A few weeks ago I started a 2024 campaign set in Greyhawk, which is a great opportunity to introduce my kids to my old favorite setting. Pulled all my old GH books out of storage, lovingly admired the Darlene map once again, the whole nine yards. I decided to start them off in the tail end of CY 581, running the 5e Saltmarsh port to get the ball rolling. So of course, the curve balls started coming at me right away. My son wanted to to play a Goliath (a 5e giantkin species, basically) which is a bit of a corker to incorporate, so thinking fast I extemporized that there are small interconnected tribes in the mountains, particularly ramified across the Jotens / Crystalmists / Sulhaut / Barrier Peaks / Hellfurnaces complex. We decided he and his tribe resided in the Jotens but were basically wrecked due to the aggressions of the real giants upon Sterich and the Yeomanry. Anyway, you've inspired me with this video to further elaborate that idea, swapping out the cave men line items for Goliath / Giantkin encounters and combine that with the pleistocene anachronism notion. Giantish mountain-folk hunting sheer upland valleys and crevasses for mammoths and cave bear and sabretooth tigers (oh my!) strikes my fancy.
Speaking of land that time forget... I saw a meme recently showing the Egyptians using dinosaurs to help build the pyramids, lifting and hauling the giant stone blocks, captioned "This should shut up those idiots who thought it was aliens!"
This is a great suggestion. I love the whole "Professor Challenger" theme. This is why "The Isle of Dread" is my favorite adventure module to this day, even though (sigh) I've never actually got to play it OR run it.
As I recall, back when the Great Kingdom map was being based more closely on North America, there was an intention to put Pleistocene and other Lost World type encounters in the Pacific Northwest.
Cool find. I wouldn't be too surprised if Gary had a permanent portal through time and/or space there, slowly funneling out creatures, like Martian White Apes from greyhawk dungeon
Talk about a me-friendly video. D&D, lost worlds, the Valley of Gwangi. That's good stuff. I always found it interesting as a kid when I would see dinosaurs and dinosaur-esc creatures in the monster manuals. So much potential in that.
The Greyhawk hardcover on pages 98-99 in the geography section describes Tovag Baragu in the Dry Steppes, an odd artifact mile-wide circle of five concentric rings of white standing stones that sometimes (when the moons and planets are correct) distort vision and allow the viewer to see strange places and times, past and future, including "a verdant plain crowded with the peculiar mammalian life which may be found on occasion near the Sulhauts." It is said in DM section that "the most frequent full connection is to a Pleistocene setting."
I guess I didn't pay close enough attention to those charts. Back in the early 90's, shortly after Jurassic Park came out, my group really wanted to fight some raptors. As they were currently in G2, it didn't really lend itself well to the setting, but when they used the iron chain teleporter to get to G3, they messed up. This landed them in the middle of the Chult accessory I had recently purchase, renamed to something else to not bring Realms into the setting. They eventually made contact with an ancient and intelligent race of lizard men (Sleestacks for all intents and purposes) who opened a gateway in one of their sacred pylons and got the party back on track.
I'm running a campaign in that region and my players rolled the cavemen encounters more than once, and it's prompted very similar thoughts with me. I put a "valley of the mammoths" in the mountains with Pleistocene mammals, giant animals, and yes, dinosaurs.
Oerth, to my knowledge, never had an Ice Age or Pleistocene period, so it would have to be a gate or teleporter to the Ice Ages of Earth. Oerth's distant past is completely different from ours.
Gary explained this in the forum Q&As he did. The original Greyhawk campaign used a blank U.S. map & the Sierra Nevada mountains were the Sulhauts. He used that area as Greyhawk's Lost World with cavemen and megafauna. When he redrew the map for publication, the Sulhauts became what we see on the Darlene map & the random encounter tables reflect what was there in the original campaign. Thanks for all your great D&D contributions! Still loving your demihuman pantheons!
Watching your video now. But I sure wish you would have left up that one from the other day with your comments about wizards of the coast. You were spot on
@GreyhawkGrognard Hey Joe. I'm not, but something popped up several days ago on your regular youtube feed around 330 pm.est re: WOTC. I listened on my way home from work. But it was gone by the time I got home and was going to post a comment. I'm guessing it was an accident or system glitch if you meant for it to be for subscribers. :shrug;
Nice catch and extrapolation! The area could be like Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World", Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Land That Time Forgot", or Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Our gaming group has a world with several isolated continents or large islands, so they can all have widely and wildly different creatures and civilizations. Fun stuff. Stay safe from Pinkertons!
The TV series Land of the Lost was kind of a big deal when D&D was coming together. I certainly didn't want to miss an episode. Greyhawk also has the Fading Lands, which can be useful for explaining weird shadows(-fell) of the past.
A campaign where PCs start off as cavemen/cavewomen, and after 2-3 sessions they come into the civilized lands, learn to speak a few words in Common, and then each one must choose which class they'll be. "Groh be Magicky Man!" "Koum be Sneaky Man!"
Huh. Didn't have those books back in the day, just the maps, DMG, MM and FF. Would have been an interesting hook when I ran an expedition-campaign through the mountains and SoD to explore the ruins. Homebrew Sleestak race, anyone?
I like it better to say these Pleistocene animals migrated there from the far west in the centuries *after* the Twin Cataclysms -- maybe a couple hundred years after -- and found a small niche to inhabit (free from Baklunish & Suel hunters from ages past).
I thought there was a time aspect to one or both of the ‘Twin Cataclysms’; could it be just a small area that a time effect was magnified or didn’t end or something. Been quite a while so….. probably mis-remembering it.
I'm sure it's just for variety that they threw these in. If it was an intended thing, there'd be other mentions of it. However, it's cool you can go off a couple of entries in the random encounter tables and generate whole adventures. I noticed some articles in the early Dragon mags took two lines from the DM Guide and wrote three pages expanding on that bit of text. Fun and cool.
Someone reported that Gary mentioned he placed a "Lost World" area in the Salhaut mountains, but I'm still trying to track it down. Plus, if it was just for variety, I'd expect to see similar things elsewhere, but this seems to be the only place it's found.
The pleistocene inclusion in Greyhawk existed for two reasons as far as I could tell at the time... 1st and foremost was just to include monster stat blocks they had worked up but had no setting for them and didn't want to just put unused monsters into the upcoming MM. 2nd, it was the earliest foray into connecting settings in what we now recognize as a 'multiverse', but they eventually shifted to a planar system. If you keep digging through Greyhawk you will find the births of Dark Sun, Al Quaddim, and other settings.
A few weeks ago I started a 2024 campaign set in Greyhawk, which is a great opportunity to introduce my kids to my old favorite setting. Pulled all my old GH books out of storage, lovingly admired the Darlene map once again, the whole nine yards. I decided to start them off in the tail end of CY 581, running the 5e Saltmarsh port to get the ball rolling.
So of course, the curve balls started coming at me right away. My son wanted to to play a Goliath (a 5e giantkin species, basically) which is a bit of a corker to incorporate, so thinking fast I extemporized that there are small interconnected tribes in the mountains, particularly ramified across the Jotens / Crystalmists / Sulhaut / Barrier Peaks / Hellfurnaces complex. We decided he and his tribe resided in the Jotens but were basically wrecked due to the aggressions of the real giants upon Sterich and the Yeomanry.
Anyway, you've inspired me with this video to further elaborate that idea, swapping out the cave men line items for Goliath / Giantkin encounters and combine that with the pleistocene anachronism notion. Giantish mountain-folk hunting sheer upland valleys and crevasses for mammoths and cave bear and sabretooth tigers (oh my!) strikes my fancy.
Speaking of land that time forget... I saw a meme recently showing the Egyptians using dinosaurs to help build the pyramids, lifting and hauling the giant stone blocks, captioned "This should shut up those idiots who thought it was aliens!"
That's a good one!
This is a great suggestion. I love the whole "Professor Challenger" theme. This is why "The Isle of Dread" is my favorite adventure module to this day, even though (sigh) I've never actually got to play it OR run it.
As I recall, back when the Great Kingdom map was being based more closely on North America, there was an intention to put Pleistocene and other Lost World type encounters in the Pacific Northwest.
Someone needs to create a stat block for a Pinkerton and add it to the random encounter tables.
Cool find. I wouldn't be too surprised if Gary had a permanent portal through time and/or space there, slowly funneling out creatures, like Martian White Apes from greyhawk dungeon
Ooh, this is a GOOD idea.
Talk about a me-friendly video. D&D, lost worlds, the Valley of Gwangi. That's good stuff. I always found it interesting as a kid when I would see dinosaurs and dinosaur-esc creatures in the monster manuals. So much potential in that.
The Greyhawk hardcover on pages 98-99 in the geography section describes Tovag Baragu in the Dry Steppes, an odd artifact mile-wide circle of five concentric rings of white standing stones that sometimes (when the moons and planets are correct) distort vision and allow the viewer to see strange places and times, past and future, including "a verdant plain crowded with the peculiar mammalian life which may be found on occasion near the Sulhauts." It is said in DM section that "the most frequent full connection is to a Pleistocene setting."
True, but that came out many years after the Gold Box.
@@GreyhawkGrognard yes, but it tends toward the anomalous encounter table was indeed deliberate in the Gold Box.
I guess I didn't pay close enough attention to those charts. Back in the early 90's, shortly after Jurassic Park came out, my group really wanted to fight some raptors. As they were currently in G2, it didn't really lend itself well to the setting, but when they used the iron chain teleporter to get to G3, they messed up. This landed them in the middle of the Chult accessory I had recently purchase, renamed to something else to not bring Realms into the setting. They eventually made contact with an ancient and intelligent race of lizard men (Sleestacks for all intents and purposes) who opened a gateway in one of their sacred pylons and got the party back on track.
I'm running a campaign in that region and my players rolled the cavemen encounters more than once, and it's prompted very similar thoughts with me. I put a "valley of the mammoths" in the mountains with Pleistocene mammals, giant animals, and yes, dinosaurs.
This makes me think of like a folk horror Bone Tomahawk-type situation.
Oerth, to my knowledge, never had an Ice Age or Pleistocene period, so it would have to be a gate or teleporter to the Ice Ages of Earth. Oerth's distant past is completely different from ours.
Gary explained this in the forum Q&As he did. The original Greyhawk campaign used a blank U.S. map & the Sierra Nevada mountains were the Sulhauts. He used that area as Greyhawk's Lost World with cavemen and megafauna. When he redrew the map for publication, the Sulhauts became what we see on the Darlene map & the random encounter tables reflect what was there in the original campaign.
Thanks for all your great D&D contributions! Still loving your demihuman pantheons!
Now I want to make an expedition of adventurers and go to the anomaly!
Watching your video now. But I sure wish you would have left up that one from the other day with your comments about wizards of the coast. You were spot on
If you're a Patreon or channel member, I think you're referring to the early access video that will be dropping in two weeks.
@GreyhawkGrognard Hey Joe. I'm not, but something popped up several days ago on your regular youtube feed around 330 pm.est re: WOTC. I listened on my way home from work. But it was gone by the time I got home and was going to post a comment. I'm guessing it was an accident or system glitch if you meant for it to be for subscribers. :shrug;
Just when I needed a new video. Thank you for the knowledge
Nice catch and extrapolation! The area could be like Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World", Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Land That Time Forgot", or Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Our gaming group has a world with several isolated continents or large islands, so they can all have widely and wildly different creatures and civilizations. Fun stuff. Stay safe from Pinkertons!
Very interesting and thought provoking video
The Zanti Misfits, loved it loved it loved it from the original Outer Limits
Probably a cave going down to the Hollow Earth somewhere in those mountains.
The TV series Land of the Lost was kind of a big deal when D&D was coming together. I certainly didn't want to miss an episode. Greyhawk also has the Fading Lands, which can be useful for explaining weird shadows(-fell) of the past.
I like the music. 🎶 Don't go changing it 😊
I assumed they came through Tovag Baragu. Though I don't think that appeared until the Greyhawk Adventures hardback.
You might want to look up Nahanni Park/Valley of Headless Men in Canada.
Some interesting & useful folklore.
A campaign where PCs start off as cavemen/cavewomen, and after 2-3 sessions they come into the civilized lands, learn to speak a few words in Common, and then each one must choose which class they'll be.
"Groh be Magicky Man!"
"Koum be Sneaky Man!"
Huh. Didn't have those books back in the day, just the maps, DMG, MM and FF. Would have been an interesting hook when I ran an expedition-campaign through the mountains and SoD to explore the ruins. Homebrew Sleestak race, anyone?
The Valley of Gwangi
G 1969 ‧ Western/Fantasy ‧ 1h 36m
I could imagine they come from a gate or rift, caused by the Twin Cataclysms, that connects to another world, or Oerth's own past even.
I like it better to say these Pleistocene animals migrated there from the far west in the centuries *after* the Twin Cataclysms -- maybe a couple hundred years after -- and found a small niche to inhabit (free from Baklunish & Suel hunters from ages past).
Edgar Rice Buroughs did the Land that time forgot
I thought there was a time aspect to one or both of the ‘Twin Cataclysms’; could it be just a small area that a time effect was magnified or didn’t end or something. Been quite a while so….. probably mis-remembering it.
Land of the Lost
Curious, are you filming on a flip-phone? Or is UA-cam uploading your videos at super low-res?
If you watch it fast enough after it goes up, UA-cam hasn't quite finished doing it yet - it'll be low res for a bit.
I'm sure it's just for variety that they threw these in. If it was an intended thing, there'd be other mentions of it. However, it's cool you can go off a couple of entries in the random encounter tables and generate whole adventures. I noticed some articles in the early Dragon mags took two lines from the DM Guide and wrote three pages expanding on that bit of text. Fun and cool.
Someone reported that Gary mentioned he placed a "Lost World" area in the Salhaut mountains, but I'm still trying to track it down. Plus, if it was just for variety, I'd expect to see similar things elsewhere, but this seems to be the only place it's found.
The pleistocene inclusion in Greyhawk existed for two reasons as far as I could tell at the time... 1st and foremost was just to include monster stat blocks they had worked up but had no setting for them and didn't want to just put unused monsters into the upcoming MM. 2nd, it was the earliest foray into connecting settings in what we now recognize as a 'multiverse', but they eventually shifted to a planar system. If you keep digging through Greyhawk you will find the births of Dark Sun, Al Quaddim, and other settings.