Glad you cover these classic DND books. BECMI is really the true DND. It is ashame the gaps and oversights of this book. But for a willing DM, this book can still be the basis for a great campaign.
My players and I had a blast with the adventure tours. After years of saving their domains and serious stuff, a laid back ridiculous 'adventure' was a wonderful break. To mix things up the wizard played the fighter's part, the fighter played the wizard, and the cleric played the Thief. they failed the scenario and loved every minute of it. I also like the silly joke additions of the TV characters.
So, one thing that I could see as a way to use Safari Island in an interesting way is based on something that happened in a 3.5 game I played in a few years back. There was an artefact we needed to find, and our best leads pointed in the direction of a dungeon that was typically used as a training exercise for trainee adventurers. Even though we were upwards of 15th level at that point, we signed up to be hirelings for a party of said trainees; basically watching them go through the dungeon that we were ludicrously overpowered for, and guiding them away from a recently opened side path that was to be our destination. Putting the party's objective in a previously unexplored part of an "adventure tour" could make for an interesting challenge - not because of there being anything dangerous, but because the party need to find an excuse to enter what is presumably private property.
The largest known caldera on Earth is about 100 miles across. When the planet was younger and hotter, I could easily see calderas bigger than that. But with magic, Blackmore and immortals, that can explain a lot.
I think the best parts of this Gaz is the rules for naval warfare and the Warmachine stats for thier military. After that Honor island's gate to the plane of fire. . Going to Irendi as adventures would put the Dm through a bunch of extra work though.
This was worth the wait. I have this product with unpunched card stock counter sheets. It sure as hell aged like milk in the summer sun in points. No need to apologize for the harsh review... it was still worth the watch. Thanks, bro!
I purchased the POD version from DMs' Guild a while back, but it has just been sitting on my shelf. I didn't realize just how bad it was! Thank you for reading it so that i don't have to. If I did ever have my characters come here, you've given some great ideas on some potential homebrew to have it make more sense.
@@anarionelendili8961 Haha, I just watched the vid and indeed, I won't use Ierendi. Though I might find use in the naval combat system (isn't there another one in GAZ 0?), as well as some ideas for islands themes.
THIS, this is the stuff, and there's more to come in the later Gazetteers, that I point to when explaining why I don't care for Mystara at all as a setting. "How we went from; Kingdom of Ierendi. The trading ships of Ierendi rival those of Thyatis, and the kingdom sports a magnificent royal palace carved from pure white coral. The king and queen of the land are usually popular adventurer-heroes; however, they are without true power and serve only as figureheads. Actual rule is held by certain aristocratic families (making Ierendi an oligarchy)." in Isle of Dread, to this is beyond me. Le sigh. Great video as always sir.
Fully agreed. There is also a question how a collection of resort islands with a native population around 50 000 is in any shape or form able to compete with the other nations. Also, Ierendi City is way too big for the total population, showing urbanization more typical to a late 20th century. Multiply the total population by 10, and keep the city the same size, and that would take care both of my above demographic complaints, but you'd still need to do a full rewrite on this to make it live up to what it could have been.
I would totally lean in to the ridiculousness of these islands. When my player characters get there, I would ham everything up and make this place look like it was a total chaotic mess that could never function. As the players at my table are wondering what in the world is up with this place? I would slowly start to introduce some sinister plot That deals with the entirety of these islands, I could have lots of fun with some evil power doing all this craziness to these people for some nefarious purpose
It has been a Looooonng time since I read my copy so thank you very much for an excellent recap. Great video as usual. Did not mind the length at all. Just made myself a cup of coffee and sipped away. As you said some whacky stuff and missed opportunities. It wasn't a place my players ever got to but had some good things like Honor Island. I think Mr. Welch had the idea to portray the Makai as Maori's which was interesting. A lot of work needed to be done but it's been out a while so I'm sure there have been plenty of fan additions / modifications over the years and probably available on The Vaults. Artwork very good too. Looking forward to the next one.
Wow! That must have been hard for you to keep on the project when the content is so cringey. I feel bad for the original creators, in no way could they have felt that this was worthy of their time. I can only imagine popping Rolaids on the way to work and praying that you'd win the lottery, or that the building would collapse so that you wouldn't have to elaborate on the Fantasy Island motif that you were tasked with developing. How you would question the paths in life you chose and how lucky you are to have this job- absolutely soul-crushing. I do appreciate your work on this. It's a joy to have a window into the past, and be able to pick up the treasures within. I hope the future Gazetteers treat you well! I like the maps, as always, and I want to somehow rescue them with a homebrew, but I'm not sure it can be done.
Maybe the original creators should have done a better job on the product instead of complaining about being tasked with creating Gaz4? I'm guessing these authors just weren't as skilled or preferred a different style of game. TSR couldn't afford expensive authors and had to depend upon fans to write content.
Came for awesome review, stayed for "steaming geezers"! (Gotta love the differences in British vs American English!) Awesome content, and I hope you keep at it.
Thanks for doing the review. I really enjoyed playing in Ierendi. The social structure is so different to Karameikos. I think the Gaz has loads of adventure hooks.
Thanks for the great review. If my players make it to this area, they will probably encounter geography as described in GAZ4, but the rest will be heavily modified. I'd probably replace Adeventurers' Club HQ with Ierendi Castle. Regarding the location of Ierendi Castle, GAZ4 p.22 under "Adventurers' Club Headquarters" heading it says "Once the castle of the monarchs of Ierendi, this formidable keep was turned over to the Adventuerers' Club when the new Royal Castle was built in the Beverly Boulevard section south of the center of town." It's as you say, Beverly Boulevard is not shown on the Ierendi City map.
I fondly recall having the first couple of Gazeteers. Read them but doubt I ever actually used them except to steal an idea or three. Loved those maps.
Great review, I am enjoying this series. I have always assumed that the size of the crater was a kilometer/mile conversion mistake, as there are numerous supervolcano calderas that are 100 to150 kilometers across and I again assume the author wanted to have the fantasy volcano be a bit bigger, because fantasy. Big assumption but it's how I've always taken it. I also wish there had been more Iceland and Indonesia blended into the location for inspiration on how the volcanic activity could inspire or shape history. The lack of content on the Makai I have taken to be reflective of what was going on with the Native Hawaiians at the time. Hawaiian language and culture were suppressed from 1896 on, at one point the youngest speaker of Hawaiian was over 40 and there were estimated to be fewer than 100 speakers total. In the 1970s a revival finally began but in the 1980s it was still building momentum. I think the author was coming out of the older tradition that valued the plantation era over the native history. As a GM, there's a lot of potential in placing a similar Makai revival into an Ierendi campaign. I am in no way agreeing with the author's omission or justifying it, simply saying that as a point of fact in the 1980s it was much harder to get information about Hawaiian and Polynesian culture than it is today, and the book is a product of its time. The actual history of Oceania and the complex relationships between the Austronesians, Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians are fascinating. Even limited to Hawaii the history of discovery and first inhabitation by Samoans, their conquest by Tahitians, revolution, and the Kamehameha-family's consolidation of power makes for a very interesting Makai-centered campaign. You could make the Tahitian conquest inspiration for Thyatis or Alphatia, draw on the prophecy mentioned in the Gazeteer and assume they got the time wrong with a Makai force united with allied merfolk and aquatic elf (pull from the PC4 and Minrothad books) under a King Kamehameha-type figure of prophecy leading a fight to reclaim their ancestral lands. Many of the other Oceanic peoples have similarly awesome tales to draw on as well. Adding in the TV references, I think, is the sort of thing that made Mystara different and turned some people off to it. It always had a mixed bag mentality with humor and horror and sci-fi all jumbled up. The Orcs of Thar is the one that took it too far for me, turning the whole product into a comedy rather than just having some unusual references such as here. Overall, I liked Dave Arneson's additions to the world, and Bruce Heard's willingness to include different themes in small chunks while overall keeping to the fantasy genre. But not all my players have felt the same.
I had a lot of similar thoughts writing this. I think the lack of acknowledgment of Makai culture was symptomatic of the time for the reasons you gave. There was so much missed opportunity. I mentioned Iceland as an inspiration for volcanic activity but should have also mentioned the Pacific Ring of Fire. Would have been more appropriate. Anyway, thanks for watching and commenting.
Outstanding as always. Given the content you could have cut your production values and no one would likely have blamed you. Not you however! It looked to me that you spent more time than ever assembling the pictures and maps. Seriously, your videos just keep getting better. I wanted to comment on the child trafficking. A grim topic to be sure but quite in line with the known world here. We already have slavery from Gaz 1. I find it sad that D&D just released a product that allows players to perform beastality (apparently you can sex up a bear) but would find child trafficking too mature. Anyone have an opinion?
Thanks for noticing the increase in production. It’s not exactly sophisticated but it’s times consuming. Glad you’re enjoying the videos. Good point about the bear thing!
I actually really like a lot of the hooks and generally more light hearted tone of this gazetter. Like, Really, you got to admit wizards who cater to extra planar tourists to the known wold, but not the other way around is a really fun idea. They study fire and stuff, so it doesnt seem out of left feild for them to come to an agreement with beings from that plane even if they are isolationists towards those of their world. I like that irony. The lack of Detail of the Makai and kingdom life is disappointing though, albeit I like a lot of the hints that we do get, buring their dead with a bunch of treasure, minor spells to adress the issues of the island, a possible tension between the more lax majority religion and the more structured minority one. Different islands offering different vacation activities. There is a lot of empty spaces, but I do like a lot of the premises it put out even if they didnt quite develop them as robustly as they probably should.
Or someone place the islands there. Why? That would be up to the DM. Something is imprisoned under them? Someone build a subterranean kingdom? The snake-people trope? Dark Elves? Another labyrinth by a mad Wizard? It's the wreck of one of THE Spelljammers? A former asteroid city from the astral (or another) plane? Were the Makai inhabitants there? Or slaves? Take your pick or be creative. It may have been a mistake by the writers, but I see it as an invitation for a DM to add his own twist to the region.
I am about to run AD&D with this setting and while I will drop a few things and add more, I kind of like the tourism angle. Not saying I would go as full bore as they did and I will definitely have it littered with spas and other high end establishments for the elite of Thyatis, Minrothad and other kingdoms to play in, I think my biggest change is I want a large centrally located volcano right in the middle. Sort of like the Vesuvius of the world...just bigger.
If you look at Krakatoa archipelago and the growth of Anak Krakatoa you can see how the explosion and it's fall out might produce the lands in this Gazetteer.
The problem, as BECMI Berserker pointed out, is one of scale. The Krakatoa caldera is about 5 miles across, not over 200 miles. Also, the highest point of Anak Krakatoa is less than thousand feet. It is simply much easier to ignore this kind of a supercaldera exploding outright, and instead simply have it be a volcanically active area. A supercaldera like that would have wiped out the whole planetary population with a nuclear winter type scenario, not to mention the tsunamis that would have inundated everything around the Sea of Dread. It isn't great in the Gazettee, either, as it is suggesting that these volcanic eruptions and splitting of the land masses happened in a span of about a generation. (And gets the order of BC dates wrong, giving the initial event as 1700 BC and the follow-up as 1720 BC, twenty years EARLIER.) I'd toss that all aside, and just make it a volcanic archipelago, formed in the aftermath of the Blackmoor eruption (if you want to make it very very quick) or just having been there for millions of years.
What a weird incomplete mishmash inspired by the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and a bit of Australia. I'm sure my players will head from Karameikos directly towards it, making me scramble. :P
I always thought the Known World was Earth. The Grand Dutchy was New Orleans & Ierendi was the Caribbean Islands. The dying lizard men could’ve been a reference to the Arawak Peoples wiped out by the Conquistadors.
Wow. The editor in chief that approved Karameikos and Glantri must have been rendered comatose when this thing was being put together. If i should try to assemble the Known World at some point, i would get this as one area of the world that would be almost entirely scrapped and rewritten. It might be cool: i could run it as a maritime point crawl, with the characters cruising from island to island, and I could use alot of the random world generation things I've collected over the years. I might be able to fit both the Isle of Dread AND Hot Springs Island into the archipelago, cause, why not!? Anyway, what alot of lost opportunity.
Silliness like Mr. Coarke that would be more appropriate for Steve Jackson's Toon game certainly didn't do anything to rehabilitate BECMI's reputation as "kiddie D&D."
So, going out on a limb here, and correct me if I'm wrong, 'cos I'm not totally getting the message, but if the three careful and slow watches of this video and your tone are anything to go by, I'm guessing you... liked this one? in all seriousness though, I am disappointed. I've been glancing at very surface level explinations of the different regions when you drop the local of the next one to get a rough idea of the area you'll be covering, and so far I've picked up the others to skim through at leisure. When I learned this Gaz was about volcanic islands with mutliple factions and varying points of interest, I was excited to be learning about something akin to a pirate-rich (pun intended) area that would support classic treasure hunting, naval exploration & warfare and navigation through interesting cultures, to say the least of the cultural clashes. In light of your review, I feel it could have been so much more, a real 'Pirates of the Caribbean' before Pirates of the Caribbean was cool. Side point; there was a card game/miniatures game in early 2000's called Pirates of the Spanish Main. You bought boosters, and got cards, but they were pop out cut cards which could be assembled into 3D miniatures resembling vessels from the Age of Sails era. There was a complete game for them, but I found them very fun to use when seeking miniatures for naval encounters in D&D. Very happy to see the videos continuing, and am definately loving the sprinkling of videos between. I've said it once, I'll say it again; this series is going to be a benchmark for these kind of historic setting reviews once its complete, a true Magnum Opus I hope you smash aside with whatever long term project is after it. Stay cool good sir.
It could have been so so much more! Pirate, volcanoes, elementalism, magic, ancient peoples…it’s was begging to be taken in the right direction. Otherwise, glad you liked the video.
@@becmiberserker Apart of me was wondering what something like that would look like written with a redesign in mind. Its an uneasy feeling, rewriting and designing another artists work, but at the same time, tinkering and creating is a huge part of the hobby. I find myself itching for a project of late, might be something to crack out...
I can't help but think there's room for a good intrigue campaign setting in there, but the amount of work it would require and the pointlessness of all the background fluff surrounding the island is confusing to say the least. I mean "retired" pirate hideouts? Child traficking? Powerless figurehead rulers? Merchants reforming the ruling system, prehaps to benefit from the tourism front to engage in shady affairs... There's definetly something rotten in here that waits for heroes to uncover it. The druids had me scratching my head though, it's like this part comes from another supplement altogether.
Island turtle, Kara Tur style dragans that make up a mountain range while sleeping, or a later magical explosion from the plane of Earth creating new islands where once was only ocean. The Gaz failed to explain the geography which is unfortunate. In elementary school my friends and I didn't notice the discrepancy.
Wonderful. The Kingdom of Ierendi seems to be exactly the right place for a creative DM to develop a part of the Known World practically from scrap according to his/her ideas 😉
Forgot about that one. At least the silliness wasn’t focused on BECMI. Seems to have happened in the years following Gygax’s departure. Perhaps the staff were just not bothered.
The "adventurer's club" was stupid waaay back in the day, and is still stupid. I happened to read "Wizard of Earthsea" in '85 and thought "why not just chuck 92.4% of this crap and replace it with islands that don't suck?" Medieval fantasy tourism is very silly. Thanks for the video.
I agree, yet DMs still use Adventures Club/Guild today. Not all gamers like the same style. To be fair my friends and I liked this Gaz when we were in elementary school.
I find your material to be top notch. However you dont seem to possess a nostalgia bone in your body. Maybe if you were brought up in the 60s and 70s you would appreciate the nostalgia of these elements. Most people today will not identify any of these elements, and I for one, as DM will enjoy playing these characrters immensely, to new players who havnet experienced them before, and then sit back patiently as one day they will come across either fantasy island or magnum PI and the penny will drop. Pure gold.
Awww…not fair! 🙂 If you knew me, you would know I live far too much in the past. Admittedly though, my review is through the lens of a fifty-something that wants good value for money. If I read this as a 14-year-old, I bet I would have found it hilarious. I miss that 14-year-old most days. When I get to the end of this series (I intend to speed up a bit in the new year), I will do a wrap up video on my overall thoughts on the setting, given my recent examinations and differing perspective from when I was younger, as well as other things. Your comment helps me consider stuff like this, so thank you.
Lol You do realize you are critiquing the geography of a world one-third the size of Earth, but has more mountains in the Known World then we have on the whole planet right? Also don't worry about Ierendi being bad, Atruaghin is worse.
Maybe the explosion should have blown it out of the sun’s orbit then?? 🤣 Seriously though, the suspension of belief normally attributed to fantasy needs to be turned up to 11 for this one.
I'm gonna take a wild shot in the dark, knowing almost nothing about this setting or the timeframe in which it was released, so forgive me if this is totally off the mark: I think this was TSR's attempt to make a comedy adventure, but TSR's writing style is simply too dry and matter of fact to tip their hand that it's a joke. I haven't seen the video on GAZ3 yet, I skipped to this one because I found the cover art so enticing, but it seems like the previous three gazetteers have all been relatively serious, somber affairs with a lot of danger and intrigue. This seems like their attempt to pull back a bit and give you a book where it's less about having a grim fantasy story and more about letting the proverbial hair down and having a good time. The setting is a collection of islands billed as a tourist resort; this gazetteer is _literally_ a beach episode. You send the adventurers here for a break from the usual adventure to go around and sightsee and do funny tasks for a lark for a session or two. The whole economy being built around tourism and monetizing adventurers calls to mind a sort of fantasy Disneyworld parody, where the whole idea of a fantasy adventure is turned into a theme park. This comparison is going to probably throw people for a loop, but here I go: It reminds me of Fazbear Entertainment from Five Nights at Freddy's, who is so corporately money-hungry and transparently evil that they will every trick in the book to convince you that their business is reputable and deserves your money, even when they blatantly admit something is up! I don't claim that this book is trying to imply that the system that runs Ierendi is evil, in fact it seems to be devoid of much of any conflict whatsoever (furthering my theory that this is meant to be a vacation for the PCs). But it's a thought experiment. This would also clock why one island is literally just full of TV references; each island is designed to just be a sightshow your PCs visit, go "ooh, ahh" at, maybe solve a problem or complete a task, and then move on. I don't know what it is, but no comedy adventure can resist throwing in blatant references to pop culture. It may be eye-rolling to some, but I'm sure some people consider this the height of comedy (even if I don't think I want to play with those people). Making the guy with literal dwarfism a gnome is probably bad taste no matter how you do it, tho. _If what I say is true_ in that this is in fact a poorly labeled, poorly presented comedy adventure/setting, then I would argue that the reason why you don't like this gazetteer too much is because the jokes don't land for you (which would be because the comedy is pretty bad). Comedy adventures in RPGs are _extremely_ risky business because comedy is so subjective, and the stuff that makes one person groan makes another person slap their knee. Again, this whole theory is based on me being correct that this was _meant_ to be a joke but late 80s TSR didn't really have a good comedic tone to pull it off. It could, as always, simply be bad. But I think if you go into it with that mindset, there's something to be had here. You could really play up the farcical nature of the King and Queen being decided with a grand Adventurer's Tournament, likely giving your PCs a chance to earn the title themselves and realize just how little power that title holds here ("I Was Crowned King of Ierendi And All I Got Was This Stupid Hauberk"). Take that Adventurer's Club thing and change it from "a nomination from royalty" to "a monthly fee". Now it's suddenly a parody of subscription services, essentially being an Ierendi Plus account with enticing promised features that put you a cut above the free pass holders! Except it doesn't, of course, it has the bare minimum of features and in fact puts you on the list to be contacted to do missions to work for free, like it's currently presented. And finally, just change Royal Island entirely. Why is it restricted access to all but the highest of personnel? Well, because it's the employee's only island, of course! That's where the Tribunal runs everything, checks their profits, and prepares all the events and sights for the other islands, they can't just let anyone walk in there and find out this whole thing is just a money-making scheme! Now you've got a whole island beach resort honey pot that tries to shake adventurers down for all that lucrative coin they hoard from their dungeon crawls, a scheme your PCs can upend and thwart, and there's even an enticingly locked off "final boss island" to give them a clue as to where to go to reach the head of this whole charade. Or it could just be a cheesy and expensive resort that they show up at, enjoy for a bit, and then leave to go back to the main plotline. Whichever works! And to be fair, this is still dangerously too close to the "sell you a half-baked book that you as the GM have to do the work to fill out and get running" that modern Wizards DnD is criticized for, but let's be honest with ourselves for a moment; TSR was _never_ immune to that either. It's probably not _as_ bad as modern Wizards, but it would be unfair to say they never released half-baked products just for the cash.
Thanks for the great comment. I have to admit that this angle did occur to me as I was reviewing, but I took the approach of not letting TSR off the hook. That is, they might have thought it a bit of comic relief that might be shared with the wider audience, but after a bit of fun and a jape, the customer is left with a weak product that they have paid for. I also recalled some 80s TV similarities, like Moonlighting, where the 4th wall was broken to include the audience in some lighthearted entertainment. However, if you were to watch those episodes today in isolation and out of the general zeitgeist of the time, they just seem odd and out of step. I’ve got a sense of humour (well, I think so anyway…) but from a perspective of longevity and legacy I still think the product is poor, but I absolutely take your points and there’s validity in them. I just think that whatever levity TSR had thought appropriate to introduce into their campaign world was very shortsighted; isn’t that always the way when the times are good? I think I’m going to come across the same issues when I review Gaz10 Orcs of Thar. Again, thanks for a great comment. I enjoyed reading it.
Great video! To me, the idea of adventuring as a valid profession never made sense to me. GAZ4 reveals several problems with applying an overly modern worldview to fantasy. IMO, fantasy is based on three ingredients: (a) the pre-modern world, (b) pre-modern perspectives, and (c) the fantastical that pre-modern people imagined. The more I think about it, the more I think that adventures themselves are seldom realistic (though realism is not the goal in fantasy). Let's take the Caves of Chaos, for an example. What would really happen is that the castellan of the Keep would simply send in his soldiers by the dozens and hundreds to kill the relatively small numbers of monsters living in the Caves. No adventurers needed! Moreover, thieves wouldn't risk their lives in "dungeons", when they could rob townhouses for the local guild. Clerics are safer staying in their churches, magic-users in their towers, elves in their forests, dwarves in their mountains, halflings in their shires, and fighters are better off joining the military (there's safety in numbers). You have to be either crazy or desperate to risk adventures. It also makes no sense that the monsters who populate places of adventure, like "dungeons", would have the amounts of treasure that they do, much less the magic items. Where do the the monsters get them? Not by raiding peasant villages. So why have adventures at all? Very few people would. More deeply, though, adventures take place in a sort of phantasmagoria: a sort of dark fairyland, as it were. Why do we play games about them? Because pre-modern people saw the world as very mysterious. The depths of the wild wood, caves, seemingly endless crypts built in times immemorial, etc. were sources of great mystery, wonder, and horror for them. When they told stories, like the quests of the Knights of the Round Table, or the like, they imagined that legendary people, whose lives were entirely extra-ordinary, ventured into mysterious places of wonder and horror. That's what we're trying to recreate in our games. So realism fails in fantasy worldbuilding. While internal consistency is important, trying to make rational sense of these phantasmagorias is a fool's errand. An adventurer profession makes no sense, because adventurers are extraordinary people who operate beyond the bounds of ordinary society. They are the extremely rare people who venture into these places of wonder and horror. These places are full of monsters, because they're full of horror. They're full of treasure and magic, because they're full of wonder. Adventurers are, thus, liminal. They operate between the norms of society and this sort of dark fairyland where everyone else fears to tread. So having a kingdom ruled by adventurers with an adventurers' club, and all that, makes no sense in a fantasy world. It de-mystifies that which must be mysterious in order to work. Ierendi is a setting conceived by minds that are much too modern. It starts with the premise that there's a world of adventures, wonderous and horrific, and then proceeds to create a parody of them in which they're so homogenized that you can have a sort of Disneyland of adventurous tourists ruled by the winners of adventurer contests. What's needed for good fantasy worldbuilding is to set aside our modern perspectives and imagine with pre-modern eyes that see the world as being full of mysteries, horrific and wondrous.
That caught my attention as soon as I heard him say it. The Jonestown Massacre occured in 1978 and it would have been well-known when this GAZ was written. It makes me wonder if the author was implying that something sinister was going on under the facade of a universalist-type church.
Bit of a poor quality product with some good ideas. I’ve done the “fake” adventure before but via the equivalent of a holodeck (my world is science fantasy). Players always have fun playing these VR games as different characters with no actual risk to their real characters. I’ll also use it as an excuse to use different game systems. For example I ran 3e EverQuest session during a 5e campaign.
I didn't like either Fantasy Island nor Magnum PI when they were hit shows (yes, im that old...). I think i would have to ceremonially nuke Fletcher Island if i got this stuffed goose of an rpg setting. Maybe its cheap... i can't imagine it's accrued much value over the years...
This is more some DM ideas than a GAZ, which should help DMs creating and maintaining a campaign. Too many uncoordinated ideas, in the end you don't have a general idea of what Ierendi is because of that. GAZ1 Eastern Europe GAZ 2 Arabia GAZ 3 Mages ruling a medieval / renaissance Europe. A little more complicated but ok GAZ 4 Maori, Tourist Resorts, TV parodies, islands inhabited by crazy druid morphing as white apes... too crazy even for a fantasy setting!
Ok, you have convinced me, this Gaz is a waste of time, money, and paper. I am so sorry I could only listen to half this video, perhaps next year I will be able to sit through the rest. God I wasted too much time on this one.
It's an embarrassing mess of a product. Like you said, I couldn't really believe what I was reading when I found out that Ierendi was supposedly a tourism hotspot. It smacks of a badly aimed and poorly executed attempt at humor that ends up damaging the whole Mystara line. I'll never acknowledge this product's existence in my version of the Known World.
GAZ 4 might be weak but your reviews are amazing as always ❤ keep them coming
Thanks, @0den
Glad you cover these classic DND books. BECMI is really the true DND. It is ashame the gaps and oversights of this book. But for a willing DM, this book can still be the basis for a great campaign.
My players and I had a blast with the adventure tours. After years of saving their domains and serious stuff, a laid back ridiculous 'adventure' was a wonderful break. To mix things up the wizard played the fighter's part, the fighter played the wizard, and the cleric played the Thief. they failed the scenario and loved every minute of it. I also like the silly joke additions of the TV characters.
I’m sure you’re not the only one who liked it. Really interesting to hear views that counter my own. Thanks for sharing.
So, one thing that I could see as a way to use Safari Island in an interesting way is based on something that happened in a 3.5 game I played in a few years back. There was an artefact we needed to find, and our best leads pointed in the direction of a dungeon that was typically used as a training exercise for trainee adventurers. Even though we were upwards of 15th level at that point, we signed up to be hirelings for a party of said trainees; basically watching them go through the dungeon that we were ludicrously overpowered for, and guiding them away from a recently opened side path that was to be our destination. Putting the party's objective in a previously unexplored part of an "adventure tour" could make for an interesting challenge - not because of there being anything dangerous, but because the party need to find an excuse to enter what is presumably private property.
The largest known caldera on Earth is about 100 miles across. When the planet was younger and hotter, I could easily see calderas bigger than that. But with magic, Blackmore and immortals, that can explain a lot.
I think the best parts of this Gaz is the rules for naval warfare and the Warmachine stats for thier military. After that Honor island's gate to the plane of fire. . Going to Irendi as adventures would put the Dm through a bunch of extra work though.
This was worth the wait. I have this product with unpunched card stock counter sheets. It sure as hell aged like milk in the summer sun in points.
No need to apologize for the harsh review... it was still worth the watch. Thanks, bro!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Love that you’re giving BECMI it’s love. Wish theses world books could be put “Campaign World book for Mystara”
Thank you.
I purchased the POD version from DMs' Guild a while back, but it has just been sitting on my shelf. I didn't realize just how bad it was! Thank you for reading it so that i don't have to. If I did ever have my characters come here, you've given some great ideas on some potential homebrew to have it make more sense.
You’re very welcome. It’s worth having from a collector’s perspective, so not a complete waste. 🙂
😅 46:31
Everytime you make a video about a Gazetteer, I end up using it in my campaign. More work but more fun!
Glad to be of help.
This one might be the exception...
@@anarionelendili8961 🤣
@@anarionelendili8961 Haha, I just watched the vid and indeed, I won't use Ierendi. Though I might find use in the naval combat system (isn't there another one in GAZ 0?), as well as some ideas for islands themes.
There's the Sea Machine in M1 Into the Maelstrom.
THIS, this is the stuff, and there's more to come in the later Gazetteers, that I point to when explaining why I don't care for Mystara at all as a setting. "How we went from; Kingdom of Ierendi. The trading ships of Ierendi rival those of Thyatis, and the kingdom sports a magnificent royal palace carved from pure white coral. The king and queen of the land are usually popular adventurer-heroes; however, they are without true power and serve only as figureheads. Actual rule is held by certain aristocratic families (making Ierendi an oligarchy)." in Isle of Dread, to this is beyond me. Le sigh. Great video as always sir.
Fully agreed. There is also a question how a collection of resort islands with a native population around 50 000 is in any shape or form able to compete with the other nations. Also, Ierendi City is way too big for the total population, showing urbanization more typical to a late 20th century. Multiply the total population by 10, and keep the city the same size, and that would take care both of my above demographic complaints, but you'd still need to do a full rewrite on this to make it live up to what it could have been.
This is the beauty of D&D, though. Just because TSR decided to put out the gazetteers doesn't mean that content has to be used if it's trash.
Finally! I been waiting for so long! thank you!
You’re welcome. 🙂
I would totally lean in to the ridiculousness of these islands. When my player characters get there, I would ham everything up and make this place look like it was a total chaotic mess that could never function. As the players at my table are wondering what in the world is up with this place? I would slowly start to introduce some sinister plot That deals with the entirety of these islands, I could have lots of fun with some evil power doing all this craziness to these people for some nefarious purpose
It has been a Looooonng time since I read my copy so thank you very much for an excellent recap. Great video as usual. Did not mind the length at all. Just made myself a cup of coffee and sipped away. As you said some whacky stuff and missed opportunities. It wasn't a place my players ever got to but had some good things like Honor Island. I think Mr. Welch had the idea to portray the Makai as Maori's which was interesting. A lot of work needed to be done but it's been out a while so I'm sure there have been plenty of fan additions / modifications over the years and probably available on The Vaults. Artwork very good too. Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks. I appreciate that. Only 11 to go! 🙂
Wow! That must have been hard for you to keep on the project when the content is so cringey. I feel bad for the original creators, in no way could they have felt that this was worthy of their time.
I can only imagine popping Rolaids on the way to work and praying that you'd win the lottery, or that the building would collapse so that you wouldn't have to elaborate on the Fantasy Island motif that you were tasked with developing. How you would question the paths in life you chose and how lucky you are to have this job- absolutely soul-crushing.
I do appreciate your work on this. It's a joy to have a window into the past, and be able to pick up the treasures within. I hope the future Gazetteers treat you well!
I like the maps, as always, and I want to somehow rescue them with a homebrew, but I'm not sure it can be done.
Thanks for the kind comment.
Maybe the original creators should have done a better job on the product instead of complaining about being tasked with creating Gaz4?
I'm guessing these authors just weren't as skilled or preferred a different style of game.
TSR couldn't afford expensive authors and had to depend upon fans to write content.
Sweet! I’ve been waiting for this video! Thanks BECMI Berserker! 😀
You’re welcome!
Came for awesome review, stayed for "steaming geezers"! (Gotta love the differences in British vs American English!) Awesome content, and I hope you keep at it.
Thank you!
Thanks for doing the review. I really enjoyed playing in Ierendi. The social structure is so different to Karameikos. I think the Gaz has loads of adventure hooks.
Glad you enjoyed both the review and the actual Gazetteer. It wasn’t a complete failure then. 🙂
I'd explain the inconsistencies by saying they were all lies told to impress travellers.
“We were told the hotel had a pool…”
@@becmiberserker "It does! Every time it rains, there is a pool of water in that dip on the tiles there, right in front of the entrance!"
Thanks for the great review. If my players make it to this area, they will probably encounter geography as described in GAZ4, but the rest will be heavily modified. I'd probably replace Adeventurers' Club HQ with Ierendi Castle.
Regarding the location of Ierendi Castle, GAZ4 p.22 under "Adventurers' Club Headquarters" heading it says "Once the castle of the monarchs of Ierendi, this formidable keep was turned over to the Adventuerers' Club when the new Royal Castle was built in the Beverly Boulevard section south of the center of town." It's as you say, Beverly Boulevard is not shown on the Ierendi City map.
Love this breakdown, excellent presentation, look forward to watching more on your channel - thanks for making this content.
Much appreciated! Many thanks.
I fondly recall having the first couple of Gazeteers. Read them but doubt I ever actually used them except to steal an idea or three. Loved those maps.
Congratulations. Ima watch this later, but glad you got it done.
Thank you!
Great review, I am enjoying this series.
I have always assumed that the size of the crater was a kilometer/mile conversion mistake, as there are numerous supervolcano calderas that are 100 to150 kilometers across and I again assume the author wanted to have the fantasy volcano be a bit bigger, because fantasy. Big assumption but it's how I've always taken it. I also wish there had been more Iceland and Indonesia blended into the location for inspiration on how the volcanic activity could inspire or shape history.
The lack of content on the Makai I have taken to be reflective of what was going on with the Native Hawaiians at the time. Hawaiian language and culture were suppressed from 1896 on, at one point the youngest speaker of Hawaiian was over 40 and there were estimated to be fewer than 100 speakers total. In the 1970s a revival finally began but in the 1980s it was still building momentum. I think the author was coming out of the older tradition that valued the plantation era over the native history. As a GM, there's a lot of potential in placing a similar Makai revival into an Ierendi campaign. I am in no way agreeing with the author's omission or justifying it, simply saying that as a point of fact in the 1980s it was much harder to get information about Hawaiian and Polynesian culture than it is today, and the book is a product of its time.
The actual history of Oceania and the complex relationships between the Austronesians, Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians are fascinating. Even limited to Hawaii the history of discovery and first inhabitation by Samoans, their conquest by Tahitians, revolution, and the Kamehameha-family's consolidation of power makes for a very interesting Makai-centered campaign. You could make the Tahitian conquest inspiration for Thyatis or Alphatia, draw on the prophecy mentioned in the Gazeteer and assume they got the time wrong with a Makai force united with allied merfolk and aquatic elf (pull from the PC4 and Minrothad books) under a King Kamehameha-type figure of prophecy leading a fight to reclaim their ancestral lands. Many of the other Oceanic peoples have similarly awesome tales to draw on as well.
Adding in the TV references, I think, is the sort of thing that made Mystara different and turned some people off to it. It always had a mixed bag mentality with humor and horror and sci-fi all jumbled up. The Orcs of Thar is the one that took it too far for me, turning the whole product into a comedy rather than just having some unusual references such as here. Overall, I liked Dave Arneson's additions to the world, and Bruce Heard's willingness to include different themes in small chunks while overall keeping to the fantasy genre. But not all my players have felt the same.
I had a lot of similar thoughts writing this. I think the lack of acknowledgment of Makai culture was symptomatic of the time for the reasons you gave. There was so much missed opportunity. I mentioned Iceland as an inspiration for volcanic activity but should have also mentioned the Pacific Ring of Fire. Would have been more appropriate. Anyway, thanks for watching and commenting.
Thanks!
Thank you so much!
Mystara is a special kind of world. I had several adventures within. From Isle of Dread to Norvick.
Outstanding as always. Given the content you could have cut your production values and no one would likely have blamed you. Not you however! It looked to me that you spent more time than ever assembling the pictures and maps. Seriously, your videos just keep getting better.
I wanted to comment on the child trafficking. A grim topic to be sure but quite in line with the known world here. We already have slavery from Gaz 1. I find it sad that D&D just released a product that allows players to perform beastality (apparently you can sex up a bear) but would find child trafficking too mature.
Anyone have an opinion?
Thanks for noticing the increase in production. It’s not exactly sophisticated but it’s times consuming. Glad you’re enjoying the videos.
Good point about the bear thing!
I actually really like a lot of the hooks and generally more light hearted tone of this gazetter.
Like, Really, you got to admit wizards who cater to extra planar tourists to the known wold, but not the other way around is a really fun idea. They study fire and stuff, so it doesnt seem out of left feild for them to come to an agreement with beings from that plane even if they are isolationists towards those of their world. I like that irony.
The lack of Detail of the Makai and kingdom life is disappointing though, albeit I like a lot of the hints that we do get, buring their dead with a bunch of treasure, minor spells to adress the issues of the island, a possible tension between the more lax majority religion and the more structured minority one. Different islands offering different vacation activities.
There is a lot of empty spaces, but I do like a lot of the premises it put out even if they didnt quite develop them as robustly as they probably should.
The two central islands would be newer volcanic islands. The size of the caldera might allude to yet another undocumented Blackmoor device.
I like it!
Or someone place the islands there. Why? That would be up to the DM.
Something is imprisoned under them?
Someone build a subterranean kingdom? The snake-people trope? Dark Elves?
Another labyrinth by a mad Wizard?
It's the wreck of one of THE Spelljammers?
A former asteroid city from the astral (or another) plane? Were the Makai inhabitants there? Or slaves?
Take your pick or be creative.
It may have been a mistake by the writers, but I see it as an invitation for a DM to add his own twist to the region.
This was excellent.
I am about to run AD&D with this setting and while I will drop a few things and add more, I kind of like the tourism angle. Not saying I would go as full bore as they did and I will definitely have it littered with spas and other high end establishments for the elite of Thyatis, Minrothad and other kingdoms to play in, I think my biggest change is I want a large centrally located volcano right in the middle. Sort of like the Vesuvius of the world...just bigger.
Thanks for the share!!
If you look at Krakatoa archipelago and the growth of Anak Krakatoa you can see how the explosion and it's fall out might produce the lands in this Gazetteer.
The problem, as BECMI Berserker pointed out, is one of scale. The Krakatoa caldera is about 5 miles across, not over 200 miles. Also, the highest point of Anak Krakatoa is less than thousand feet.
It is simply much easier to ignore this kind of a supercaldera exploding outright, and instead simply have it be a volcanically active area. A supercaldera like that would have wiped out the whole planetary population with a nuclear winter type scenario, not to mention the tsunamis that would have inundated everything around the Sea of Dread.
It isn't great in the Gazettee, either, as it is suggesting that these volcanic eruptions and splitting of the land masses happened in a span of about a generation. (And gets the order of BC dates wrong, giving the initial event as 1700 BC and the follow-up as 1720 BC, twenty years EARLIER.)
I'd toss that all aside, and just make it a volcanic archipelago, formed in the aftermath of the Blackmoor eruption (if you want to make it very very quick) or just having been there for millions of years.
@@anarionelendili8961 l only said might..
LOL
Wow. You guys are nerds
Great review! I am always torn between how weak this gazetteer is and how incredible its art is.
It truly is. I’ve credited the illustrator in the video description.
What a weird incomplete mishmash inspired by the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and a bit of Australia. I'm sure my players will head from Karameikos directly towards it, making me scramble. :P
I always thought the Known World was Earth. The Grand Dutchy was New Orleans & Ierendi was the Caribbean Islands. The dying lizard men could’ve been a reference to the Arawak Peoples wiped out by the Conquistadors.
I think this is heavily implied. 👍
Mystara is based on a map of earth during the jurassic period.
The Known World is where North America is today
Wow. The editor in chief that approved Karameikos and Glantri must have been rendered comatose when this thing was being put together. If i should try to assemble the Known World at some point, i would get this as one area of the world that would be almost entirely scrapped and rewritten. It might be cool: i could run it as a maritime point crawl, with the characters cruising from island to island, and I could use alot of the random world generation things I've collected over the years. I might be able to fit both the Isle of Dread AND Hot Springs Island into the archipelago, cause, why not!? Anyway, what alot of lost opportunity.
"I don't mind the larger print issue so much these days," he said, now in need of bifocals.
There is that. 🧐
Silliness like Mr. Coarke that would be more appropriate for Steve Jackson's Toon game certainly didn't do anything to rehabilitate BECMI's reputation as "kiddie D&D."
You may have a point.
This is a prime example of a "phoned in" supplement.
It seems like ierendi could be a good fit for adventures in a Monkey Island style :D
Do the steaming geezers have a stat block?
🤣
So, going out on a limb here, and correct me if I'm wrong, 'cos I'm not totally getting the message, but if the three careful and slow watches of this video and your tone are anything to go by, I'm guessing you... liked this one?
in all seriousness though, I am disappointed. I've been glancing at very surface level explinations of the different regions when you drop the local of the next one to get a rough idea of the area you'll be covering, and so far I've picked up the others to skim through at leisure. When I learned this Gaz was about volcanic islands with mutliple factions and varying points of interest, I was excited to be learning about something akin to a pirate-rich (pun intended) area that would support classic treasure hunting, naval exploration & warfare and navigation through interesting cultures, to say the least of the cultural clashes. In light of your review, I feel it could have been so much more, a real 'Pirates of the Caribbean' before Pirates of the Caribbean was cool.
Side point; there was a card game/miniatures game in early 2000's called Pirates of the Spanish Main. You bought boosters, and got cards, but they were pop out cut cards which could be assembled into 3D miniatures resembling vessels from the Age of Sails era. There was a complete game for them, but I found them very fun to use when seeking miniatures for naval encounters in D&D.
Very happy to see the videos continuing, and am definately loving the sprinkling of videos between. I've said it once, I'll say it again; this series is going to be a benchmark for these kind of historic setting reviews once its complete, a true Magnum Opus I hope you smash aside with whatever long term project is after it. Stay cool good sir.
It could have been so so much more! Pirate, volcanoes, elementalism, magic, ancient peoples…it’s was begging to be taken in the right direction. Otherwise, glad you liked the video.
@@becmiberserker Apart of me was wondering what something like that would look like written with a redesign in mind. Its an uneasy feeling, rewriting and designing another artists work, but at the same time, tinkering and creating is a huge part of the hobby. I find myself itching for a project of late, might be something to crack out...
I can't help but think there's room for a good intrigue campaign setting in there, but the amount of work it would require and the pointlessness of all the background fluff surrounding the island is confusing to say the least. I mean "retired" pirate hideouts? Child traficking? Powerless figurehead rulers? Merchants reforming the ruling system, prehaps to benefit from the tourism front to engage in shady affairs... There's definetly something rotten in here that waits for heroes to uncover it. The druids had me scratching my head though, it's like this part comes from another supplement altogether.
Some good ideas here. There’s plenty of scope for campaigning in Ierendi, but so much has to be rehashed.
22 minutes in, it kinda seems like TSR was phoning it in with Gaz4...
In my opinion, I think there was some post-Gygax blues settling in.
Island turtle, Kara Tur style dragans that make up a mountain range while sleeping, or a later magical explosion from the plane of Earth creating new islands where once was only ocean.
The Gaz failed to explain the geography which is unfortunate. In elementary school my friends and I didn't notice the discrepancy.
Wonderful. The Kingdom of Ierendi seems to be exactly the right place for a creative DM to develop a part of the Known World practically from scrap according to his/her ideas 😉
The one part that seemed interesting, unfortunately was a subtle Peter Pan reference. Lost children and pirates....
heh... the inclusion of parodies of Fantasy Island and Magnum P.I. is definitely silly... reminds me of the silly tone in WG7 - Castle Greyhawk.
Forgot about that one. At least the silliness wasn’t focused on BECMI. Seems to have happened in the years following Gygax’s departure. Perhaps the staff were just not bothered.
The "adventurer's club" was stupid waaay back in the day, and is still stupid. I happened to read "Wizard of Earthsea" in '85 and thought "why not just chuck 92.4% of this crap and replace it with islands that don't suck?"
Medieval fantasy tourism is very silly.
Thanks for the video.
You’re welcome.
I agree, yet DMs still use Adventures Club/Guild today. Not all gamers like the same style.
To be fair my friends and I liked this Gaz when we were in elementary school.
I find your material to be top notch. However you dont seem to possess a nostalgia bone in your body. Maybe if you were brought up in the 60s and 70s you would appreciate the nostalgia of these elements. Most people today will not identify any of these elements, and I for one, as DM will enjoy playing these characrters immensely, to new players who havnet experienced them before, and then sit back patiently as one day they will come across either fantasy island or magnum PI and the penny will drop. Pure gold.
Awww…not fair! 🙂 If you knew me, you would know I live far too much in the past. Admittedly though, my review is through the lens of a fifty-something that wants good value for money. If I read this as a 14-year-old, I bet I would have found it hilarious. I miss that 14-year-old most days.
When I get to the end of this series (I intend to speed up a bit in the new year), I will do a wrap up video on my overall thoughts on the setting, given my recent examinations and differing perspective from when I was younger, as well as other things. Your comment helps me consider stuff like this, so thank you.
Lol You do realize you are critiquing the geography of a world one-third the size of Earth, but has more mountains in the Known World then we have on the whole planet right?
Also don't worry about Ierendi being bad, Atruaghin is worse.
Maybe the explosion should have blown it out of the sun’s orbit then?? 🤣
Seriously though, the suspension of belief normally attributed to fantasy needs to be turned up to 11 for this one.
@@becmiberserkersuspension of disbelief, maybe?
@@danacoleman4007 Indeed!
I'm gonna take a wild shot in the dark, knowing almost nothing about this setting or the timeframe in which it was released, so forgive me if this is totally off the mark: I think this was TSR's attempt to make a comedy adventure, but TSR's writing style is simply too dry and matter of fact to tip their hand that it's a joke.
I haven't seen the video on GAZ3 yet, I skipped to this one because I found the cover art so enticing, but it seems like the previous three gazetteers have all been relatively serious, somber affairs with a lot of danger and intrigue. This seems like their attempt to pull back a bit and give you a book where it's less about having a grim fantasy story and more about letting the proverbial hair down and having a good time. The setting is a collection of islands billed as a tourist resort; this gazetteer is _literally_ a beach episode. You send the adventurers here for a break from the usual adventure to go around and sightsee and do funny tasks for a lark for a session or two. The whole economy being built around tourism and monetizing adventurers calls to mind a sort of fantasy Disneyworld parody, where the whole idea of a fantasy adventure is turned into a theme park.
This comparison is going to probably throw people for a loop, but here I go: It reminds me of Fazbear Entertainment from Five Nights at Freddy's, who is so corporately money-hungry and transparently evil that they will every trick in the book to convince you that their business is reputable and deserves your money, even when they blatantly admit something is up! I don't claim that this book is trying to imply that the system that runs Ierendi is evil, in fact it seems to be devoid of much of any conflict whatsoever (furthering my theory that this is meant to be a vacation for the PCs). But it's a thought experiment.
This would also clock why one island is literally just full of TV references; each island is designed to just be a sightshow your PCs visit, go "ooh, ahh" at, maybe solve a problem or complete a task, and then move on. I don't know what it is, but no comedy adventure can resist throwing in blatant references to pop culture. It may be eye-rolling to some, but I'm sure some people consider this the height of comedy (even if I don't think I want to play with those people). Making the guy with literal dwarfism a gnome is probably bad taste no matter how you do it, tho.
_If what I say is true_ in that this is in fact a poorly labeled, poorly presented comedy adventure/setting, then I would argue that the reason why you don't like this gazetteer too much is because the jokes don't land for you (which would be because the comedy is pretty bad). Comedy adventures in RPGs are _extremely_ risky business because comedy is so subjective, and the stuff that makes one person groan makes another person slap their knee. Again, this whole theory is based on me being correct that this was _meant_ to be a joke but late 80s TSR didn't really have a good comedic tone to pull it off. It could, as always, simply be bad.
But I think if you go into it with that mindset, there's something to be had here. You could really play up the farcical nature of the King and Queen being decided with a grand Adventurer's Tournament, likely giving your PCs a chance to earn the title themselves and realize just how little power that title holds here ("I Was Crowned King of Ierendi And All I Got Was This Stupid Hauberk").
Take that Adventurer's Club thing and change it from "a nomination from royalty" to "a monthly fee". Now it's suddenly a parody of subscription services, essentially being an Ierendi Plus account with enticing promised features that put you a cut above the free pass holders! Except it doesn't, of course, it has the bare minimum of features and in fact puts you on the list to be contacted to do missions to work for free, like it's currently presented.
And finally, just change Royal Island entirely. Why is it restricted access to all but the highest of personnel? Well, because it's the employee's only island, of course! That's where the Tribunal runs everything, checks their profits, and prepares all the events and sights for the other islands, they can't just let anyone walk in there and find out this whole thing is just a money-making scheme!
Now you've got a whole island beach resort honey pot that tries to shake adventurers down for all that lucrative coin they hoard from their dungeon crawls, a scheme your PCs can upend and thwart, and there's even an enticingly locked off "final boss island" to give them a clue as to where to go to reach the head of this whole charade. Or it could just be a cheesy and expensive resort that they show up at, enjoy for a bit, and then leave to go back to the main plotline. Whichever works!
And to be fair, this is still dangerously too close to the "sell you a half-baked book that you as the GM have to do the work to fill out and get running" that modern Wizards DnD is criticized for, but let's be honest with ourselves for a moment; TSR was _never_ immune to that either. It's probably not _as_ bad as modern Wizards, but it would be unfair to say they never released half-baked products just for the cash.
Thanks for the great comment. I have to admit that this angle did occur to me as I was reviewing, but I took the approach of not letting TSR off the hook. That is, they might have thought it a bit of comic relief that might be shared with the wider audience, but after a bit of fun and a jape, the customer is left with a weak product that they have paid for. I also recalled some 80s TV similarities, like Moonlighting, where the 4th wall was broken to include the audience in some lighthearted entertainment. However, if you were to watch those episodes today in isolation and out of the general zeitgeist of the time, they just seem odd and out of step.
I’ve got a sense of humour (well, I think so anyway…) but from a perspective of longevity and legacy I still think the product is poor, but I absolutely take your points and there’s validity in them. I just think that whatever levity TSR had thought appropriate to introduce into their campaign world was very shortsighted; isn’t that always the way when the times are good? I think I’m going to come across the same issues when I review Gaz10 Orcs of Thar.
Again, thanks for a great comment. I enjoyed reading it.
One of the downsides of the gazetteer series is that they often degenerated into pure silliness.
Great video! To me, the idea of adventuring as a valid profession never made sense to me. GAZ4 reveals several problems with applying an overly modern worldview to fantasy. IMO, fantasy is based on three ingredients: (a) the pre-modern world, (b) pre-modern perspectives, and (c) the fantastical that pre-modern people imagined.
The more I think about it, the more I think that adventures themselves are seldom realistic (though realism is not the goal in fantasy). Let's take the Caves of Chaos, for an example. What would really happen is that the castellan of the Keep would simply send in his soldiers by the dozens and hundreds to kill the relatively small numbers of monsters living in the Caves. No adventurers needed!
Moreover, thieves wouldn't risk their lives in "dungeons", when they could rob townhouses for the local guild. Clerics are safer staying in their churches, magic-users in their towers, elves in their forests, dwarves in their mountains, halflings in their shires, and fighters are better off joining the military (there's safety in numbers). You have to be either crazy or desperate to risk adventures.
It also makes no sense that the monsters who populate places of adventure, like "dungeons", would have the amounts of treasure that they do, much less the magic items. Where do the the monsters get them? Not by raiding peasant villages.
So why have adventures at all? Very few people would. More deeply, though, adventures take place in a sort of phantasmagoria: a sort of dark fairyland, as it were. Why do we play games about them? Because pre-modern people saw the world as very mysterious. The depths of the wild wood, caves, seemingly endless crypts built in times immemorial, etc. were sources of great mystery, wonder, and horror for them. When they told stories, like the quests of the Knights of the Round Table, or the like, they imagined that legendary people, whose lives were entirely extra-ordinary, ventured into mysterious places of wonder and horror. That's what we're trying to recreate in our games.
So realism fails in fantasy worldbuilding. While internal consistency is important, trying to make rational sense of these phantasmagorias is a fool's errand. An adventurer profession makes no sense, because adventurers are extraordinary people who operate beyond the bounds of ordinary society. They are the extremely rare people who venture into these places of wonder and horror. These places are full of monsters, because they're full of horror. They're full of treasure and magic, because they're full of wonder. Adventurers are, thus, liminal. They operate between the norms of society and this sort of dark fairyland where everyone else fears to tread.
So having a kingdom ruled by adventurers with an adventurers' club, and all that, makes no sense in a fantasy world. It de-mystifies that which must be mysterious in order to work. Ierendi is a setting conceived by minds that are much too modern. It starts with the premise that there's a world of adventures, wonderous and horrific, and then proceeds to create a parody of them in which they're so homogenized that you can have a sort of Disneyland of adventurous tourists ruled by the winners of adventurer contests. What's needed for good fantasy worldbuilding is to set aside our modern perspectives and imagine with pre-modern eyes that see the world as being full of mysteries, horrific and wondrous.
Really good insight and breakdown. Thank you!
Bold choice to call your good religion 'People's Temple'.
That caught my attention as soon as I heard him say it. The Jonestown Massacre occured in 1978 and it would have been well-known when this GAZ was written. It makes me wonder if the author was implying that something sinister was going on under the facade of a universalist-type church.
Please continue your trip through the Known World. I'm sure the next Gaz will be much better: can't get any worse than this sick dog...
This made me almost spit out my morning coffee! 🤣 Thank you cheering me up. 👍
Bit of a poor quality product with some good ideas.
I’ve done the “fake” adventure before but via the equivalent of a holodeck (my world is science fantasy). Players always have fun playing these VR games as different characters with no actual risk to their real characters. I’ll also use it as an excuse to use different game systems. For example I ran 3e EverQuest session during a 5e campaign.
I didn't like either Fantasy Island nor Magnum PI when they were hit shows (yes, im that old...). I think i would have to ceremonially nuke Fletcher Island if i got this stuffed goose of an rpg setting. Maybe its cheap... i can't imagine it's accrued much value over the years...
This is more some DM ideas than a GAZ, which should help DMs creating and maintaining a campaign. Too many uncoordinated ideas, in the end you don't have a general idea of what Ierendi is because of that. GAZ1 Eastern Europe GAZ 2 Arabia GAZ 3 Mages ruling a medieval / renaissance Europe. A little more complicated but ok GAZ 4 Maori, Tourist Resorts, TV parodies, islands inhabited by crazy druid morphing as white apes... too crazy even for a fantasy setting!
Ok, you have convinced me, this Gaz is a waste of time, money, and paper.
I am so sorry I could only listen to half this video, perhaps next year I will be able to sit through the rest.
God I wasted too much time on this one.
almost at 5k subs lfg
Am really happy about that.
Damn, this setting is bad :/ I WONDER WHY....
Amazing video, btw
Thank you.
It's an embarrassing mess of a product. Like you said, I couldn't really believe what I was reading when I found out that Ierendi was supposedly a tourism hotspot. It smacks of a badly aimed and poorly executed attempt at humor that ends up damaging the whole Mystara line. I'll never acknowledge this product's existence in my version of the Known World.
A good approach in my view.
Could've been worse... Could've been written/edited by Rose Estes.