These are all GREAT points. Every Greyhawk D&D game I've run, the question of "what date does the game take place in?" comes up. I typically stick with the same "year 576" since it's most faithful to Gary Gygax's creation and it's the one I was most familiar with.
I just started my newest AD&D 1E campaign, two weeks ago. Greyhawk has always been the only setting I played AD&D in. This is really a great channel. I’m going to feature it on my channel.
First to comment. Great video as always especially given the subject matter. So very informative and helpful. I will definitely be using everything you've mentioned in the video. Thank you so much for this. Stay safe and happy gaming.
The U series is also pretty good as a starting point. In fact, I'm porting that to my home setting for an upcoming campaign and swapping out the sahuagin for straight up deep ones.
I love the Sheldomar Valley, and an awful lot of the old-school modules were written in and around it, so it makes an ideal part of the world to set your campaign. I also really enjoy the U series, and believe it is a really great way to start out such a Sheldomar campaign!
Hello Lord Grognard and thank you for this video. I realize that the house library has all the stuff you mention except Ruins of Greyhawk. I am a lucky Game Master! I find your analysis relevant as to the documents to use for playing. I currently have two campaigns on Greyhawk. The fisrt one started with ToEE and will continue with Prince of Furilondy, Thrommel's gift, in Veluna (A sandbox of my creation consisting of managing a fiefdom in a border area of the Archduchy.). I must admit that if the villages of Hommlet and Nulb as well as the Moathouse are well described, I did not like the underground passages of the Temple at all and I redesigned them. (An Aboleth in the Water Temple harmed my players, for example). The other group was made up of game newbies and they started with the B2 module because it's an opportunity to do a lot of roleplay and the Caves of the Unknown are small dungeons. My campaign arc will be to lead the PCs to the events that will trigger the Greyhawk Wars. I would like to make them play the classics such as G1 to Q1 WGS1 to WGS3 to end with The Tomb of Horrors. I think there will be years of play there. Fingers crossed so that players never tire of this fabulous setting. Playful friendships, Mörkhdull from Belgium.
Watched a bunch of your videos last night and I really enjoy them! Been trying to convince my group to give 1e a shot (We're 5e players now. I started with 3rd edition) and I'll send them some of your stuff to help me convince them!
Great video, Groggy. I would absolutely recommend using T1 to start a Greyhawk campaign. That's what it was designed for. And unlike many of the original classic adventures that are ostensibly set in Greyhawk, they were written as tournament adventures and play as tournament games, T1 was written as an introduction to a campaign set in the World of Greyhawk, and all the seeds to grow a campaign are there.
that is what we did, and today they are trying tohelp hommlet develop. relocating "good" people from nulb, bringing in businesses, (baker, butcher, food stalls) building roads, bridges, and housing for new workers from the big cities they paid to relocate.
Chivalry & Sorcery? Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time! Solid advice all around. I would suggest starting in Greyhawk itself, and using Saga of Old City, plus the City box set, plus other fantasy city resources (anything Lankhmar) to cook up your own low-level adventures. Castle Zagyg, Yggsburgh, and the Dark Chateau are nice if you can find them. Or, since you modestly downplayed it, the Castle of the Mad Arch-Mage!
The new 5e is pretty good (the Beastiary funded on KS last week), but for Greyhawk, it would be hard not to dig out my copy of the Red Book (long ago fell apart and put into a binder) and Sourcebook 1.
@Stefani Sandoni Funny thing. When I got my copy of the folio from my parents' house after it sat there for 30 years I found notes for a campaign starting in the Wild Coast.
@@GreyhawkGrognard Oh hell, you're absolutely right. I had forgotten about that it's mentioned in that book. Anyway, thanks for the heads up and your latest video. Stay safe and happy gaming.
Can I just say that the Greyhawk Ruins maps are absolutely terrible. There's no grid and they're at weird angles that make trying to DM them a nightmare. I really like the writing, but the maps kill it.
Sorry Grognard, this may be a little long. I love Greyhawk it is a primary world setting. I started in Greyhawk as a player then became a DM. I have it with AD&D (both 1&2e), Palladium Fantasy, GURPS, and Gamma World. I am looking at my using or switching to Iron Falcon, Castles & Crusades or Lion & Dragon. I usually play in the Wild Coast and surrounding areas. I originally start my games around 576 CY because I initially started the Greyhawk Folio, then added the gold box setting and the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover book: now there around 586 CY. I have also purchased anything Greyhawk related for possible information. I usually start with the Village of Hommlet, the Keep on the borderlands (which I have set in the Gnarly Forest-Welkwood area or Hunter’s Lodge (my own creation near Narwell). I have used adventures from many different sources including published modules, Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, etc
Drive-Thru RPG/DM’s Guild has Print-on-Demand and PDF of the 1980 Folio. The entire set is in one book, so the map is cut up into 8 1/2 x 11 pages. The ‘83 Gold Box is only available as PDF, three different files (Guide, Glossography, and a huge but slightly-damaged PDF map). I have both. Your map with the Greyhawk City boxed set locations was awesome. I’m using the black and white copy; the later colored version is too cluttered for me.
I’ve heard positive reviews of N1 “Against the Cult of the Reptile God” and I own it, and I was thinking to run it as the first module I DM in Greyhawk. I like how it’s not such a big commitment as T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil. T1-4 was one of the modules I most wanted to play as a teenager (mainly due to the feelings invoked by the title and cover art), but these days in my mid-40s, I’m more intrigued by N1 than T1-4. (Actually, I own the Temple of Elemental Evil computer game and I intend to play that computer game before I DM the pen and paper module.)
N1 is a fun module, but the challenge is integrating it into the rest of the campaign. If you are planning to mostly create your own adventures, then no problem, but if you wanted to lean heavily on published modules, it's kind of out of the way from where anything else happens. Which means, once they complete N1, being in a small village in the middle of nowhere, how do you get them over to wherever you plan your next adventure to be? One bit of contrivance I never used, but did think up, is to have one of the party members be a distant relative of some noble at the court of Niole Dra, and when word filtered in about some odd goings on along the fringe of the dominion, not wanting to waste any valuable resources on something that was most likely just a minor nuisance, if anything at all, the courtier had the idea of sending out the PC and his friends to look into it so that the King wouldn't have to be bothered by such a trivial matter. That way, assuming the players wrap up the adventure successfully, they have reason to travel back to Niole Dra to make a full report, where their success will justify the court sending them out of additional adventures throughout the realm, possibly leading to the U1-3 series, maybe followed by the A1-4 series, etc. Keeps them in the same general region (Sheldomar Valley), building up prestige and influence (or notoriety and infamy, depending...) that can be parleyed into the name level benefits from building castles or churches or whatever a given class is expected to do. After beating the giants in G1-3, the fighters are given baronies on the west side of the kingdom to build their castles and ensure such encroachments never happen again, etc. It creates a smoothly integrated, logical progression for the players to not only advanced in levels, but also to advance socially and politically. Maybe one day I will run such a campaign. If you do so yourself, be sure to report to the world how it went, whether on a youtube post, a dragonsfoot post, or wherever, I imagine you'd find enough interested people to justify the effort :)
Nice video. I'm planning on using greyhawk for swords and wizardry and tossing a few modules like desert of desolation if I can so it's great to see I video on the setting
i started a greyhawk campaign in january and it's been a ton of fun. we started near orlane and now we're in the dim forest. my thought was to pick a module i wanted to run (reptile god) and see which direction they wanted to go from there. i'm gonna check out B1 for sure! i'd be curious to learn how you prep an area that your party is travelling toward. do you have any sort of process to develop a town / local area before they get there? thanks for the vids EDIT: also i thought it was worth mentioning that our campaign starts in 576 CE as well. i thought it would be cool to see the world before the greyhawk wars and maybe do a timeskip down the line
how has your campaign developed? we starteed a year ago with toee. we are still in the temple, but are developing hommlet. they are just now exploring the nearby towns. Nulb has wanted posters for them, lol and most of their time has been spent there or in the forest. They are mostly a good/lawful group
@@IamsTokiWartooth niceee we also played for about a year, unfortunately we had multiple month-long gaps between sessions, ended up having about 9 in total. my group was pretty evil/chaotic and they ended up getting bounties as well, but not long after they inadvertently saved a couple Knights of the Watch from a dangerous situation in the Dim Forest. we never made it to the cult of the reptile god lol but i made a different dungeon for them to work through inspired by the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. big conscious tree-dungeon who's insides were rotted from the magic being done inside. i also had a Satyr grant them safe passage through the woods to the dungeon if they gave him their blood, which some of them took up, others paid him in treasure they had found along the way - but they ended up killing him regardless 😂 i definitely enabled some of the chaos by giving them big decisions to make, and most of the time they couldn't agree on anything 😂😂 if they "messed up" or got in some deep trouble i'd usually try to give them an opportunity to redeem it, but nothing guaranteed. most of them were level 4-5 by the end of it. i also had a fortune teller give them readings with the deck of many things at the end of the first session, so they had some pretty silly character perks going into it. i made my own deck of many things by painting some playing cards so they could draw the cards themselves. but yeah i learned a lot, it was my first big DM role in a while. i had a bit of difficulty finding a good ending place since i had developed more than we played for, but it was great overall! good luck with your campaign, feel free to let me know how it goes moving forward. cheers!
@@illustrious-jaco I tried to respond, but my pc erased it/ we play every mon but only 2 hours and we get a lot of canceled weeks. we are all about 50yo, but my son who is 27 and has been playing since he was 3. His bard and our cleric were captured by the greater temple a few weeks back. they played new toons last week, my son a bugbear CN barbarian that was taking a wood elf prisoner to the jails. The wood elf was our clerics new guy, Fighter:archer He took us to the prisons after agreeing to join us but they were not there. we did not find the torture room. they might have been there. they both appear fine to not find their old toons.
Nicely done. I actually have been running a Greyhawk campaign for about a year now, and actually imported the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign "Coin of Power" over to it. I used the events in it to explain the fall of the Pomarj, with the wizard Daresh uniting the humanoid tribes to conquer it, but with her downfall chaos ensues, leading to where the Pomarj is "today." From there, the players have rolled into A1, and will then go on to S2, S4 / WG4, S3, S1, WG5, and maybe WG6. I've created an overall story arc where Iggwilv is seeking to release Tharizdun and the PCs are enlisted by the Circle of Eight to stop her. I've made Iggwilv the adoptive sister of Daresh, with the adoptive mother being...Baba Yaga. The players at one point will have to seek out the advice of Baba Yaga, for which I'll be using a Dragon Magazine adventure based on her. This will probably happen after S4 / WG4, once the players have discovered the overall plot. From there the players will seek out magic items rumored to have power to stop Tharizun. Some in a mysterious metal castle that's been revealed in the Barrier Peaks, another somewhere in a lost tomb rumored to be in the Vast Swamp, another in Maure Castle, and finally on the Isle of the Ape. I've recently had a thought to maybe "Split the Party." We have a large group of players -- seven. I also know of a few others who could join, but that would be too much. So my thought would be to split them into different game nights, much like happens at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, where the groups go off into different areas to ultimately try to complete the same goal. If so, one group may hear of a recent insurrection by some hill giants, down in Geoff...
I'm running a Pathfinder game (basically improved 3rd edition) and found out about Living Greyhawk online. Sadly, I wasn't able to find many of the corresponding adventures. The few I found weren't so beautiful as pdfs or publications, nor where they great storywise, but they had some pretty cool adventure ideas, which I decided to use just the parts I like from. They all fit into a certain regions on the map and might help DMs to flesh these out with adventure. Is there any place in the internet where more of those Living Greyhawk adventures would be available for Download? They don't look as if they were ever for sale, so downloading would be juristically fine I suppose. I'd appreciate your answer on this. Also, maybe make a video about just Living Greyhawk? Because I'd love to hear from you, what and how it was and what your thoughts on it are. Maybe you have more recommendation for people who are interested in this certain era in the greyhawk setting.
I'm currently running Against the Giants as a Greyhawk campaign. Was part of the Tales of the Yawning Portal games. I had the party get there via spell jammer (rather than going through one of the portals in the Yawning Portal, given that it's in a different crystal sphere). Rather than Drow, I'm having the BBEGs be Mindflayers who have hired Neogi pirates to sow discord on Greyhawk while they conduct a campaign of conquest across the stars. It made more sense to have the Neogi given that mental enslavement is kind of what they do. Previous to Against the Giants, the players found Welm during the series of Tales adventures. The sentient hammer comes from the Mightyhammer clan (a dwarf clan from the Crystalmist mountains), so it made perfect sense for them to try to return the hammer to its home and then discover giants who are attacking the clan (rather than humans) and then go to solve the problem and eventually unravel the influence of the aberrations upon the giants and the world of Greyhawk from their dens in the underdark.
Hey Grog, I want to get my friends into tabletop gaming and specifically with Greyhawk, but I really don't want to run 5e. I was thinking doing OSE+Advanced Fantasy but I know that's just B/X with a few AD&D aspects. As an inexperienced player, would it be difficult to convert some old AD&D modules into the OSE system?
Wonderful video! My campaign began in 590 CY with AD&D 2e rules, back in early 2000's and later moved to D&D 3e and finally 5e. Same group of players, we played a mix of homebrew adventures and the whole "Sunless Citadel" 3e series, now they are level 20-21. My home/family campaign began with Keep on the Borderlands (Yeomanry), moved to Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and now the players are in the Moathouse/ToEE. All in 5e rules. Do you think about doing a video about how to start a Greyhawk campaign from a Player's perspective? Which books and chapters are better to read about races, gods, items, etc.? Thanks!
You hit the nail on the head. I would use those resources and have used those resources. Last year I started a 2nd edition game for my friends that wanted to try the edition and took them through B2
The somewhat, but not really related purely, are the Saltmarsh adventures... I have used the Sinister Secret rather well, more than once, because the focus can change. But, yeah, Hommlet is so damned good :)
Morning! I grew up looking, never adventured using it, at the folio of Greyhawk, back in the very early 80s, and so want to start up a Greyhawk campaign now. I was thinking about buying the pdf of Greyhawk ( box set and 1980 campaign folio) and printing out into a book format, along with buying via DRIVETHRURPG, many of the basic and first print on demand adventures. Using all of these and starting with The Keep on the Borderland to begin my Greyhawk campaign. Also, buying the printed editions of D & D 1e DM Guide/Players/Monster books from DRIVETHRURPG. Any suggestions or comments? Is there a order of adventures that should be done first or anything else that might make the campaign run smooth? thanks
I'm all in favor of the reprints on DriveThru, as the originals can get a little pricey. If you can find a set of the original Darlene maps, you should probably splurge for them, since they're so beautiful and iconic. As for an order of adventures, there are any number of places to start a campaign. Village of Hommlet is my personal favorite (and leads into Temple of Elemental Evil), but I know a lot of people are fans of Secret of Bone Hill, and that leads you to L2 and L3. Honestly, once you get established with a pre-published module, I'd go into homebrew adventures or pure sandbox, using published material like City of Greyhawk and Greyhawk Ruins as a scaffold.
I'm a bit surprised there isn't more Greyhawk-specific material in Adventures Dark & Deep. Is reasonable to assume Adventures Dark & Deep assumptions are highly Greyhawk optimized given the designer? Edited to add: I'm looking forward to your Return review. All your old blogs (Blogspot era) about the Temple and possible alternatives to Queen made up a huge part of my longest-running campaign this century. I took your ideas into a non-Greyhawk setting and mashed in ideas for the two Descent novels by Jeff Long. I'm wondering if you'll wind up giving me ideas on my to mash Return with something else for another campaign. And oddly, given your comments about rules systems, the non-Greyhawk setting was Nentir Vale and the rules were 4e.
Obviously for legal reasons, there isn't anything overtly Greyhawk in Adventures Dark and Deep. However, I did intentionally skew very Gygaxian wherever I could when I wrote it... That said, I think Adventures Dark and Deep would work really, really well with Greyhawk, especially if you're a fan of the Gord novels. In the novels there are mountebanks, savants, mystics, and so forth, albeit perhaps not by those specific names.
Thought I would ask here. The World of Greyhawk Gazetteer is no longer offered on Drive thru rpg. Anyone know what happened? Glad I got my copy. The pdf is still in my library.
My new campaign will be set in 576, but it won't conflict with previous campaigns I've run in the same era. If I were to maintain continuity, it would be a few years later. The Wars as described won't happen in my campaign, but there are wars, of course.
I remember buying the OG Greyhawk back in the day. Our group split the modules and would DM their setting when it was their turn. It was a blast to split the workload as we all were high school students. We went by 1st edition AD&D rules. D&D fell apart for after 2nd edition came out as I felt TSR held new adventure modules for the 2nd edition and had planned obsolescence for 1st edition and we had sunk cost bias. We never got back together again.
I’m looking for information of greyhawk history lore during the time of 581CY. This is the year when a group of adventures where send by Mordenkaïnen on a quest to find dna of the members of the Circle of Eighth. They where slain by Halmadar the Cruel. Mordenkaïnen needs the dna to clone the dead members of this group, to prevent the Greyhawk war. I’d like more info about the different regions, city’s and villages. Or if that info isn’t available, some indication of how Fearûn/Sword coast fits in the Greyhawk map. If that’s even possible. I’d like the player put in that timeperiod on the quest that Mordenkaïnen sends the adventures on. That would be an amazing campaign. Thanks to anybody that can help me on the right path. 😃👍🏻
Thank you for this! I’ve been enjoying these. I just started DMing for the first time and I am running Ghosts of Saltmarsh in 5e. I’d love to hear you do a review of that module. Thanks!
@@GreyhawkGrognardsome people really think that back in those days, without internet and restrict access to phones, people would pubblish a setting without extensive home testing, friends feedback etc.
@@mikefett5989 Either the official Greyhawk Ruins (plus the later Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins) or my own Castle of the Mad Archmage. I know some people have taken levels from the one to add on to the other as well...
Ruleswise, I go with OD&D, incl. Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry, sometimes d6 for damage and hit dice, sometimes variable. And I do some houserules: - 3d6, in a row if the player likes to, but they don't have to. - All characters receive the dexterity bonus on AC to avoid TPK'ing to early, not only fighters. - Thieves receive 30 Points to divide among their percentiles if the player chooses so, listening goes up by table (my 2e players will revolt if they can't customize them...). - Same reason: Bonus Spells for every point beyond 14, 1 spell per level. Makes the party more versatile - and I avoid a peasant revolt... - Every 3rd level they can roll if one of their attributes goes up (meet or higher, beware, a natural 1 means the stat drops 1 point!) - this is borrowed from the german RPG The Dark Eye, where one can even make a development roll every level... They can do it, but don't have to. One of them got a 1 twice so he declined doing it... - Languages can be used to make up some background skills - if they like to... not a proficiency-system, just for the fluff, because the players like it that way... German players have been background obsessed for ages and I want them to have fun... If the players insist on Basic, 1e or 2e, I will also do this. I am not dogmatic about the rules... We even did a campaign with the weapon mastery rules from BECMI. Setting: before Greyhawk Wars, Folio, Gold Box, City of Greyhawk, Greyhawk Adventures (the looooove Pack Rats and Change Cats...) Starting Adventures: Depends - One of my standard beginnings has been in Rookroost, the first adventure of Fate of Istus, having them do some Hexcrawl on the way to Stoink, in Stoink rescuing some kidnapped children, another overland travelling to Rel Mord with some scooby-dooish Hextor-uncovering (it has ALWAY been scooby-dooish, I don't know why) Others include N-series, C-series or U-series. Or investigating Homlet... (Quak! *gulp*) - pretty standard... I also converted some classic adventures from The Dark Eye to D&D... And, strange coincidence, I started playing D&D with only the City of Greyhawk boxed set and Fate of Istus. The guy from our local fantasy store said almost the same like you did, start in the middle of it all. And they didn't have the Gold Box available... ;) My favorite NPCs of that era were Derider Fanshen and Turin Deathstalker (esp. because his demeanor to children) btw.
Ah, I forgot, I give the pcs maximum hit points, to avoid an early tpk. When they roll hp on the following levels they roll all the dice together, and they get at least 1 additional hp. Thac0 develops by table. No psionics. I never had anyone play a monk, but they can play druids, monks, paladins, assassins and thieves. We tried pure white box once, but it wasn't a success. That was to much retro ;) We also tried Swords&wizardry, also the both whitebox variants, single saving throw didn't work well. We liked blueholme, osric, ose, (advanced) lablord and gold&glory. We've always returned to Oe, AD&D or Becmi, but ose was very close... But my players have the pod 1e books, or we use printed and saddle stitched Oe copies and none of them wanted to purchase a retro clone. They have the free pdfs, but... The only ones we really considered are Iron Falcon and Basic Fantasy
@@GreyhawkGrognard I've been "converting" some of the first series of modules, some newer less known adventures, and some of my own stuff. The PC's are displaced SR characters transported to Oerth in a magical experiment gone awry. There's usually a SR critter ability that approximates any D&D monster's, so it's just some eyeballing and plugging in what fits. Honestly I put more work into freshening up the old adventures structure and pacing than I do the mechanics.
Hah oh man you killed me with that 4th edition line! I do have a question in regards to the maps of all three eras. I have the maps from the 3.0 gazetteer and the living Greyhawk but no longer possess those books. I am looking to run games for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E and I am curious to know how off the maps for the 3.0 are from the gold box era and from the ashes era?
It's really hard to say because there are several different maps. For instance, there were 4 maps of the Flanaess published in Dungeon magazine that sort of stretch the continent horizontally, because of the size of the paper they were working with. And if you're looking at the more small-scale maps, the situation gets worse because the details don't really line up. So there's no single "source of truth" set of maps. I'd say go with what you have; it's not like anyone is going to really be aware if a city is shoved over a couple of hexes from a map that came earlier.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I have the one from the 3.0 Gazetteer booklet and the one from the living Greyhawk book. I had a cursory look and the geographical locations seem to be spot on. The only concern I have is whether or not the city/town locations were around in the older editions. But as you just said no one really is going to be aware of location errors unless they are big into the setting. If a place didn't exist in the gold box era I can adjust the map if need be. I was just curious whether or not there were huge differences in the maps. Thank you!
I was still running 1e through the entire run of 2e. I think my campaign ended right before the first Lord of the Rings movie came out. I could not stand the 3e meta-building suggestions in the magazines. You plotted out your entire multi-class career at first level, which carries over to 5e. Ugh.
greyhawk is one of my two biggest contenders as a setting when i get an opportunity to dm a game ☺️ but for now i am happy to play at a table with a great gm and friends. maybe one day its my turn.
Thanks for this video, great timing. I recently purchased the 1st addition greyhawk box set. To be honest I am having a bit of a hard time reading the included books. The print is fine but the content is a little dry for my liking so struggling to keep myself engaged . Your video is great explaining the history and suggested starting points. I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed with the history. Thanks for your advice
You just about lost me the moment you were so dismissive of 4E. I ran my 4E Campaign for 8 years before lockdown closed us down. I took that time to prepare my 5E Campaign during the long enforced home time and I use many rules I gathered from 4E 1HP minions for example so my players can feel like epic bad-asses when faced by a wave of goblins that can number way more then a dozen. I appreciate that many folks did not like 4E but I also know that many also never gave that edition enough of a chance to let it wow their players.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I am glad you don't suppress your opinion just as I did not, as I had previously said I appreciate that many did not like 4E and you are one of those, not everyone will like everything :). I did enjoy your video overall though, it just that I am a proponent for 4E and whilst I can accept that there are flaws in it, as in most editions, IMHO we should not be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have always liked Greyhawk myself which was why I came to watch your video having begun my D&D and TTRPG obsession waaay back in 1976 actually before I bought my white box D&D set my very first purchase was TSR's Metamorphosis Alpha as it was cheaper and more colourful. D&D followed a couple of paydays later. Yup I am very much of a certain age. I keep hoping that WotC bring out a Greyhawk Worldbook, as they have with FR, Eberron, and the upcoming Spelljammer and DragonLance books, as I want to have the opportunity to link my Homebrew world to Oerth. The overall conceit of my world is that close to 1000 years past a world spanning Magocracy destroyed itself by over experimenting with Portals creating all sorts of random and unstable rifts that allow for occasional one way travel to/from other worlds (this helps to justify my ever growing collection of third party Kickstarter campaign world books).
@@eponatwospirithorse4980 it is so sad that 4e mixed the good with too much bad and then for business reasons (no VTT mostly) they dial back to an "old school" type of game. The boardgame world kept evolving around the german revolution but DnD got stuck behind, IMHO cause of 4e failing. Now there are a lot of rpgs around the world that have embraced the boardgame revolution, DnD now is an "hybrid" of old school style and modern dogmas, which is not a bad thing per-se, but I do fear It can fail in keeping up. Remember that this game is still number1 only for reasons that ARE NOT related to the game experience or rules (Covid, Streaming, Critical Role, Baldurs Gate 3...)
Why not start a Greyhawk campaign using START PLAYING? You can charge a fee to play or run for free. I am sure you will have a packed table and bring others to the wonderful world we call Greyhawk.
I'm interested in starting a Grayhawk campaign I've read a lot about it but I don't have any friends who play Grayhawk how would I start. also does a campaign have to take place in a dungeon or can it take place all above ground.
I enjoy your videos but I'm starting to really hate the ragtime music intro. Not that the late 19th to early 20th century piece of music is bad, but it doesn't reflect Greyhawk (maybe Gangbusters) and I don't think it fits you/your channel. Maybe something that sounds like a throwback to the sword & sorcery fantasy music of the late 70s to 80s?
Every once in a while there's some back-and-forth with Bards of Greyhawk to do some intro music for the channel. If that ever happens, I will happily replace the ragtime intro. :-)
@@GreyhawkGrognard Heh...Never heard of the Bards of Greyhawk. After checking a few of their vids out...hrm. Not to throw shade, but can't say I care for their vocal talent. Watching a few of your videos in a row I think is what put me off of Ragtime. Makes me think of silent movies and old farts wearing boaters. There has to be something in the public domain (along the lines of 1978s Lord of the Rings or even something along the lines of Sword & Sorcery movie?) Anyway, one of the best starts I used for a campaign was Hommlet & the Moat House. But I made Lareth a cleric of the EEG with ties all the way to the Wildcoast (and minor connection within the temple) to Edralve (also made EEG connected as cleaned up a bit of the plot with House Eilservs). Killing Lareth doesn't get an assassin after the PCs but instead draws the attention of Edralve who decides to have them kidnapped for the crime instead (either to use or to sacrifice). Basically the River Pirates are easy to connect to slavers and it is pretty easy to curb stomp the party after they arrive in Nulb and eventually literally ship them down the river (via Nyr Dyv) to the Wild Coast. A few plot other modifications is making the first drop off as slaves into the Darkshelf Quarry (relocated on wild coast) where Stalmin KIim gets involved. Basically at least 3 factions (EEG/Eilserves, Klim, and Scarlet Brotherhood) and a dark horse (Theg Narlot) use the PCs as catspaws as one another. Got rid of 'slavers meeting in the sewers' thing and pretty made that an underground backdoor into the Slaver Palace/Temple on the slopes of the mountain overlooking the city. PCs have a very tough fight with the slavers (with deck stacked against them to capture them, just not as blatant as the original). Stripped, interrogated, and eventually thrown down a ceremonial 'bottomless pit'. Basically one of the Slavers makes sure they survive the fall and the area is a ruin of an old flan druidic circle set up to contain the Tarrasque (that the PCs don't see other than as a misshapen colossal statue/lump due to the accumulation of minerals). Basically in the course of escaping they damage the menhirs enough to loosen the stasis hold on the Tarrasque which becomes a part of the volcano finale (as well as initiates that). My PCs had a hate on EEG at that point so they went back to Nulb after that to follow up on the breadcrumbs I left them with the slavers (and from the Temple to the Giants etc). But one of the best open ended sandbox campaigns I ran was through the Saltmarsh area. The town is detailed in 3.5's DMG 2 (as well it gets an adventure treatment in 5e as well). Some of the adventures need a bit of tweaking to suit some groups but the local area has plenty of adventure opportunities no matter the era. And a surprising number of Dungeon magazine adventures are easy to slide right in there. Landlocked towns are a lot harder to do that with. As far as using Greyhawk Ruins or the City. From the Ashes adds a bit to the region but I've noticed that with a lot of different groups Megadungeon fatigue hits about twelve or so sessions in. Even with groups that like breaking down the doors, kicking the monsters in the junk, and taking their stuff session after session tend to get bored with it even threading plots into the dungeon environs (even the Temple can get tough in this regard). Hardby is another decent location imo but moreso just before or after the Wars.
These are all GREAT points. Every Greyhawk D&D game I've run, the question of "what date does the game take place in?" comes up. I typically stick with the same "year 576" since it's most faithful to Gary Gygax's creation and it's the one I was most familiar with.
i was just explaining this to our group today: that we are in 576, and much they are finding happens in the next 25 years
but I will use anna's maps
Perfect timing, I'm starting an AD&D 2e game this weekend!
I just started my newest AD&D 1E campaign, two weeks ago. Greyhawk has always been the only setting I played AD&D in.
This is really a great channel. I’m going to feature it on my channel.
Thanks so much!
@@GreyhawkGrognard I just picked up the original Adventure Begins w/ all maps from EBay. Thanks for the heads up.
@@DM_Bluddworth Excellent! Hope you find it useful.
I just move the keep on the borderlands from the yeomanry to the duchy of urnst towards its border with greyhawk for my campaign
First to comment. Great video as always especially given the subject matter. So very informative and helpful. I will definitely be using everything you've mentioned in the video. Thank you so much for this. Stay safe and happy gaming.
Thank you.
You are doing Pelor's work my friend.
The U series is also pretty good as a starting point. In fact, I'm porting that to my home setting for an upcoming campaign and swapping out the sahuagin for straight up deep ones.
I love the Sheldomar Valley, and an awful lot of the old-school modules were written in and around it, so it makes an ideal part of the world to set your campaign. I also really enjoy the U series, and believe it is a really great way to start out such a Sheldomar campaign!
Hello Lord Grognard and thank you for this video.
I realize that the house library has all the stuff you mention except Ruins of Greyhawk.
I am a lucky Game Master!
I find your analysis relevant as to the documents to use for playing.
I currently have two campaigns on Greyhawk. The fisrt one started with ToEE and will continue with Prince of Furilondy, Thrommel's gift, in Veluna (A sandbox of my creation consisting of managing a fiefdom in a border area of the Archduchy.).
I must admit that if the villages of Hommlet and Nulb as well as the Moathouse are well described, I did not like the underground passages of the Temple at all and I redesigned them. (An Aboleth in the Water Temple harmed my players, for example).
The other group was made up of game newbies and they started with the B2 module because it's an opportunity to do a lot of roleplay and the Caves of the Unknown are small dungeons.
My campaign arc will be to lead the PCs to the events that will trigger the Greyhawk Wars.
I would like to make them play the classics such as G1 to Q1 WGS1 to WGS3 to end with The Tomb of Horrors.
I think there will be years of play there.
Fingers crossed so that players never tire of this fabulous setting.
Playful friendships,
Mörkhdull from Belgium.
Where can one get a Greyhawk Grognard t-shirt?
That's the only one, although you're not the first person to ask. I'll have to think about it...
Watched a bunch of your videos last night and I really enjoy them! Been trying to convince my group to give 1e a shot (We're 5e players now. I started with 3rd edition) and I'll send them some of your stuff to help me convince them!
Great video, Groggy. I would absolutely recommend using T1 to start a Greyhawk campaign. That's what it was designed for. And unlike many of the original classic adventures that are ostensibly set in Greyhawk, they were written as tournament adventures and play as tournament games, T1 was written as an introduction to a campaign set in the World of Greyhawk, and all the seeds to grow a campaign are there.
that is what we did, and today they are trying tohelp hommlet develop. relocating "good" people from nulb, bringing in businesses, (baker, butcher, food stalls) building roads, bridges, and housing for new workers from the big cities they paid to relocate.
Chivalry & Sorcery? Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time!
Solid advice all around. I would suggest starting in Greyhawk itself, and using Saga of Old City, plus the City box set, plus other fantasy city resources (anything Lankhmar) to cook up your own low-level adventures. Castle Zagyg, Yggsburgh, and the Dark Chateau are nice if you can find them. Or, since you modestly downplayed it, the Castle of the Mad Arch-Mage!
The new 5e is pretty good (the Beastiary funded on KS last week), but for Greyhawk, it would be hard not to dig out my copy of the Red Book (long ago fell apart and put into a binder) and Sourcebook 1.
@Stefani Sandoni Funny thing. When I got my copy of the folio from my parents' house after it sat there for 30 years I found notes for a campaign starting in the Wild Coast.
Not to be a prude but the "City of GreyHawk" boxed set is set in 581-582 C.Y.
Whoops! My bad. I was thinking of the later mentions about refugees from the Shield Lands and so on.
@@GreyhawkGrognard No biggie. Are you thinking of "The Mark lands" Source book possibly?
No, I was thinking of the Campaign Book in the From the Ashes boxed set.
@@GreyhawkGrognard Oh hell, you're absolutely right. I had forgotten about that it's mentioned in that book. Anyway, thanks for the heads up and your latest video. Stay safe and happy gaming.
Can I just say that the Greyhawk Ruins maps are absolutely terrible. There's no grid and they're at weird angles that make trying to DM them a nightmare. I really like the writing, but the maps kill it.
Sorry Grognard, this may be a little long. I love Greyhawk it is a primary world setting. I started in Greyhawk as a player then became a DM. I have it with AD&D (both 1&2e), Palladium Fantasy, GURPS, and Gamma World. I am looking at my using or switching to Iron Falcon, Castles & Crusades or Lion & Dragon. I usually play in the Wild Coast and surrounding areas.
I originally start my games around 576 CY because I initially started the Greyhawk Folio, then added the gold box setting and the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover book: now there around 586 CY. I have also purchased anything Greyhawk related for possible information. I usually start with the Village of Hommlet, the Keep on the borderlands (which I have set in the Gnarly Forest-Welkwood area or Hunter’s Lodge (my own creation near Narwell).
I have used adventures from many different sources including published modules, Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, etc
Drive-Thru RPG/DM’s Guild has Print-on-Demand and PDF of the 1980 Folio. The entire set is in one book, so the map is cut up into 8 1/2 x 11 pages. The ‘83 Gold Box is only available as PDF, three different files (Guide, Glossography, and a huge but slightly-damaged PDF map). I have both. Your map with the Greyhawk City boxed set locations was awesome. I’m using the black and white copy; the later colored version is too cluttered for me.
I’ve heard positive reviews of N1 “Against the Cult of the Reptile God” and I own it, and I was thinking to run it as the first module I DM in Greyhawk. I like how it’s not such a big commitment as T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil.
T1-4 was one of the modules I most wanted to play as a teenager (mainly due to the feelings invoked by the title and cover art), but these days in my mid-40s, I’m more intrigued by N1 than T1-4.
(Actually, I own the Temple of Elemental Evil computer game and I intend to play that computer game before I DM the pen and paper module.)
N1 is a fun module, but the challenge is integrating it into the rest of the campaign. If you are planning to mostly create your own adventures, then no problem, but if you wanted to lean heavily on published modules, it's kind of out of the way from where anything else happens. Which means, once they complete N1, being in a small village in the middle of nowhere, how do you get them over to wherever you plan your next adventure to be?
One bit of contrivance I never used, but did think up, is to have one of the party members be a distant relative of some noble at the court of Niole Dra, and when word filtered in about some odd goings on along the fringe of the dominion, not wanting to waste any valuable resources on something that was most likely just a minor nuisance, if anything at all, the courtier had the idea of sending out the PC and his friends to look into it so that the King wouldn't have to be bothered by such a trivial matter. That way, assuming the players wrap up the adventure successfully, they have reason to travel back to Niole Dra to make a full report, where their success will justify the court sending them out of additional adventures throughout the realm, possibly leading to the U1-3 series, maybe followed by the A1-4 series, etc.
Keeps them in the same general region (Sheldomar Valley), building up prestige and influence (or notoriety and infamy, depending...) that can be parleyed into the name level benefits from building castles or churches or whatever a given class is expected to do. After beating the giants in G1-3, the fighters are given baronies on the west side of the kingdom to build their castles and ensure such encroachments never happen again, etc. It creates a smoothly integrated, logical progression for the players to not only advanced in levels, but also to advance socially and politically.
Maybe one day I will run such a campaign. If you do so yourself, be sure to report to the world how it went, whether on a youtube post, a dragonsfoot post, or wherever, I imagine you'd find enough interested people to justify the effort :)
I use C&C with Greyhawk. Straight up. No significant problems. I use C&C monsters as they have pretty much everything 1st Ed had.
Do any of these resources cover the city of Highport hope if not you do a video on the history of that area.
Nice video. I'm planning on using greyhawk for swords and wizardry and tossing a few modules like desert of desolation if I can so it's great to see I video on the setting
i started a greyhawk campaign in january and it's been a ton of fun. we started near orlane and now we're in the dim forest. my thought was to pick a module i wanted to run (reptile god) and see which direction they wanted to go from there. i'm gonna check out B1 for sure! i'd be curious to learn how you prep an area that your party is travelling toward. do you have any sort of process to develop a town / local area before they get there? thanks for the vids
EDIT: also i thought it was worth mentioning that our campaign starts in 576 CE as well. i thought it would be cool to see the world before the greyhawk wars and maybe do a timeskip down the line
how has your campaign developed?
we starteed a year ago with toee.
we are still in the temple, but are developing hommlet.
they are just now exploring the nearby towns.
Nulb has wanted posters for them, lol
and most of their time has been spent there or in the forest.
They are mostly a good/lawful group
@@IamsTokiWartooth niceee we also played for about a year, unfortunately we had multiple month-long gaps between sessions, ended up having about 9 in total. my group was pretty evil/chaotic and they ended up getting bounties as well, but not long after they inadvertently saved a couple Knights of the Watch from a dangerous situation in the Dim Forest. we never made it to the cult of the reptile god lol but i made a different dungeon for them to work through inspired by the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. big conscious tree-dungeon who's insides were rotted from the magic being done inside.
i also had a Satyr grant them safe passage through the woods to the dungeon if they gave him their blood, which some of them took up, others paid him in treasure they had found along the way - but they ended up killing him regardless 😂 i definitely enabled some of the chaos by giving them big decisions to make, and most of the time they couldn't agree on anything 😂😂 if they "messed up" or got in some deep trouble i'd usually try to give them an opportunity to redeem it, but nothing guaranteed. most of them were level 4-5 by the end of it.
i also had a fortune teller give them readings with the deck of many things at the end of the first session, so they had some pretty silly character perks going into it. i made my own deck of many things by painting some playing cards so they could draw the cards themselves. but yeah i learned a lot, it was my first big DM role in a while. i had a bit of difficulty finding a good ending place since i had developed more than we played for, but it was great overall! good luck with your campaign, feel free to let me know how it goes moving forward. cheers!
@@illustrious-jaco I tried to respond, but my pc erased it/
we play every mon but only 2 hours and we get a lot of canceled weeks.
we are all about 50yo, but my son who is 27 and has been playing since he was 3. His bard and our cleric were captured by the greater temple a few weeks back.
they played new toons last week, my son a bugbear CN barbarian that was taking a wood elf prisoner to the jails.
The wood elf was our clerics new guy, Fighter:archer
He took us to the prisons after agreeing to join us but they were not there. we did not find the torture room. they might have been there.
they both appear fine to not find their old toons.
Nicely done.
I actually have been running a Greyhawk campaign for about a year now, and actually imported the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign "Coin of Power" over to it. I used the events in it to explain the fall of the Pomarj, with the wizard Daresh uniting the humanoid tribes to conquer it, but with her downfall chaos ensues, leading to where the Pomarj is "today." From there, the players have rolled into A1, and will then go on to S2, S4 / WG4, S3, S1, WG5, and maybe WG6. I've created an overall story arc where Iggwilv is seeking to release Tharizdun and the PCs are enlisted by the Circle of Eight to stop her. I've made Iggwilv the adoptive sister of Daresh, with the adoptive mother being...Baba Yaga. The players at one point will have to seek out the advice of Baba Yaga, for which I'll be using a Dragon Magazine adventure based on her. This will probably happen after S4 / WG4, once the players have discovered the overall plot. From there the players will seek out magic items rumored to have power to stop Tharizun. Some in a mysterious metal castle that's been revealed in the Barrier Peaks, another somewhere in a lost tomb rumored to be in the Vast Swamp, another in Maure Castle, and finally on the Isle of the Ape.
I've recently had a thought to maybe "Split the Party." We have a large group of players -- seven. I also know of a few others who could join, but that would be too much. So my thought would be to split them into different game nights, much like happens at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, where the groups go off into different areas to ultimately try to complete the same goal. If so, one group may hear of a recent insurrection by some hill giants, down in Geoff...
I'm running a Pathfinder game (basically improved 3rd edition) and found out about Living Greyhawk online. Sadly, I wasn't able to find many of the corresponding adventures. The few I found weren't so beautiful as pdfs or publications, nor where they great storywise, but they had some pretty cool adventure ideas, which I decided to use just the parts I like from. They all fit into a certain regions on the map and might help DMs to flesh these out with adventure. Is there any place in the internet where more of those Living Greyhawk adventures would be available for Download? They don't look as if they were ever for sale, so downloading would be juristically fine I suppose. I'd appreciate your answer on this. Also, maybe make a video about just Living Greyhawk? Because I'd love to hear from you, what and how it was and what your thoughts on it are. Maybe you have more recommendation for people who are interested in this certain era in the greyhawk setting.
I'm currently running Against the Giants as a Greyhawk campaign. Was part of the Tales of the Yawning Portal games. I had the party get there via spell jammer (rather than going through one of the portals in the Yawning Portal, given that it's in a different crystal sphere). Rather than Drow, I'm having the BBEGs be Mindflayers who have hired Neogi pirates to sow discord on Greyhawk while they conduct a campaign of conquest across the stars. It made more sense to have the Neogi given that mental enslavement is kind of what they do. Previous to Against the Giants, the players found Welm during the series of Tales adventures. The sentient hammer comes from the Mightyhammer clan (a dwarf clan from the Crystalmist mountains), so it made perfect sense for them to try to return the hammer to its home and then discover giants who are attacking the clan (rather than humans) and then go to solve the problem and eventually unravel the influence of the aberrations upon the giants and the world of Greyhawk from their dens in the underdark.
Back to Greyhawk for the first time in many years and using Mythras to run it. Thank you for the loving curation of this world.
Hey Grog, I want to get my friends into tabletop gaming and specifically with Greyhawk, but I really don't want to run 5e. I was thinking doing OSE+Advanced Fantasy but I know that's just B/X with a few AD&D aspects. As an inexperienced player, would it be difficult to convert some old AD&D modules into the OSE system?
Honestly, I'm not all that familiar with OSE, but most old-school games are pretty interchangeable with one another in terms of adventures.
Wonderful video! My campaign began in 590 CY with AD&D 2e rules, back in early 2000's and later moved to D&D 3e and finally 5e. Same group of players, we played a mix of homebrew adventures and the whole "Sunless Citadel" 3e series, now they are level 20-21. My home/family campaign began with Keep on the Borderlands (Yeomanry), moved to Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and now the players are in the Moathouse/ToEE. All in 5e rules. Do you think about doing a video about how to start a Greyhawk campaign from a Player's perspective? Which books and chapters are better to read about races, gods, items, etc.? Thanks!
this is wonderful
what year is it currently in your world?
Thank you so much, this was exactly the information I was looking for!
You hit the nail on the head. I would use those resources and have used those resources. Last year I started a 2nd edition game for my friends that wanted to try the edition and took them through B2
The somewhat, but not really related purely, are the Saltmarsh adventures... I have used the Sinister Secret rather well, more than once, because the focus can change. But, yeah, Hommlet is so damned good :)
Modules B1 & B2 primarily belong to the D&D BECMI world of Mystara... The best D&D world ever.
Other than Greyhawk of course. ;-)
Morning! I grew up looking, never adventured using it, at the folio of Greyhawk, back in the very early 80s, and so want to start up a Greyhawk campaign now. I was thinking about buying the pdf of Greyhawk ( box set and 1980 campaign folio) and printing out into a book format, along with buying via DRIVETHRURPG, many of the basic and first print on demand adventures. Using all of these and starting with The Keep on the Borderland to begin my Greyhawk campaign. Also, buying the printed editions of D & D 1e DM Guide/Players/Monster books from DRIVETHRURPG. Any suggestions or comments? Is there a order of adventures that should be done first or anything else that might make the campaign run smooth? thanks
I'm all in favor of the reprints on DriveThru, as the originals can get a little pricey. If you can find a set of the original Darlene maps, you should probably splurge for them, since they're so beautiful and iconic.
As for an order of adventures, there are any number of places to start a campaign. Village of Hommlet is my personal favorite (and leads into Temple of Elemental Evil), but I know a lot of people are fans of Secret of Bone Hill, and that leads you to L2 and L3. Honestly, once you get established with a pre-published module, I'd go into homebrew adventures or pure sandbox, using published material like City of Greyhawk and Greyhawk Ruins as a scaffold.
For anyone who's curious, I believe the only Greyhawk product for 4e was a conversion of the Village of Hommlet
According to RPG.net, there were also 4E versions of Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Tomb of Horrors. But yeah, it was meager.
@@GreyhawkGrognard At least there was more than I thought, if just barely...
Well done G.G!!
I'm a bit surprised there isn't more Greyhawk-specific material in Adventures Dark & Deep. Is reasonable to assume Adventures Dark & Deep assumptions are highly Greyhawk optimized given the designer?
Edited to add: I'm looking forward to your Return review. All your old blogs (Blogspot era) about the Temple and possible alternatives to Queen made up a huge part of my longest-running campaign this century. I took your ideas into a non-Greyhawk setting and mashed in ideas for the two Descent novels by Jeff Long. I'm wondering if you'll wind up giving me ideas on my to mash Return with something else for another campaign.
And oddly, given your comments about rules systems, the non-Greyhawk setting was Nentir Vale and the rules were 4e.
Obviously for legal reasons, there isn't anything overtly Greyhawk in Adventures Dark and Deep. However, I did intentionally skew very Gygaxian wherever I could when I wrote it...
That said, I think Adventures Dark and Deep would work really, really well with Greyhawk, especially if you're a fan of the Gord novels. In the novels there are mountebanks, savants, mystics, and so forth, albeit perhaps not by those specific names.
I'm running 3.5 for my family and I've decided to run it in Greyhawk. We started with the Sunless Citidal and we are gonna flesh out what you do next.
I've run multiple Greyhawk campaigns in Pathfinder 2E. It works really well. There is definitely some adaptation, but it's not terrible.
Great shirt.
Thought I would ask here. The World of Greyhawk Gazetteer is no longer offered on Drive thru rpg. Anyone know what happened? Glad I got my copy. The pdf is still in my library.
Which one are you looking for? I see the Gold Box, the 3E D&D Gazetteer, and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.
@@GreyhawkGrognard The 1980 "The World of Greyhawk Gazetteer".
My new campaign will be set in 576, but it won't conflict with previous campaigns I've run in the same era. If I were to maintain continuity, it would be a few years later. The Wars as described won't happen in my campaign, but there are wars, of course.
I remember buying the OG Greyhawk back in the day. Our group split the modules and would DM their setting when it was their turn. It was a blast to split the workload as we all were high school students. We went by 1st edition AD&D rules. D&D fell apart for after 2nd edition came out as I felt TSR held new adventure modules for the 2nd edition and had planned obsolescence for 1st edition and we had sunk cost bias. We never got back together again.
I would love to run TOEE but I want to play it first before run it as DM ..
The keep in the borderlands is in the west of Yeomanry right?
Goodman Games did a 5e conversion of ToEE which also includes the complete first edition module. Well worth the money.
I’m looking for information of greyhawk history lore during the time of 581CY. This is the year when a group of adventures where send by Mordenkaïnen on a quest to find dna of the members of the Circle of Eighth. They where slain by Halmadar the Cruel. Mordenkaïnen needs the dna to clone the dead members of this group, to prevent the Greyhawk war. I’d like more info about the different regions, city’s and villages. Or if that info isn’t available, some indication of how Fearûn/Sword coast fits in the Greyhawk map. If that’s even possible. I’d like the player put in that timeperiod on the quest that Mordenkaïnen sends the adventures on. That would be an amazing campaign. Thanks to anybody that can help me on the right path. 😃👍🏻
Started my own Crystal Sphere setting for AD&D 2e that has a binary solar system and four plants.
Thank you for this! I’ve been enjoying these. I just started DMing for the first time and I am running Ghosts of Saltmarsh in 5e. I’d love to hear you do a review of that module. Thanks!
GREYHAWK was first an OD&D supplement published in 1975.
The supplement was named after Gygax's home campaign, which started several years earlier.
@@GreyhawkGrognardsome people really think that back in those days, without internet and restrict access to phones, people would pubblish a setting without extensive home testing, friends feedback etc.
Two supplements I've always loved are the Scarlet Brotherhood and Ivid the Undying.
Gamma World would work. Just use the conversion data from the AD&D DMG 1st edition
Starting a greyhawk game using the GURPS system.
What was the name of the dungeon Gary released that we should find if we can?
Castle Zagyg. Good luck finding it - the boxed set goes for big bucks nowadays.
Thank you! If i can't find or afford that what's second best recommendation?
@@mikefett5989 Either the official Greyhawk Ruins (plus the later Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins) or my own Castle of the Mad Archmage. I know some people have taken levels from the one to add on to the other as well...
an actual play of that OGRE game would be very nice!
Ruleswise, I go with OD&D, incl. Greyhawk, Blackmoor and Eldritch Wizardry, sometimes d6 for damage and hit dice, sometimes variable. And I do some houserules:
- 3d6, in a row if the player likes to, but they don't have to.
- All characters receive the dexterity bonus on AC to avoid TPK'ing to early, not only fighters.
- Thieves receive 30 Points to divide among their percentiles if the player chooses so, listening goes up by table (my 2e players will revolt if they can't customize them...).
- Same reason: Bonus Spells for every point beyond 14, 1 spell per level. Makes the party more versatile - and I avoid a peasant revolt...
- Every 3rd level they can roll if one of their attributes goes up (meet or higher, beware, a natural 1 means the stat drops 1 point!) - this is borrowed from the german RPG The Dark Eye, where one can even make a development roll every level... They can do it, but don't have to. One of them got a 1 twice so he declined doing it...
- Languages can be used to make up some background skills - if they like to... not a proficiency-system, just for the fluff, because the players like it that way... German players have been background obsessed for ages and I want them to have fun...
If the players insist on Basic, 1e or 2e, I will also do this. I am not dogmatic about the rules... We even did a campaign with the weapon mastery rules from BECMI.
Setting: before Greyhawk Wars, Folio, Gold Box, City of Greyhawk, Greyhawk Adventures (the looooove Pack Rats and Change Cats...)
Starting Adventures: Depends - One of my standard beginnings has been in Rookroost, the first adventure of Fate of Istus, having them do some Hexcrawl on the way to Stoink, in Stoink rescuing some kidnapped children, another overland travelling to Rel Mord with some scooby-dooish Hextor-uncovering (it has ALWAY been scooby-dooish, I don't know why)
Others include N-series, C-series or U-series. Or investigating Homlet... (Quak! *gulp*) - pretty standard... I also converted some classic adventures from The Dark Eye to D&D...
And, strange coincidence, I started playing D&D with only the City of Greyhawk boxed set and Fate of Istus. The guy from our local fantasy store said almost the same like you did, start in the middle of it all. And they didn't have the Gold Box available... ;) My favorite NPCs of that era were Derider Fanshen and Turin Deathstalker (esp. because his demeanor to children) btw.
Ah, I forgot, I give the pcs maximum hit points, to avoid an early tpk. When they roll hp on the following levels they roll all the dice together, and they get at least 1 additional hp. Thac0 develops by table. No psionics. I never had anyone play a monk, but they can play druids, monks, paladins, assassins and thieves. We tried pure white box once, but it wasn't a success. That was to much retro ;)
We also tried Swords&wizardry, also the both whitebox variants, single saving throw didn't work well. We liked blueholme, osric, ose, (advanced) lablord and gold&glory. We've always returned to Oe, AD&D or Becmi, but ose was very close... But my players have the pod 1e books, or we use printed and saddle stitched Oe copies and none of them wanted to purchase a retro clone. They have the free pdfs, but... The only ones we really considered are Iron Falcon and Basic Fantasy
You mentioned a more filled in City of Greyhawk map. Source? What map is it?
Mike Schley did a fantastic one that you can find on his website. I also have a free download on my blog, if you search.
Are there VTT usable maps of WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins available anywhere?
I don't use VTT myself, but I've never heard of such being available. Anyone else know one way or the other?
I'm running a Greyhawk game using modified Shadowrun rules, it's been a blast so far!
That's a new one. I'd love to hear more.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I've been "converting" some of the first series of modules, some newer less known adventures, and some of my own stuff. The PC's are displaced SR characters transported to Oerth in a magical experiment gone awry. There's usually a SR critter ability that approximates any D&D monster's, so it's just some eyeballing and plugging in what fits. Honestly I put more work into freshening up the old adventures structure and pacing than I do the mechanics.
Hah oh man you killed me with that 4th edition line! I do have a question in regards to the maps of all three eras. I have the maps from the 3.0 gazetteer and the living Greyhawk but no longer possess those books. I am looking to run games for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E and I am curious to know how off the maps for the 3.0 are from the gold box era and from the ashes era?
It's really hard to say because there are several different maps. For instance, there were 4 maps of the Flanaess published in Dungeon magazine that sort of stretch the continent horizontally, because of the size of the paper they were working with. And if you're looking at the more small-scale maps, the situation gets worse because the details don't really line up.
So there's no single "source of truth" set of maps. I'd say go with what you have; it's not like anyone is going to really be aware if a city is shoved over a couple of hexes from a map that came earlier.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I have the one from the 3.0 Gazetteer booklet and the one from the living Greyhawk book. I had a cursory look and the geographical locations seem to be spot on.
The only concern I have is whether or not the city/town locations were around in the older editions. But as you just said no one really is going to be aware of location errors unless they are big into the setting. If a place didn't exist in the gold box era I can adjust the map if need be. I was just curious whether or not there were huge differences in the maps. Thank you!
591 was a good year
I was still running 1e through the entire run of 2e. I think my campaign ended right before the first Lord of the Rings movie came out. I could not stand the 3e meta-building suggestions in the magazines. You plotted out your entire multi-class career at first level, which carries over to 5e. Ugh.
Great advice.
greyhawk is one of my two biggest contenders as a setting when i get an opportunity to dm a game ☺️
but for now i am happy to play at a table with a great gm and friends. maybe one day its my turn.
Thanks for this video, great timing. I recently purchased the 1st addition greyhawk box set. To be honest I am having a bit of a hard time reading the included books. The print is fine but the content is a little dry for my liking so struggling to keep myself engaged . Your video is great explaining the history and suggested starting points. I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed with the history. Thanks for your advice
You just about lost me the moment you were so dismissive of 4E. I ran my 4E Campaign for 8 years before lockdown closed us down. I took that time to prepare my 5E Campaign during the long enforced home time and I use many rules I gathered from 4E 1HP minions for example so my players can feel like epic bad-asses when faced by a wave of goblins that can number way more then a dozen. I appreciate that many folks did not like 4E but I also know that many also never gave that edition enough of a chance to let it wow their players.
Don't know what to tell you. I hate 4E. If you like it, fine, but I'm not going to suppress my own opinions on the off chance someone might disagree.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I am glad you don't suppress your opinion just as I did not, as I had previously said I appreciate that many did not like 4E and you are one of those, not everyone will like everything :). I did enjoy your video overall though, it just that I am a proponent for 4E and whilst I can accept that there are flaws in it, as in most editions, IMHO we should not be so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have always liked Greyhawk myself which was why I came to watch your video having begun my D&D and TTRPG obsession waaay back in 1976 actually before I bought my white box D&D set my very first purchase was TSR's Metamorphosis Alpha as it was cheaper and more colourful. D&D followed a couple of paydays later. Yup I am very much of a certain age. I keep hoping that WotC bring out a Greyhawk Worldbook, as they have with FR, Eberron, and the upcoming Spelljammer and DragonLance books, as I want to have the opportunity to link my Homebrew world to Oerth. The overall conceit of my world is that close to 1000 years past a world spanning Magocracy destroyed itself by over experimenting with Portals creating all sorts of random and unstable rifts that allow for occasional one way travel to/from other worlds (this helps to justify my ever growing collection of third party Kickstarter campaign world books).
@@eponatwospirithorse4980 it is so sad that 4e mixed the good with too much bad and then for business reasons (no VTT mostly) they dial back to an "old school" type of game. The boardgame world kept evolving around the german revolution but DnD got stuck behind, IMHO cause of 4e failing. Now there are a lot of rpgs around the world that have embraced the boardgame revolution, DnD now is an "hybrid" of old school style and modern dogmas, which is not a bad thing per-se, but I do fear It can fail in keeping up. Remember that this game is still number1 only for reasons that ARE NOT related to the game experience or rules (Covid, Streaming, Critical Role, Baldurs Gate 3...)
Why not start a Greyhawk campaign using START PLAYING? You can charge a fee to play or run for free. I am sure you will have a packed table and bring others to the wonderful world we call Greyhawk.
I'm interested in starting a Grayhawk campaign I've read a lot about it but I don't have any friends who play Grayhawk how would I start. also does a campaign have to take place in a dungeon or can it take place all above ground.
Drow rhymes with Toe according to Gygax
I enjoy your videos but I'm starting to really hate the ragtime music intro. Not that the late 19th to early 20th century piece of music is bad, but it doesn't reflect Greyhawk (maybe Gangbusters) and I don't think it fits you/your channel. Maybe something that sounds like a throwback to the sword & sorcery fantasy music of the late 70s to 80s?
Every once in a while there's some back-and-forth with Bards of Greyhawk to do some intro music for the channel. If that ever happens, I will happily replace the ragtime intro. :-)
@@GreyhawkGrognard Heh...Never heard of the Bards of Greyhawk. After checking a few of their vids out...hrm. Not to throw shade, but can't say I care for their vocal talent.
Watching a few of your videos in a row I think is what put me off of Ragtime. Makes me think of silent movies and old farts wearing boaters. There has to be something in the public domain (along the lines of 1978s Lord of the Rings or even something along the lines of Sword & Sorcery movie?)
Anyway, one of the best starts I used for a campaign was Hommlet & the Moat House. But I made Lareth a cleric of the EEG with ties all the way to the Wildcoast (and minor connection within the temple) to Edralve (also made EEG connected as cleaned up a bit of the plot with House Eilservs). Killing Lareth doesn't get an assassin after the PCs but instead draws the attention of Edralve who decides to have them kidnapped for the crime instead (either to use or to sacrifice). Basically the River Pirates are easy to connect to slavers and it is pretty easy to curb stomp the party after they arrive in Nulb and eventually literally ship them down the river (via Nyr Dyv) to the Wild Coast.
A few plot other modifications is making the first drop off as slaves into the Darkshelf Quarry (relocated on wild coast) where Stalmin KIim gets involved. Basically at least 3 factions (EEG/Eilserves, Klim, and Scarlet Brotherhood) and a dark horse (Theg Narlot) use the PCs as catspaws as one another. Got rid of 'slavers meeting in the sewers' thing and pretty made that an underground backdoor into the Slaver Palace/Temple on the slopes of the mountain overlooking the city. PCs have a very tough fight with the slavers (with deck stacked against them to capture them, just not as blatant as the original). Stripped, interrogated, and eventually thrown down a ceremonial 'bottomless pit'. Basically one of the Slavers makes sure they survive the fall and the area is a ruin of an old flan druidic circle set up to contain the Tarrasque (that the PCs don't see other than as a misshapen colossal statue/lump due to the accumulation of minerals).
Basically in the course of escaping they damage the menhirs enough to loosen the stasis hold on the Tarrasque which becomes a part of the volcano finale (as well as initiates that). My PCs had a hate on EEG at that point so they went back to Nulb after that to follow up on the breadcrumbs I left them with the slavers (and from the Temple to the Giants etc).
But one of the best open ended sandbox campaigns I ran was through the Saltmarsh area. The town is detailed in 3.5's DMG 2 (as well it gets an adventure treatment in 5e as well). Some of the adventures need a bit of tweaking to suit some groups but the local area has plenty of adventure opportunities no matter the era. And a surprising number of Dungeon magazine adventures are easy to slide right in there. Landlocked towns are a lot harder to do that with.
As far as using Greyhawk Ruins or the City. From the Ashes adds a bit to the region but I've noticed that with a lot of different groups Megadungeon fatigue hits about twelve or so sessions in. Even with groups that like breaking down the doors, kicking the monsters in the junk, and taking their stuff session after session tend to get bored with it even threading plots into the dungeon environs (even the Temple can get tough in this regard).
Hardby is another decent location imo but moreso just before or after the Wars.
@@GreyhawkGrognard if you need someone to do music i'm open for commissions! lemme know if you want me to send over a sample
@@GreyhawkGrognard I like the ragtime intro, myself. It has an old-timey fun and friendly vibe. That said, I’d like sword and sorcery style music too.
drow drow drow your boat