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Greg V., I have some questions regarding timeline conflicts with your notes.
According to the Living Greyhawk Journal #1 or #2, in the Keoland article, it states that Istivin was created in CY -230. You seem to imply that Brellis Krelont was the overseerer of the March (in CY -229) until Qualtaine took over 27 years later (I thot Qualtaine was in charge from day one). In the trilogy, under the Istivin Crossing entry, Brellis Krelont disposed of the miners and was awarded "Warden" status (which I assumed was just a fluff title and an excuse for him to eat at the good table) about CY 394, "200 years ealier". Is this the same man? His descendent?
Sterich is a feudal society according to the LGG. How does a council of Barons constitute a "legislative branch" in a "feudal" government? Perhaps a council of appointed advisors would be a better term. Also, wouldn't it be made up of 6 counts and the Earl? The LGG says that Sterich is made up of 7 counties, each with 3-15 lesser baronies. I assume that the Earl runs one and that 6 Counts run the rest with Barons answering to the counts or Earl. Lord Bova, I would assume, is actually a Count and not a Baron (regardless that Baron Bova sounds cooler).
Please do not take my questions in a harsh manner. That is not my intention. I have just finished writing and compiling a 16 page gazetteer of Sterich for my own new campaign. Yes, I am one of those CANON freaks. I just wanna get it ALL and done RIGHT!!!
Thanks for sharing.
I have to admit that I was a little curious/confused about the whole baron/count aspect.
Skech,I would love to see what you have compiled for your campaign on Sterich, as well as what kind of adventures and other ideas you had planned for fleshing everything out. I have a good while before my campaign takes off the ground so I have lots of time and room to change things.Plus I just kinda love hearing about other peoples adventures and campaigns.
I never would have considered myself a canon freak before but for some reason perhaps with age I find myself like that now. Also, It makes you ask the question: What makes any campaign setting what it is. You could take stuff from anywhere and use it in your game but then is a Greyhawk game really Greyhawk if you dilluted it with stuff from Eberron or FR. This isnt a setting bashing statement just an observation, I think Eberron and FR are cool settings too. I just find myself becoming more an more enthralled with Greyhawk, perhaps because of a lack of published material, or because its what the bulk of the classic D&D material was spawned from? I Dunno...
1) The Master of the Hunt is from ancient Celtic legend which I transposed over to early Greyhawk druidism. He could be a feral aspect of Beory, a different nature god, or some demi/semi/ascended hero god that was extant at that time in Flanaess history. The only stats I have ever seen for him in D&D were in the old 1ste edition Deities & Demigods from which I borrowed the inspiration, even down to the description of the hellhounds in "Wrath of the Abyss". The Hunt is also mentioned indirectly in "Goblin Fever" in Dungeon #46 set in a generic campaign world.
The "Master of the Hunt" also appears in a debased form in FR5 - The Savage Frontier in the write-up of the orcs of the High Forest. I believe I included his alias in Faiths & Pantheons in the write-up of Malar.
--Eric
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1) The Master of the Hunt is from ancient Celtic legend which I transposed over to early Greyhawk druidism. He could be a feral aspect of Beory, a different nature god, or some demi/semi/ascended hero god that was extant at that time in Flanaess history. The only stats I have ever seen for him in D&D were in the old 1ste edition Deities & Demigods from which I borrowed the inspiration, even down to the description of the hellhounds in "Wrath of the Abyss". The Hunt is also mentioned indirectly in "Goblin Fever" in Dungeon #46 set in a generic campaign world.After Greg posted more on the Master of the Hunt stuff, the gears started turing on how I could use all these juicy tidbits in the campaign. I actually thought that there was an intersting parallel with Malar that I found in the FR:CS.Id like to get FR:F&P especially if I decide to run an FR game oneday. Ive been debating the merits all of FR,Eberron and Greyhawk. Most likly Ill go GH, being that most of the work will already be done for me, and there will be a minimum of spicing up to do on my part.
The "Master of the Hunt" also appears in a debased form in FR5 - The Savage Frontier in the write-up of the orcs of the High Forest. I believe I included his alias in Faiths & Pantheons in the write-up of Malar.
--Eric
Savage Screen Monkey and Greg V.
I'd love to send you my Sterich Player's Gazetteer for your personal use/review/imput if you'd like. It's a "MS word" document of about 17 pages, kit-bashed from several canon and non-canon sources with my own limited twists thrown in. In other words, I worked hard on it to be thorough, but it's still bastardized where holes needed filling. It is not 100% original. i can site my sources if requested (I know them, I just didn't write them down).
My only request is that you give me a basic review and add suggestions.
Also, how do I get it to you?
Cheers
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Savage Screen Monkey and Greg V.
I'd love to send you my Sterich Player's Gazetteer for your personal use/review/imput if you'd like. It's a "MS word" document of about 17 pages, kit-bashed from several canon and non-canon sources with my own limited twists thrown in. In other words, I worked hard on it to be thorough, but it's still bastardized where holes needed filling. It is not 100% original. i can site my sources if requested (I know them, I just didn't write them down).
My only request is that you give me a basic review and add suggestions.
Also, how do I get it to you?
Cheers
Id love to read/review your gazetteer! Im not sure what paizos site policy is on posting email adresses and other info is, otherwise I would say email it to me. If you could site your sources that would be nice in case I want to reference anything for my own campaign.
RE: The baron/count issue (Bova & co.)
It should be noted that count and earl are basically equivalent titles--an English earl would have the same noble rank as a count on the Continent.
LGG says Sterich is divided into both counties and baronies.
We also know that Querchard was originally Earl of Sterich, and was subsequently promoted to Marquis (one rung up the ladder of the nobility), IIRC this was after the giants were run out of Sterich with the help of Keoish forces.
It doesn't make sense that an earl would have counts under him--so the only way to reconcile LGG's statement about administrative subdivisions is to posit that originally the only title of nobility granted by the Earls of Sterich was "baron," but that once Querchard was promoted to Marquis, he promoted some loyal supporters (or rewarded those who helped most in getting rid of the giants) with the title of "count."
Whether the other barons were placed under the jurisdiction of one of the counts, or the counts are merely wealthier, more powerful nobles with larger estates is not entirely clear, but the reform might have been designed to put particularly trustworthy nobles in charge of sectors of the March and thus to add a layer into the middle of the administrative hierarchy.
As to the "council of barons"--I should think this would be like the medieval English parliament. Anyone with a noble title has a right to sit on the council, and perhaps they vote on certain matters pertaining to the governance of the land. For example, they may have to ratify new laws or taxes proposed by the ruler. The ruler, of course, is always trying to bypass them or manipulate them into doing his bidding . . . they serve as a sort of check on the despotic power of the monarch, but not always an effective one. One might imagine that the council was weakened severely by the recent troubles--lots of empty seats and a crisis that allows the Marquis to reassert his authority. Also, recognizing dubious claimants to old baronial estates gives the Marchioness a way to make more members of the council beholden to her, so probably a majority on the council is now willing to rubber stamp whatever she wants. Verbane and other high advisors are probably engaged in many intrigues involving the council, which may change this situation, as might the outcome of the Malgoth crisis in your campaign.
BTW, I don't know if I said this before, Greg V--but this campaign arc was a lot of fun to run, and is the reason I got into reading Dungeon. Major nostalgia trip, and I'm working on turning my son (Dragonlance/FR novel reader) into a Greyhawk afficionado.
Spoilers . . .
Most memorable moments--a near TPK in the battle with Marquis Querchard (I've now adopted the Evard's black tentacles/cloudkill combo as a favorite strategy). Urgan the Giantslayer (wood elf rogue/ranger) takes out Velikar with a surprise attack/crit arrow in the back just as he is about to pound the party cleric into hamburger. Urgan gives the succubus a holy water kiss (she thinks he's still charmed but the cleric used dispel evil to free him. He surreptitiously sucks a vial of holy water into his mouth and spits it in her face as she tries to kiss him again). She gets royally pissed and kills two party members (including said Urgan) before the dwarf cleric buries her with an Earthquake on the roof of the cavern. The drow priest opens his throwdown with the party by disintegrating the party's gnome illusionist, then is forced to retreat to the altar room to recover. He hears the party (in the room above) discussing a plan to use earthquake to collapse the chamber and bury him, so he levitates up out of the chamber for throwdown #2--my son was totally spooked! Likewise, Galmoor's corpse animating as they exhumed it from the square.
Four resurrections in three adventures. A very rockin' time was had by all!
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Heehee. Excellent, Smithers....
That's the kind of thing I like to hear, and has alot to do with why my own players hate me so.
Thanks for the comments and the in depth analysis on the many topics posted so far. I'm appointing you as my new PR man, P of B. I like how you explain my stuff better than how I do. :-)
I love the interest these adventures are still generating, as I think they're some of my best work (of course I had really great material to work with).
Thanks for the update, Eric. I actually remember that now that you mention it but had completely forgotten about the Hunt's association with Malar (ironic since half the stuff ever printed about Malar has to do with some hunt or other).
Skech, I'd love to take a look at your stuff and send you back a review. My only caveat is not I'm not really much of a reviewer so I have no idea if my opinions will be of any practical value or not. They could actually sum up as a "cool, I really liked it" type of thing, though I'll certainly make any suggstions that come to mind.
You can send them to me at gav3@cox.net. I'll try to get back with you within a week or so (which should be doable for me for 17 pages). I'm scanning through Ptolus right now, so I probably won't get to it immediately, though (not that I'll finish Ptolus first, but I'll probably at least finish the chapter on Jabel Shammar I've started).
Ah Ptolus, the third campaign Id love to run (#192 of 1000 on the preorder),man I need more time to game! But seriously, Im pretty psyched to run the Sterich game more than anything right now. P of B's comments on the nobility and other posts have been very insightful and helpful in the development of the campaign so far.
Savage Screen Monkey and Greg V.
I'd love to send you my Sterich Player's Gazetteer for your personal use/review/imput if you'd like. It's a "MS word" document of about 17 pages, kit-bashed from several canon and non-canon sources with my own limited twists thrown in. In other words, I worked hard on it to be thorough, but it's still bastardized where holes needed filling. It is not 100% original. i can site my sources if requested (I know them, I just didn't write them down).
My only request is that you give me a basic review and add suggestions.
Also, how do I get it to you?
Cheers
Is this an open invitation? I'd love to look at it as well. I'd like to see someone else's take on some of the things.
If so please send it to callawayr@abcglobal.net
RE: The baron/count issue (Bova & co.)
It should be noted that count and earl are basically equivalent titles--an English earl would have the same noble rank as a count on the Continent.
LGG says Sterich is divided into both counties and baronies.
We also know that Querchard was originally Earl of Sterich, and was subsequently promoted to Marquis (one rung up the ladder of the nobility), IIRC this was after the giants were run out of Sterich with the help of Keoish forces.
It doesn't make sense that an earl would have counts under him--so the only way to reconcile LGG's statement about administrative subdivisions is to posit that originally the only title of nobility granted by the Earls of Sterich was "baron," but that once Querchard was promoted to Marquis, he promoted some loyal supporters (or rewarded those who helped most in getting rid of the giants) with the title of "count."
Whether the other barons were placed under the jurisdiction of one of the counts, or the counts are merely wealthier, more powerful nobles with larger estates is not entirely clear, but the reform might have been designed to put particularly trustworthy nobles in charge of sectors of the March and thus to add a layer into the middle of the administrative hierarchy.
Thank you Perhuin! When I read the LLG "counts under earls" I did a doubletake. It's like "marquis below margraves." I guess Keoish nobility could be so fractionated that they make a distinction between the two and go king-duke-prince-marquis-earl-count-baron, but it makes more sense to have the Sterish earls enfeoffing barons and have the barons enfeoffing lords.
That would alter the LGG and have "earl and barons" before Sterich is retaken and "marquis and counts and barons" afterwards. I would even go further and say it was "earl and barons and lords" before the invasion, replacing the counts in LGG with barons and the barons with lords (nobles who are not peers). [Making it marquis & counts & barons & lords after Sterich is retaken.]
Then the counts are a new thing. Another example of the rulers of Sterich engaging in title inflation to draw support.
I wonder how the mountain dwarves fit into all this?
I also concur about the Council of Barons = pre-Magna Carta English Parliament. The empty titles and plethora of claiments has put the ruler (I wish it was margrave, "margravate" sounds good "marquis-ate" is just plain awful) in a power play position.
11) I downloaded the supplemental material for Dungeon issues #117-119, but when I tried to cut and paste the city and Hinterland maps for the player’s guide I’ve been working on none of the words would come with it. Am I doing something wrong here? How do I fix this problem?
I think I can help a little bit here, but no promises you will like the answers...
First, what is going on: Basically a PDF is made up of several parts, those being "raster" and "vector" portions. Rasters are pictures of things... essentially they are made up of saved/fixed pixel locations. Vectors are more like math equations... they say that there is a line between these points and they are this far apart relatively. The end result is something that can be made smaller or bigger and never have any loss of quality (since the relationship all stays the same). Vectors are common in things like line drawn logos and most commonly of all, fonts. So essentially what you are seeing is that the raster portion of the image is coming across (the map itself) but not the vector (words in this case).
How to fix it. This is the part you may not like. The best way to fix it is to make the entire picture into a raster image. This is done by opening the page that the map is on in a photo editing program (I use photoshop, but there are many that will open a PDF as an image). Once the image is flattened it is all raster and can be saved in a familiar raster format, like JPG.
Sean Mahoney
I'm appointing you as my new PR man, P of B. I like how you explain my stuff better than how I do. :-)
Honored!
Skech--I might be interested in the "Sterich Player's Guide" too, as it might be fun to take the Istivin arc players out of the drawer again and run some more adventures. I would be happy to give feedback. e-mail abatai at yahoo.com
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OK Skech,
Man you sent a lot of stuff! I wasn’t expecting that many documents. I’ve decided to post some stuff on your player’s guide on this thread since I thought that if you sent it to multiple people it would be simpler for review purposes. I’ve never really reviewed stuff before so here it goes.
1) You’ve gathered quite a bit of info here, from various sources, Canonfire, Dungeon magazine the LGG and the LGJ’s this is great, and I had no idea that some of that stuff was available on the net. Also you have some interesting ideas of your own that you’ve noted. I like that you have fleshed out the towns and counties a little
2) Im a little confused if this is meant, as a player’s guide intended for player’s to gain insight into the setting and help to provide information and material for additional house rules and character background creation. Or if it is meant as a DMs guide on the setting for yourself. I say this because you mention things that players probably don’t need to know right away. None the less you have some good stuff here.
Just to give you an idea this is a rough outline of my PG and what I might want to see as a player:
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Introduction: Provides an introduction to the game
Campaign & Player Goals: States my goals as DM and requests players create goals for their PC’s
List of possible player goals: Idea generator for possible PC goals also reinforces in the player’s minds what kind of campaign I’m shooting for.
Chapter 1: History of Sterich : Provides a brief history of Sterich
Timeline of events: Point form timeline of events
Chapter 2: People of the March: Lists important people the character might know or have heard of
Chapter 3: Places of the March: Notes on places in the march
City of Istivin: Notes on the important locations in the city weapon shops, places to buy ale and magic ect.
Law in Sterich: give the players a heads up on what kind of behaviour is frowned on or illegal, so they can act accordingly
Sterich Hinterlands: Notes on important places in the march
Chapter 4: Religion, Organizations & Prestige Classes
Religion: list of religions in addition to the PH with important details.
Organizations: List of important organizations that the PC’s maybe aware of want to join ask for help or watch out for.
Prestige Classes: notes on what PrC’s I’ll allow and how I handle them.
Chapter 5: Character Creation & House Rules: basic house rules and what other books beyond the core books I allow in the game
Notes on Psionics: how psionics works in my Greyhawk.
I hope this helps.
BTW: what do you mean you use the Hero system and not d20, that’s just crazy man! I guess whatever makes you and your group happy is all that’s important in the end.
Wow, what responses!
I'd love to send my player gazetteer of Sterich into Canonfire except for the fact that I didn't "create" about 90% of it. In reality I searched the web, the TSR modules, LGG, LGJ, and a few fansites and Canonfire to come up with a really good unified sourcebook (of sorts) with 10% filler (my additions being mostly on the towns). I tried to write this in d20 terms where some mechanics were required, but it is generally like the LGG (rules lite).
Yes, I believe that everything in it is available for players to see. The better their understanding, the better the campaign will unfold. My players have more than sufficient self restraint than to play on non-character knowledge and to ruin their own fun. Besides, they could just look it up as I have done.
Regarding playing Hero System vs d20: I hate getting my well crafted PC to the point where he finally gets all the crunchy-bits that I desire (level 20) and then, in most cases, be forced to retire him. With Hero, I get what I want when I start and tweek my concept as the campaign and my tastes evolve. It's just my taste,... no flame war required. :)
Also, I'd love to send this well researched compilation (hey, it took me about 6 weeks of steady work to get it together) out to whoever wants it, but it isn't completely mine. Of course it may all be scattered across your gaming shelves already, so where is the harm? I don't know. But Greg V. maybe can answer that after he looks at my work. Yes, I have rewritten stuff in my own words, but not all of it (if it ain't broke...). Posting it on a fan website would rock, but I have no such expertise. A volunteer would get 'er done.
Thanks and cheers,
Skech
There's some old Living Greyhawk adventures set in Sterich too.
Birthday bash and another one.Mike
As Mike mentioned, there were a trilogy of against the drow Living Greyhawk adventures set in Sterich.
To the best of my knowledge here is a run-down on all Living Greyhawk Sterich adventures.
“Gloom and Disunion Cycle” Series (set in Sterich)
COR2-04 “Birthday Bash” (Part 1, Retired)
COR2-05 “Beneath the Veil” (Part 2, Retired)
CORS3-01 “Assault on the Vault” (Part 3, Retired)
COR3-07 “Bridge Over Svartjet” (Part 4)
# COR02-04 - Birthday Bash
by Kevin Freeman
Carnival time arrives in Istivin as the people celebrate a local landowner’s birthday, and everyone is invited! What fun and games await those who show up for the festivities? An adventure for characters level 3-12. The first adventure in the Gloom and Disunion Cycle.
Status: Available.
Retirement Date: 1/31/2004
# COR02-05 Beneath The Veil
by Steve Larkin
In the crumbling ruin of Istivan’s west end lives a young boy who, if the star’s don’t lie, will either grow to become the greatest prophet of the god Celestian that Oerth has ever know, or become the next foul tyrant of the age. Quested to retrieve the boy and bring him to the Plinth of the Conjunction in the Barrier Peaks, your adventure takes a dangerous turn at the very start. The boy has been kidnapped by a dangerous demon-worshipping cult. An adventure for characters level 3-12. The second adventure in the Gloom and Disunion Cycle.
Status: Available.
Retirement Date: 12/31/2003
# CORS3-01 Assault on the Vault
Core Special scenario by The Circle.
RPGA database entry - Nyrond website review
Third part of the "Gloom & Disunion" series, sequel to "Birthday Bash" (COR2-04) and "Beneath The Veil" (COR2-05), prequel to "Bridge Over Svartjet" (COR3-07) which was later rescheduled as COR5-10.
# COR5-10 Bridge Over Svartjet
by Creighton Broadhurst, Stephen Radney-MacFarland & Tim Sech
APLs 4-12, Official listing - RPGA database entry - Nyrond website review
Long-delayed fourth part of the "Gloom & Disunion" series, sequel to "Birthday Bash" (COR2-04), "Beneath The Veil" (COR2-05) and "Assault On The Vault" (CORS3-01). Originally scheduled as COR3-07. Rescheduled as COR5-10 but not released.
Hope this helps. Ain't google a grand thing?!
Cheers