Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Take a Greyhawk Survey

Over at Greyhawk Grognard, good friend Joe Bloch has posted a short survey for his own use on where we as Greyhawk fans would like to see the setting progress in the hypothetical future. Why not? Take the survey HERE. Enjoy!

4 comments:

Mystic Scholar said...

I haven't played all of the dungeons listed on the left of your page, so my vote was biased. LOL

enabity said...

As you have already expressed, Greyhawk is fading on the web. A lot of that comes from a lack of new material. Frankly, it isn't possible for Greyhawk to compete with Forgotten Realms in terms of material. There is an enormous supply of infintesimal gory detail on that world. Forgotten Realms is filled out and lush. This is attractive to newcomers. It also doesn't hurt that there are a lot of novels out there set in the Forgotten Realms.

Greyhawk was different, but more recent development efforts often haven't followed through. Greyhawk wasn't defined by the supplements. It was defined by the adventures. Tharizdun barely exists in sourcebooks. He is entirely a concoction of the adventures, an undefined menace. A large part of what we knew about the world was through the events that the players could take part in, not from sourcebook #47.

This bottom up presentation of the world is more of an erratic mesh with holes that cause fascination. Mysterious gods like Tharizdun and equally confounding relics like the Crook of Rao are far more fascinating than anything in local evil #381 Forgotten Realms. These gaps, what exactly happened at Emridy Meadows and how are these people in Verbobonc and Hommlet connected? are more powerful than completely defined Harper politics.

Carl Sargent did us something of a disservice of waving his hand and creating the GH wars gap in the mosaic. What he wrote was interesting and often well thought out, but there are no events for the players in that timeframe. There are modules that are set just before and just after, but none during. There could have been plenty of Isle of the Ape type quests as well as odysseys like Against the Giants.

Living Greyhawk created a campaign, but it was seriously flawed. First, everything is vanilla for the shared campaign. There can be no . Second, it is too event driven rather than focusing on villain and place. There are no loose ends like Prince Thrommel and Fragarach, or the Orb of Golden Death. When campaigns become event driven as modern adventures are wont to do, they become boring rides on rails. Third, there were too many adventure writers that either wanted to make their mark on the world or wanted to blend in. LG had way too many hare-brained save the kingdom/world stupidities.

Greyhawk didn't just die overnight. It was killed by the evolution of the gaming business, which was not necessarily an evolution for the better. If Greyhawk is worthwhile, I think it needs to be better defined as it was originally. There need to be more sandboxy adventures that give little pieces of the world a measure of definition that adds to the tapestry and there needs to be some boldness in the ideas, but restraint as well.

Greyhawk will not gain mindshare by being like the Forgotten Realms.

chatdemon said...

"At the risk of exposing myself to endless attacks by fanboys who think they know me while at the same time being utterly ignorant to my former role in the community....

"What's the future of Greyhawk?

Do you guys want the truth, from someone with enough experience with the setting and the community to know that truth?

Or do you want the unpopular a-holes who built and maintained the community as it exists today for nearly a decade to shut up and let people drool over something the IP owners have shown NO signs of pursuing?"

There is no future in Greyhawk anymore.

Lack of product didn't kill the community, The current "leaders" of the "community" did that.

No respect or even acknowledgement is given to those who built and contributed to the community in the late 90s and early 00s.

Thieves used to be dealt with as they deserved, now they are praised and the community becomes a giant pissing match to see who can leave the biggest lipstick stains on the asses of admitted plagiarists.

There are those who would blame guys like me, the "assholes" they say killed the online community. It's bullshit. We WERE the community; WE built it, WE maintained it, and when we got tired of the popularity contests and lining up to try and curry freelance favor with Paizo most of the newer members were only there for, it died when we left.

It's a dead setting, even an official relaunch now can't save it. The fanbase is so fractured on different versions of canon that no solution Wizards could come up with will solve anything, and all the good will and rallying of the community anyone can muster won't heal the old, deep arguments and grudges that exist."

SADLOVE said...

That's the best kind of group. Not that I hate my oldest gaming buddies, but fresh minds definitely spurs old DM creativity.



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