The "Sword of Black Ice" and the metal destrier appear first (AFAIK) in "Rary the Traitor" (WGR 3, TSR 9386, published 1992).
This sourcebook was written by Anthony Pryor.
Pen and Paper lists his credits.
The Blade protecs him from the effects of the desert heat while wearing armor, so that may be a reason to have such a weapon. The metal destrier has probably replaced the green dragon as to not come into conflict with the placement of Volte, a blue dragon Wyrm (1000y. old) living in the Bright Desert.
From dragonriding to a metal destrier - talk about demotion!
Stefan
"...did Robilar have the "Sword of Black Ice" back then or was that a rewrite/add-in to jazz up the Robilar to "Epic" status for the book?"
Well, that was all jazz (for what reason, I do not know, as I was not involved with that project), including that silly thing he is now riding on. Heh. Sorry. But that's literary license for you.
RJK
It's crime to do things such as this to characters knowing full well these things never took place. Lack of imagination is what this is. Perhaps in the next book Robilar will have a Green cape and stylized letter R emblazoned on his chest able to leap tall castles....
Uncle
how come EGG was mad at Robilar's sacking of the Temple of E-e anyway?
And what Level was Robilar when he went there?
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I doubt very seriously that the Blade of Black Ice business was meant to be a personal affront to Rob. "Rary the Traitor" was written before the Internet and--more importantly--well before TSR realized their customers cared at all about quality control in Greyhawk products. With a few exceptions, almost all of them involving Carl Sargent or in the first several chapters of "Fate of Istus," the Greyhawk line of the era was absolute garbage.
I would not be surprised to learn that Anthony Pryor didn't even know Robilar was Rob's character. Honoring the spirit of the original campaign didn't even enter into the design and business equations of the day, and frankly I think Greyhawk fans are lucky that more damage wasn't done to the setting in that era.
With adventures like Puppets, Childsplay, Gargoyles, and Greyhawk Ruins the potential for major trouble was certainly present. It is, I suspect, a testament to the fact that (Sargent excepted) the Greyhawk designers didn't do more damage, since they were almost wholly ignorant of the setting's development or the enthusiasm for the setting held by most of the fans.
I think that surprised the TSR types once they got on the Internet, and I think it's taken up until very recently for the D&D decision makers to acknowledge that yes, there probably _is_ an audience for nostalgic Greyhawk material.
I'd _like_ to think that what we've done in Dragon and Dungeon and what I helped start with the Living Greyhawk campaign have contributed to this, but it's really anyone's guess. It is basically impossible to predict what is "in" one year and "out" the other.
--Erik
With a few exceptions, almost all of them involving Carl Sargent.
Carl was keeping to Greyhawk canon and flavored history?
With adventures like Puppets, Childsplay, Gargoyles, and Greyhawk Ruins.
I never saw these products, they are very bad?
With a few exceptions, almost all of them involving Carl Sargent.Carl was keeping to Greyhawk canon and flavored history?
He did introduce new elements and had his own view of things, but in general, what he wrote was very usable and defined a lot of things previously undefined. I like his works very much.
I never saw these products, they are very bad?With adventures like Puppets, Childsplay, Gargoyles, and Greyhawk Ruins.
IIRC, Puppets and Child´s Play are only very loosely set in Greyhawk, they are old RPGA adventures - the adventures themselves are not that bad, but not really greyhawk.
Gargoyles and Castle Greyhawk are joke adventures - maybe funny to read, but not worth playing and not adding anything of relevance.Greyhawk Ruins is one Mega-Dungeon - I bought it only for the sake of completeness.
This is, of course, my opinion. Other views may (and will) differ.
Stefan
Greyhawk Ruins is one Mega-Dungeon - I bought it only for the sake of completeness.
This is, of course, my opinion. Other views may (and will) differ.
Stefan
Is it any good as far as layout and production(Good maps!)
Is it any good as far as layout and production(Good maps!)
It is as well produced as any product from the 90s, I´d say. The maps are IMHO no reason for buying it - they are ok, color-coded to show the different heights within a level, and show the contents of each room, but nothing outstanding. The text uses a rather small type and is densely printed, as they had to describe 26 dungeon levels within ca. 80 pages. This does not faciliate reading. There are 12 or so pages of monsters that hadn´t been published for AD&D2 prior to this adventure (small wonder, as it is from 1990) - Caryatid Column, Derro, Imps, Meenlocks, several Trolls, to name but a few. 128 Pages in all.
Buying the pdf from paizo for 4$ is probably sufficient, although the review says it is poor scan quality, which I can´t judge. I would not go through the trouble locating it via ebay or a used games dealer.
Stefan
With a few exceptions, almost all of them involving Carl Sargent or in the first several chapters of "Fate of Istus," the Greyhawk line of the era was absolute garbage.
I am so in aggreement with this statement. Basically, I loved Greyhawk and modules like Dwellers of the forbidden city and Guantlet/sentienel were great as filled in regional gaps and allowed me to run a campaign anywhere my players wanted to go.
So I religiously bought every Greyhawk adventure that came out, and then I started noticing that I didn't like what I was seeing. Meanwhile, the Forgotten Realms Grey Box came out and it was cool and they first few FR modules were interesting, so I assumed that it was just that the good writers were busy on FR products. But the greyhawk modules just got worse and worse. Valley of the mage was not the kick ass supplment/adventure I wanted it to be..puppets was stupid, gargoyles I prompted tore to shreds and threw out. The Greyhawk city set was pretty good, but it was talking about the shield lands being overrun..like what? when did this happen? Then came an awesome adventure by Carl sargent, howl from the North..I loved the idea of a powerful swords treasure hunt..
But then the conclusion of that adventure was wriiten by Dale "slade" Henson..It was very jarring, not written in same style or as interesting..obviously, Carl was busy on writting From the Ashes and had to hand over the reigns on the 5 corusk blades adventure sequel but the 5 shall be one adventure was so bad, I was just really annoyed. And this is what seemed to happen with every Greyhawk release..a good adventure then a mind bogglingly stupid adventure.
Ruins of Greyhawk had some interesting concepts but again I was extremely annoyed because I was expecting that after the joke CG module that this one would actually be the one we had all been hearing about for the last 10 years..little did I know at the time that Gary had been booted and that the people in charge cared nothing for logical consistency or the creators vision..
Anyway...all this rant proves is that customers carry long memories when they are passionate about things..new coke anyone? so its good to see that decision makers are seeing there is a sizable market for greyhawk products that are done well and not written in 6 hours by some hack.
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Creative Director
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Is it any good as far as layout and production(Good maps!)
I'd have to vote no. The maps range from okay to bad to boring; there's no grid, and while the color coding is nice to keep track of elevation, there's a LOT of symbols and notations on the maps that aren't explained in the text, or mentions of notations in the text that aren't on the maps.
The adventrue itself packs 24 levels (each with about 30 to 40 enounters) into, I believe, about 64 pages. Which equates to a low estimate of 720 encounters. Using my time-honored estimate for Dungeon that, in 3rd edition, that tells me the adventure should be at least 360,000 pages; if we printed that in Dungeon (which averages about 850 words a page), we'd have a 424 page issue.
Now, back in the days of Greyhawk Ruins, encounters and adventures didn't need nearly as much wordage. But still, the adventure's pushing 1,000 encounters. Add in those 24 maps of dungeon levels, about a dozen pages of new monsters, and some opening info, and pow, you don't have much room for the adventrue's meat. As a result, the text is VERY dense and packed in tight, and the encounters read almost like an adventure outline rather than an adventure. And there's a lot of nonsensical stuff in there too, like a room that goes out of its way to describe how valuable the furniture is (one table's worth 10,000 gp!) but then when it mentions a ruby-encrusted spellbook, not only are no spells listed, but no price is listed! Further complicating issues is the fact that a lot of iconic Castle Greyhawk dungeon locations (like Fraz-Urb'luu's prison) are just missing. The only real classic element is the room where Zagig trapped the nine demigods, but in this adventure, that room gets about a paragraph of description and turns it into a fight with some umber hulks. And the further you get in the product the more obvious it becomes that by the time they got near the end, they realized that they were running out of time (the maps get REALLY dull looking) and space (whole wings of rooms are summed up in one encounter that effectively says: "This room is empty.").
Of the adventures Erik listed, it's easilly the best. But that does not make it a good adventure.
It's a MILLION times better than the jokey WG7 Castle Greyhawk, though, which was to me more about being offensive and disrespectful than it was about comedy.
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I agree with James' description of GH Ruins (particularly about the maps and how it looks like they just ran out of time to finish it), except I think it is a good adventure.
I will only note that the number of encounters on each level could be significantly lower, a few levels were just large, single rooms (which probably only reduces the whole thing to about a 400 page issue, that should be doable, right? :-P), spellbooks didn't get values in those days (and besides, its better than Ruins of Undermountain which spent close to a page describing the equipment and background of a party of DEAD adventurers you find), and that Fraz-Urb'luu's prison was supposed to be the clown face by the maze in the Tower of Magic.
So if you can put up with the bizarre maps and don't mind finishing the last few levels yourself, GH Ruins is a very good adventure.
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Creative Director
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If you're talking about the clown face in area P207... I'm not seeing anything there that indicates that it was Fraz-Urb'luu's prison. And if it was... lame! Modern-day clowns with crazy hair and big red noses don't belong in D&D... they belong in horror movies unseen by me.
I've used Greyhawk Ruins many times myself in exactly the way you mention, but for the Iconic Dungeon of D&D... it's too bad that it wasn't better or handled with more respect.
And the adventure itself is longer than I remembered (I just dug up my copy); it's more like 122 or so pages long.
HA! That roper on page 23's got to be the dumpiest roper of all time.
Is it any good as far as layout and production(Good maps!)I'd have to vote no. The maps range from okay to bad to boring; there's no grid, and while the color coding is nice to keep track of elevation, there's a LOT of symbols and notations on the maps that aren't explained in the text, or mentions of notations in the text that aren't on the maps.
The adventrue itself packs 24 levels (each with about 30 to 40 enounters) into, I believe, about 64 pages. Which equates to a low estimate of 720 encounters. Using my time-honored estimate for Dungeon that, in 3rd edition, that tells me the adventure should be at least 360,000 pages; if we printed that in Dungeon (which averages about 850 words a page), we'd have a 424 page issue.
Now, back in the days of Greyhawk Ruins, encounters and adventures didn't need nearly as much wordage. But still, the adventure's pushing 1,000 encounters. Add in those 24 maps of dungeon levels, about a dozen pages of new monsters, and some opening info, and pow, you don't have much room for the adventrue's meat. As a result, the text is VERY dense and packed in tight, and the encounters read almost like an adventure outline rather than an adventure. And there's a lot of nonsensical stuff in there too, like a room that goes out of its way to describe how valuable the furniture is (one table's worth 10,000 gp!) but then when it mentions a ruby-encrusted spellbook, not only are no spells listed, but no price is listed! Further complicating issues is the fact that a lot of iconic Castle Greyhawk dungeon locations (like Fraz-Urb'luu's prison) are just missing. The only real classic element is the room where Zagig trapped the nine demigods, but in this adventure, that room gets about a paragraph of description and turns it into a fight with some umber hulks. And the further you get in the product the more obvious it becomes that by the time they got near the end, they realized that they were running out of time (the maps get REALLY dull...
Whether intended or not, this is the best indication of what we will and won't be seeing in Erik's version of Castle Greyhawk. Thanks James. I am truly psyched.
I don't remember any confirmation that this is what Erik is working on. Perhaps I missed it earlier on in the thread, but I'm just worried that everyone is assuming this is what he is working on, and if its not, that we may have some people that mistakenly think that they got tricked out of a product that was never planned in the first place.
If you're talking about the clown face in area P207... I'm not seeing anything there that indicates that it was Fraz-Urb'luu's prison. And if it was... lame! Modern-day clowns with crazy hair and big red noses don't belong in D&D... they belong in horror movies unseen by me.
That's right JJ no f**KIN clowns in D&D-Court jesters yes!
HA! That roper on page 23's got to be the dumpiest roper of all time.
I shot coffee out my nose laughing!
I don't remember any confirmation that this is what Erik is working on. Perhaps I missed it earlier on in the thread, but I'm just worried that everyone is assuming this is what he is working on, and if its not, that we may have some people that mistakenly think that they got tricked out of a product that was never planned in the first place.
Based on that cover shot for WOTC 2007(Showing Mordy looking at castle (Greyhawk) in a Crystal Ball, I know the cover of a book can be decieving, but come on it's not gonna be...
DUNGEON & DRAGONS
Mordakainen's Guide to Greyhawk Realestate
Had not heard of nor had I seen any such image, so thank you for the information.
Had not heard of nor had I seen any such image, so thank you for the information.
Yeah there was a Gen con movie from August You can access it at Gaming report.com speed it up till around 33:40 and you see new products for coming 2006-2007.
Follow this link
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=693189
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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No confirmation has been made about my "secret project," I'm afraid. I'd love to talk about it, but I can't due to the circumstances of my non-disclosure agreement. This is a very interesting thread, though, so by all means keep speculating. I'd like to particularly thank Uncle for dropping by. He is much respected and appreciated in these quarters, and it is great to see him lurking about.
On that note I will leave you with a hint.
I am not the only poster to this thread with a Secret Project.
Good night, and good luck.
--Erik
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Hi everyone,
this posting might be a bit off topic, even though it is about GH. ;-)
I mentioned that I am a late comer, one of those who just found "From the Ashes" in my flgs's shelves and the new FRCS. Hard choice, wasn't it, if the shop owner explains that GH required you to buy dozens of out of print adventures in order to get into it whereas the FRCS was one box ready for playing... ;-)
To the topic: I am still very curious about GH because it is closer to the fantasy feel I like in my campaigns. And this is what I am heading at: I already wrote that I would be most eager to get hands on a 3rd editon GH CS. But there is also something else I heard about:
Gary Gygax created a new rpg called Castles & Crusades, basically a very simplified D&D. What interests me most, though, is that he also published/ is going to publish a series of campaign supplements about a place called Castle Zagyg. The similarities are all too obvious, even to someone like me...
Did anyone of you check out this product? Does it compare well in comparision to old GH products. Is it compatible to official GH canon or easily adaptable to it? And finally: Is it easy to use under D&D 3.5?
Thanks for your replies,
Günther
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If you're talking about the clown face in area P207... I'm not seeing anything there that indicates that it was Fraz-Urb'luu's prison. And if it was... lame! Modern-day clowns with crazy hair and big red noses don't belong in D&D... they belong in horror movies unseen by me.
There was a thread over on the WotC boards with comments from the authors citing this as the intended location. Apparently because the management didn't want any overt references to OOP products, all such references had to be done on the sly.
As for the description of the clown . . . I blame the roper!I've used Greyhawk Ruins many times myself in exactly the way you mention, but for the Iconic Dungeon of D&D... it's too bad that it wasn't better or handled with more respect.
Well, my opinion about "iconic" anythings has dropped over the years. They seem to be used more as albatrosses to hang around the necks of new authors, denying them any fair consideration of what they do because it just can't match up. I'm sure I don't have to go into details (LGG) on that. Likewise they are used to keep players down, creating artificial limits for their characters. I can never be better than Designer X's Avatar NPC? Time for a new setting!
And then of course you get things like Undermountain, aka, The Last FR Product I Would Buy. I'd like to think GH Ruins was better than that.Now mind you, this doesn't mean I won't be trampling innocent bystanders to get my copy when it comes out just because there's an iconic location in the title. But for the survey, the author's name is going to rate higher than the product name, and the content will rate higher still. I am going to be buying a good adventure, written by an author I know is good, in that (alleged) setting I love, at some (still alleged) famous location. And if he arranges that Vecna kills off the Circle of HoweverManyAreLeft, including Mordenkainen this time, I won't be upset. :)
HA! That roper on page 23's got to be the dumpiest roper of all time.
I blame the clown!
Or maybe he got confused which colored level he was on. :-P
No confirmation has been made about my "secret project," I'm afraid. I'd love to talk about it, but I can't due to the circumstances of my non-disclosure agreement. This is a very interesting thread, though, so by all means keep speculating. I'd like to particularly thank Uncle for dropping by. He is much respected and appreciated in these quarters, and it is great to see him lurking about.
On that note I will leave you with a hint.
I am not the only poster to this thread with a Secret Project.
Good night, and good luck.
--Erik
erik
Any clue as to when we'll know what it is that your working on?spring 2007-summer 2007 or fall of 2007?
I honestly have no idea. I don't even know when it is scheduled to come out.
--Erik
damn your tight lipped!
So what's james Jacobs' secret project? Care to stoke the fires by saying it's Greyhawk related?
I smell Giants.
*waves hand in front of face*
sorry to hear that!
I smell Giants.
Did they wash their feet?
It's true... I do have a Secret Project as well. And like Erik, that's all I can say about it. Although it, like Erik's Secret Project, is also neat. In many of the same ways that Erik's Secret Project is neat, one might say.
Any clue as to when we'll be in the know?
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Director of Games
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It's true... I do have a Secret Project as well. And like Erik, that's all I can say about it. Although it, like Erik's Secret Project, is also neat. In many of the same ways that Erik's Secret Project is neat, one might say.
Ohh ohh.. me too. I want to have a secret project that I cannot yet talk about. Can I.. please?
Jason Bulmahn
Managing Editor of Dragon
Guy with a neat Secret Project
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Creative Director
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Yes. You can. <fires up internet-purchased time travel device>
There! You're all hooked up!
You can also have a NOT so secret project involving some big birds and a danger-attracting gnome with a pet crow. Sound good?
Wow... it's late. I should get to sleep.
Hopefully all this talk about secret projects will be public knowledge soon, cause much longer and when we reveal that we're all working on a 1:1 scale model of Undermountain built in the roots of Mt. Ranier, expectations will be built up too high and people won't be impressed.
Ohh ohh.. me too. I want to have a secret project that I cannot yet talk about. Can I.. please?
Hey Jason! Me too! I want a new secret project too, now that the old one is done! Wanna share? ;-) By the way, Jason, I hope the old secret project wasn't too long, and that you could fit in the whole thing. Secret projects have a tendency to expand. Right, Erik? ::wink wink::
Denis, aka "Maldin"
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Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Loads of edition-independent Greyhawk goodness... maps, magic, mysteries, mechanics, and more!
My vote for a secret project:
a weekly TV cartoon show called "where in Oerth is Quij?"
each week, a pair of teenage kids from Earth accidently traped on Oerth must track down Quij, whose poncho is the only way they can get home. Each week, they visit a new city tracking down the ever tricky Quij while avoiding the evil Lord Robilar and his band of flunkies who believe the kids possess the secrets of the lost city of the gods.
Council of Wyrms! Dragonfell War! I hope.