I don't think there's been a map in the entire fantasy genre that captivated me as strongly as the old Greyhawk map. Yes, the books were threadbare for my younger self, as I would have devoured a set of Greyhawk encyclopedias if given the opportunity. Yes, I've certainly looked more often at the maps of Middle-Earth (MERP will do that to you). But that map of the Flaeness just has this OG D&D spirit to it that sets it apart.
Yes, I remember back in the day (40+ years ago now), we'd meet up to start a new campaign and the players would roll dice and then count those numbered/lettered hex and follow the path of hexes to determine a starting point. I'd then give a description of the starting area and while they rolled up characters based on that theme, I'll be making notes and dreaming up the start of my campaign. * Middle of the Wolf Nomads, great... "You start in a deserted former encampment, lies busying around the horse corpses. You've been sent by your nearby family/leader/temple heads having to investigate the strange disappearance of your sister tribe." * In the ocean off the Bone March, fine... "You are hanging to the sides the remains of your jarl's longship, having been destroyed in a strange storm. Night if falling, but you see a green colored sail in the distance." * In the Raker Mountains, no problem... "After days of a mysterious man following you and a poor night's sleep, you suddenly awaken in some snow-capped mountains. Your gear is neatly piled next to you along with pack of winter gear and with a note on top of it." Best thing about Greyhawk was it had so many different areas with different culture, people, languages, trade, politics, alignments, etc. Onwall was different that Ekbir, or the Great Kingdom.
the grand duchy of geoff has been my campaign setting for groundlings for 40+ years. i can't imagine setting a campaign anywhere else. of course, the characters travel to other parts of the map, especially greyhawk city for adventures, but it is always grounded in geoff. thanks for the video.
I am trying to resist a "grinding in Geoff" pun, but it raised a smile. I know it was unintentional, but thank-you for that! Out of interest, what was it that attracted you specifically to Geoff as a setting?
Fantastic overview and coverage of the product lines. I started playing in 1979 and have almost all of the early products. I don't have a great interest in the post-2nd edition materials or being a "collector" but I really appreciate how you've covered Greyhawk so thoroughly. This world showed me what building a D&D world *could* be, along with that incredibly inspirational and beautiful Darlene map.
For me Greyhawk was awesome because it felt like anything could happen when you got to the edges of the map. 70's van paintings could be hiding round the corner or heavy metal album covers. Our DM might throw something from All the Worlds Monsters at us or something from Arduin. Forget the monster manual he had a three ring binder of who knows what. Homebrew in Forgotten Realms almost feels like walking into a Games Workshop store with a War Machine army.
Hah! That analogy would have made me spit my tea if I was drinking any at the mo! The Realms used to have a designated homebrew corner for DMs to develop for themselves. But then TSR developed it. So so much for that idea...
Funny, I actually liked that anything could happen within the map. You have everything from Mongol-like plains, Viking-like barbarians, evil empires, city states, jungles, ocean areas, etc. I used to love having my players randomly roll starting hexes. I'd then give them a week to prepare characters for that area and spend the week researching it (and real world history it was based on) and just going with it. I'd blow up a 30-mile hex into five mile hexes and then start them in a made-up town, village, boat, caravan, etc. in that area. I must have started a hundred games (got to love those 1980s summers when you are 12 or 13) that way.
I think Ghosts of Saltmarsh is amazing. They gave the DM the adventures to run through the first campaign as well as a densely packed "this would also be cool" section to expand upon. I've been working through that one book with my group since it came out. Still going strong.
It's not bad... I'm old-school, so see more scope in the original Saltmarsh modules. But, I'll give the new one it's due - it is among the better of the official 5E adventures.
I just this week started an old-school style game set in the Greyhawk setting. It takes place about 100 years after Vecna Lives, with the particularity that VECNA WON. There are only a few gods left, all depowered and bound to Oerth. Evil rules, elves and dwarves are seriously in decline, drow are making a suicide conquest of the surface world. Monsters, especially dragons, are fewer, but more monstrous. We started in what was left of Quag Keep ...
Well done sir. Well done. I’m a modder, turning to The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer often in my campaign, now six years deep, spanning a thousand years and apocalyptic events.
Thank-you! I'm mostly homebrew, but certainly a modder when in Greyhawk (and other published works). For me, Greyhawk, Glorantha, and the Wilderlands inform my homebrew in a "this is how it should be done" way 🙂
After watching the universe of Warhammer 40k shrink rather than grow with more and more detail painted in, I absolutely agree with how much more large a world can be if left only broadly painted.
Sometimes detail is fun. Take Glorantha. However, when I run games in Glorantha, I'm always bloody scared of getting something wrong (some RuneQuest players have encyclopaedic knowledge). Glorantha thus becomes fun to read, bloody nervy to run. Possibly a similar experience you have with 40K?
That's a good point. That whole world building philosophy of "create as needed". It does make it somewhat compartmentalised - that's even more illustrated by the alignment map.
I've been playing a long running Greyhawk game starting with the village if homlet then going into the temple of elemental evil. We then went into a couple short standing arcs and into the giants and into the underdark campaigns, my wizard has withstood it all loosing many allies. This setting will always have a special place in my heart. (I'm still playing into the underdark rn)
Oerth was the first setting my cousin and I played AD&D in. (It was just the two of us!) I'm not a diehard fan but have great affection for Greyhawk and, in my view, a much better and more fun setting than the Realms. I ran a very short campaign in Oerth but it fell apart thanks to schedules. 'Twas ever thus. Working on a Greyhawk campaign as I write this. After running homebrew settings, Midgard and Eberron campaigns, a return to Greyhawk is long overdue. This time, I'm be "folding, spindling, and mutilating" some old modules. By the way, the expression in quotes is paraphrasing advice in 2e Paranoia. I noted you insert Lankhmar into your Free City of Greyhawk. I unashamedly put in Enas Yorl, One-Thumb Lastel and the Vulgar Unicorn.
The beauty of RPGs is that we can mix, match, and cram anything we want anywhere we want! I hope you enjoy your return to Greyhawk when you get it running 🙂
I'd guess that a lot of us were attracted to tabletop gaming like RPGs and wargames -at least in part - by a love and appreciation of maps. I remember even when I was little, being totally absorbed by books of geography and by maps.
I mentioned this fact to someone unfamiliar with ttrpgs a couple of months ago and they looked at me like I was insane. I wonder what it is about reading and drawing maps that fascinates the geek mind …
@@MisterWebb For me at least, maps cause me to imagine myself at the place depicted. I am also very tactile, and models, miniatures, paper books, and maps are real, physical artifacts to touch. Touch makes things "real" for me.
@@anna-elizabeth I have made ancient-looking maps (stained with tea) for my players - having this kind of aide can build immersion, although I don't go in for models or minis so much.
It's perhaps that artistic depiction of data coupled to a sense of immersion a good map can bring to a game. I'm now trying to case my mind back over the decades to try and remember if I was into maps before RPGs, or vice versa...
Great summary on GH. No mention of the adventure paths in Dungeon magazine - Age of Worms, Cauldron etc. Those adventures I strongly believe under the stewardship of Paizo were the seeds for how the Pathfinder product line would form/evolve. Pretty much ignoring the rehashes in 4e and 5e. WOTC/Hasbro seem to have a similar problem to Hollywood; no talent or originality.
Yeah, perhaps I should have delved into the adventure paths. For me, they didn't have much of an impact on GH specifically, and felt more "handwave GH, but present generically" than actually having a GH foundation. They also tied into my least favourite style of play - episodal railroads. 4E and 5E haven't really touched GH. I know adventures such as Saltmarsh are nominally set there - but, again, it's more on a generic scale. Those I purposely omitted, by and large.
@Willy Muffin Yah, the railroading aspect is not great, but it was interesting. As for the later stuff in 4e and 5e, there seems to be some rehashing of some classic themes such as Elemental Evil etc.
@@TheAndrian463 Ah, yes. And ported them all to the Realms (Tomb of Annihilation, Princes of the Apocalypse)! I think only Ghosts of Saltmarsh retains its at least nominal Greyhawk setting. C'est la vie.
Well, the biggest collection of modules was the early 2000s era Living Greyhawk campaign. They divided the countries up into real world regions which each given the ability to make modules. So, you'd have over two dozen regions, each making 8-12 adventurers per year, for five years, plus they had several dozen adventures set in common places like Greyhawk. Some regions weren't English speaking, but still... we are talking hundreds and hundreds of 4 hour 3/3.5 modules and many had long running plot lines.
@@BW022 Unfortunately, most of those were not on general release - very, very few were made available outside of the Living Greyhawk organised play. A handful of the Castle Greyhawk ones were, but added even more inconcistency to the Greyhawk Ruins/Expedition dichotomy. Living Greyhawk was a reasonable idea on paper. I'm not convinced it particularly succeeded - especially given the region enforcement (in the UK, we were limited to releases for Onnwal, for example). It was a great addition to the RPGA scene, but not particularly useful beyond that. I do lament the demise of the RPGA, though. I got a lot out of my time in it.
So I have read - but only the material they have. Looks like reprints of Yggsburgh and The Hermit are on the cards. No mention yet of the Upper Works. It will be interesting to see if there's any material on the lower dungeons around for new publications rather than reprints.
Never heard of Arduin before and now that I have, it looks like a lot of innovative stuff was done to flesh out that campaign setting. Any chance of a deep dive there?
@@WillyMuffinUK I dont mind either tbh. The Dm and others at my play through in the US use the "Oath" pronunciation which really weirded me out as I used O-Earth but all the Yanks I meet seemd to be saying Oath... maybe I heard it wrong total potability. how is is said in the audio books? Do you know?
@epone3488 I don't think any of the Greyhawk novels are on audio books - none I've seen. It's common, though. For example, old King Æthelred is often just "Ethelred" - but then Æthelstan is often just "Athelstan" - so... I just put it down to "it's whatever you feel most comfortable with". And I know it's not Œerth... but it should be! As should Gygax's Dangerous Journey's world should have been Æerth - but... I guess Gygax doesn't love diphthongs as much as I do 🙂
Paul(a) Kidd of the bad Greyhawk novels is rather creepy. A lot of talk of Pixie-ass and strong opinions on early education set off a lot of alarm bells.
@@WillyMuffinUK yeah, I think the main issue is lack of support & just not getting as much detail as the Forgotten Realms. I have friends that have played since 2e & they love the realms but are convinced Greyhawk is a low magic setting.
I think that might ruin some of its charm. However, the Argan Argar Atlas exists for Glorantha, which is the nearest thing to a road atlas for a fantasy world I can think of, and that's pretty cool. With both the Forgotten Realms and DragonLance having received the Karen Wynn Fonstad treatment in the 1980s, it's a shame they didn't commission her to do Greyhawk, too. However.... TSR politics at the time and all that...
27:43 "but it is really only Greyhawk that screams D&D game world" Hmm, how about Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord, and their accompanying products detailing other parts of the world it's set in?
I don't see CS as fundamentally D&D. A setting that used the D&D rules as a framework to describe it, initially at least, sure. But when you read the JG material with a "spot the off-piste concepts" eye when core D&D is concerned, there are many. CS and Wilderlands is it's own thing. (I'd actually go further, and say it suits the RQ rules better than D&D, but that's another story altogether that will have to wait for the Wilderlands Milieu video).
@@WillyMuffinUK Would need some serious work to use for RQ seeing as all the stats given are for D&D, not complicated if you know both systems perhaps but repetitive and time consuming work that's going to slow gameplay a lot if you don't do it all ahead of time which will take ages 🙂 What are some of the 'off-piste' concepts that you had in mind? I may just never have noticed them as being such simply because I got it early after my D&D books as a kid so it all rolls together as the same thing in my mind. It was written specifically for retail as a D&D supplement from a time before TSR started doing their own modules and supplements. [my copy even had "approved for use with AD&D" plastered over the front, lined over with black marker because it was printed before they lost the licence (or right) to do that and was shipped after] I only had CS though, never got around to grabbing a copy of Wilderlands.
@@pelinoregeryon6593 Given that the stats in the original JG Wilderlands books are very minimal, it doesn't require serious work at all. Coupled with the fact that there's an almost 1:1 correlation between RQ base stats and D&D - yes, you'd need to know both systems, but it's pretty easy. The "off-piste" elements can be found within some of the Ruins & Relics entries across the Wilderlands series - very much hint at a more science-fantasy base than the swords and sorcery one that underpinned D&D and Greyhawk. In that regard, it has more in common with Blackmoor than Greyhawk - and Blackmoor sort of attaches to the Wilderlands maps. Yes, the Wilderlands material was produced under an approval agreement with TSR, but that has no bearing on what I'm stating. Put it like this. With Greyhawk, you need nothing more than the core books to "accurately" depict the world. The core books say nothing about modern or futuristic weaponry - but caches of such things can be found within the Wilderlands and Blackmoor. The core Greyhawk races are the core D&D ones - those from the Wilderlands require further definition, because they wander off the core D&D line (Atlanteans, Viridians, etc. are not adequately covered by core D&D races). You need to adapt the core D&D rules to the Wilderlands setting - you don't need to adapt the D&D rules to Greyhawk; Greyhawk is already there (even in the naming of spells). It's not a surprising thing, though. Gygax wrote Greyhawk, Gygax wrote (especially) AD&D. That the two pair up better than other settings is a pretty natural thing. BTW, track down the rest of the Wilderlands stuff. The CSIO is only the tip of the iceberg! It is a very cool setting.
@@WillyMuffinUK Fair comment about the sci fi elements I suppose. You don't really see much of that in CS, I might have noticed it more if I'd ever got my hands on the Wilderlands Some might point at Expedition to the Barrier Peaks in response I suppose, but it's a module rather than core GH and it was really only ever meant as a one shot and an advertising aid for convention release, to introduce some core concepts of the precursor of their Gamma World game to players, so not really canon for GH. "track down the rest of the Wilderlands stuff" 👍 I fully intend to .. but then I've been intending to for something like thirty years now 😁 I do much prefer the CS map style to most (if not all) TSR / WotC produced city maps though, their ones are nearly all just too clean and tidy in their layouts to be convincing as real naturally evolved medieval cities, while CS is gloriously cramped and cluttered, far more convincing.
I never got into it to be able to say much of anything about it, and it was mostly gone in the blink of an eye. Feel free to add anything you feel important!
I have just received a ping that the new DMG has been delivered - so, I will see later just how back it might be! Also "Worlds and Realms", which looked like the perfect book for a world-tourist like me, but the reviews of it have been mixed... I'll lay my thoughts out on it when I've digested.
@@WillyMuffinUK I look forward to your take on the Greyhawk section maybe as a follow up to this video. I found it brief but useful for DM's and Players new to the setting but not sure how those who have played in it will find it. I fall into that camp of people who experienced D&D through the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and mostly passed Greyhawk by but now seems the right time to visit that world. If anything it brought me to your channel so that's one plus of the new DM's guide lol
@andytheDM Could well do. Still absorbing the PHB, but have flicked through the Greyhawk section of the DMG briefly. At the very least, the map looks cool.
I'm not sure you've quite captured the tensions at play in how the setting has been developed. I agree that original Greyhawk is quite loose and open to DM input (by design), but Carl Sargent's writing as well as the subsequent fan produced material is quite punctilious, to the point that it would make the allegedly over-developed Forgotten Realms setting blush. I don't see these various styles of Greyhawk as easily reconcilable, since many would feel (as I often have) some guilt at not at least considereding the hyper-articulated details of the setting when developing our own takes on it. The Sargent material for example is canon, after all, so shouldn't you at least review it when setting a game in a part of the world that he detailed? Moreover, with the fan made material, it is often difficult to distinguish where official sources stop and unofficial material begins. Consider the Anna Meyers map, which absolutely kills all enthusiasm I have for Greyhawk because it is just too detailed (suffering the usual problem attributed to FR). Also, I am not sure I agree with some of the short shrift given to a few of the early 90’s adventures!
To be fair, "canon" in gaming only describes the narrative and material the publisher is expected to follow. As even Gygax said, individual games should freely turf out or add in anything they like. "Shouldn't at least review it" - no! Could be useful, may be things you'd enjoy in there, but there is no onus on DMs to use, read, and absorb anything. To paraphrase a renowned Glorantha saying - Your Greyhawk May Vary. With fsn material, it's exactly the same - moreso. Use, abuse, or ignore at will. Yes, I glossed over certain modules because they are, in my opinion, not good. Lastly... there's a reason why I don't mention that map in either Greyhawk video 😉 Maps need to be usable...
I'd love a video on From The Ashes area greyhawk I think Sargent's work is wonderful but I also understand the importance of DM using what they want to color any world in which they wish too, and hell If we can have 9 hells with 666 ( or unlimited number of) flavors or take a Portal from from Mr. Cooks Planescape setting or crack an opening to any dimension in space while Spelljamming, the limits of any home brew or cannon adventure are at our fingertips, at the farthest reaches of our mind's imagination.
@@mychaellee6317 Indeed - and our imaginations don't need to be fettered to a published world. I did a companion video to this summarising Sargant's era: ua-cam.com/video/enrulnGTAPo/v-deo.html
@@TheEldarGuy It's a separate setting. The Blackmoor of the World of Greyhawk is... let's say a passing reference to Arneson's Blackmoor. It's been attached to a couple of settings. The First Fantasy Campaign (JG) attaches it to the Wilderlands. The "DA" (for David Arneson) modules attach it to Mystara's past (Basic D&D's Known World), with time-travelling PCs going back to The Temple of the Frog et al. I.e., Greyhawk isn't the only world with a tentative Blackmoor connection. It's also been released (as an independent world) under D20 et al. To cover it within a Greyhawk video, given the relatively tiny space labelled "Blackmoor" on the GH map that bears little relationship to Arneson's setting, would not be doing it justice.
I don't think there's been a map in the entire fantasy genre that captivated me as strongly as the old Greyhawk map. Yes, the books were threadbare for my younger self, as I would have devoured a set of Greyhawk encyclopedias if given the opportunity. Yes, I've certainly looked more often at the maps of Middle-Earth (MERP will do that to you). But that map of the Flaeness just has this OG D&D spirit to it that sets it apart.
It is truly something special.
Yes, I remember back in the day (40+ years ago now), we'd meet up to start a new campaign and the players would roll dice and then count those numbered/lettered hex and follow the path of hexes to determine a starting point. I'd then give a description of the starting area and while they rolled up characters based on that theme, I'll be making notes and dreaming up the start of my campaign.
* Middle of the Wolf Nomads, great... "You start in a deserted former encampment, lies busying around the horse corpses. You've been sent by your nearby family/leader/temple heads having to investigate the strange disappearance of your sister tribe."
* In the ocean off the Bone March, fine... "You are hanging to the sides the remains of your jarl's longship, having been destroyed in a strange storm. Night if falling, but you see a green colored sail in the distance."
* In the Raker Mountains, no problem... "After days of a mysterious man following you and a poor night's sleep, you suddenly awaken in some snow-capped mountains. Your gear is neatly piled next to you along with pack of winter gear and with a note on top of it."
Best thing about Greyhawk was it had so many different areas with different culture, people, languages, trade, politics, alignments, etc. Onwall was different that Ekbir, or the Great Kingdom.
the grand duchy of geoff has been my campaign setting for groundlings for 40+ years. i can't imagine setting a campaign anywhere else. of course, the characters travel to other parts of the map, especially greyhawk city for adventures, but it is always grounded in geoff. thanks for the video.
I am trying to resist a "grinding in Geoff" pun, but it raised a smile. I know it was unintentional, but thank-you for that!
Out of interest, what was it that attracted you specifically to Geoff as a setting?
Fantastic overview and coverage of the product lines. I started playing in 1979 and have almost all of the early products. I don't have a great interest in the post-2nd edition materials or being a "collector" but I really appreciate how you've covered Greyhawk so thoroughly.
This world showed me what building a D&D world *could* be, along with that incredibly inspirational and beautiful Darlene map.
Thank-you. I suspect the Darlene map launched more than a thousand home campaign worlds!
For me Greyhawk was awesome because it felt like anything could happen when you got to the edges of the map. 70's van paintings could be hiding round the corner or heavy metal album covers. Our DM might throw something from All the Worlds Monsters at us or something from Arduin. Forget the monster manual he had a three ring binder of who knows what. Homebrew in Forgotten Realms almost feels like walking into a Games Workshop store with a War Machine army.
Hah! That analogy would have made me spit my tea if I was drinking any at the mo!
The Realms used to have a designated homebrew corner for DMs to develop for themselves. But then TSR developed it. So so much for that idea...
Funny, I actually liked that anything could happen within the map. You have everything from Mongol-like plains, Viking-like barbarians, evil empires, city states, jungles, ocean areas, etc. I used to love having my players randomly roll starting hexes. I'd then give them a week to prepare characters for that area and spend the week researching it (and real world history it was based on) and just going with it. I'd blow up a 30-mile hex into five mile hexes and then start them in a made-up town, village, boat, caravan, etc. in that area. I must have started a hundred games (got to love those 1980s summers when you are 12 or 13) that way.
I think Ghosts of Saltmarsh is amazing. They gave the DM the adventures to run through the first campaign as well as a densely packed "this would also be cool" section to expand upon. I've been working through that one book with my group since it came out. Still going strong.
It's not bad... I'm old-school, so see more scope in the original Saltmarsh modules. But, I'll give the new one it's due - it is among the better of the official 5E adventures.
This is such a fascinating world, with real world events so well documented you can see how it started and what influenced what direction.
Indeed, especially through the 70s and 80s when it was closer to the development of D&D itself.
I just this week started an old-school style game set in the Greyhawk setting. It takes place about 100 years after Vecna Lives, with the particularity that VECNA WON. There are only a few gods left, all depowered and bound to Oerth. Evil rules, elves and dwarves are seriously in decline, drow are making a suicide conquest of the surface world. Monsters, especially dragons, are fewer, but more monstrous.
We started in what was left of Quag Keep ...
It sounds like you started in what's left of the world, let alone Quag 😱😳
Deity-level post-apocalyptic madness - sounds great 🙂
Well done sir. Well done. I’m a modder, turning to The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer often in my campaign, now six years deep, spanning a thousand years and apocalyptic events.
Thank-you! I'm mostly homebrew, but certainly a modder when in Greyhawk (and other published works). For me, Greyhawk, Glorantha, and the Wilderlands inform my homebrew in a "this is how it should be done" way 🙂
After watching the universe of Warhammer 40k shrink rather than grow with more and more detail painted in, I absolutely agree with how much more large a world can be if left only broadly painted.
Sometimes detail is fun. Take Glorantha. However, when I run games in Glorantha, I'm always bloody scared of getting something wrong (some RuneQuest players have encyclopaedic knowledge). Glorantha thus becomes fun to read, bloody nervy to run.
Possibly a similar experience you have with 40K?
What i liked about greyhawk is that its had that improvisional feel you get from a campaign that was created on the fly from the inside out.
That's a good point. That whole world building philosophy of "create as needed". It does make it somewhat compartmentalised - that's even more illustrated by the alignment map.
I still have some of those Letraset sheets from back in the early 80's 😁👍
Do they still work?!
I've been playing a long running Greyhawk game starting with the village if homlet then going into the temple of elemental evil. We then went into a couple short standing arcs and into the giants and into the underdark campaigns, my wizard has withstood it all loosing many allies. This setting will always have a special place in my heart. (I'm still playing into the underdark rn)
I hope your character makes it through, suitably well-rewarded!
It's funny how 3.x making Greyhawk "Default" meant it ended up getting *less* setting detail books than FR or even the newcomer Eberron.
Yes... They left that to Living Greyhawk, by and large.
Oerth was the first setting my cousin and I played AD&D in. (It was just the two of us!) I'm not a diehard fan but have great affection for Greyhawk and, in my view, a much better and more fun setting than the Realms. I ran a very short campaign in Oerth but it fell apart thanks to schedules. 'Twas ever thus.
Working on a Greyhawk campaign as I write this. After running homebrew settings, Midgard and Eberron campaigns, a return to Greyhawk is long overdue. This time, I'm be "folding, spindling, and mutilating" some old modules. By the way, the expression in quotes is paraphrasing advice in 2e Paranoia.
I noted you insert Lankhmar into your Free City of Greyhawk. I unashamedly put in Enas Yorl, One-Thumb Lastel and the Vulgar Unicorn.
The beauty of RPGs is that we can mix, match, and cram anything we want anywhere we want!
I hope you enjoy your return to Greyhawk when you get it running 🙂
I'd guess that a lot of us were attracted to tabletop gaming like RPGs and wargames -at least in part - by a love and appreciation of maps. I remember even when I was little, being totally absorbed by books of geography and by maps.
I mentioned this fact to someone unfamiliar with ttrpgs a couple of months ago and they looked at me like I was insane. I wonder what it is about reading and drawing maps that fascinates the geek mind …
@@MisterWebb For me at least, maps cause me to imagine myself at the place depicted. I am also very tactile, and models, miniatures, paper books, and maps are real, physical artifacts to touch. Touch makes things "real" for me.
@@anna-elizabeth I have made ancient-looking maps (stained with tea) for my players - having this kind of aide can build immersion, although I don't go in for models or minis so much.
Maps are awesome - and the evolution of maps, real-world and gaming - is fascinating. I should do some map videos.
It's perhaps that artistic depiction of data coupled to a sense of immersion a good map can bring to a game.
I'm now trying to case my mind back over the decades to try and remember if I was into maps before RPGs, or vice versa...
damn i loved the way you laid this out, thankful i found this channel
Thank-you! 🙂
I always liked Greyhawk because it was not completely fleshed out.
I think that's a philosophy that many RPG settings miss. Sometimes, less is more.
Great summary on GH. No mention of the adventure paths in Dungeon magazine - Age of Worms, Cauldron etc. Those adventures I strongly believe under the stewardship of Paizo were the seeds for how the Pathfinder product line would form/evolve.
Pretty much ignoring the rehashes in 4e and 5e. WOTC/Hasbro seem to have a similar problem to Hollywood; no talent or originality.
Yeah, perhaps I should have delved into the adventure paths. For me, they didn't have much of an impact on GH specifically, and felt more "handwave GH, but present generically" than actually having a GH foundation. They also tied into my least favourite style of play - episodal railroads.
4E and 5E haven't really touched GH. I know adventures such as Saltmarsh are nominally set there - but, again, it's more on a generic scale. Those I purposely omitted, by and large.
@Willy Muffin Yah, the railroading aspect is not great, but it was interesting. As for the later stuff in 4e and 5e, there seems to be some rehashing of some classic themes such as Elemental Evil etc.
@@TheAndrian463 Ah, yes. And ported them all to the Realms (Tomb of Annihilation, Princes of the Apocalypse)! I think only Ghosts of Saltmarsh retains its at least nominal Greyhawk setting. C'est la vie.
Well, the biggest collection of modules was the early 2000s era Living Greyhawk campaign. They divided the countries up into real world regions which each given the ability to make modules. So, you'd have over two dozen regions, each making 8-12 adventurers per year, for five years, plus they had several dozen adventures set in common places like Greyhawk. Some regions weren't English speaking, but still... we are talking hundreds and hundreds of 4 hour 3/3.5 modules and many had long running plot lines.
@@BW022 Unfortunately, most of those were not on general release - very, very few were made available outside of the Living Greyhawk organised play. A handful of the Castle Greyhawk ones were, but added even more inconcistency to the Greyhawk Ruins/Expedition dichotomy.
Living Greyhawk was a reasonable idea on paper. I'm not convinced it particularly succeeded - especially given the region enforcement (in the UK, we were limited to releases for Onnwal, for example). It was a great addition to the RPGA scene, but not particularly useful beyond that.
I do lament the demise of the RPGA, though. I got a lot out of my time in it.
By the way, Troll Lord games IS releasing the Gygax material on the castle and dungeon now...
So I have read - but only the material they have. Looks like reprints of Yggsburgh and The Hermit are on the cards. No mention yet of the Upper Works. It will be interesting to see if there's any material on the lower dungeons around for new publications rather than reprints.
What do you think of the news coming out of Troll Lord Games?! Things are looking up for Yggsburgh and Castle Zagyg!
It's good that all that licence mess has finally got resolved 🙂
Ahhhh, I think I heard a "Gentle Reader" from ages past.
Those were good words to use on the page. Get the reader all comfy by the fireside from the outset 🙂
19:17 "Eh mystara, Greyhawk, who cares about either?" --TSR at the time apparently.
There were attempts... I found them half-hearted.
Never heard of Arduin before and now that I have, it looks like a lot of innovative stuff was done to flesh out that campaign setting. Any chance of a deep dive there?
Eventually! It is one of those largely forgotten gems.
The Arduin Grimoire gets a backhanded compliment from Gygax in the DMG magic item ‘The Vacuous Grimoire’.
FYI the world name rhymes with 'Oath' so a cross between Oath and Earth. I have zero canonical references to point you at just a trip to GenCon.
That sounds like someone trying to voice complex vowels and going "oh sod it!" 😉 "Oh-Erth" sounds more evocative to me!
@@WillyMuffinUK I dont mind either tbh. The Dm and others at my play through in the US use the "Oath" pronunciation which really weirded me out as I used O-Earth but all the Yanks I meet seemd to be saying Oath... maybe I heard it wrong total potability. how is is said in the audio books? Do you know?
@epone3488 I don't think any of the Greyhawk novels are on audio books - none I've seen.
It's common, though. For example, old King Æthelred is often just "Ethelred" - but then Æthelstan is often just "Athelstan" - so... I just put it down to "it's whatever you feel most comfortable with".
And I know it's not Œerth... but it should be! As should Gygax's Dangerous Journey's world should have been Æerth - but... I guess Gygax doesn't love diphthongs as much as I do 🙂
Paul(a) Kidd of the bad Greyhawk novels is rather creepy. A lot of talk of Pixie-ass and strong opinions on early education set off a lot of alarm bells.
Yeah, there are some unwise choices in those books.
Any chance you could do this for the JG Wilderlands series?
It is on the list.
12:52 I've seen it argued that part of Greyhawk's decline in popularity was due to how bad the Rose Estes novels were.
Perhaps. A gaming world does tend to live or die on its game support, though.
@@WillyMuffinUK yeah, I think the main issue is lack of support & just not getting as much detail as the Forgotten Realms. I have friends that have played since 2e & they love the realms but are convinced Greyhawk is a low magic setting.
@@CrashWeezerman Try telling Mordenkainen that! 🤣
Exactly
i wish there was a road atlas type book for greyhawk.
I think that might ruin some of its charm. However, the Argan Argar Atlas exists for Glorantha, which is the nearest thing to a road atlas for a fantasy world I can think of, and that's pretty cool.
With both the Forgotten Realms and DragonLance having received the Karen Wynn Fonstad treatment in the 1980s, it's a shame they didn't commission her to do Greyhawk, too. However.... TSR politics at the time and all that...
The folio fell short of expectations? I seriously doubt this disappointed many people in 1980. I sure wasn't.
Mileage in everything varies. For me, it didn't compare to releases for Glorantha and the Wilderlands that predated it, and it really should have.
@@WillyMuffinUK fair enough
27:43 "but it is really only Greyhawk that screams D&D game world" Hmm, how about Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord, and their accompanying products detailing other parts of the world it's set in?
I don't see CS as fundamentally D&D. A setting that used the D&D rules as a framework to describe it, initially at least, sure. But when you read the JG material with a "spot the off-piste concepts" eye when core D&D is concerned, there are many. CS and Wilderlands is it's own thing.
(I'd actually go further, and say it suits the RQ rules better than D&D, but that's another story altogether that will have to wait for the Wilderlands Milieu video).
@@WillyMuffinUK Would need some serious work to use for RQ seeing as all the stats given are for D&D, not complicated if you know both systems perhaps but repetitive and time consuming work that's going to slow gameplay a lot if you don't do it all ahead of time which will take ages 🙂
What are some of the 'off-piste' concepts that you had in mind?
I may just never have noticed them as being such simply because I got it early after my D&D books as a kid so it all rolls together as the same thing in my mind.
It was written specifically for retail as a D&D supplement from a time before TSR started doing their own modules and supplements.
[my copy even had "approved for use with AD&D" plastered over the front, lined over with black marker because it was printed before they lost the licence (or right) to do that and was shipped after]
I only had CS though, never got around to grabbing a copy of Wilderlands.
@@pelinoregeryon6593 Given that the stats in the original JG Wilderlands books are very minimal, it doesn't require serious work at all. Coupled with the fact that there's an almost 1:1 correlation between RQ base stats and D&D - yes, you'd need to know both systems, but it's pretty easy.
The "off-piste" elements can be found within some of the Ruins & Relics entries across the Wilderlands series - very much hint at a more science-fantasy base than the swords and sorcery one that underpinned D&D and Greyhawk. In that regard, it has more in common with Blackmoor than Greyhawk - and Blackmoor sort of attaches to the Wilderlands maps.
Yes, the Wilderlands material was produced under an approval agreement with TSR, but that has no bearing on what I'm stating.
Put it like this. With Greyhawk, you need nothing more than the core books to "accurately" depict the world. The core books say nothing about modern or futuristic weaponry - but caches of such things can be found within the Wilderlands and Blackmoor. The core Greyhawk races are the core D&D ones - those from the Wilderlands require further definition, because they wander off the core D&D line (Atlanteans, Viridians, etc. are not adequately covered by core D&D races). You need to adapt the core D&D rules to the Wilderlands setting - you don't need to adapt the D&D rules to Greyhawk; Greyhawk is already there (even in the naming of spells).
It's not a surprising thing, though. Gygax wrote Greyhawk, Gygax wrote (especially) AD&D. That the two pair up better than other settings is a pretty natural thing.
BTW, track down the rest of the Wilderlands stuff. The CSIO is only the tip of the iceberg! It is a very cool setting.
@@WillyMuffinUK Fair comment about the sci fi elements I suppose.
You don't really see much of that in CS, I might have noticed it more if I'd ever got my hands on the Wilderlands
Some might point at Expedition to the Barrier Peaks in response I suppose, but it's a module rather than core GH and it was really only ever meant as a one shot and an advertising aid for convention release, to introduce some core concepts of the precursor of their Gamma World game to players, so not really canon for GH.
"track down the rest of the Wilderlands stuff" 👍 I fully intend to .. but then I've been intending to for something like thirty years now 😁
I do much prefer the CS map style to most (if not all) TSR / WotC produced city maps though, their ones are nearly all just too clean and tidy in their layouts to be convincing as real naturally evolved medieval cities, while CS is gloriously cramped and cluttered, far more convincing.
@@pelinoregeryon6593 No argument there - I absolutely love the Wilderlands maps, cities and all.
Well done.
Thank-you 🙂
No mention of WotC's Chainmail lore? :D
I never got into it to be able to say much of anything about it, and it was mostly gone in the blink of an eye.
Feel free to add anything you feel important!
@@WillyMuffinUK Well, you have already summarized it pretty much.
@@ragimund5502 Aha - probably more by luck than design 🙂
2024 here Greyhawks back baby erm kind of 😂
I have just received a ping that the new DMG has been delivered - so, I will see later just how back it might be!
Also "Worlds and Realms", which looked like the perfect book for a world-tourist like me, but the reviews of it have been mixed... I'll lay my thoughts out on it when I've digested.
@@WillyMuffinUK I look forward to your take on the Greyhawk section maybe as a follow up to this video. I found it brief but useful for DM's and Players new to the setting but not sure how those who have played in it will find it. I fall into that camp of people who experienced D&D through the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and mostly passed Greyhawk by but now seems the right time to visit that world. If anything it brought me to your channel so that's one plus of the new DM's guide lol
@andytheDM Could well do. Still absorbing the PHB, but have flicked through the Greyhawk section of the DMG briefly. At the very least, the map looks cool.
Beautifull video, want more Geeyhawk related videos plz ;)
Maybe! Plenty of other odds and sods in the works, though.
I'm not sure you've quite captured the tensions at play in how the setting has been developed. I agree that original Greyhawk is quite loose and open to DM input (by design), but Carl Sargent's writing as well as the subsequent fan produced material is quite punctilious, to the point that it would make the allegedly over-developed Forgotten Realms setting blush. I don't see these various styles of Greyhawk as easily reconcilable, since many would feel (as I often have) some guilt at not at least considereding the hyper-articulated details of the setting when developing our own takes on it. The Sargent material for example is canon, after all, so shouldn't you at least review it when setting a game in a part of the world that he detailed? Moreover, with the fan made material, it is often difficult to distinguish where official sources stop and unofficial material begins. Consider the Anna Meyers map, which absolutely kills all enthusiasm I have for Greyhawk because it is just too detailed (suffering the usual problem attributed to FR). Also, I am not sure I agree with some of the short shrift given to a few of the early 90’s adventures!
To be fair, "canon" in gaming only describes the narrative and material the publisher is expected to follow. As even Gygax said, individual games should freely turf out or add in anything they like. "Shouldn't at least review it" - no! Could be useful, may be things you'd enjoy in there, but there is no onus on DMs to use, read, and absorb anything. To paraphrase a renowned Glorantha saying - Your Greyhawk May Vary.
With fsn material, it's exactly the same - moreso. Use, abuse, or ignore at will.
Yes, I glossed over certain modules because they are, in my opinion, not good.
Lastly... there's a reason why I don't mention that map in either Greyhawk video 😉 Maps need to be usable...
I'd love a video on From The Ashes area greyhawk I think Sargent's work is wonderful but I also understand the importance of DM using what they want to color any world in which they wish too, and hell If we can have 9 hells with 666 ( or unlimited number of) flavors or take a Portal from from Mr. Cooks Planescape setting or crack an opening to any dimension in space while Spelljamming, the limits of any home brew or cannon adventure are at our fingertips, at the farthest reaches of our mind's imagination.
@@mychaellee6317 Indeed - and our imaginations don't need to be fettered to a published world.
I did a companion video to this summarising Sargant's era:
ua-cam.com/video/enrulnGTAPo/v-deo.html
Probably could have mentioned Blackmoor. It is still a lively setting even today.
In a video about Greyhawk?! Each world has (or will have) it's own.
@WillyMuffinUK Blackmoor is in The World of Greyhawk. It's also the location of Arneson's game.
@@TheEldarGuy It's a separate setting. The Blackmoor of the World of Greyhawk is... let's say a passing reference to Arneson's Blackmoor.
It's been attached to a couple of settings. The First Fantasy Campaign (JG) attaches it to the Wilderlands. The "DA" (for David Arneson) modules attach it to Mystara's past (Basic D&D's Known World), with time-travelling PCs going back to The Temple of the Frog et al. I.e., Greyhawk isn't the only world with a tentative Blackmoor connection.
It's also been released (as an independent world) under D20 et al.
To cover it within a Greyhawk video, given the relatively tiny space labelled "Blackmoor" on the GH map that bears little relationship to Arneson's setting, would not be doing it justice.
God bless you guys ask Ernie, Gygax, and all the other players that help create the Settings go tonight Gary’s true person Freja it is a masterpiece❤
Can you elaborate? I'm trying to make sense of what you're saying!