World of Greyhawk Folio: Greatest Campaign Setting Ever?
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Greyhawk is still my favorite published setting for D&D. It always had a gritty, sword and sorcery feel to it, with a good mix of the deadly serious and the bizarrely whimsical. Greyhawk feels *dangerous.* The Forgotten Realms never really grabbed me the same way.
FR is just so... populated. Every nook and cranny is stuffed with something.
@@captcorajus I completely agree! I can understand the appeal that has for some folks, but for someone like me, it's nice to have a world painted in broader strokes where the DM is free to improvise, create, etc.
@@Jimmyinvictus I have had zero problems improvising and creating in FR.
Agree 100%. "Gritty" is the way I describe it as well.
I have a tendency to bounce between the two depending on the flavor of the campaign I'm interested in. The Dark Ages v. High Middle Ages feel is the primary deciding factor for me. Of the three primary campaign worlds I would have to agree that Greyhawk is still the best focus for starting campaigns.
I'm hitting 50 this month, and I swear I cut my teeth with Iuz, and St. Cuthbert. So many fond memories .
Happy birth month! I am not far behind you....hitting 50 shortly after the new year begins! Great memories in the World of Greyhawk!
49 here and I was raised up in the World of Greyhawk. Some of the happiest days of youth.
54 and Greyhawk was my first setting.
I turn 50 August 14th and I still remember this from the seventh grade
@@longshot9060 Thank you sir!
Just leave off the question mark. Greyhawk IS the greatest setting ever...period!
Hits the sweet spot of just enough to get the imagination started, but leaves plenty of room to add our own content. Greyhawk draws heavily from history, pulp fantasy and that unique Gary Gygax perspective. Brilliant map!
Had the Greyhawk map hanging up in my bedroom when I was 10. Would go to sleep dreaming about the Sea of Dust, deserted towers scattered throughout the Bandit Kingdoms, and where in the holy hell was S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks REALLY located at. Subsequent editions left out the heraldry of the Great Kingdom, which I felt was a great loss, as it gave some of the other associated heraldry a little more history.
The Forgotten Realms grew on me after a while, but Greyhawk will always be my favorite. As far as the light versus fleshed out in campaign settings, I always prefer a middle of the road approach. Give me some established lore , but leave me room to create.
DAllen2537 how is the realms ?
The ideal FR campaign for me is based on the original boxed set and *possibly* Waterdeep and the North and Ruins of Undermountain. I can't imagine needing or wanting more.
@@willmistretta The North and the Sword Coast are OK, the Savage Frontier has a lot of potential for almost every adventure you may think, but the Dales, Sea of Fallen Stars and Heartlands area are fantastic for political intrigue games.
I personally loved Maztica and Chult but, up until recently, they had little development.
@@waltwhitmanleaves They are OK if you don't abuse the NPC cameos (something many new DM's seem to do and then complain as if it was a problem within the setting) and don't care about contradicting canon too much when your campaign requires it.
I bought (and still own) the 1983 boxed set of Greyhawk. I started out in Greyhawk as a kid but drifted to the Forgotten Realms after years and years of TSR and much later, WotC, supporting the latter. I just might set my next campaign in Flaeness!
As both a player and DM, the world of Greyhawk has always held a special place for me. It has just the right balance of established lore and roon to grow. It's underappreciated in every sense.
Old fart d&d'er here (60 this year - OMG!). :-)
Greyhawk is the absolute best setting ever. I still have my old box set. But... ToEE baby! Pure fun!
I prefer a campaign setting with a few key details and important figures, and then focus on flavor. More specifics should be handled in adventure modules.
I'm on a Mystara kick for my home game, because it gives me big boundaries to work within. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance don't, as they are too detailed for me to get a word in edgewise, even if I love them.
Rather than overpopulated FR to death, WotC should support new settings.
I love Dragonlance but yeah - for the 1E and 2E Dragonlance setting to work at its best, you really need to throw out the canonical events of the War of the Lance entirely, just say that the Heroes of the Lance never existed, and let the player characters fill those gaps.
I did not have this product. I began playing in '82. I did purchase the Gold Box Set in '83, and was fascinated with it. The others in my group did not (it was a pricey thing), and were altogether clueless about the setting.
I found the setting daunting. It was so big!
So, instead of setting my campaign in Greyhawk, I stole from it, worldbuilding my own, one small corner at a time. Little did I know at the time that what I was doing was exactly what Gary Gygax intended me to do with his.
I owned the greyhawk boxed set that was released. I’m still kicking myself in the butt not saving all the old game stuff.
I'm right there with ya brother!!
aren't we all
Agreed. I sold all my D&D stuff when I turned 40 telling myself I don’t need this stuff anymore. Then ten years later I am playing remotely and bought all new 5E books.
Man I wish I had sold my books. I lost them in a flood. I now have a digitally back up of every print book I get but I desperately miss my old originals.
In high school, my drama club went to contest in Independence, MO. We stopped at a low-end restaurant, and saw the Darlene map being used as the main decoration in one of the booths. A lot of us played D&D together, so it made us feel right at home.
The map was big and beautiful but the one thing I didn't get/like about it was that hex overlay. It ruined the sense that you were looking at an actual map, reminding you that it was an RPG prop, especially in an era when RPGs hadn't fully branched off from wargames. And the point to a hex grid is to simplify movement and ranged attacks on a tactical map. They don't serve much purpose on a world map, where a ruler is just as good. I get that it provides a grid reference for specific features, but that's not realistic for a fantasy game anyway. No one would say "it's located in hex BB19" they would say "three leagues west of Carcassone", etc.
When I was a kid, I always wanted more, More, MORE! As time goes on, I find myself finding greater appreciation in the "Less is More" camp...along with the caveat, of course, that the "Less" must be well done.
I think Greyhawk is one of my personal favorite settings. However I got into D&D around the release of 2nd edition, and it was the From the Ashes boxed set that really hooked me on Greyhawk. I loved how the one book provided an overview of the history, world, cultures and religions, and the second book had a more detailed look at the Greyhawk City region. I think Carl Sargent was a really talented D&D game writer.
I had all this stuff in the 80s. Lost it to fire. You're lucky to have retained yours through the years.
I ran this for around two years -- the first two years that I played AD&D. It was too complex to keep all of the nations straight, in my head! The fact that it was on the verge of war, made it even more complex, and difficult to digest. My friend bought the folio version, initially. When the boxed set came out, he bought that, too.
Bought the PDF, years ago. Planned to print, and assemble, the entire map... Then I discovered how much $$$ that would cost me, and I gave up. I recently printed black-only copies of the Priest's Spell Compendium books, on my laser printer: $40/book! Each volume consumed 1/2 of a black toner cartridge! The color, Darlene map, would likely consume two toner cartridges, of cyan, and yellow, alone. I hate to think how much toner these would require...
A friend had his 1983 TSR map mounted on plywood, using wall paper paste, and framed. He gave it to me on, "permanent loan," so now it hangs in my game room, as gaming art. It doesn't mean much to my players, as they never adventured in it, but to me...
As DM, my first, High School group, adventured across Greyhawk, and we had many memorable games using it, during those early years. We dreamed, and fantasized, about what we would like to do in it, where we wanted to go visit. It was a wonderland for the imagination -- it still is, to be honest! After 40 years, I still find it fascinating to look at, read about, and dream of exploring. I've never found anything that inspires me as much as this does. Then, in 1983, I created my own home-brew game world. I've been developing that, ever since. My home-brewed world is likely as complex, overall, but I created it, so I know it. That makes it vastly superior, by fiat.
I still love Greyhawk, and I always will. I cut my teeth, learning AD&D, in this world setting. I will always love it for the past, and the nostalgia. I would not mind running games within it, but I am too deep into my own, for that. Thanks for the review! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Cheers!
One thing we love was the graphic notation. Even if we didn't use the setting the map was great, the notation that were in some of the modules were used to get a similar location. Oh G1 is set in a5,055 a string of high mountains. DM adds a string of mountains to his own campaign world.
I bought the Greyhawk boxed set when it first came out and have been loving it ever since. No other world setting can compete.
I started playing in Greyhawk in the organized play campaign Living Greyhawk in 2005. Currently I am running a campaign set in the Sheldomar Valley.
I love hearing how many have played and are still playing in this classic setting.
I loved Living Greyhawk. Each realm had its own fans creating detailed areas, yet plenty of open space to do things with. I actually got to co-write one adventure for an outdoor camping convention on the Canadian shared border area at the International Peace Gardens. My Canadian friend wrote the parts dealing with Ket and I got to do the Shield Lands.
The LG Gazateer is still an awesome overview of the world. Still great for adventuring long after the LG campaign ended.
I don't have the original Greyhawk Folio, but I do have the 1983 boxed set with those same Darlene maps, and they're wonderful. My high school friends and I had many a hexcrawl across those maps back in the day.
Oh yeah, the grand-daddy of them all. Those early Greyhawk modules are what made D&D really take off back then.
I wish I'd held on to the shelves of modules and rule books I acquired before I left for college in the late 80s.
In their well-used condition, they wouldn't be worth much in dollars, but now that my daughter is into D&D, the cool dad cred would have been priceless. Especially World of Greyhawk! I almost memorized the lists of countries, rivers, ...
Lol... Cool Dad cred is priceless to be sure.
Funny story. My daughters are grown, but nerds like me. Went to comiccon recently and were chatting up a guy in one of the booths, and they found out the guy liked old school games. So they are like, "Yeah our dad has a youtube channel.' and the guy is like 'oh, who is he?" and they say 'Captcorajus' and he's like "oh wow, your dad is captcorajus? I watch his channel all the time, will he adopt me?"
I Lol'd.
I can't even tell how many hours I spent staring at that map and reading about the history of Oerth!
I'll be picking this up. I'm currently working on converting Expedition to Castle Greyhawk into Starfinder. This would be an amazing reference tool.
We have just started playing DnD again (after a 10 year break). I decided to use Greyhawk as the campaign world. First campaign world i played in. Its great to be back.
I still have the Greyhawk 1983 box set in near perfect condition..The map is a work of art
I have only relatively recently revived my interest in DnD, during a difficult personal period in which I found myself reflecting on things in myriad ways and came across the wonderful Arts and Arcana, which traced the history of this wonderful game and reinvigorated my interest in exploring where it had come to.
I very much enjoy your videos and the nostalgic glimpses back into my past that they provide, but I have been amazed by how DnD has evolved in the 25 years I have not been playing it. I am not exactly playing it again but am totally immersed in it again across many mediums - I am also developing my own campaign setting in the hope that I can persuade some of my old dungeoneers into rediscovering the passion that seeped away as life got in the way...
I digress.... I still own both the folio and box set of Greyhawk and have been delving into it for inspiration for my own writing. I don’t know if it deserves the title of “greatest campaign setting ever” but I suspect that for people of my generation, where there was initially such a dirth of roleplaying game content, it will always stand up as the great classic (full disclosure: I turned 52 last week). I have seen mention in the comments of other settings that I think people may be saying they believe bettered it around the time it first appeared - Glorantha, from Runequest for one. But if these alternatives were indeed available here in the UK at the time, in the same colourful and imagination inspiring detail as Greyhawk, finding material for them was difficult, so I do not believe they offered sufficient competition for this reason alone. There were other “unofficial” DnD alternatives (the City State of the Invincible Overlord and surrounding environs comes to mind, but I may be getting mixed up?) - but these were much weaker in the flair that Greyhawk provided. Which is not to say that I am one for excessive detail.
To answer the question posed in the video, I think there is room for both the Greyhawk approach, with all its beautiful flaws and tantalising mysteries, which demand that you embark on your own flights of imagination to overcome and solve the challenges posed; but I also greatly admire the Forgotten Realms for how they lead you through a colourful world that you can still change as you may see fit. I dabbled in FR, which was just taking off when I instead drifted into the ICE roleplaying system before departing these realms of fantasy altogether, until now.
Enjoy them all for what they are, but never forget where this great game truly found its wings. Because that was most definitely in the World of Greyhawk. Enjoy!
Great insight and very eloquently said. I would love to see/read anything you come up with.
@@stevencook3894 Thank you. I don’t pay things very often but sometimes the subject matter will inspire a personal response. One always hopes that others will appreciate something in what I say, so I am glad you did. If I happen to publish anything more, I will try to remember to let you know!
I will certainly look forward to it. Like you I have played two decades ago and have not played since but now with my two young boys I'm trying to encourage them to use their imagination and it's great bonding time.
I'm even trying to get them into movies I grew up with such as Time Bandits and adventures of Baron Munchausen. '70s and 80s were a great era for inspiration and I hope it keeps on going!
@@stevencook3894 👍🏼
The Darlene Map is definitely iconic and beautiful.
I'm currently running a campaign for up to 9 players set in the grand duchy of karameikos. started of with the module 'destiny of kings' were the PC's either save or fail to save the crown prince after the kings murder by his evil brother..pc's would either be on the run if they failed or would be hunting down the would be usurper. As it happened by a cunning use of a web spell they succeeded and was given a fixer upper castle as a base of operations to hunt down late kings uncle.. I've thrown in a bunch of other modules aswell as my own missions and am now running a sandbox campaign. I've used a thick roll of underlining wallpaper for the PC's to use as a map which they draw and fill in as they go so wen other players tht couldn't make a session can see the progress in the search visibly too..
Karameikos is a brilliant start point as there is a few large cities/towns with hundreds of miles of wild wilderness fornall those beasties to hide in..
Love all your vids...keep up the good work m8 👍
I agree wholeheartedly of your assessment. I started in that campaign setting for my own first campaign and later "transferred" to the world of greyhawk setting. I too will always have a fondness my heart for the grand duchy of Karameikos.
Amazing! Hope it's still going or ended well.
The World of Greyhawk has always fascinated me. Whenever i bought something back then... having Gary's name on it was a huge bonus. I love the detail he packed into everything he did.
I always bought the stuff with his name on it in the 80s, I knew it would be good.
Thanks. Now I know why TSR lost its way in the mid 1980s. I was really puzzled at the time, why was TSR introducing so many bad modules etc. Why the sudden impulse to multiply products instead of focusing on doing things right. Even Dragon magazine had lost its nitty gritty, it was all too polished and corporate-slick feeling. And later, when new editions started appearing, I didn't buy a single one. I moved on to Rolemaster, and later to strategy games Star Fleet Battles, Advanced Squad Leader. I have fond memories of Basic D&D (B1) and AD&D (Monster Manual, Players' Handbook, GM Guide w the Efreet), especially Greyhawk and G1-G2-G3, S1. I have all the paperbacks Gary and Rose wrote in the world of Greyhawk.
The map was great. Same in Rolemaster, the Middle Earth module maps probably helped sell those modules quite a bit. Beautiful work.
I agree, Greyhawk was the best campaign setting published. Better than Dragonlance, better than Forgotten Realms, better than Ravenloft, better than Dark Sun.
I like a format like this where I can put places like the Nentir Vale or Elsir Vale and comment on lore on the fly.
I like campaign settings with teeth, Dark Sun was fleshed out with a rich history and interesting differences to classical archtypes.
Despite the amount of detail The Forgotten Realms provide enough room to create your own adventures. That is why it is called a "setting".
I had the maps laminated and they now grace my wall. I have both the folio and the box set. The good old days, when everything was simple.
I was in 6th grade when this came out. I ended up not using it but I was still fascinating to read. I still own the map to this day.
Wilderlands of High Fantasy for me. This primarily stems from my love for the city state of the invincible overlord. That was the center of the bull’s-eye, and I moved out from there. I do have Greyhawk, but it never hit me like the judges guild stuff.
I've been building a campaign based in Perrenland for years for my wife and buddies.
Damn! I'm literally the first view. Don't think that's ever happened before. Incidentally there has been a lot of discussion about this lately on DF, especially in comparison to the Greyhawk boxed set.
Really? I'll have to go check that out. Got a link to the thread?
What's df?
@@chiefchurpa5739 Dragonsfoot.org is a 1st ed AD&D site
I prefer a setting that allows me to generate my own. It gives me some basics to work with and the means to create everything else.
I have always preferred Greyhawk over Forgotten Realms. I am currently doing a campaign for 5th edition. My player's are having a good time. For me Greyhawk has the best modules and interesting villains. And you campaign can be part of a major war, enough said!
I love your channel! My father and uncle started playing D&D as it was coming out and as such I grew up with it around the house. I have so many great memories of the two of them, my brother, cousins and I playing all nighters in the basement. Used to drive the women folk crazy. Still does to be honest lol. I have never been interested in going on to use the newer editions so I still play with 1st and 2nd Edition only. Your channel is so helpful to me when I’m looking for new material from these editions. Appreciate you!
On a similar note when my daughter was 5 she staggered out of bed on a game night around 9pm and asked if we could ask our characters to be quieter. She has now graduated college, and I still laugh about that.
That's hilarious!!
Love your reviews. The Greyhawk folio was one of my favorite game accessories back in the day. The level of detail was just enough for me to expand with my own homebrew content without having to stick to a bunch of predetermined boundaries.
I remember a guy in junior high (1982) had to map laid out on the table in the library and everybody was amazed and a few feeling a little envious
I got this right after it came out and still have it. It's awesome. I have the maps framed and hanging on my wall. They are near mint. Seeing how expensive they are, I count myself very lucky. I love how I have full control over what happens in my campaign; I'm not locked into anything, and have plenty of hooks to develop on my own.
I am currently starting to run a adventure in the world of greyhawk
I like the World of Greyhawk most because of its versatility, open-endedness, atmosphere and historical significance. Also it has my favorite maps by Darlene the Artist. I'm currently running a campaign that started in Hochoch and now is in the Grand Duchy of Geoff. I like how there is enough detail to fire my imagination, but enough left open for me to do my own thing. It feels like a world that the likes of Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric, Kane and other pulp swords & sorcery characters would fit into well, but you could also do something high fantasy or Tolkien-like if you wanted.
Great video!
Greyhawk was always an ideal setting for the simple reason that it was so open sandbox. Forgotten Realms was a neat area and included some neat concepts and ideas, but the more it got developed the more difficult it became to put down new roots and develop a campaign without running into conflicting or unhelpful canon. A friend of mine who determinedly tried to run a FR campaign for knowledgeable players quickly found himself losing the grip on his campaign as his players used the minutia of knowledge to focus on certain times and events and to try to use their characters to derail history and upset the plans of their DM. My DM friend's only comment on the campaign's end was 'I took a page from Greyhawk and created an invoked devastation. Cormyr and the north are now a barren wasteland where nothing lives." Drastic? Perhaps. Dramatic? Certainly. Effective end to the campaign? Yes. 😀
Dragonlance was some of the same. I liked a lot of the campaign-specific rules, but I selectively imported some of those into my own campaign world instead of trying to use the set piece of Krynn where way too much was known and set in stone. I did run DL1 for a group once, and it was a lot of fun, but that was the only DL module I ever used.
Greyhawk was great because whatever the style of campaign one wanted, there was a place to play it on the map. This was even true for non-TSR works. From Judges Guild I set City State of the Invincible Overlord in The Great Kingdom since it seemed appropriate there. Tegel Manor ended up on the Wild Coast. From Mayfair's Role Aids line I put Throne of Evil in the Bandit Kingdoms (I think? It's been a few decades...) and I used some of the Fez adventures in places near the City of Greyhawk and the Iron Hills or Gnarley Wood. I remember having placed Shipwrecker near the Holds of the Sea Princes, but I never ran it for a group.
Greyhawk is the best sandbox. Enough backstory and history to give a feel for each land, so the DM can easily find a land suitable to the game he wants to run, but otherwise fully open for each DM to develop however they want.
What I loved about that set, and what I look for in a campaign setting is a setting that SHOWS, not TELLS you about the mysteries and strangeness of the world through adventuring rather than having it written up as a done deal. That was always so frustrating about the Forgotten Realms, but made the original gray box so compelling to me.
I personally like Forgotten Realms cause it has a large amount of lore already built into it, and with my philosophy where, as a dm, as soon as you say go the world is yours and you shouldn't feel overly constrained by what the lore says, it has a good enough amount of variety that you can run pretty much any kind of campaign you want in FR.
I remember my step dad was building a Dream Machine arcade store up in Watertown Maine the summer this came out. I begged the $20 from my Mom to buy this cause the guy at the store told me that this was all I needed to play the game since I didn't have the rules at that time. Sadly, he was wrong, should have bought the basic box set. It was great fun though when I met a new friend when I moved that year and we used this world to run all kinds of home brewed stuff. Good times. I wish I could talk to my friend I made in Maine that summer. Her mom owned a store that I hung out in every day.
I always felt that the Forgotten Realms felt like a LOTR alternate universe while Greyhawk was a gritty medieval world where anything could happen not just from mythology but also literature or television, or just whatever popped out of Gary’s (or the DM’s) imagination. The other AD&D worlds seem to restrain you to the canon of the source material.
Nah I love FR but Ed Greenwood is very paimfully not Tolkien. Which suits me fine, there is just one master and sometimes one wants to play on Worlds that care mostly abount the mundane, instead of living all the time on the metaphysical and Mythical.
Dragonlance is as close as D&D can get to Tolkien IMO. Which is why I love DL but I have a hard time playing extended campaigns in Krynn.
Ironically enough, LOTR is way more grounded and gritty than FR.
Cool looking map, and pretty wild that Darlene dropped her surname.
Oh man, I've recently come back to Greyhawk with my group. When we were little, we just played Greyhawk as generic medieval fantasy. But coming back to it, I'm really feeling the freedom of the setting. I've taken things a step more extreme now, with raucous pirates of the Lordship/Sea Barons, wolf-riders and tiger-riders in the Nomads, genies and magic carpets throughout the Sultanate of Zeif, etc.
I didn’t realize this was print on demand!!! I’m totally ordering this now!!! Fantastic video as always!!!
just started a new adventure set in the wonderful land of greyhawk. the players never played in this world so its all new. I have a simple mission the group sets out from the city of cryllor to search for the lost cave in the good hills for the town healer. It takes place 10 years after the great wars and the town healer i made him a old student of the "circle of 8" who rumors after the great wars went missing or possible perished during the war. The healer was searching for a lost scroll that might be located in the lost cave.
Bought this on Drive Throu a few years back. Even if I have no real plans of running a Greyhawk campaign, this book is great for stealing ideas and getting inspiration. A great bathroom book! :)
Thank you! I have been looking high and low for any videos on Greyhawk and you did not disappoint(I knew you wouldn't).What I LOVE about this setting is that even though there is a lot of background for this campaign it still leaves a ton of room for customization and sand boxing(I hope I'm putting that right).Great video as always.
Yeah, that was my take on things, and if you enjoy that style of play, it certainly makes this release pretty great!!
I would agree, WoGF, is the greatest campaign setting IF one wants a simple classic Western medieval/Tolkien fantasy world. I remember back in junior high being overwhelmed trying to figure out the Runequest world. As I grew older, however, I more and more appreciated Glorantha, and especially the RQ system, which I now think if vastly superior to D&D/AD&D. AD&D, however, will always have the nostalgia factor. I still have both versions of WoG you mention in this video and now I really want to turn the map into a wall hanging.
As always, another great video.
Good history lesson
Nice review
Darlene said she wrote the mountain names really big in order to avoid hand drawing as many mountains.
*Eye of the Beholder. The art of Dungeons & Dragons.
Worth watching if you haven't. Especially if you started in the 2nd edition era.
You hit the nail firmly on the head. Minimalism was of the reasons I choose Greyhawk for my 1e AD&D campaign last year. Although I’ve minimalized even more by switching to Swords & Wizardry, we’re still using Greyhawk. Great review - thanks!
And to answer your question near the end, I like to keep things mostly open; too much detail is its own kind of "railroad." The original World of Greyhawk was super because it just briefly described each nation/state/territory. Plenty of room for what the DM could add to it. It also makes for an easier situation to simply drop in established modules in the world in various places. Really like the fact that you display your map. It was really a one-of-a-kind thing. I had it back in the day but no longer (sad panda!) Super video!
Forgotten Realms is well designed. However, I always felt I was playing in someone else's back yard. Greyhawk definitely gave you more room to explore your own stories.
While I like Greyhawk, when I was new I NEEDED the level of detail FR offered. I've never ever even once cared about "keeping canon" because as soon as I start playing/DM, the World is my group's canon, and that is the only canon I care about.
By early 3.0 my Faerun had a ton of changes with the "canon" version, I adapted the changes we liked from the official and the ones that did not conflict with our canon, we did the same with Greyhawk after we bought "From the Ashes", since our ToEE and Saltmarsh campaigns ended with massive deviations to what was supposed to be "canon", as did our journey through A1-4, G1-3, U1-3 and Q1.
With Golarion on PF we are taking the same approach. Canon is what you want it to be.
This was fascinating well done. Dark Sun is my favorite but I love hearing about all the campaign settings (except Forgotten Realms)
No question mark. It's the greatest campaign setting ever.
Definitely in my top 2 greatest campaign settings of all time. World of Greyhawk for AD&D and the Palladium world for Palladium (Fantasy Role-Play).
One of the things that kept Greyhawk from getting crowded was Gary’s exit and the push towards the Realms being a default setting. When launched a fair amount was set aside for GM’s to make their own without TSR changing things beyond the original background: Serpent Hills, Wood of Sharp Teeth, Desertedge Mountains, and the whole of Sembia. A large cut-out also existed for RPGA, which in theory was independent and a group could make their own. All of that of course was tossed in the 2E revisions and the need for more space for their materials.
Basically, the Realms started as a great background and became over-developed like most of TSRs settings. Greyhawk was largely spare because it moved to the background.
My first game setting ever was Mystara Grand Duchy of Karameikios followed by Greyhawk.
Good Stuff! Thanks for the History and back ground. Loving the content Dave.
My Uncle just gave me his copy of this box set. What a gem!
From 2000 to 2008 WotC ran Living Greyhawk as part of its RPGA. They released the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer which is a slightly longer version of the guide -- moved slightly ahead in time. Further, they divided the real world into regions and hundreds of players created thousands of adventures -- dozens of core ones and dozens per region. These are well done with copy editing, play testing, etc. Best... they are free to download. (thetrove.net/Books/Dungeons%20&%20Dragons/Greyhawk/Living%20Greyhawk%20-%20RPGA/)
Great video and looking forward to the next one!
Great review,. Captain! You know I have been waiting for this one. Got me to finally buy it at Drivethrurpg. Now I got to read it. Those framed Darlene Maps are quite impressive.
Hope you enjoy it!
The artwork looks fantastic. I really love the old school style of art for these games.
This is the best thing I ever saw.
Have the second release in the box - loved that map and reading the booklets. Based my campaigns running the modules mainly, T1-4 was the greatest. Enjoyed the novels as well, the other campaign worlds are all interesting but Greyhawk was the first.
To answer your query about campaign setting composition preference I prefer to play settings that have novels as a part of the tapestry.
I am only familiar with Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance settings due to the many novels that are available. I like to see the world through a natives eyes before I play a character of my own.
I realize that lots of settings have political and geographic descriptions, but those, while informative, do not convey a sense of emotion or narrative like a character focussed interaction does.
So I suppose I like a lot of setting content and would pass on a bare-bones framework.
Love this so much. Had so much fun over the years in Greyhawk. My DM was so awesome he incorporated a lot of other places (like the Bazaar from MYTH Inc books for example) into this setting. We played extensively in and around Highfolk, near the Vesve Forest. Our map was laminated, and we used them a lot!
First dungeon I ever ran was G1, forty years back.
Just finding this in 2023....Good job. What do I look for in a campaign setting, as a GM? _"Another Greyhawk"_ -- a setting that is detailed enough to give me a start, but not a setting _so_ detailed that I am constricted in what I can or cannot do. By all means, write a basic outline, but don't hand me a novel....That's MY job.
Thanks! You should check out my review of the Hyperborea setting!
I think all us "old farts" who started playing in or around 1980 have our World of Greyhawk Darlene maps hanging up. I'm looking at mine on the wall as I watch this. :)
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I love the folio for exactly the reason you stated; open-endedness. Just enough "...what...hmmm...that's interesting...", but not so much that I'm stepping on my own toes when deciding where I'm going to place my latest dungeon. That said, I do also really appreciate the 'expanded' boxed set as well. I've been running a more or less continuous campaign in Greyhawk (well, continuous timeline) since 1981. Take "continuous" to mean "anytime I am DM'ing Greyhawk"...I'm using my "core timeline". I think I'm up around CY 597 ...and in my timeline, the Greyhawk Wars never really happened (re: the map is still pretty much Darlene and not the updated one where Iuz conquered the Horned Society or The Bandit Kingdoms)....but The Great Kingdom *did* suffer a demon/devil catastrophe.
Ah, now I understand Knights of the Dinner Table politics so much better.
Oh the memories. The first setting I ever owned, and still for me the best.
My old DM started me in Greyhawk but we gradually moved to Forgotten Realm modules. I ended up buying the gold box of FR in the mid-90's. There is A LOT of details, background, factions, NPC's, etc... in FR. It's basically I take what I need and disregard the rest. I've retired the old heroes in the campaign and made the player pc's and my old pc's the 'new guard' of FR. It IS a lot of gutting but it's also nice to have city details and villain factions ready to go without tossing and turning over new ones. I mix & match. It's kind of like taking someone's screenplay, re-writing it, then directing it. I'm not against Greyhawk or making a new sandbox world. I've just taken the history of my pc's in the FR and ran with it to make a customized amalgamation. There's pros and cons. Great vid Captain! Love live the old-school and Greyhawk!
I had the Greyhawk boxed setting AND the Forgotten Realm boxed setting.
The FR might gave been more detailed, but lacked geographic separations between nations which made no sense.
Greyhawk was more simplistic but made more sense. Plus I LOVE the old school hex map.
What do I prefer? Homebrew. Better to make from scratch than fix someone else's errors. Arrogant, I know.
The only thing I didn't dig about Greyhawk was their Deities. Most did nothing for me. I had Deities and Demigods with all those cool Norse, Finnish, Greek etc pantheons. I just combined them all. So in a large lawful city, there would be temples to Athena, Tyr, St. Cuthbert, etc.
Good point, they were pretty meh.
That is something FR does well, they make great gods. And then they do too much with them to the point of silliness, but they start cool.
That’s funny I loved them I still use them today
I had a party of players who all got really fascinated by Hextor after raiding a cults lair, half of them converted to the religion afterwards
You could always dump in the Gods of Hârn to Greyhawk, either piecemeal or whole cloth. Hextor is easily replaced with Agrik, Heironeous with Larani, etc. Or use them in addition. It's a pretty cool fantasy pantheon IMO. YMMV of course.
@@Daleksaresupreme1 Gloryaxe here...
Tremble, miscreant 😠
I found the episode interesting. I have never actually seen the map. But no doubt it is a gorgeous piece of art. I myself use the forgotten realms section swords coast as my map area for campaigns because no one now a days has the time to run a long campaign. But many old school mods i use and the mother-load web page with almost every dungeon mag issue as reference material or has adventures to tie in the sword coast map.
Volo’s guide to swords coast is an invaluable guide for DM’s to set up towns and “cough” certain cities, “Cough” Baldur’s gate.... And I never use Waterdeep. Baldur’s works as Waterdeep in my campaign. Unless the players make opening remarks about skull-port or the Undermountain of Halastar before they even start playing in opening interviews as GM... I pay attention to what players envision or been reading in books.... makes it easier to design the campaign around.
Keep on the borderlands followed by ruins of adventure/ original pool of radiance
Like #405. More classic old-school D&D gold from captcorajus!
I love Greyhawk above all the other campaign settings. Always have.
Greyhawk as a fantasy world wasn't my style at all and I never played in it, but I always really enjoyed reading about the 1970s D&D/TSR arcana and history surrounding Greyhawk and Blackmoor.
I just got a map set from ebay. I would love to frame them as well. I would love a video with a closer look on your maps and on how you prepared and framed them, they look awesome!
I'm new to this, run a game about 7 times, played as a PC for about 3, over the span of a year.
While I am making my own setting, my own world, I want a campaign setting that is more bare bones, things like kingdoms can be changed easily with ones you already have in your mind but creating pantheons, history, a half decent map that is presentable and then make sure that history, kingdoms, politics and geography are glued together well-enough as to not make your players question the history of it to the point you start arguing about it is the tough part. The part definitely need a pre-made setting.
Questions about magic, about the everyday lives of people, about their beliefs, these are questions that can be hard to answer in the empty canvas of your mind but can be easily put down in a world that already knows what it is.
And then all that is left to do is find some friends, roll characters and strat going on adventures.
Personally, I love both types of campaigns, although I tend to choose more detailed campaigns, but even I get nauseous when the world already seems too sclerotic, so to speak.
When I was younger I wanted a meaty setting that would tell me what to do. Now that I am older I prefer a more basic setting where I and my friends can evolve the setting to what we like. This also makes us to just ignore what we don't like in a more detailed setting.
I miss Greyhawk!
Absolutely.
We need to find Gary’s original Castle Greyhawk map