I own WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins but not WG7 Castle Greyhawk.
I was just curious if WGR1 borrows anything from WG7, like maps for example or the odd room or two?
Or is WGR1 a complete rework?
I'm thinking of buying WG7 just for a piece of publishing history. I understand it's meant to be a disgrace. I might pay up to $10 USD for it. Or is it not even worth that?
As much of a strict canonista as I am, allow me to be the dissenting opinion. But not for the reasons you may think.
WG7 is worth $10 if you can find it. (Although I probably wouldn't pay more then that myself, either.)
WG7 is a joke. And it should be taken that way. As it is, it would never work in a serious campaign. I would never allow this abomination to exist in my Greyhawk. Castle Greyhawk was such an overly anticipated piece of EGG vaporware that was dangled in front of fans so cruelly for so long... when this came out I bought it immediately. When I read it... I just about snapped! Had the clock-tower picked out and everything. Rage and disappointment. When WGR1 came out, I felt relieved (and use it as my Castle Greyhawk), and over the years I've come to accept WG7 for what it was.
However, there are parts of it which contain information that I have actually adopted in my campaign (such as info about Iuz, Iggwilv, Xodast, Zol). Also, there are a couple of levels which I have actually placed under my City of Greyhawk and attached to my real Castle Greyhawk, simply because Zagig is such a strange dude... it makes those levels possible!
However WG7 is a joke (yes, I said that already), and if its run as a one-shot, just-for-laughs, outside-of-your-normal-campaign, vacation-from-serious-role-playing adventure, it can be fun. And that was the whole purpose when it was created... just an escapist piece of hilarity that was never meant to be integrated into ones regular campaign. For that reason, it works. And for that reason, back before pdfs started becoming available, and collector prices of out-of-print materials were higher, WG7 was actually one of the more valuable TSR products. Not sure how much its worth at auction these days, but $10 would have been an incredible deal. Typically, it would net more then 3 or 4 times that.
And of course, love it or hate, accept it as it is or rage against what it is not, no Greyhawk collection could ever be complete without it.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, mysteries, magic, mechanics, and more!
Isn't this the module with the dinosaur shaped lake? I remember thinking, "Okay, why is there no lake on the floor below it too? How deep can this lake be?"
In the world of Greyhawk, there is a place for bad puns, anachronisms and references to “our” world, and animated inanimate objects. That place is on the demi-planes created by Zagig, and there they abound. There is not much in WG7 that is not also found in Dungeonland, The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, the Isle of the Ape, and the Ship of Fools. For a campaign to successfully use WG7, then, it has to remove the sense that this place is part of the regular world. It must be presented as a world apart. All the surface stuff about the castle needs to be dumped. Each of the levels of the dungeon then needs to be removed to its own demi-plane, created by Zagig, with a clear limit on how to enter and leave.
This, in fact, is what I did in my campaign and it works fine. I run a very serious campaign. But the players have twice been to Castle Greyhawk and have found themselves in various levels of WG7. They enjoyed them immensely and it did not hurt the realism of the campaign at all, because they know that this weirdness only happens in the worlds created by Zagig. If they had run into Poppinfarsh the Dough Golem on the streets of Greyhawk City it would destroy the credibility of the campaign. But if they find a secret door in Castle Greyhawk that leads to a demi-plane of Zagig, they can meet Poppinfarsh and not feel their faith in the realism of the campaign challenged.
OK. The same person starting the very same thread that they started 4 years ago is a bit odd. I recommend not doing this. I'll leave the thread open though as the original question was not even addressed fully in the original thread.
At a glance, I cannot see any areas that either adventure have in common. I am pretty sure that a conscious effort was made to ensure that WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins was nothing like the looney WG7 Castle Greyhawk.
Last edited by Cebrion on Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:58 pm; edited 1 time in total
At a glance, I cannot see any areas that either adventure have in common. I am pretty sure that a conscious effort was made to ensure that WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins was nothing like the looney WG7 Castle Greyhawk.
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