The Folio Project

I mentioned previously that I know very little about the Greyhawk setting.  After getting some excellent recommendations, I decided to pick up the original folio in order to see what all the fuss was about.  I went with the folio since it was a bit skimpier on details than later versions.

Anyway, my copy came in the mail yesterday and I'm very impressed with it.  The folder itself is rather scuffed up, but the booklet and maps are immaculate.  The maps live up to their reputation, and pictures on the internet truly do not do them justice.  The Folio is exactly what the doctor ordered.

So I've decided to start a new project for my blog.  It'll be roughly in the style of sirlarkins's Grey Box Project or Scott's Wilderlands of Darkling Sorcery.  Essentially I'll try to develop a version of Greyhawk that appeals to my tastes using only this folio and some version of D&D I like (likely LL + AEC).  

I would say I'm approaching Greyhawk with fresh eyes, but I think that would imply that I'm somewhat familiar with the setting.  This is literally my first contact with the World of Greyhawk so I have no preconceptions.  I don't know if I'll come up with anything new or extremely radical, but I hope to have something I'm happy with.

Proper work on this project will have to be stalled until after next week, since I still have a mountain of work to do before the semester is over.  I'll still have Dark Country and Uz posts fairly regularly.  In fact, I have a number of ideas for those two settings swirling around in my head right now, but it'd take too long to write them up and I can't justify doing that with this work load.  Still, you can look forward to more material on those settings in the near future.

Someone Make This their Campaign Map

Sadly, this one doesn't include the names of the sons of Noah, but it's pretty representative of a Mappa Mundi.

I myself am thinking of basing the planes in the Dark Country off of the Spheres

Ok, back to my blogging break.

Break Interrupted to Bring You a Dream

This morning I awoke after one of the strangest nights of my life with the end of a dream tugging at my mind.  For some -- D&D related -- context, that afternoon I had finished stocking a level of Nightwick Abbey.  I was worried that the level was all too random in it's contents, but I have very little time this week and since I needed to spend my time writing and grading papers I decided to leave it in its current "sucky state."

Then I had this dream.  I literally only remember two things about it.

1. I was reading ChicagoWiz's blog.
2. In that blog was the following sentence "It's the kind of stupid dungeon that makes total sense to stupid me and my stupid players after the fact."

I have no idea what the hell else was in the dream, but I think there is some wisdom in that line.  I know I'll certainly be looking at this level that way when my players get to it.

Taking a Blogging Break

The end of this semester is looking to be a rather rough one for me, so I desperately need to cut my blogging time.  I'll resume some time around the second week of May.

A Useful Tool For the Name Challenged

Mythmere of Swords & Wizardry fame has posted a guide on how to Gygax Your Name.  I've often have difficulty with this as my first name doesn't give me a lot to work with and my last name has, under all previous efforts, turned into an pronounceable mess of consonants.  My middle name is simply Van, which is equally hard to deal with.  However, using this system I've gotten some neat results.

Below are the results when applied to my first, last, and middle names repsectively.
Vennax

Insllek

Ann (this one is the strangest one to me)

And here are some miscellaneous others: 

Yevak

Yelgins

Veyn

Evynax

Vaynekkisn

I wouldn't be surprised if my players come into contact with the Dread Sorceror Vennax if I were you.

My Woeful Ignorance

I've played in and run quite a few campaign settings in my time.  During high school and very early college -- and arguably even know -- I suffered from an acute case of Gamer ADD.  My old flames includes the Forgotten Realms, Rokugan (the 3.x version), Eberron, Ravenloft, The Wilderlands, and Warhammer's Old World.  With the exception of WFRP, I used 3.x to run all of these settings, since that was the system I was most comfortable with at the time.  There are other settings I've read but never run or played.  I've read a smattering of Dark Sun, EPT, Blackmoor, Harn, and a few others.

However, there is one setting I have neither run no read anything about: Greyhawk.  Aside from vague references in 3e, such as the deities and spells like Mordenkainen's Shit Covered Hovel, I don't really have any grasp on what Greyhawk is and what makes it tick.  If there is a single D&D topic I'm ignorant of it's Greyhawk.

There are multiple reasons for this.  First of all, there wasn't a very clear "buy this product to learn about Greyhawk" for 3e.  Sure there was the D&D Gazetteer, but at that time I was more interested in making my own milieus (read: filing the serial numbers off of Erathia).  It also isn't terribly clear from the title that it details the World of Greyhawk.

The other major reason is that whenever I do go through my periods of Gygax idol worship, I'm more interested in emulating what he did than playing in his world.  He made his own milieu, so the the most Gygaxian thing one can do is not play in Greyhawk but make your own damn Greyhawk.  This is obviously an overzealous and flat out stupid opinion, but it's one I hold on to nevertheless.

Due to comments to my recent post, I can't help but feel that I may have missed something.  While the game I run is more or less based on B/X D&D, there is a certain ineffable quality to 1e that attracts me.  It is both highly fantastic and gritty and dirty all at the same time.  Perhaps that's why the Dark Country campaign has incorporated an ever increasing amount of AD&D material in recent weeks.  Something in me thinks that looking at Greyhawk would help me get closer to defining the je ne sais quoi of Gygaxian AD&D in a way just the core books do not.

Of course, I don't really know where to start.  So I ask you gentle reader: is there some product or place where I might find out about Greyhawk in its most interesting form?