Iquanders’s comment in a recent post, as well as some previous posts and comments by others, moves me to consider the “old AOL GH folder.”
Whether in archived file, available for download on Canonfire, by word of mouth or otherwise, like many others, I am familiar with the “old AOL GH folder.” The reputation and storied character of those posting to that folder has, it seems to me, passed into myth or legend, perhaps in no small measure thanks to the editorial in Oerth Journal No. 5, which credited that community with having helped to revive Greyhawk, as well as the merit of the material produced in that folder, of course. Out of sheer curiosity, and with the assistance of the good people at Barnes & Noble, I recently signed on to AOL using one of those “free 1000 hours” disks. I wanted to visit the “Trinity site,” as it were.
There was nothing there. There is no “Greyhawk folder” on AOL at the present. The entire AOL gaming area contains nothing relating to paper and pencil RPGs at all. Whatever was there is not there anymore.
Yet, much like the Suel Imperium, it seems sometimes as if one cannot escape the long shadow of that bygone time. What is more, if one watches closely, there is something of a “standing on the shoulders of giants” phenomenon that can be seen.
I mean no disrespect to anyone who posted to the “old AOL GH folder,” but it seems to me this mythologizing impulse is an over reaction and an over-veneration of that folder and its posters. I have no doubt that those posting to this and other Greyhawk folders are every bit as imaginative and creative Greyhawkers as those who came before; how this may be given expression may be different but I do not think the posters to the “old AOL GH folder” had a corner on the imagination or creativity market. Yet, it is not hard to imagine the affect the mythology of the “old AOL GH folder” may have on those now coming after its heyday.
Some may feel intimidated by comparison or slighted. Intimidation would be unfortunate. Slighted would not be unwarranted. The accomplishments of different generations of Greyhawkers are different and each is uniquely its own and, I think, worthy of being recognized for its own unique value without comparison. A comparison is unnecessary and unfair to those now active online, even if such a comparison is natural all the same for those with a foot in each period.
Present day Greyhawkers do not need to take a back seat to anyone and should not be made to feel that they do in any way. Speaking from a purely personal stance, I will put my Ur-Flan article up against anything by anyone from any time and figure I will give a good account of myself.
And meaning no disrespect, where are these “legends” and what have they done recently? A name is seen, here or there, a few posts. Enough of the “legends” are still online that one would think they would spark a “revival” of the storied days of yore. It has yet to develop to judge by the commentary and the record as it exists. Maybe they did their part for “king and country” and may now rest. Maybe they too labor in the shadow of those earlier days. I suspect it may be tough to be a “living legend,” competing with your younger self. But just as present day Greyhawkers should not have to take a backseat to anyone, neither should the “oldtimers.”
And what if a magic wand could be waved and all of the posters from the “old AOL GH folders” were to magically reappear and take up where they left off? I suspect the reality could be very different than might be supposed. It is odd that, for all the mythologizing, a number of the “old posters” are routinely run down in absentia by some, who I think were there and would have some basis to know. Either everything was not what the myths say or for all the good, there was an equal counter weight. Certainly, the reception some of the posters to “the old AOL GH folder” would receive should they now reappear would likely be problematic to judge by the asides that may be heard to be made.
The past is past. It should be remembered and appreciated but one should not “live in the past.” The future will be sufficient unto itself.
My Two Cents
GVD
PS - To be very clear, I do not mean to disrespect any of the “old AOL GH folder” posters and would welcome the opportunity to interact with any who would care to post or attend a chat. I just have no intention of genuflecting and hope to be forgiven if I have little to add when a general backslapping or recounting of tales breaks out. No offense. _________________ GVD
Hey GVD. It seems like you're on a kick regarding the online GH community. Cool.
I don't keep up with this forum and am trying to catch up on a day off. Props to military veterans!
I'm missing a bit of your meaning I think. In Wizards' GH folder I think someone characterized some of your posts as trolling. I don't think that but wonder about your characterization of "canon wonks." Did you recently have a bad experience with someone? Is there an article that you find unnecessarily fussy over canon?
It looks like you've got a bit of time and energy on your hands. It'd be great to channel that into some creative posts -- not that I'm against critique. Critique is good.
Factually, there was more than one "GH Folder" on AOL. After a certain number of posts, a folder would be automatically closed and a log of the folder placed in a download library. GH went through 30 of these before AOL switched to an unlimited system that no longer generated logs, and deleted the oldest posts. The first 11 folder logs have been reformatted and the misc chatter deleted to create the Best of Greyhawk on AOL files - I no longer have the original versions of those logs. I have sent Gary the logs of folders 12-30, (except for 27 and 29, which were corrupted and no copies exist to my knowledge). When TSR moved off of AOL(or maybe before, memory fails), the download library was deleted.
Once Gary gets them onboard CF!, you can read them for yourself and make your own judgements. I've also sent pdfs of postsfests and some other miscellany that is no longer generally available.
I joined the GH board on AOL sometime around folder 10 or 11. GLH, Iquander, Blusponge, Roger Moore, and a number of others were around from folder 1. Despite Iq recently calling me a "great old one", I've always considered myself a "second generation", with those present from the beginning being the "first generation" (I've got no idea whet generation we're up to now).
Having done the BoGs, and been there for 20 or so of the folders, I can say without a doubt that the quality and abundance of material declined as time past. That's no longer true -- I think there's alot of stuff on CF that's just as good or better, but I feel that the tone of it has changed.
Alot of the old creative material, IMO, was "large-scale". Wholly different GH campaigns -- Gunhawk and Middle Oerth being the two that stick out the most in my mind. What the rest of Oerik was like (Iq's 25 text pages on Sagard + GH).
Much of today's material seems...smaller. It has, literally, been years since I've heard anyone talk about a really cool alternative GH campaign. Admittedly, I'm also much less involved than I was, and there may be a slew of great variant articles that I've missed here on CF!. But I don't believe CF!'s current format supports long articles, involved discussion, or a give-n-take of ideas, and I think that material reflects that. It's alot harder to keep abreast of new ideas people have, and alot easier to get buried in the minutia (keep in mind, though, that I am not, nor ever have been, a proponent of strict adherence to canon. Canon bores me. There's a reason why most of my GH material falls off of edge of the map.)
I've got no idea what people say about me behind my back, nor do I care. I do think people who aren't here are sometimes unfairly slandered or elevated -- Nitescreed being one example, perhaps of both (like postsfests? His idea. And he contributed.) I think my own claim to fame, if I have one, more likely lies in my inadvertant role as archivist of the AOL Times, my stint as OJ editor, and perhaps my Wee Jas article far more than any AOL material.
Continuing this conversation as I make time. In this post I provide my own example of what GVD called a "mythologizing impulse." Then I cite to a few earlier disucssions of the subject of GH canon.
NiteScreed recently returned to the online community of GH fans. To some folks this was a non-issue: they'd never heard of him. To others it was more or less interesting -- contingent on their prior relationships with him.
I responded with disinterest initially but then became steadily more interested as I read his posts at Wizards' website and in these forums. Ultimately, I experienced what GVD called above a "mythologizing impulse," which he critiqued as "an over reaction and an over-veneration of that folder and its posters."
GVD continued:
Quote:
I have no doubt that those posting to this and other Greyhawk folders are every bit as imaginative and creative Greyhawkers as those who came before; how this may be given expression may be different but I do not think the posters to the “old AOL GH folder” had a corner on the imagination or creativity market. Yet, it is not hard to imagine the affect the mythology of the “old AOL GH folder” may have on those now coming after its heyday.
Nellisir has responded to this in one way, noting that to him:
Quote:
Much of today's material seems...smaller. It has, literally, been years since I've heard anyone talk about a really cool alternative GH campaign. Admittedly, I'm also much less involved than I was, and there may be a slew of great variant articles that I've missed here on CF!. But I don't believe CF!'s current format supports long articles, involved discussion, or a give-n-take of ideas, and I think that material reflects that. It's alot harder to keep abreast of new ideas people have, and alot easier to get buried in the minutia ...
While Cruel Summer Lord Jared has presented views on different continents of Oerth, overall I tend to agree with Nellisir. Today fewer GH fans share Alternate Oerths that differ fundamentally in theme from the standard campaign setting. (However, a few such ideas have been presented and briefly discussed at Wizards' forums.) Regardless of some GH fans posting ideas or brief descriptions of thematically Alternate Oerths, relatively few (if any) post the kind of seemingly comprehensive accounts that one finds in the GH folders.
In my opinion, this is partially a matter of technology (highlighted by Nellisir). However, currently there seem to be far fewer GH fansites in the 'net than existed at an earlier moment in the history of online GH fandom. As you may know, there was a moment when the proliferation of GH fansites spurred the creation of the GH Webring. While the GH Webring exists today, many of the old sites of older "generations" of fans are no longer online.
Note however, that I agree with GVD that we should not presume that past GH fans were more creative than those of us posting today. However, I have a hard time imagining how not to compare past works with those of the present. I guess I'm not the protagonist of Memento.
To me, reading fans' past creations informs my appreciation of current projects. While knowledge of the past may preclude our ability to imagine some things, such knowledge may also better enable us to pursue our own visions of Oerth or allow us to braid aspects of others' Alternate Oerths with our own.
Hey GVD. It seems like you're on a kick regarding the online GH community. Cool. . . .
I'm missing a bit of your meaning I think. In Wizards' GH folder I think someone characterized some of your posts as trolling. I don't think that but wonder about your characterization of "canon wonks." Did you recently have a bad experience with someone? Is there an article that you find unnecessarily fussy over canon?
It looks like you've got a bit of time and energy on your hands. It'd be great to channel that into some creative posts -- not that I'm against critique. Critique is good.
Thank you.
You are correct that I am on something of a "kick regarding the online GH community." I joined that community in August, more out of curiosity than anything else. By mid-September, I came to the realization that I wanted to belong to and participate in the community on more than a casual basis. I think the community has a lot that is interesting to me and I hope to eventually return the favor. I was and am struck, however, by certain things that I think could stand some modification. These things I have tried to bring up for review, as it were. That may be presumptious by some measure but if I'm going to live here, so to speak, I think I can raise questions about the decor. But on that note I've pretty much raised those matters that I think needed raising. Its up to the community to decide if there was any merit to it and whether there is a need to move the television a little more to right or to replace the light in the kitchen, along that line.
The Wizard's Greyhawk Folder. Now, there are four words with which to conjure. I called them fanboys. They called me a troll. That makes us about even, I think. I should have called them fascists to begin with but I restrained myself. I will now use that term after the initial Istivin thread was locked by the admins and a new one opened where only happy talk about the Istivin article is allowed. The problem I had in that original thread had almost nothing to do with the Istivin article substantively and everything to do with how anything but glowing praise was regarded. While the discussion was lively and pointed, I hardly thought it a "flamewar" worthy of being locked. There is a different tenor to posts on the Wizards folder that is in some ways appealing but there is also a, now evident to me, tendency to make slashing attacks and then to hide behind the playground monitor when the target chooses to object to being slashed. Eh. Water under the bridge. While a member of the "online GH community" for the better part of six months, I am still very much learning things.
"Time and energy." LOL! I would wish for more time! And more energy! The truth is I am a gaming and Greyhawk fanatic. It is my main hobby and I would not have another. I met my wife while gaming (she has actually been gaming longer than I have) and she shares my enthusiasm. She does not, however, always see things my way and this leads to your point about "channeling" and "creative posts." My wife is a DM in her own right, a player and a Greyhawk fan (she is, however, almost totally devoted to 1st Edition but with some appreciation for parts of 2nd Edition just to show she keeps an "open" mind ). She was not initially enthusiastic about my participating in the "online GH community," even though she participates in her own set of gaming forums. It took some persuasion on my part to get her to see things my way but, that accomplished, you will see an increasing number of topical contributions from me after the New Year (I want to avoid getting caught up during the Holidays etc. or would begin sooner). In addition to the Ur-Flan in two parts, I have one piece that has been waiting its turn in the topical que and will be contributing a piece to the postfest. That's almost one article a month, so far. I will confess to feeling that I should not submit one thing until what has previously been submitted makes it out of the que, but I may have to break myself of that habit.
I look forward to being a more active participant in this community.
I think there's both more and less to the story. . . .
I think there's alot of stuff on CF that's just as good or better, but I feel that the tone of it has changed.
Alot of the old creative material, IMO, was "large-scale". Wholly different GH campaigns -- Gunhawk and Middle Oerth being the two that stick out the most in my mind. What the rest of Oerik was like (Iq's 25 text pages on Sagard + GH).
Much of today's material seems...smaller. It has, literally, been years since I've heard anyone talk about a really cool alternative GH campaign. . . .
But I don't believe CF!'s current format supports long articles, involved discussion, or a give-n-take of ideas, and I think that material reflects that.
I've got no idea what people say about me behind my back, nor do I care. I do think people who aren't here are sometimes unfairly slandered or elevated -- Nitescreed being one example, perhaps of both (like postsfests? His idea. And he contributed.) I think my own claim to fame, if I have one, more likely lies in my inadvertant role as archivist of the AOL Times, my stint as OJ editor, and perhaps my Wee Jas article far more than any AOL material.
Cheers
Nell.
Great Old Fart
Thank you. I felt I was running a risk with this thread. It was not my intention to offend and I am very glad you were not offended!
I find a lot of what you say (quoted above) extremely interesting.
My negative feelings toward canon derive from precisely the kind of thing you speak to when you say you do not see people talking about GH variants! It is as if some feel anything other than that based in canon is either unsafe, unworthy or uninteresting to be spoken about. I will confess to being very uncertain how some aspects of my GH campaign might go over. I figure it will leak (or burst ) though in some of the topical posts I will be making after the New Year. I am preparing myself to be ignored or ridiculed, perhaps (hopefully) unnecessarily. My initial toe in that water says ignored, but one always imagines the Nixonion "silent majority" out there reading away and nodding.
I take your meaning when you speak about "smallness," in two respects.
Among gaming friends, we speak of "macro" and "micro" DMs. Some people run Flanaess spanning campaigns; they are the "macro" DMs, who want to know what the situation is in Sunndi, even though their campaign takes place in Bissel. Others run very country specific, or even location specific, campaigns; these are the "micro" DMs, whose interests may be broad in a gaming sense but are specific within Greyhawk. Neither is better but reflect different styles, preferences or tastes. I am a "macro" DM. I look at my campaign as an immense, living thing, through which PCs pass. I find no part of Greyhawk uninteresting, and have no favorite part. I like it all and work at it all, even if some of it never makes it out of scribbles in a notebook (or several).
In the second sense, no "long articles, involved discussion, or a give-n-take of ideas" on Canonfire, I see your point and I percieve something of the same. I had hoped to generate a discussion on the Ur-Flan. Nope. I've seen others and have myself tried to open particular discussions in this forum, sometimes connected to a topical post, with better but limited success. I would particularly like to see more "give-n-take" on aspects of the GH setting. There does seem to be plenty of willingness to discuss what I'll call "penumbral" issues, topics associated with Greyhawk, be it points of canon or more generally philosophical questions, but less desire to talk about possibilities or alternatives within the setting proper. This is where, to this degree, the Wizards boards are somewhat better, I think.
You say - "I don't believe CF!'s current format supports long articles, involved discussion, or a give-n-take of ideas, and I think that material reflects that." I would very much like to hear (1) what impediments you see and (2) how these matters might be evolved, modified or changed or what additions could improve matters. I don't think I would be alone in welcoming suggestions. Please?
Your claim to fame, to me, is evident. I was well aquainted with Lo Nakar before ever visiting Canonfire. The GH fan community may be dispersed but good stuff travels, even by the backroads. Your WeeJas piece was a pleasant suprise when I read the OJ issues available on Canonfire; it is outstanding.
There was discussion of WeeJas in this past Thursday's Greychat wherein I opined that WeeJas has too often been subordinated to, or explained away in deference to, Boccob and Nerull; yet WeeJas was the _THE_ deity of magic within the Suel Imperium that was preeminent for thousands of years before Boccob or before the Flan's Nerull was discovered. She needs her props and does not need to be explained away as a goddess of "creating spells and items" or "the use of magic." She is in every way a deity of magic, just as much as Boccob and just as much a deity of death (with evil necromancers and all) as Nerull.
Please expound on how Canonfire might be enlivened along the lines you mention. My welcome is wearing thin at Wizards.
Your claim to fame, to me, is evident. I was well aquainted with Lo Nakar before ever visiting Canonfire. The GH fan community may be dispersed but good stuff travels, even by the backroads. Your WeeJas piece was a pleasant suprise when I read the OJ issues available on Canonfire; it is outstanding.
Forgive me for replying only to the paragraph most pleasing to my ego -- I'm a little short on time right now, but I'll get to the rest of your post later.
I'm confess to being slightly amazed when people admit familiarity with Lo Nakar, and very curious as to where they came across it. Aside from the "overview" here on CF! (from many moons ago), the only version in possible circulation anywhere would seem to be from the very first postfest on the AOL boards, yet I never hear anything about the postfest or the other articles from it.
I also confess to being a little annoyed I've never properly finished it. :-/
I'm glad you liked the Wee Jas article, which I know is featured on several websites in addition to the Oerth Journal (I occasionally amuse myself by Googling "Lady of Book and Bone" and seeing how many casual references pop up, since that phrase originated in my article, and doesn't appear in any WotC books...yet). As I've mentioned in other places, the article benefitted enormously from Eric Boyd's oversight and gracious commentary.
Insofar as large-scale, Alternate Oerths are concerned...I've had an idea recently. I'll let it brew a little while longer and get back to you.
Forgive me for replying only to the paragraph most pleasing to my ego -- I'm a little short on time right now, but I'll get to the rest of your post later.
I'm confess to being slightly amazed when people admit familiarity with Lo Nakar, and very curious as to where they came across it. Aside from the "overview" here on CF! (from many moons ago), the only version in possible circulation anywhere would seem to be from the very first postfest on the AOL boards, yet I never hear anything about the postfest or the other articles from it.
. . .
Insofar as large-scale, Alternate Oerths are concerned...I've had an idea recently. I'll let it brew a little while longer and get back to you.
Cheers
Nell.
I got ahold of Lo Nakar when a gaming friend presented it to me some, some time ago and said something to the effect of "I found this online." To those who have been members of "the GH online community" for a long time, it may come as a surprise but there are many Greyhawk players and DMs going about their business with very little thought of the online community. I was certainly one, until curiousity got the best of me this past summer. I think people have a general awareness that there is an online community thanks to mentions in Dungeon and Dragon but that doesn't always translate to a specific knowledge.
I will look forward to your continued reply that you mention.
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The truth is I am a gaming and Greyhawk fanatic. It is my main hobby and I would not have another. I met my wife while gaming (she has actually been gaming longer than I have) and she shares my enthusiasm. She does not, however, always see things my way and this leads to your point about "channeling" and "creative posts." My wife is a DM in her own right, a player and a Greyhawk fan (she is, however, almost totally devoted to 1st Edition but with some appreciation for parts of 2nd Edition just to show she keeps an "open" mind 
). She was not initially enthusiastic about my participating in the "online GH community," even though she participates in her own set of gaming forums. It took some persuasion on my part to get her to see things my way but, that accomplished, you will see an increasing number of topical contributions from me after the New Year (I want to avoid getting caught up during the Holidays etc. or would begin sooner). In addition to the Ur-Flan in two parts, I have one piece that has been waiting its turn in the topical que and will be contributing a piece to the postfest. That's almost one article a month, so far. I will confess to feeling that I should not submit one thing until what has previously been submitted makes it out of the que, but I may have to break myself of that habit. 