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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Feb 2, 2015 15:34:54 GMT -5
I have very little knowledge of Greyhawk even though I started playing in 1980. I remember the hints and vague information included in the old modules and the information scattered among the rule books. For those of us that have spent some serious gaming time in Greyhawk, can you tell me what are some of your likes and dislikes about the setting? Maybe what makes it stand out in your mind?
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Post by finarvyn on Feb 3, 2015 19:39:37 GMT -5
Is Greyhawk the greatest campaign ever? No, but I liked it for several reasons.
(1) The #1 thing for me is simply "Gary did it." I like the fact that it's one of the earlier worlds developed and marketed, even if Gary made it up instead of using his actual campaign.
(2) I like the fact that it had color maps, in an era when this kind of thing simply wasn't done.
(3) I like the fact that it's a skeleton rather than an encyclopedia. The folio had very short blurbs about each place and the boxed set more detail but not complete. This means that "my Greyhawk" may not match yours, but that it has a few key things in common with extras added in by me. Nothing worse than having something identical to that run by another gamer, so that you make up a detail and some know-it-all says "well, that's not correct." With later versions of Greyhawk (as well as Middle-earth and other fleshed-out worlds) the know-it-all factor becomes large and running a world becomes a lot like work, whereas the early Greyhawk is vague enough to customize as my own.
(4) I like the fact that early commercial products were loosely tied to Greyhawk. The artifacts in Gods, Demigods & Heroes came out of the Greyhawk campaign. The early monochrome AD&D modules were tied to Greyhawk.
That help?
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Feb 4, 2015 5:11:07 GMT -5
Is Greyhawk the greatest campaign ever? No, but I liked it for several reasons. (1) The #1 thing for me is simply "Gary did it." I like the fact that it's one of the earlier worlds developed and marketed, even if Gary made it up instead of using his actual campaign. (2) I like the fact that it had color maps, in an era when this kind of thing simply wasn't done. (3) I like the fact that it's a skeleton rather than an encyclopedia. The folio had very short blurbs about each place and the boxed set more detail but not complete. This means that "my Greyhawk" may not match yours, but that it has a few key things in common with extras added in by me. Nothing worse than having something identical to that run by another gamer, so that you make up a detail and some know-it-all says "well, that's not correct." With later versions of Greyhawk (as well as Middle-earth and other fleshed-out worlds) the know-it-all factor becomes large and running a world becomes a lot like work, whereas the early Greyhawk is vague enough to customize as my own. (4) I like the fact that early commercial products were loosely tied to Greyhawk. The artifacts in Gods, Demigods & Heroes came out of the Greyhawk campaign. The early monochrome AD&D modules were tied to Greyhawk. That help? Tremendously! That's exactly the type of info I was hoping for. I must say I'm intrigued about finding a copy of the folio more than ever.
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Post by finarvyn on Feb 4, 2015 8:39:17 GMT -5
I liked the folio best, but the original boxed set is pretty nice. Both have essentially the same map. The boxed set fleshed out the information from the folio a little, but is still pretty minimalistic. If I was going to run a Greyhawk campaign starting from scratch, I would probably pick the boxed set but I'm not 100% sold either way.
Looks like Noble Knight has copies of the folio for $45 and $70 while the boxed set is $60 and $70, just to give you an idea of what they will run you. Might be on e-bay as well but I didn't check. I don't think that the printing is that important unless you really are a collector.
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Post by jalsmith on Feb 18, 2015 5:20:16 GMT -5
Looks like Noble Knight has copies of the folio for $45 and $70 while the boxed set is $60 and $70, just to give you an idea of what they will run you. Might be on e-bay as well but I didn't check. I don't think that the printing is that important unless you really are a collector. The price is kinda all over the place, on ebay. You'll see a lot of people trying to get $50+ for the folio, but you can snag a decent, or better copy for under $35, if you're a little patient. I paid about $20 for mine, a couple of years ago. Pretty much the same scenario, for the box set. Also, it's kinda hard to find a copy of the folio, with a decent cover. The edges are almost always mangled.
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