawk is your own, and making it so is part of the joy of DMing.
As Erik Mona once said in a Dungeon Magazine editorial, canon is the enemy. Your job as DM is to make a setting tailored to your needs and the needs of your players, not to uncritically parrot back decisions made by other people in other situations. For example, the siv is a race of lawful evil humanoid frogs with monk abilities. They're perfect for servants of Wastri, but they happen to have been introduced in a book called Monsters of Faerun. So what? They work better in Greyhawk than they ever did in the Forgotten Realms setting.
Or, for another example, I happen to think the Nerull's Bane culture described in Iuz the Evil is a spitting image for the Thane, a race of plane-travelling demonologists and necromancers from the Talislanta setting. So maybe some revised variation of the Thane should be part of my history of Greyhawk.
Greyhawk canon as it exists is the result of chance, happenstance, and occasionally bad decisions made at the designer level or the corporate level. Some things are part of the Forgotten Realms instead of Greyhawk just because things with the Forgotten Realms label were more profitable for a time. Other companies sometimes come up with great ideas that happen to not be canon because the designers were working for those companies instead of TSR/WotC. Some things, like the Bloodstone series of modules or Kara-Tur, were actually moved from Greyhawk to the Forgotten Realms after the fact. Sometimes good ideas come from 4th edition, which has itself raided heavily from Greyhawk. Sometimes good ideas come from basic D&D, which only split itself from AD&D in order to avoid a copyright claim from Dave Arneson. It seems silly to let decisions that come from legal issues or advertising strategies affect a home game.
I say whatever floats your boat I actually removed drow as a subrace more due to the over proliferation and exposure of a race which is suppose to be an underdark denizen, than anything else.
So like Rasgon has put it unless its for a published piece of work your version of Greyhawk is your canon. In the end thats your decision and no one can take that away from you.
I am guilty of modifying monsters either advancing or devolving monsters as per the rules in the Monster’s Manual. In official worlds I do not bring in monsters from other gaming systems. I have had DMs try creating monsters from scratch based on monsters from other systems. Virtually all of my experiences in this have been bad ones. The monsters are always way way way overpowered. Typically if I want to create something I find an existing creature to base the creature on and modify the base creature as little as possible.
In a home brew adventure back in the early 2000s I created a D20 modern version of Duke Nukem and had him in a D&D adventure.
I agree that there's plenty in the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and MM2, along with various supplements from WoG itself to keep me more than busy.
Unless you omit most of the entries of air-breathing creatures, from said books. ;)
I tend not to borrow from other campaign settings, though I have made a few exceptions such as Monsters of Faerun, where traditional beasties were placed in a setting-specific supplement.
For me, I feel odd when I cross-pollinate from an edition of D&D I did not personally play - 2e. I jumped from 1e to 3e. Thanks to the GH Wiki, I can get ahold of all sorts of odd bits; hag goddesses, bits about Persana and assorted deities, and a few tidbits regarding various regions. It's odd to use them, since I am reading about them after the fact.
I agree that there's plenty in the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and MM2, along with various supplements from WoG itself to keep me more than busy.
Unless you omit most of the entries of air-breathing creatures, from said books. ;)
I tend not to borrow from other campaign settings, though I have made a few exceptions such as Monsters of Faerun, where traditional beasties were placed in a setting-specific supplement.
For me, I feel odd when I cross-pollinate from an edition of D&D I did not personally play - 2e. I jumped from 1e to 3e. Thanks to the GH Wiki, I can get ahold of all sorts of odd bits; hag goddesses, bits about Persana and assorted deities, and a few tidbits regarding various regions. It's odd to use them, since I am reading about them after the fact.
I skipped 2nd edition also, came back for 3.x, and skipped 4e. Between the 6 monster manuals from WotC and the 3rd party MM, there are tons of stuff to use, way more than enough. To be honest, I generally stick to the first 3 WotC and FF, but 90% are from MMI, I'm a traditionalist. As for 2e, I never liked 'kits', it turned me off to it, so I stayed 1e.
TT _________________ Servant of Azmekidom the Most Prudent Despot, The Unapproachable One
Well ... I'm of two minds on this one.
See the thing is, I tend to try to stay comfortably within canon - but, I realize that not everything is always in canon, and there's lots of leeway in it. But, I don't want to directly contradict canon, either. I mean, it's all about personal taste. Obviously. This thread has been going on and on about "it's your own campaign". It's like a Mantra. But, ultimately, everyone knows that. It's just a matter of finding what's interesting in the campaign without breaking it. I think that's more what this thread's about - asking how far we each have personal tastes for going. we all go outside the bounds (even if only a little) every now and again.
For example, the Tiger Nomads are known for having shapeshifting humanoids there ... this is generally thought of as Were-tigers, but, there's no reason that a shifter couldn't fit into it just as well. Also, the City of the Gods is known for having augmented humanoids that are part machine, part man. There's no reason to think that the warforged couldn't find a decent place in that area. (not that I really like warforged; I think they're dumb. They're cyborgs, for crying out loud.)
But, I don't really think that I would do something to bring in monsters from other realms that were more jarring or shocking to see in GH. But, by the same token ... there's canon for a fair amount of SciFi in GH. But, I don't think that I would want Godzilla in GH. (Oddly for the same reason, I won't likely ever use the Tarrasque.) Nor am I likely to put He-man flying space skiffs in GH. Unless they happen to be in the "Incursion" campaign, and they're magical platforms with githyanki on them. ... which I've done.
So ... hmm. I'm trying to think of any really surprising cross-pollination that I have used. The Wemic were in Monsters of Faerun: Monstrous Compendium ... butm they've been canon in GH for years.
I guess that I've always made a way to make monsters "within the rules". I've done a fair amount of custom-monster-building - but, never really wholesale cross-pollination.
Well ... there was this one time, at band camp, that I put Draconians in a dragon's lair, and my 21st level paladin came in with this +3 holy shock vorpal two-handed sword ... but, he could wield it one-handed - and he took on the Draconians, and his sword got stuck in the one that turns to stone, and the the other one blew up when I killed it, and then the other one was a spellcaster ...
... and, and, and ... hey. HEY! Where are you going? I'm not done with my story! <follows along, rambling> ... so, I threw a +1 holy hand grenade at the Dragon, and charged with my shield ...
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I haven't added monsters from other games/settings in, but I have used Skaven miniatures, for instance, to represent a group of wererats. The 2E Monster Compendiums put some of the standard 1E monsters in specific setting compilations, for space/content reasons. I don't count those, meaning I surely did NOT steal perytons from the Forgotten Realms- they were always in Greyhawk. _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
As has been said before . . . "they've" been mining Greyhawk for, what? 3 score years?
Um, well ... they might've been doing so for quite a while ... and it may've, in fact, been 3 dozen years. ... but, not likely 60. I don't think that Greyhawk's been around three score years.
As has been said before . . . "they've" been mining Greyhawk for, what? 3 score years?
Um, well ... they might've been doing so for quite a while ... and it may've, in fact, been 3 dozen years. ... but, not likely 60. I don't think that Greyhawk's been around three score years.
I think Mystic Scholar must have been referring to the only three years in which the New Orleans Saints managed to score a touchdown...
I enjoy adding a few different monsters from other worlds/settings, but I don't do it on a large scale. I guess the older I get, the older the players are and they seem less surprised by canon monsters. You can almost see them running numbers in their heads, so when I throw a small group of Skaven at them, they freak a little.
I agree there are plenty of monsters in the books to fill out WoG, but with all the fantabulous (<---that's right, I said fantabulous) magic being thrown around and such, I always thought it was inevitable that certain doors would be opened for a short time. I also enjoy making some of my zombies move quickly, which always stirs the pot for my players
...I surely did NOT steal perytons from the Forgotten Realms- they were always in Greyhawk.
Same goes for Kara-Tur!
I don't believe Kara-Tur was ever meant for Greyhawk. Yes, OA was originally advertised as detailing Oerth's orient in Dragon Magazine, but that was before Dave Cook took over the project from Froideval. Cook has said that he specifically designed Kara-Tur to be "setting-neutral" and the description of the land in the book doesn't really match any landmass on Oerth, even before the controversial Dragon Annual #1 map. When you also take into account Gygax's later negative comments about Cook's work on the book, it makes a strong case that Kara-Tur was never meant to be on Oerth.
Anyway, when I ran my Greyhawk campaign I didn't bring stuff from outside D&D, but almost any D&D monster or class was fair game (with a few rare exceptions). I considered all other campaign worlds as part of the same universe (or "multiverse") and thus could have a means of reaching Oerth somehow.
I don't believe Kara-Tur was ever meant for Greyhawk. Yes, OA was originally advertised as detailing Oerth's orient in Dragon Magazine, but that was before Dave Cook took over the project from Froideval. Cook has said that he specifically designed Kara-Tur to be "setting-neutral" and the description of the land in the book doesn't really match any landmass on Oerth, even before the controversial Dragon Annual #1 map. When you also take into account Gygax's later negative comments about Cook's work on the book, it makes a strong case that Kara-Tur was never meant to be on Oerth.
There is a certain veracity to this ... and you're right, just because there was an advertisement for *a* oriental portion of Greyhawk, that doesn't mean that Kara-Tur was going to be it. It may well have been pulled from publication before the book went to print. It *could* have been an entirely different setting.
But, there are still anachronisims that stick out, like:
WG8 - "Fate of Istus" wrote:
"... a semi-permanent one-way gate to western T'u Lung in the land of Kara-Tur"
Not that it can't simply be discounted, or it couldn't be said that it was a gate to another plane, not just the other side of the world, but, it's there.
Personally, I don't use Kara-Tur, despite the fact that I would like to. Nowadays, I just use a generic form of oriental stuff because I haven't actually gotten to run a campaign in the Western Oriental lands of the world of GH lately. Although I would use the given names, and not the Kara-tur ones if I did. (Western Oriental? does that even make sense?) _________________ Owner and Lead Admin: https://greyhawkonline.com<div>Editor-in-Chief of the Oerth Journal: https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal</div><div>Visit my professional art gallery: https://wkristophnolen.daportfolio.com</div>
Even at that time, though, WG8 was problematic because by the time it was written Kara-Tur had been incorporated into the Forgotten Realms setting. No matter how you look at it, including it in that module was a mess
And you're right about the "orient" name, too--on Oerth, the "orient" would be the Flanaess, while the pseudo-Asian lands to the west would be the "occident."
EDIT: I just remembered, in Dragonsfoot's Q&A with Dave Cook he stated his preference for streamlining extraneous classes for 2nd edition, and affirming what he wrote in Oriental Adventures that monks should be removed from the standard setting and only in "oriental" settings. I guess whoever wrote that chapter of WG8 felt the need to name Kara-Tur explicitly, since it was the only official "oriental" setting at the time.
... I surely did NOT steal perytons from the Forgotten Realms- they were always in Greyhawk.
Ab-so-friggin'-lutely.
That's one that I was minorly miffed about.
Also, that Underdark, and Drow of the Underdark were FR books. Boo.
A quick look at page 98 of Drow of the Underdark and the lists of house names nad cities, shows several names familiar to the GH crowd.
Erelhei-Cinlu...FR better not be trying to steal OUR city!
But then, maybe that explains them ripping off the houses of Tormtor, Despana, Everhate, and so on.
Let FR keep the "Underdark"; I prefer "DeepOerth" for GH anyway. But Erelhei-Cinlu, and its noble houses are GH, and should always remain so!
As for the general question of cross pollinating, if I were running a GH campaign right now, I'd try to avoid world specific creatures as much as I can. However, as others have said, some creatures listed in world specific Monster Manuals did not start out that way, such as Cebrion's perytons. I see nothing at all wrong with restoring them to their non specific status.
On the other hand, some creatures are more world specific, like the Baneguard, which are undead servants of the FR deity Bane, or Krynnish draconians. For creatures like this, I'd want to either have a really good reason for them to be so far from home, or I'd take the creature as listed, modify it a bit, probably rename it, and find a way this creature can fit into my campaign. But before doing that, I might try to find a generic (or specific to the world I'm running my game in) creature that can work as well or almost as well.
As for taking creatures from games other than D&D and using them, as far as I can recall, I haven't done that yet, but I'm not vowing I never will. Just that I haven't seen the need to do it so far.
Anyway, when I ran my Greyhawk campaign I didn't bring stuff from outside D&D, but almost any D&D monster or class was fair game (with a few rare exceptions). I considered all other campaign worlds as part of the same universe (or "multiverse") and thus could have a means of reaching Oerth somehow.
I was just re-reading back through the thread, for fun, and I thought of back when I first started running, when I was a teen. This was when Dragonlance was at the height of its enormous popularity.
While some of my freinds and I did, indeed, cross-pollinate ... we had a firm and fast rule:
"NO KENDER!"
-The Halflings in D&D 3.5 seem to have a kender-like flavor. I've always thought of GH halflings as more LOTRs-like. In the battle between "canon", I go with the GH.
I probably take from other sources all the time, without really knowing it. Certainly when I need something elemental I've turned to Planescape or some such. I have pulled out old MERP stuff before too and Judges Guild. There's enough that I don't normally need to do it, but I'm not afraid. One thing's for sure, with players who have all been playing DnD for 20+ years, stealing from other sources is sometimes the only way to keep them on their toes.
I play a 2nd ed game (yep, I'm a dinosaur!) but 3rd ed REALLY gives me the best pantry to raid. I routinely use leveled-up monsters, especially humanoids. Rather than just a 3 HD orc subchief, a 5th level barbarian orc is just better. And you don't really have to do much, except throw in some better THACO and AC and let him use the same combat tactics (and more) that the players use. I also take some of the other monster stats, as the 2nd ed party, especially when they can gang up on an individual monster, is pretty tough.
For example, they just fought a Dire Ape. It was supposed to be a Carnivorous Ape. 5 HD, maybe 30 hp (I give MINIMUM of 6 hp/die), AC of 6. 3 attacks with (1-4/1-4/1-8) +rending for 1-8. OK, not too shabby, but a couple of 8-9th level warriors certainly would have no problem with it!
Enter the 3rd ed Dire Ape. HP of 45-60 or so. AC and THACO remain pretty much the same IIR, but damage, well that is where things change. 3 attacks at (1-6+6/1-6+6/1-8+3) + rending for 2-12+9. One warrior charged up, unconcerned. He took three hits plus the rend for a total of about 50; a huge amount in 2nd ed. He was stunned, and very lucky I had the ape toss him aside as it moved on.
So, there's certainly a place for other things, IMHO. Whether you take them from other editions, from other worlds, even other genres, it's up to you as DM. Personally, I have always wanted to bring in some marvel superheroes, but I just couldn't ever bring myself to finally do it. Hey, if we can play the Castle GH funny adventures, why not? The Hulk bashing Iuz into next week would at least be memorable!
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