What makes Greyhawk so cool?

[old school gamer]

Jynx wrote:
Admittedly I'm not a Greyhawk expert. The GH I knew was all medieval and the GH I play with my buddy is the same with slightly more magic than I remember.

BUT SPACE SHIPS!?!?! Seriously?

Not for me!

This is a joke right?

Hmmmm...... Where? What module? Who? When? WHY!?

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was a module that had the PC's exploring a crashed spaceship.

[serleran]

Sci-fi was not always a separate "element" of fantasy. Blackmoor, Wilderlands, Greyhawk... even 2e Mystara. They all have science fiction. Hell, even the OAD&D DMG has stuff on it, like the conversion to Gamma World and Sixguns and Sorcery.

The hobby had that stuff from the near-beginning.

[Jynx]

After hearing about it, I spoke to my buddy who's the GreyHawk Fanatic and he's gonna lend me the module. It got my curiousity going....

[mordrene]

Jynx wrote:
After hearing about it, I spoke to my buddy who's the GreyHawk Fanatic and he's gonna lend me the module. It got my curiousity going....

Its a really good mod. Basically the PCs investigate where these strange creatures are coming from and it leads them to the crashsight. I remember the froggenmoth battles fondly.

[Geleg]

yup, Exped to teh Barrier Peaks is an all-time classic. Those deranged androids were also pretty tough!

G

[Keolander]

As other have said, partly its nostalgia. Another part is the fact it had some of the BEST modules, ever! I mean, who doesn't love The Slave Lords series (and I mean the original A1, A2, A3 & A4...not the Supermodule)? I had some of the most fun ever playing in that series! Or G1-3 Against the Giants (which I will be running at NecronomiCon in October). Some of the FUNNIEST things I've ever witnessed as a DM were when I ran it years ago. The Temple of Elemental Evil simply rocks, even the badly mangled Atari videogame that came out a few years ago has been kept alive by loyal Greyhawk fans who fell in love with the buggy game (and the modding done by The Circle of Eight folks has really extended the life of the game by undoing alot of the bugs).

Simply put, Greyhawk (and Blackmoor in my opinion) ARE Dungeons & Dragons.

[RakintheBlue]

How is it I feel nostalgia now, even though I've never experienced it?

[slimykuotoan]

I actually never did get into Greyhawk until a fews years back, when I found the 83' boxed set at a used book store.

I still read it periodically, because of its rich human cultures: Baklunish, Sueloise, etc., its amazing variety of nations and empires, its open-ended plots and sub plots, the 'hugeness' of the world, the writing style which makes you feel 'there', and the shear coolness of its...well you get the picture.

(On a side note, I never did get into the later stuff much, just because it moved the setting in someone else's direction, when the setting has so much potential for my games to alter in their own ways.)

Hmm, this conversation's getting me in the mood for another game o' C&C...

[gideon_thorne]

Quote:
What makes Greyhawk so cool?

The fact that it's slightly farther from its sun than the earth...
_________________
"We'll go out through the kitchen!" Tanis Half-Elven

Peter Bradley

[serleran]

No, that only helps a little, I hear. It has an especially dense ozone layer which has yet to be eroded by nasty ecolutions.

[Dristram]

serleran wrote:
No, that only helps a little, I hear. It has an especially dense ozone layer which has yet to be eroded by nasty ecolutions.

Yes, but the humans are quickly destroying Oerth. Look what they've done to the fine planes that became the Sea of Dust. And the Bright Lands were once fertile lands as well. Magic is destroying the world I tell ya! And Rary thinks he can just pay magic credits for his huge magic footprint and it all be okay. Its sad, but I predict the planet will be destroyed by Global Magic.

[ssfsx17]

I wasn't even born yet in those good old days. Where do I start learning about Greyhawk? (besides paying an arm and a leg on e-bay)

[Dristram]

Wikipedia is a fun place to start. Check out:
World of Greyhawk
Oerth

[DangerDwarf]

ssfsx17 wrote:
I wasn't even born yet in those good old days. Where do I start learning about Greyhawk? (besides paying an arm and a leg on e-bay)

I'd recommend the Living Greyhawk Gazateer or The Adventure Begins as decent, generally cheap entries into Greyhawk.

They're pretty solid titles and in my opinion better than spending $50 or more on a box set for a campaign setting you know nothing about.

Check out on of those two, and if you like what you see...then you might consider picking up the older stuff.

[mordrene]

ssfsx17 wrote:
I wasn't even born yet in those good old days. Where do I start learning about Greyhawk? (besides paying an arm and a leg on e-bay)

http://paizo.com/store/downloads/wizard ... awk&page=1

everything is 4 dollars, there are similar downloads on drivethrurpg.com but I've heard some people complain about them. I've had no problems with either sight.

[Dristram]

mordrene wrote:
http://paizo.com/store/downloads/wizard ... awk&page=1

everything is 4 dollars, there are similar downloads on drivethrurpg.com but I've heard some people complain about them. I've had no problems with either sight.

Woah! That's pretty damn cool!

[ssfsx17]

I'd better keep a tight grip on my wallet. Four dollars a piece has this strange way of turning into forty dollars for me.

[DangerDwarf]

I wish I was into PDF's enough to pick 'em up. I hate reading PDF's. Especially scanned ones. They piss me off.

[mordrene]

i recently purchased the lost caverns of tsojcanth and the pdf was top notch. give one a try. its the same as a big mac combo, small sized.

[erc1971]

1: Nostalgia. I have to admit that growing up with this setting when I was a teenager does give it a special place in my heart.

2: Fuedal European feel. More than any other setting out there, Greyhawk captures that. You have dozens of sovereign states, each one with a good overview - resources, boundaries, leader, etc, etc. This is completely lost in Forgotten Realms - you have a few city states and evil bad guy states, but that is about it. This aspect really made the world come alive for me.

3: Mystery: Take Forgotten Realms. EVERYTHING is listed in minute details in hundreds of supplements. The world is over saturated with magic - hell, WotC officially condoned players being able to buy any magic item they wanted in the Magic Item Compendium. In Greyhawk, magic is rare enough to have mystique about it. The way the books were set up, you were given a nice framework and the DM filled in all the spots in between. It made the world unexplored, it gave you a true feeling of the unknown as you traveled to a far off land.

4: $$$ - or the fact you don't need to spend a ton of it on Greyhawk. A couple old 1st edition supplements (the Gygax stuff!) and off you go. Gary designed the world to be a fun place to play, not a way to sell book after book. Not only is it cheap to get the material, but the lack of it keeps your players from getting angry when you deviate from "official" material, because the books don't cover the entire planet in microscopic detail.

After 28 years of gaming, I still love Greyhawk more than any other fantasy world. I still feel like there is a huge part of the world I have not yet touched with my campaigns, and I hope to never see its grandeur fade.

Eric

[Zudrak]

erc1971 wrote:
1: Nostalgia. I have to admit that growing up with this setting when I was a teenager does give it a special place in my heart.

2: Fuedal European feel. More than any other setting out there, Greyhawk captures that. You have dozens of sovereign states, each one with a good overview - resources, boundaries, leader, etc, etc. This is completely lost in Forgotten Realms - you have a few city states and evil bad guy states, but that is about it. This aspect really made the world come alive for me.

3: Mystery: Take Forgotten Realms. EVERYTHING is listed in minute details in hundreds of supplements. The world is over saturated with magic - hell, WotC officially condoned players being able to buy any magic item they wanted in the Magic Item Compendium. In Greyhawk, magic is rare enough to have mystique about it. The way the books were set up, you were given a nice framework and the DM filled in all the spots in between. It made the world unexplored, it gave you a true feeling of the unknown as you traveled to a far off land.

4: $$$ - or the fact you don't need to spend a ton of it on Greyhawk. A couple old 1st edition supplements (the Gygax stuff!) and off you go. Gary designed the world to be a fun place to play, not a way to sell book after book. Not only is it cheap to get the material, but the lack of it keeps your players from getting angry when you deviate from "official" material, because the books don't cover the entire planet in microscopic detail.

After 28 years of gaming, I still love Greyhawk more than any other fantasy world. I still feel like there is a huge part of the world I have not yet touched with my campaigns, and I hope to never see its grandeur fade.

Eric

Bingo! Good points and an excellent post. You want to go to China like some of GG's campaigns did from GH, go ahead. Want to add the Wilderlands to the other side of the globe? You got it. The Flanaess is big enough for most campaigns and the uncharted territories outside of it is the DM's playground.
_________________
AD&D, Amish Dungeons & Dragons.

"Galstaff, ye are in a cornfield, when a moustachioed man approaches. What say ye?"

"I shun him."

-----

"Knowledge, logic, reason, and common sense serve better than a dozen rule books."

-- E. Gary Gygax

[slimykuotoan]

I just realized another reason I like Greyhawk so much.

Other game settings often are unique purely through virtue of omission. ie. "This setting is unique because there are no orcs...or gnomes make flying machines and dwarves don't exist...or in this world, everything has died and change is"...and etcetera.

Greyhawk in contrast is the setting that has everything...

[RakintheBlue]

Sounds like something I've been looking for but didn't know it for years, and on top of that it's been sitting there longer than I've been alive! (I think)

It sounds rockin because I can picrture important NPC's but not like the Dragonlance or FR imortant NPCs

Although you might run into Gargimesh ruler of teh High Realms, (made that up btw) and he's listed in the book, with a well thought out story and he's interesting, it doesn't seem like you have to worry about the annoyingness of "OMG! I JUST PWNED SOME DRAGON WITH RAISTLIN!"

(don't get me wrong, I've read the Dragonlance books and liked them, but it just seems like a playing gimmick to play with "famous" NPC's)

One of these day's I'll earn the Ability to make sense...

[ssfsx17]

I finally caved and blew out $16.00 on A1-4 (Slavers series), T1-4 (Temple of Elemental Evil series), B1-9 (In Search of Adventure) and the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting.

All I need to complete my collection is Castles & Crusades Player's Handbook for ~$20 *wink wink nudge nudge*

[grodog]

Rhuvein wrote:
Haha, S3 is a hoot. I'm going to try and run it, only because my nephews are huge sci-fi fans and would be blown away at something like this. I mean it's really a "one shot", unless one were to take it to the next level.

I loved S3, too, and similarly, I hope Rob publishes "The Machine Level" one day. Jim Ward mentioned details from it in The Dragon #17, and it sounds like a hoot!:

Jim Ward in Boredom & the Average D&D Dungeon in TD17 wrote:
While some steady readers might think that I harp on this topic too much, the first time I came in contact with a level of this type was in the mighty castle of Greyhawk, run by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz. Imagine conveyor belts that force players to travel in one direction or another, a cellophane machine that wraps you up no matter how big or small you are and puts you in a holding area for as long as it takes to rip yourself out, how about a die press that shapes anything in its path into a bottle top (Boy, can that

hurt!), or a row of blades that cut in a pattern on the belt with a 25% chance that any given blade will cut you? Try a slot machine that takes only large sums of gold and with the flip of the handle takes a random

magic item from the party, and how about a lever that turns on something

way off in another part of the level (like a robot or level clean up

machine) that you cant know about until you travel to that part of the

level? The treasures of this level could easily be more fun than the level:

imagine bottle tops made out of mithril on wine bottles; how about guns and pistols that work; a set of chain mail made out of a super hard and light alloy that acts like plus 5 armor and shows no magical traits; how about a huge pile of gold dust in a large plastic bubble that isnt small enough to get out the door and cant be cut by anything less than a plus 5 sword?

Greyhawk is all about the origins of the game for me---the original inspirations from CAS, HPL, REH, Vance, and others made "real" (so to speak). There's plenty done to GH's development over the years that I haven't liked, but I don't have to use that in my games, so I don't! I love the maps, the discovery of connecting info from the DMG artifacts to the setting (hmmm, just where should the Plains of Pesh be located?), and the fact that the setting's richness continues to interest me 30 years after I started playing.
_________________
grodog

----

Allan Grohe
grodog@gmail.com
http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/
http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html for my Greyhawk site