Looking for Advice for my Greyhawk 4E game.

[JohnBiles]

The PCs are now 15th level and we just finished my adaptation of Expedition to Castle Greyhawk. The situation:

Iuz and Wastri are once again trapped under Castle Greyhawk and the PCs trashed every way to reach the Godtrap other than being able to tunnel through solid rock/phase through it. They freed Zuoken and Rudd from imprisonment and also Robilar.

They know there is ALSO a 'Robilar' working with Rary the Traitor in the Bright Desert. They're going to go to the Bright Desert with Robilar to find out what's going on; they think it's probably another evil duplicate like the dupes of the Circle of Seven they fought in Castle Greyhawk.

Timelinewise, I'm using some ideas from Greyhawk Wars, but mostly this is Pre-Greyhawk Wars Greyhawk setting adapted to 4E.

At this point:
Iuz's followers have some idea the PCs exist and have locked up Iuz, but don't know where he is or how to free him; they want revenge.

Wastri's followers probably don't even know he's imprisoned yet.

Rary has no idea they're coming for him but he's gearing up to conquer Greyhawk City so he can control access to the Castle Greyhawk dungeons to get at some of Zagyg's old lore. He has a force of Dragonborn desert nomads and Brass and Brown dragons and some of the Orbs of Dragonkind. He has taken control of a Tiamat cult and hopes to use it to get resources for his master plan--kill Vecna, steal his power. He wants access to the Godtrap and doesn't know the PCs have cut it off.

Rudd wants to reward the PCs for saving her; Zuoken basically takes them for granted and heads off to the Baklunish lands to probably vanish off stage.

Duergar living in the Abbor-Alz, which the Pcs must cross, want revenge on them.

Any suggestions for things to do with all this in motion appreciated. The PCs basically plan to head from Greyhawk SE to the Abbor-Alz, cross them, and then head through the Bright Desert to investigate.

[Raevhen]

I miss Greyhawk. Have you done anything with Vecna and Kas?

[JohnBiles]

Raevhen wrote:

I miss Greyhawk. Have you done anything with Vecna and Kas?

Rary hopes to eventually trap Vecna and steal his power and the PCs beat up some servants of Vecna back in Thunderspire Labyrinth.

(The same players, MANY YEARS AGO went through Die, Vecna, Die and shoved Vecna through a time gate, then discovered they'd changed history so he was now in Iuz's place, but we never finished that game...)

[Raevhen]

What if the time gate they pushed him through landed him in the current PC's lap? That might be fun to circle back on their earlier character's exploits. My current 4e game is centered around cleaning up the mess left by my 2e campaign 20 years after the campaign ended.

What if this time the group has to help Vecna rather than defeat him? Maybe after his time trip he is in a weakened state and the party has to protect him from agents of Rary. Maybe Rary has somehow enlisted the aid of Kas the Betrayer...

[JohnBiles]

Raevhen wrote:

What if the time gate they pushed him through landed him in the current PC's lap? That might be fun to circle back on their earlier character's exploits. My current 4e game is centered around cleaning up the mess left by my 2e campaign 20 years after the campaign ended.

What if this time the group has to help Vecna rather than defeat him? Maybe after his time trip he is in a weakened state and the party has to protect him from agents of Rary. Maybe Rary has somehow enlisted the aid of Kas the Betrayer...

I like the idea of them being in the world created by what their old chars did :)

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Do you find that the presumptions of many 4E encounters have trouble mixing with Greyhawk?

I was just bumping into this while doing an encounter for my Age of Worms campaign. Not normally a problem because I run it in my homebrew but it did dawn on my that 4E default (and my homebrew) presumes a recent fall from a higher level of technology and its often interacting with this higher level left over technology that's part of the more elaborate encounters. Usually the players need to figure out some kind of controls and then use the old technology to solve their problem - all before the bad guys finally overwhelm them. I've seen a slew of this style encounter - blow a dam, close the vents and in my current creation its use old mining machine to block up passages with rubble.

However it dawns on me that Greyhawk has no real space for this type of material as there really is no ancient higher 'tech empire in the area. Maybe the areas covered in the Rain of Colourless Fire and the Invoked Devistation might hide ancient and powerful stuff but the central part of the Greyhawk campaign world is very much a world slowly rising in technology. Its probably roughly in the 11th century at the moment and there are clear indications that places like Greyhawk city are just on the cusp of becoming true greater cities as did a handful of historical European cities between the period from the late Dark Ages and the high middle Ages. Hence there is no old higher level of technology in Greyhawk.

[Sebastrd]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Hence there is no old higher level of technology in Greyhawk.

However, it's very possible to encounter new higher level technology. ;)

[Matthew Koelbl]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Do you find that the presumptions of many 4E encounters have trouble mixing with Greyhawk?

I was just bumping into this while doing an encounter for my Age of Worms campaign. Not normally a problem because I run it in my homebrew but it did dawn on my that 4E default (and my homebrew) presumes a recent fall from a higher level of technology and its often interacting with this higher level left over technology that's part of the more elaborate encounters. Usually the players need to figure out some kind of controls and then use the old technology to solve their problem - all before the bad guys finally overwhelm them. I've seen a slew of this style encounter - blow a dam, close the vents and in my current creation its use old mining machine to block up passages with rubble.

I've actually run into very little along these lines in 4E material, though I've admittedly only played through the H1-H3 series of adventures in terms of what WotC has to directly offer. However, if looking for this style of encounter design, I imagine one can still find such elements without needing to establish that level of technology. A forest filled with elaborate kobold traps might involve similar need to figure out the mechanisms and how to bypass/operate them, while any area inhabited by wizards might have magical creations that are puzzling in much the same way. Between magical creations and mundance devices, I think there are still several options on the table for creating the interesting set-pieces as needed.

[LazarX]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

However it dawns on me that Greyhawk has no real space for this type of material as there really is no ancient higher 'tech empire in the area. Maybe the areas covered in the Rain of Colourless Fire and the Invoked Devistation might hide ancient and powerful stuff but the central part of the Greyhawk campaign world is very much a world slowly rising in technology. Its probably roughly in the 11th century at the moment and there are clear indications that places like Greyhawk city are just on the cusp of becoming true greater cities as did a handful of historical European cities between the period from the late Dark Ages and the high middle Ages. Hence there is no old higher level of technology in Greyhawk.

The old Suel Empire was supposedly pretty high up in magitek, the refugees from the Rain of Colorless Fire spread themselves all over the Flaness. There might be ruins from aborted or failed outposts that were set in the period between the fall of the Suel and their final settlement in the places they now occupy. Besides the Scarlet Brotherhood and the obvious places there are a lot of kingdoms like Keoland ruled by those of mixed Sueloise blood. Some of those folks might have access to ancient hierlooms.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

LazarX wrote:

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

However it dawns on me that Greyhawk has no real space for this type of material as there really is no ancient higher 'tech empire in the area. Maybe the areas covered in the Rain of Colourless Fire and the Invoked Devistation might hide ancient and powerful stuff but the central part of the Greyhawk campaign world is very much a world slowly rising in technology. Its probably roughly in the 11th century at the moment and there are clear indications that places like Greyhawk city are just on the cusp of becoming true greater cities as did a handful of historical European cities between the period from the late Dark Ages and the high middle Ages. Hence there is no old higher level of technology in Greyhawk.

The old Suel Empire was supposedly pretty high up in magitek, the refugees from the Rain of Colorless Fire spread themselves all over the Flaness. There might be ruins from aborted or failed outposts that were set in the period between the fall of the Suel and their final settlement in the places they now occupy. Besides the Scarlet Brotherhood and the obvious places there are a lot of kingdoms like Keoland ruled by those of mixed Sueloise blood. Some of those folks might have access to ancient hierlooms.

From a pure cannon perspective the concept is iffy. Almost every example we have of fleeing Suel has them escape with little more then the clothes on their back - their evil tinged nature and some access to their powerful magic but not nearly enough to come close to restoring their former glory (which is what often drives them - desire to some how regain what they have lost). Still a 4E homebrew does not really need to adhere that close to such nebulous elements of cannon and I suppose we can use this as part of the setting sometimes. Though even here I have to wonder - if the Suel escape and build a dam after words why would they abandon it?

All that said I'm sure a creative DM can come up with an excuse if one is needed. I'm just noting that there is a troublesome disconnect between assumed fantasy tropes in 4E and assumed fantasy tropes in Greyhawk.

[Matthew Koelbl]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

I'm just noting that there is a troublesome disconnect between assumed fantasy tropes in 4E and assumed fantasy tropes in Greyhawk.

Oh yeah, the 4E default setting is definitely more built around the high fantasy approach more than the low-magic base of Greyhawk. Now, to be fair, even in 3rd edition you could run into that difficulty - I'm thinking mainly of Living Greyhawk. Which used the Greyhawk setting, but also had to accomodate a world full of rapidly levelling PCs. And more than that, adventure design meant they needed to find ways for PCs of different levels to have similar encounters. The level 5 PCs get attacked by level 5 bandits... fair enough. When the level 15 PCs get attacked by level 15 bandits, or accosted by level 15 town guards, things are feeling a little weird. In each region's primary plot, they had to figure out how to address the huge number of high-level PCs influencing the region. They had to present threats like armies of giants in floating cloud castles, to demonstrate a genuine challenge to these heroes. They made for excellent battles and adventures, but also often stretched quite a bit from greyhawk canon.

Now, all this... is mostly a tangent. It mainly came to mind since, again, it was a similar problem - but one that good writers could usually avoid, through having the right adventures and appropriate challenges. And many times, even when they broke from canon in order to include the right element, they were able to do so while preserving the flavor of the setting, and I think that is a big key.

Switching gears a bit, there are actually a few pages in the DMG that are excellent reading when thinking about this topic. Pages 150-151 are where it is at, where they lay down the fundamental elements of the default D&D 'world'. And then tell you to feel free to break them, and offer a few questions to think about how things can be different. Now, that doesn't necessarily tell you what changes to make yourself when dealing with a setting that has different core elements, but it is at least a good place to start. And more than that, I think it underscores that such elements are often more thematic than everything - that you can make those changes without undercutting the system or the mechanics.

Dark Sun seems likely to prove that - if you can simply strip out the divine source from an entire setting, and the game still works, that shows a lot of room to mess with background elements without disrupting game balance in any way.

[donnald johnson]

i am starting a 4e greyhawk campaign this summer, i have gone to the 1983 product and am disregarding all cannon since then. i have never been a cannon fanboy anyway. i dont have time to read it all, or care much about what other people write about my campaign area.

the beauty of dungeons and dragons is that you are free to do what you want.

besides, there is high technology in greyhawk. expidition to the barrier peaks is set in a space ship. nothing says that the rest of the ship isnt scattered all over the content. or that one of the races from 4e phb123 isnt the decendants of the inhabitants of that space ship, and they built high technology items. all of the raw materials are there.

i say leave cannon, go do your own stuff.