However, by reading different threads on this site, I would say that the average Dungeon & Dragon reader (magazines and site) looks like this (to me) :
- male, age 36-40, education slightly above average, slightly more curious (history, geography, books, movies...) than the average, married or living maritaly (is that correct ?),
- began playing at least 20 years ago, around 10-12 years old, D&D or AD&D 1st edition, in the world of Greyhawk mostly or generic adventures,
- played at least three or four of the following adventures : "In search of adventure", "Keep on the borderlands", "Isle of dread", "Castle Amber", "Against the giants (G1-3)", "Against the drows (D1-3)", "White plume mountain", "lost caverns of Tsocjanth", "Expedition to the barrier peaks", "dwellers of the forbidden city" "hidden shrine of Tamoachan", "Village of Hommlet" (and "temple of elemental evil") and "the secret of Bone hill" (+L2), "tomb of horror",
- has tried other RP games and other worlds / settings,
- still likes Greyhawk, either for the memories it brings back, and / or due to a coherent, interesting and very open setting with lots of potential adventures.That pretty well sums me up.
I have to say my spare income of late has been spent on Dungeon and Dragon magazine due to the fresh material for Greyhawk. Its the best Greyhawk material I have seen since Carl Sargeant's master pieces. Dungeon and Dragon magazine has been the only solid support Greyhawk has had (LG doesn't count imho).
Paizo keep up the good work.
I have to agree with that.Aside from Carl Sargent's awesome stuff Greyhawk kinda vanished in the nineties. I ended up playing "re-vamped" classics for my games.The stuff Dungeon mag (and Dragon)has done in the last few years has breathed a lotta new life into ol' Greyhawk,and really brought my interest back into the game.
What Greyhawk needed years ago was Cataclysm. That could have changed a lot of things for the better and brought about a conversion to the new rules.
You could have changed the land mass a little, drop the names of places english professors cannot even begin to pronounce. And ushered in a whole new Greyhawk after the cataclysm.
Well, Greyhawk had the Twin Cataclysms in its distant past, and as others have mentioned,the Greyhawk Wars in its recent past. Some countries became conquered/swallowed up by others (e.g., the Horned Society got wiped out and became part of the expanded Empire of Iuz; Idee was conquered and is no longer known by that name, and the same goes for Almor; the former Great Kingdom fractured into smaller realms, including the Solnor Compact). And if that isn't change enough, what are you hoping for? An asteroid to wipe out half the countries? Has the FR map gone through a comparable amount of geo-political change in recent years (this is an honest question -- I really don't know, since I don't follow developments in FR). If you, as a Forgotten Realms player, expect map altering changes to GH for it to be considered "exciting", then I expect that comparable changes would have occurred to the FR map in the recent past for your criticism to be warranted.
As for Greyhawk's place names... odd? Some of them, certainly. Unpronounceable? That's debatable. Even the US has bizarre and barely pronounceable place names. Greyhawk is a fantasy world that spans a variety of fictional cultures, the distinctiveness of which are highlighted by the unusual names... much like in our own world. You not being able to pronounce the names suggests a different problem (no offence intended).
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I have run games and played in both worlds extensively, and I can agree to some extent that FR adventure paths are a good thing. That is why WOTC has published Mysteries of the Moonsea, their own FR adventure path. If WOTC were publishing Greyhawk adventure paths as well, I would feel that there would be some justification for rotating the worlds in which the adventure paths are set. However, I do feel that Greyhawk is painfully neglected over at WOTC, and am very glad that the excellent authors and editors at Paizo remember the origins of Dungeons and Dragons. No Greyhawk = No D&D. Someone must carry the torch. Thanks be to Paizo.
I have run games and played in both worlds extensively, and I can agree to some extent that FR adventure paths are a good thing. That is why WOTC has published Mysteries of the Moonsea, their own FR adventure path. If WOTC were publishing Greyhawk adventure paths as well, I would feel that there would be some justification for rotating the worlds in which the adventure paths are set. However, I do feel that Greyhawk is painfully neglected over at WOTC, and am very glad that the excellent authors and editors at Paizo remember the origins of Dungeons and Dragons. No Greyhawk = No D&D. Someone must carry the torch. Thanks be to Paizo.
Here, here! Couldn't have put it better. Anytime I walk into a game store I see craploads of FR hardcovers and a lot of FR dungeons (there's a new big one about orcs that looks pretty good, can't remember the name of it...)but zippo GH material. Rulebooks don't count 'cuz they're not exclusively GH material. It was the same in the nineties, there was a little trickle of GH but the market was saturated with FR stuff. Personally, I'm kinda surprised to see Paizo stickin' with GH as it would seem FR is what sells. Not complaining, though, GH has always been my setting of choice.
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Personally, I'm kinda surprised to see Paizo stickin' with GH as it would seem FR is what sells. Not complaining, though, GH has always been my setting of choice.
actually - in our store for every one FR book we sell, we sell at least 6 dungeons, and 4 dragons.... And I hear more GH love when I am woring there then ever since AOW started (SCAP was hobbled by the fact that diamond distributers screwed up on the order 2 months in a row so people had to start @ adventure 3 in our area)
Personally, I'm kinda surprised to see Paizo stickin' with GH as it would seem FR is what sells...
FR and Eberron sell because they're all WotC prints; I'm now pretty sure GH would sell if they tried. I once thought their decision to ditch GH was a good one, but this community (and the huge success of LG) appears to be proving them and me wrong.
At least I can admit when I make mistakes :/
Though to be fair, I've increasingly come to think that D&D is just a way to keep interest up so they can go for the real profits -- minis and novel sales (where FR certainly kicks GH's butt).
Two more cents,
Jack
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Though to be fair, I've increasingly come to think that D&D is just a way to keep interest up so they can go for the real profits -- minis and novel sales (where FR certainly kicks GH's butt).Two more cents,
Jack
The sad part, I think, is that FR doesn't have to kick GH's butt in novel sales. I simply think that WOTC has made an effort to keep their best novel writers focused on worlds other than Greyhawk. Let's see R.A. Salvatore write a Greyhawk novel. I guarantee that it would sell like hotcakes. And besides, the drow that made Salvatore a NYT Bestselling author found their genesis in Greyhawk...
Personally, I'm kinda surprised to see Paizo stickin' with GH as it would seem FR is what sells. Not complaining, though, GH has always been my setting of choice.actually - in our store for every one FR book we sell, we sell at least 6 dungeons, and 4 dragons.... And I hear more GH love when I am woring there then ever since AOW started (SCAP was hobbled by the fact that diamond distributers screwed up on the order 2 months in a row so people had to start @ adventure 3 in our area) [/QUOTE
Ya know, I once spoke to a store owner and he told me the same thing. He also said the dark covered rulebooks sell way better than the light, greyish color of the FR hardcovers. I'm not sure how much color has to do with it, just an interesting marketing tidbit.
Personally, I'm kinda surprised to see Paizo stickin' with GH as it would seem FR is what sells. Not complaining, though, GH has always been my setting of choice.actually - in our store for every one FR book we sell, we sell at least 6 dungeons, and 4 dragons.... And I hear more GH love when I am woring there then ever since AOW started (SCAP was hobbled by the fact that diamond distributers screwed up on the order 2 months in a row so people had to start @ adventure 3 in our area) [/QUOTE
Ya know, I once spoke to a store owner and he told me the same thing. He also said the dark covered rulebooks sell way better than the light, greyish color of the FR hardcovers. I'm not sure how much color has to do with it, just an interesting marketing tidbit.
Having a friend who is the manager of the most succesful gaming store in my town said the exact opposite. The FR material sells more than any other "world setting", and they are hounded when the new FR books are coming out more than any other dnd product. (Not that *I* think that means anything be it realms or GH setting as far as making a point; but just to play devils advocate, there it is...)
As far as an AP in FR or Ebberon, well i think it would be great! I don't care for GH, but i have nothing agasint it or its fans. I think it would be a great idea to have a AP for the FR fans, even if its just a one shot. Same for Ebberon. I may even buy an Eberon book or two if a AP was set in Ebberon and try it out. It would def give everyone in my group *Reason* to try it out! I mean if they were going to play an entire campaign in the world, they would prob all get into it. I dont care for the reason this won't be done... "its too hard to translate the mateerial for another world that we are not as comfortable in as GH" (not exact words, but that was it in a nutshell) That is a bit lazy and unfair to other fans. IMO. No offense intended. But its a little insulting that since everyone at Paizo digs GH more than any other setting the best FR and Eb fans will EVER get is conversion notes. Not cool.
I know it has been said, so lets face it.
Paizo uses Greyhawk because when they print an Adventure Path they assume the average users ONLY has the three core rulebooks. (PHB, DMG, MM) This is why they print information that is not readily available in these books, so that someone doesn't have to go out and buy a book to play it, because I know if I had to have something other then the core books, I would just forego buying Dungeon instead of spending money on a book.
And thus, we come to the fact that they don't want to release something that says, "You need the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting or the Eberron Campaign Setting in order to run this Adventure Path". Since an adventure path takes up a third of the magazine for a year that I am sure people will just forego buying it, making Dungeon lose money to run it.
Where as the AP are not really completely in the true Greyhawk (that is why the AoW overload needed just alittle conversation notes for true greyhawk fans) they are in the 'Core books' world.
Face it, you probably will never see a Forgotten Realms Adventure Path or Eberron Adventure Path unless Wizards publishes it as the core setting for D&D 4E or Even 9E.
Converting the AP to your own campaign world is a great joy for me, because I could customize it and make it unique. I'm going to run STAP in a homebrew world and I'm looking forward to converting the adventures, even though I'm at least 6 months away from starting STAP with my gaming group.
The conversion notes that Paizo provides for Eberron and FR users is a great courtesy, especially since they're available free online. Eberron and FR users should be particularly pleased that Paizo publishes 3-part campaign arcs that are a rotation of FR/Eberron/Generic "Greyhawk."
When I started playing D&D, back in the 1e days, it was always assumed that DMs would have to do varying degrees of custom fitting of modules and adventures to fit their own campaigns. When FR first came out, I contemplated making it a part of Oerth (gasp!) so I could use Greyhawk and FR for my games without any difficulty. Either three things have happened:
1) The modern DM is too dependent on spoon feeding from Wizards and refuses to do game prep of any kind
2) The modern DM is now in his/her 30's and 40's and has kids and family and has zero time for game prep of any kind
3) The modern DM is the same as DMs 25 years ago, but the fact that we can all now communicate instantly makes us all more aware of our idiosyncracies and differences
(My money is on #3 and a bit of #2)
While I would love to see a 12 issue Eberrom AP, I seriously doubt it will happen. I expect people to band together and write one long before paizo publishes one.
I say this because publishing an AP for a specific campaign world is catering to a small group, while publishing a generic world AP caters to a much broader audience.
All adventures, and even AP's can be converted to any campaign setting. I am in the process of converting Sasserine into Stormreach for Eberron. Yes, it takes a little time, but it would take time to convert a FR AP to generic as well.
Thirdly, if a FR-specific AP does rear it's ugly head, I'll be suspending my subscription for that year. Yes, I know it is an irrational hatred, but it is MY irrational hatred :)
As a very avid Forgotten Realms fan, I vote firmly to keep the Adventure Paths as "Greyhawk/Core Setting" adventures (they aren't pure Greyhawk honestly, since the Isle of Dread, for example, would be in Mystara). I think it makes more sense that a long, 12 adventure campaign be presented in a "neutral" setting.
Eric Boyd's notes are great, and they gave me a good starting point for the outline that I made for my group, if and when I get a chance to run it, but I added in a few even more FR related tie ins, and about halfway in, after Ilthane wrecks Diamond Lake/Daggerford, the PCs can go on a side quest that essentially turns Daggerford back to its pre "Age of Worms" condition, as the Duke and his family are actually in hiding with the help of the Moonstars while Maulagrym are trying to get a foothold ruling a town from which to launch forays into Waterdeep.
Long story short, keep the AP neutral, and let the writers focus more on making good adventures than trying to throw in token bits to make it FR or Eberron compliant.
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You want a GH cataclysm? How about the Age of Worms. My players already left the City of Greyhawk a festering pit of undead and seem to be hell-bent on resisting my attempts to railroad them into fixing the problem. My version of GH has cataclysm written all over it. I may have to run STAP in Faerun just to avoid ugly questions like 'Hey, where did all the worms go?'
As a very avid Forgotten Realms fan, I vote firmly to keep the Adventure Paths as "Greyhawk/Core Setting" adventures (they aren't pure Greyhawk honestly, since the Isle of Dread, for example, would be in Mystara). I think it makes more sense that a long, 12 adventure campaign be presented in a "neutral" setting.
Eric Boyd's notes are great, and they gave me a good starting point for the outline that I made for my group, if and when I get a chance to run it, but I added in a few even more FR related tie ins, and about halfway in, after Ilthane wrecks Diamond Lake/Daggerford, the PCs can go on a side quest that essentially turns Daggerford back to its pre "Age of Worms" condition, as the Duke and his family are actually in hiding with the help of the Moonstars while Maulagrym are trying to get a foothold ruling a town from which to launch forays into Waterdeep.
Long story short, keep the AP neutral, and let the writers focus more on making good adventures than trying to throw in token bits to make it FR or Eberron compliant.
Hell has frozen over. I agree with KnightErrantJr, for once. Of course, neutral=Greyhawk... right;D