Some viewers may not remember the context of this release: it came out in 1999, which is a couple years after the TSR bankruptcy, the new management of Wizards of the Coast, and just a year before the release of 3e. Thus while it does bear the TSR logo, and author Sean Reynolds had started working as TSR’s first web designer for the old Wisconsin company, it comes from the WotC era. Thus the inclusion of the assassin and monk classes in this book are an early example of a nostalgic Old School Revival
always been tepid about the Scarlets themselves, but as a collector I had to buy it anyway, and thankfully really enjoyed the stuff about Amedio, Hepmonaland, and the two old/new classes, even if 3rd Ed was right around the corner.
Like you said, I think this book is valuable for anyone running a campaign in Greyhawk as it outlines in detail sections of the Southern regions of the map that were not well documented in other sources. I've used a few of the adventure hooks as side quests in my campaigns. A great resource all around.
Got my POD copy of Scarlet Brotherhood and started reading it. I'm not even two dozen pages in and I already have a few ideas for adventures! Thanks for the video encouraging me to acquire this!
Good stuff. I generally avoid materials from that era as I was not a fan of what was done with Greyhawk in the 2E era. Good to know there was some wheat amongst the chaff. In listening to your commentary I am put in mind of a great source of conflict in Hepmonaland and adjacent regions: the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Yuan-Ti both fancy themselves the superior race, and this is bound to provide chinks in the armor of both, with areas for exploitation for the PCs, should they be clever enough to think on it. Espionage, meet counter-espionage!
I never was too interested in buying that book, though I liked using the Scarlet Brotherhood as villains here and there in my campaigns. I wish I had bought it now, just to mine it for ideas. Thanks for a great overview and dang it if there's not another product I will be looking out for now. 😀
I built most of a campaign around that supplement! It was a great source for the secretive red peeps, and my players loved fighting them and uncovering their sinister plots! Great to hear tour take on it!
Love your content and enthusiasm for the amazing World of Greyhawk. The Scarlet Brotherhood resource is fantastic and has laid the groundwork for many adventures in my Heroes, Ladies of Hawethorne and other local store campaigns over the last 15 years here. I like leaving them very secretive and behind the scenes, any time you see a Brotherhood Agent should be an extremely difficult situation to be in. Keep up the amazing work and thank you for your passion and knowledge about the setting we all love!
Recently started a cleric character who worships Quetzalcoatl, and as I hurriedly work to develop an Oman-centric background for him, this was incredibly helpful - thank you! Great channel for folks gaming in Greyhawk :-)
I always enjoy hearing your perspective on this stuff. Do you have any thoughts on the 5e book Ghosts of Saltmarsh? It is set in Greyhawk, and features the Scarlet Brotherhood
I've been running GoS for the last 14 months, including a trip by ship to the Iuzian wars (which were a disaster for the forces of evil in my world) and up to White Plume Mountain. Thanks to Grognard's videos I downloaded the book on Iuz and used it as a sourcebook for my campaign. This Scarlet Brotherhood book looks equally good as there was nothing in first edition other than a few mentions of them, which made them as mysterious as SPECTRE from Bond. Always good to have these on Drivethrurpg or DMsGuild as source books. Back to our campaign and we're just doing the Styes at the moment. Skerrin Wavechaser was apprehended by the party a while back and handed over to the Keoland authorities, but mysteriously managed to escape. He'll return when they least expect it! When they finish they are off to the Joten hills where some giants are being terribly naughty....Greyhawk is a much more vivid and better written setting than Forgotten Realms ever was. It's still mentioned as a setting in many of the 5E adventure books, despite the lack of 5E sourcebooks. Maybe they will one day resurrect it.
Well done! I wish TSR had survived long enough to do additional books like this, say one for the cold barbarians of the northeast, the Arabian Nights themed kingdoms of the northwest. I know they were working on one for the Great Kingdom but only released it as a pdf (that’s one you could kind of review!). What I think would have been cool would be Gazetteers like they did for Mystara (ie Karameikos, Glantri, etc.).
I used the source book to stage a Keoish/Sea Princes pirate raid against the island that the Brotherhood are doing the mutation research. The lord of Gradsul shanghied the pcs into a little privateer raid that was set up by Scotti Kimbertos. Treasure Island meets the
I would like to see a video giving your opinion of the 10 best Greyhawk products (in order of importance) that are still readily available (like from Drive-Thru RPG) that someone starting a campaign in Greyhawk should strive to obtain. Assume that we have (or can get) the World of Greyhawk Boxed Set (so we have the two maps and the two overview booklets). Where should we go from there? It would be appreciated if you would also put the answer in a reply to this post). Thanks a lot; love the channel.
I play on world of Greyhawk for 40 years now. I didn't pay much attention on the Scarlet Brotherhood and didn't like them conquering the Hold of the Seaprinces, because I don't believe they could have assassinated the leaders so easily, plus they would have needed a large army to subdue all the uprisings of the lieutenants, life guards, mages and clerics, which the leaders of the Seaprinces most certainly have in order to keep their power. Then I started a campaign in Keoland and the Hold of the Seaprinces and liked the idea of the Scarlet Brotherhood infiltrating the regions to take advantage of them some time. The players have the opportunity to expose the spies of the Scarlet Brotherhood only to find out that there are several spy cells all over the place conspiring and preparing to take over. Are the players able to stop them? We will find out. 😊
I also have been tepid about the wading into the Scarlets' territory as a DM. Cloak & Dagger adventures can be fun, I'm sure. I'm not sure how to avoid it becoming a covert gang war because I don't think I have any talent for DMing that kind of thing. On the other hand, I got the .pdf and it seems fairly detailed and impressive. I love the Marklands... that's more my speed.
I always thought the scarlet brotherhood was the best evil organization in all of D&D. They are the greyhawk equivalent of nazis, and who doesn’t hate nazis? The best part is that they weren’t your standard evil clerics and wizards, the leaders were monks, followed by assassins and thieves. Very different, and a nice breath of fresh air.
@@GreyhawkGrognard more retrospectives of the From the Ashes source books would be great, btw. (Markedlands, Iuz the Evil, Ivid the Undying, Rary the Traitor, etc.) I tried to look through your playlists but didn’t see those… Thanks!
This video has me thinking about playing a monk who defected from the Brotherhood and is something of an anti-hero. Someone who's trying to be less of an overall dick, but has years of indoctrination to work past. The could be fun within the right group of players.
Some viewers may not remember the context of this release: it came out in 1999, which is a couple years after the TSR bankruptcy, the new management of Wizards of the Coast, and just a year before the release of 3e. Thus while it does bear the TSR logo, and author Sean Reynolds had started working as TSR’s first web designer for the old Wisconsin company, it comes from the WotC era. Thus the inclusion of the assassin and monk classes in this book are an early example of a nostalgic Old School Revival
I thought it was hilarious how they brought back the Monk and the Assassin after they went to all the trouble to erase it from second edition.
TSR got rid of those classes, WOTC/Hasbro brought them back along with demons and devils.
@@vonbek8118 hail Satan
always been tepid about the Scarlets themselves, but as a collector I had to buy it anyway, and thankfully really enjoyed the stuff about Amedio, Hepmonaland, and the two old/new classes, even if 3rd Ed was right around the corner.
Like you said, I think this book is valuable for anyone running a campaign in Greyhawk as it outlines in detail sections of the Southern regions of the map that were not well documented in other sources. I've used a few of the adventure hooks as side quests in my campaigns. A great resource all around.
I couldn't agree more. It was an excellent source of flavor, ideas and plot points!
I always felt the new assassin and monk (which contained errors) were preludes to what gygax had in mind for his version of 2nd edition.
Got my POD copy of Scarlet Brotherhood and started reading it. I'm not even two dozen pages in and I already have a few ideas for adventures! Thanks for the video encouraging me to acquire this!
I love this book! Sooo much detail on new areas of the map. I also used it to design a Brotherhood Monk Archetype for my Pathfinder campaign.
Good stuff. I generally avoid materials from that era as I was not a fan of what was done with Greyhawk in the 2E era. Good to know there was some wheat amongst the chaff.
In listening to your commentary I am put in mind of a great source of conflict in Hepmonaland and adjacent regions: the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Yuan-Ti both fancy themselves the superior race, and this is bound to provide chinks in the armor of both, with areas for exploitation for the PCs, should they be clever enough to think on it. Espionage, meet counter-espionage!
In my campaign I had the Scarlet Brotherhood team up with the Shadar-kai. Yuan-ti makes a perfect bedfellow too.
My Greyhawk campaign (set in Keoland) is featuring the brotherhood as the main villain. This book has been extremely useful
Party is fighter, paladin, ranger, shaman, cleric, and an assassin
I never was too interested in buying that book, though I liked using the Scarlet Brotherhood as villains here and there in my campaigns. I wish I had bought it now, just to mine it for ideas. Thanks for a great overview and dang it if there's not another product I will be looking out for now. 😀
11:52 - Lenord Lakofka in Dragon Magazine 86 (for anyone wanting to do further research on this)
I built most of a campaign around that supplement! It was a great source for the secretive red peeps, and my players loved fighting them and uncovering their sinister plots!
Great to hear tour take on it!
Love your content and enthusiasm for the amazing World of Greyhawk. The Scarlet Brotherhood resource is fantastic and has laid the groundwork for many adventures in my Heroes, Ladies of Hawethorne and other local store campaigns over the last 15 years here. I like leaving them very secretive and behind the scenes, any time you see a Brotherhood Agent should be an extremely difficult situation to be in.
Keep up the amazing work and thank you for your passion and knowledge about the setting we all love!
Recently started a cleric character who worships Quetzalcoatl, and as I hurriedly work to develop an Oman-centric background for him, this was incredibly helpful - thank you! Great channel for folks gaming in Greyhawk :-)
This is a great channel. Thank you.
The last character I'll ever make will be a lawful neutral mage from the Scarlett Brotherhood. It will be a fun experiment
I always enjoy hearing your perspective on this stuff. Do you have any thoughts on the 5e book Ghosts of Saltmarsh? It is set in Greyhawk, and features the Scarlet Brotherhood
Haha what I'm actually playing right now and it's been a blast for a year.
I've been running GoS for the last 14 months, including a trip by ship to the Iuzian wars (which were a disaster for the forces of evil in my world) and up to White Plume Mountain. Thanks to Grognard's videos I downloaded the book on Iuz and used it as a sourcebook for my campaign. This Scarlet Brotherhood book looks equally good as there was nothing in first edition other than a few mentions of them, which made them as mysterious as SPECTRE from Bond. Always good to have these on Drivethrurpg or DMsGuild as source books. Back to our campaign and we're just doing the Styes at the moment. Skerrin Wavechaser was apprehended by the party a while back and handed over to the Keoland authorities, but mysteriously managed to escape. He'll return when they least expect it! When they finish they are off to the Joten hills where some giants are being terribly naughty....Greyhawk is a much more vivid and better written setting than Forgotten Realms ever was. It's still mentioned as a setting in many of the 5E adventure books, despite the lack of 5E sourcebooks. Maybe they will one day resurrect it.
Well done! I wish TSR had survived long enough to do additional books like this, say one for the cold barbarians of the northeast, the Arabian Nights themed kingdoms of the northwest. I know they were working on one for the Great Kingdom but only released it as a pdf (that’s one you could kind of review!).
What I think would have been cool would be Gazetteers like they did for Mystara (ie Karameikos, Glantri, etc.).
I used the source book to stage a Keoish/Sea Princes pirate raid against the island that the Brotherhood are doing the mutation research. The lord of Gradsul shanghied the pcs into a little privateer raid that was set up by Scotti Kimbertos. Treasure Island meets the
Island of Dr Meroux
I would like to see a video giving your opinion of the 10 best Greyhawk products (in order of importance) that are still readily available (like from Drive-Thru RPG) that someone starting a campaign in Greyhawk should strive to obtain. Assume that we have (or can get) the World of Greyhawk Boxed Set (so we have the two maps and the two overview booklets). Where should we go from there? It would be appreciated if you would also put the answer in a reply to this post). Thanks a lot; love the channel.
Great idea! I'll put it on the list.
I do enjoy all these videos
I play on world of Greyhawk for 40 years now. I didn't pay much attention on the Scarlet Brotherhood and didn't like them conquering the Hold of the Seaprinces, because I don't believe they could have assassinated the leaders so easily, plus they would have needed a large army to subdue all the uprisings of the lieutenants, life guards, mages and clerics, which the leaders of the Seaprinces most certainly have in order to keep their power.
Then I started a campaign in Keoland and the Hold of the Seaprinces and liked the idea of the Scarlet Brotherhood infiltrating the regions to take advantage of them some time. The players have the opportunity to expose the spies of the Scarlet Brotherhood only to find out that there are several spy cells all over the place conspiring and preparing to take over. Are the players able to stop them? We will find out. 😊
Thanks for the video!
Oh, you have the Darlene map of Greyhawk on your wall!
A much larger version. 🙂
I also have been tepid about the wading into the Scarlets' territory as a DM. Cloak & Dagger adventures can be fun, I'm sure. I'm not sure how to avoid it becoming a covert gang war because I don't think I have any talent for DMing that kind of thing. On the other hand, I got the .pdf and it seems fairly detailed and impressive.
I love the Marklands... that's more my speed.
I always thought the scarlet brotherhood was the best evil organization in all of D&D. They are the greyhawk equivalent of nazis, and who doesn’t hate nazis? The best part is that they weren’t your standard evil clerics and wizards, the leaders were monks, followed by assassins and thieves. Very different, and a nice breath of fresh air.
Thanks!
Thanks so much for your generosity! It really does help.
@@GreyhawkGrognard more retrospectives of the From the Ashes source books would be great, btw. (Markedlands, Iuz the Evil, Ivid the Undying, Rary the Traitor, etc.) I tried to look through your playlists but didn’t see those…
Thanks!
@@paulsanford7211 Duly noted. Eventually I'll work my way through them all.
This video has me thinking about playing a monk who defected from the Brotherhood and is something of an anti-hero. Someone who's trying to be less of an overall dick, but has years of indoctrination to work past. The could be fun within the right group of players.
Those hack frauds at Blizzard copied more in detail than I suspected.