What Common Year will the 5.5e WoG be set in?Will it be literally the work of the Rebooted 576CY project (and explain why they disappeared)?Will it be 599 immediately following the events of 3.5e's Living Greyhawk RPGA campaign?Will it be some other point earlier in the past or further in the future? If it's extremely vague (which is my guess) where will you set it? Before or after the Wars? If it's in the past, how close to the founding of the City of Greyhawk could it be and still feel like a Greyhawk campaign? If it's in the 7th century how much of the events of Living Greyhawk will be Canonical?
>>93385459Why did Faggotten Realms take over as default setting?
Dragon #227 (March '96) had a pretty out-there, late 2e flavor article in it, "Greyhawk 2000" pitching a magitech setting 1400 years in the future intended to be parallel to the not-so-distant Y2K. It was pretty bizarre even at the time and outright surreal as a bit of retro-futuristic ephemera. I wouldn't recommend using it but it's interesting to read. Very different from Eberron's later magitech flavor.
>>93385481Because Greyhawk was Gary's setting and after his ouster from TSR they wanted to scrub his IPs as much as possible from 2e and they had that dirty little gnome worldbuildingfag Ed Greenwood right there with a whole setting more or less ready to go that he developed for his own masturbatory purposes.
>>93385481Because it has been, by a wide margin, the most commercially successful D&D official campaign setting. Sourcebooks, novels, campaigns, video games, the works. The only thing it lacked was a major motion picture, and we even eventually got that and it was even pretty good even if not commercially successful.What's more confusing is why WotC has decided to move away from the Realms as the default and instead moved to Greyhawk, since it's not like the Realms' popularity has gone downhill or anything, not with the success of Baldur's Gate 3.Best guess: in the early 2010s, D&D was in major trouble, potentially going to be shelved by Hasbro and allowed to lie dormant for a decade or so before being revived. To avoid this 5e badly needed to be a success, so even though it would involve paying royalties to Ed Greenwood, the Realms were chosen to be the default setting. The trade-off of paying Greenwood was seen as worthwhile as long as it made 5e more likely to succeed.Cut now to 2024, 5e has been an unparalleled success. Curse of Strahd (not set in the Realms) is the most popular adventure module, and I'm going to guess that other non-Realms modules like Ghosts of Saltmarsh, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, etc., also sold well, as did the MtG setting books like Ravnica and Strixhaven. Not necessarily gangbusters, but enough to prove to WotC that it doesn't need the Forgotten Realms to be popular.So, although they'll keep publishing the occasional Realms book as per Greenwood's contract, the main focus is now turning to a campaign setting that they don't have to pay royalties on.This is, of course, just a guess since I don't know any actual sales numbers. But it does at least make sound business sense.
>>93385481Because most people simply do not give a shit about Greyhawk as a setting. Forgotten Realms is the setting that people give a shit, at least for the last 20some years.Put yourself in WoTC's shoes. You did Grayhawk, people largely ignored it and used either forgotten realms or made their own thing. You did your own thing that was meant to cater to the "make your own" crowd, which has a handful of diehard but most audiences weren't paying attention to.Put in this situation, what do you do? And before you answer, please remember that you keeping your job hinges on making money for your overlords at Hasbro.
>>93385502What a shame. They're even hitting at Gary's legacy while he's already in the grave. And FR really is Greenwood's magical realm huh, some weird shit all over the place.
>>93385519>What's more confusing is why WotC has decided to move away from the Realms as the default and instead moved to Greyhawk, since it's not like the Realms' popularity has gone downhill or anything, not with the success of Baldur's Gate 3.They have? Is this a recent thing?
>>93385521You should be aware that the RPGA, in conjunction with WotC, developed hundreds of Living Greyhawk adventures played by tens of thousands of people all across the world from 2001-2009.The Realms is a setting to read about. Greyhawk is a setting to play in.
>>93385535Greyhawk will be the "example setting" in 5.5e
>>93385521Keeping any job hinges on making money for the company you work for, that's nothing new.>>93385527>They're even hitting at Gary's legacyAs far as I'm aware Gary's legacy is making terrible business decisions, having the company he founded partially bought out by someone who was specifically brought in to save it from those terrible business decisions, and subsequently throwing a hissy fit at no longer being in control of the company he was ruining and selling off his remaining shares. And then spending the next twenty or so years taking potshots at D&D even as it's the only thing he's actually known for, until finally he spends his last few years waxing nostalgic about "back in my day" crap.That's not really a legacy worth preserving.
>>93385541I am aware of the RPGA. I've been a member for a long time.And it's funny that you say "look at 2001-2009" but that's dishonest in two ways that I know you know. The first being that Living Greyhawk officially ended in 2008. And the second being that the RPGA was operating from 2008-2014 before being transitioned into the D&D Adventure League. And remind me, what was happening in 2008-2014.RIGHT, RIGHT, LIVING FORGOTTEN REALMS.
>>93385549You should really read the 1e DMG. It's a Magnum Opus.Gary's "Legacy" is a mutable and fun game full of magic and mystery to play with your friends.
>>93385562Why would I owe you a genuine argument? You've not tacitly admitted your initial argument that "Forgotten Realms is the setting that people give a shit, at least for the last 20some years" was disingenuous.
>>93385569I've read it. It's okay. And Arneson deserves at least as much credit as Gary, with the difference being that I'm not aware of Arneson ever being particularly bitter towards Dungeons & Dragons once it was out of his control. Towards Gygax, sure, but not towards the game itself.
>>93385601>Muh Arneson
>>93385519You're mostly right but you are reaching it from a flawed premise.>in the early 2010s, D&D was in major troubleThat's not exactly true.The failure of 4e is overstated. 4e did alright. If it was being held to the same standards 3e/3.5 were, it would have generally been considered a success. Book sales were good, and the DDI character builder (and the builder alone) was successfully selling D&D-as-a-service.But 4e was given some ambitious sales metrics. 4e had to grow the brand significantly - a modest success was not enough. (None of this was helped due to it being attached to the absolute failure that was Gleemax. The plan was for 4e to carry Gleemax to success, but instead Gleemax dragged 4e down with it.)D&D was not in trouble of being shelved. That was never in the cards. Anyone who tells you that is delusional. What WAS on the table was D&D being scaled back.In fact, that's the card that got played. 5e is, compared to its predecessor, pretty fucking cheap. The rules were simplified, the digital tools were abandoned, and a lot of decisions were made to basically "play the hits." And to that effect, paying Ed Greenwood was a way to pander to fans for a relatively minor cost. I really must emphasize this, 5e was produced on the cheap. A level of success similar for 4e would have been a victory for 5e because the objectives were different.Of course, 5e was disproportionately successful - mostly down to luck. Things WoTC had no real involvement wound up being wildly successful, and brought more awareness to D&D as a brand. Stranger Things did a lot to bring mainstream attention, which version of the rules were for sale was largely irrelevant to the bump this gave. Meanwhile, things like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role did a lot to grow the awareness of D&D 5e specifically. And while we don't know the exact details with TAZ, we know that CR used 5e specifically because the simplified ruleset made it very easy to manage the game on stream
>>93385677I'm going to point out like I always do that 5e was already selling quite well before Stranger Things even premiered and before Critical Role received its major subscription bump in Campaign 2. I won't deny that those things helped, but they built on something that was already very successful in its own right, they are not responsible for 5e's success.
Midwest kino is back on the menu
>>93385647My main point is that Gygax squandered my ability to appreciate his "legacy" with how he behaved towards D&D over the 20 years following him leaving TSR to the tender mercies of Lorraine Williams, which it only ended up in because of his own dumbass decisions.
>>93385677>>93385703I remember Pathfinder getting big for a while from 3.5 refugees, before it shat itself.
>>93385580Because RPGA attendance in the mid-aughts was most stagnant. People played Living Greyhawk but they weren't really invested in Greyhawk, they just wanted to play D&DIf you think the move away from Grayhawk was a spur of the moment decision in 2008, you're wrong. The signs are there, and they've been there since 2002. WoTC wasn't going to overturn the apple cart, but they were looking for the exit.WoTC knew that Forgotten Realms was the most popular D&D setting. But it has the nasty problem of needing to give Ed Greenwood money. And WoTC would rather not do that.Why do you think WoTC made the Fantasy Setting Search? $100,000 to crowdsource ideas, pick the best one, and try to create something that audiences resonate with more but also you own. WoTC releases Eberron in 2004, started work on 4e in 2005, and if you looked at the landscape of things around 2006 you'd see that this was the brand WoTC was trying to build (hell DDO used Eberron as its setting.) Problem is that when most people thought D&D, a world like Eberron didn't click with their expectations.So WoTC changes plans behind the scenes. 4e launches with the points of light setting, a generic world with some lore that's designed more as stand alone set pieces you can drop into any game. Very modular design. However, they decided that the RPGA would go a different route, and instead WoTC chose to bite the bullet, and switched over the Living Forgotten Realms. Which players resonated with, if attendance numbers were anything to go by.
>>93385502Still better than raping Gygax' world as they're about to do.
>>93385856The number of people who actually care about Greyhawk enough to care could comfortably fit inside a single average-sized convention hall with room to spare.
>>93385862For the sake of discussion, let's assume that's true. So what?
>>93385703I don't disagree that 5e was successful before ST and CR, though I think we'd ultimately be quibbling over semantics over exactly how successful we perceive it to be.However, it's undeniable that these largely outside forces helped it gain unexpected and unprecedented levels of success. >>93385724Pathfinder was successful, though the level of success is often overstated by people with axes to grind. And while it's a bit disheartening that the number one and number two RPGs in the market were just different versions of D&D, Paizo did a great job, because it would have been VERY easy for Pathfinder to wind up as another name in the pile of dead D&D clones.
>>93385887>Pathfinder was successful, though the level of success is often overstated by people with axes to grind. And while it's a bit disheartening that the number one and number two RPGs in the market were just different versions of D&D, Paizo did a great job, because it would have been VERY easy for Pathfinder to wind up as another name in the pile of dead D&D clones.It kinda evaporated though. Don't hear about it much anymore. Not sure why.
>>93385885Part of the goal is to get people invested in your product, so that they'll want more of it. And time has shown repeatedly that people resonate more with Forgotten Realms than they do with Greyhawk. So you go with the thing that's going to get them more invested, because that's what's gonna make you money.Because remember, that's what all this is about. It's about money. Is that a good thing? Maybe, maybe not, that question isn't relevant. The reality of the situation is that the money is what matters.And to just touch on something. Do you think your average player knows who Gary Gygax or Ed Greenwood are? No. Those are names that don't mean anything to them, and even if they do, they care more about their own amusement than they do about the relative legacies of these two dudes.
>>93385885Well, let me put it this way.When 4e caused the Forgotten Realms to lose two entire continents and suddenly gain a new one full of dragonborn, when the Great Rift collapsed and the Shining Sea flooded Thindol and turned Chult into an island, when an entire nation literally, not figuratively, fell on top of Unther, when Calimshan suddenly had a ton of genasi pop up out of nowhere, when the gods were killed off by the dozens, and when about a million other cataclysms happened to the Forgotten Realms, what did you think of that?Because the most common reaction I see on this board to everything that happened to the Realms in 4e is "good", "it's an improvement", "there were too many gods anyway", "lol who cares about Maztica", "Eilistraee is a fag", etc.So in light of that you'll forgive me if I really don't give a shit what happens to Greyhawk, a setting I never cared about anyway, but is often championed by the same people who didn't give a shit what happened to the setting I DID like in 2007.
>>93385941>When 4e caused the Forgotten Realms [...] what did you think of that?I have no idea what you are talking about, the latest edition I have played is BECMI.>I really don't give a shit what happens to GreyhawkNobody said you should care, Anon.
>>93385549I take it you're one of those faggots slurping modern faux-"biographies" by wotctards considering 90% of what you wrote is flat out factually false.
>>93385962And this, here, is the exact reason why I hope that Mordenkainen becomes Maidenkainen.
>>93385926I guess my general point is that I'd prefer if intellectual properties died with the authors who originated them. Disney Star Wars is crap, Amazon Tolkien is crap, and I won't be surprised if WotC Greyhawk is also crap.
>>93385970I don't understand why you hope that will happen, but chances are it will.
>>93385978But Lucas is still alive. And frankly Disney Star Wars is still, on the balance, better than the EU that it replaced. No matter how bad the Disney EU gets I always find myself asking, "but is it really worse than the Yuuzhan Vong?" And the answer is always "no".
>>93385985Spite towards the people who cheered for everything that happened to the Realms in 2007 and are now crying that Maidenkainen might become a thing, as though that's the worst thing that could happen to a setting.
>>93385989>Lucas is still aliveSure, but that's besides the point.>>93385993>Spite towards the people who cheered for everything that happened to the Realms in 2007Read my comment again. I never cheered for it, I never had any idea any of that happened until you told me.
>>93385913This is where things get a bit odd. Sure, you're hearing less about it, but Pathfinder is still the #2 RPG on the market most of the time. Only time I remember it getting jostled out of that spot was because Cyberpunk Red had a surge of interest in late 2020/early 2021.But the same reason you don't hear about it is the same reason that people incorrectly perceived that pathfinder was a much bigger success than it was. There's no real beating around the bush about it, there were people who really hated 4th edition D&D. 4e was a version of D&D they didn't like, and Pathfinder was a version of D&D they did like. And so, the success of Pathfinder 1e mattered a lot to them, they had emotional investment in it. So they would post about how great pathfinder was, how it was the real version of D&D etc. When 5e came out and resembled a version of D&D they liked more, they'd lost their reason to keep posting. The thing they hated was dead. This was a relatively small, but very loud, group of players when you really broke things down. One thing you need to understand with any hobby - if you're discussing it online with someone on a forum (including image boards), you're not dealing with a normal person.
>>93386010Well, spite for the people who did cheer it, then.>Sure, but that's besides the point.Fine, then if you prefer another counterpoint, the best Star Trek happened after Gene Roddenberry died or with minimal input form Roddenberry. No one's favorite Star Trek movie is The Slow-Motion Picture, the one he was most involved with; and he hated Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country (the one with the Klingon that quotes Shakespeare). There is a noticeable uptick in the quality of TNG's episodes after he died, and Deep Space Nine is at many points outright antithetical to what Roddenberry envisioned Trek to be like and yet it's highly regarded and legitimately great. Gene Roddenberry had great ideas, but his implementation was often lackluster or outright bad. Roddenberry was bad for Star Trek.
>>93385978I'm frustrated because I want to agree with you on general principles but unfortunately there are legacy media franchises that have passed from hand to hand that I really enjoy. I mean fuck's sake, my favorite entry in a long running series came 25 years after the original creator died.Also, weirdly, doesn't apply to Star Wars. Not saying Disney are good stewards of the brand. They are, at best, wildly inconsistent in terms of quality. But even so, George Lucas? Still alive. This is not a case of someone plundering his grave to take an intellectual property from him. He sold that shit for an ungodly amount of money.
>>93385989NTA what was so bad about the Yuuzhan Vong?
>>93385970>>93385985>>93385993Although I was surprised at the number of gender swaps in Ravenloft there's basically zero chance they would gender swap Mordenkainen.
Jeez how have I not posted the Rebooted Mega yet. Get it while you can!https://mega.nz/folder/eUJy2SjL#_VtulDPRj0nI5KznVCRSWg
>>93386331What, aside from the story arc lasting way too long, killing off Chewbacca just to prove that the situation is serious, killing off Anakin Solo purely beacause Lucas didn't want there being two Anakins in the canon, starting the corruption of Jacen Solo from a easy-going guy who likes animals into the next Sith Lord, being completely inconsistent on how the Vong's force immunity works, being overall just incredibly dark and violent and often gross to really no one's benefit, and just generally not being very good?
>>93386976I asked because I don't know much about the Yuuzhan Vong story.
>>93387130Ah. Well, short version is that the Yuuzhan Vong are vaguely Aztec-inspired aliens that actually originate from outside the galaxy. They're immune to the Force, although what exactly this means was never really nailed down (sometimes there merely invisible to being sensed, like droids; sometimes they're outright immune to powers like mind tricks and choking and force lightning. Sometimes they can be pushed by telekinesis, sometimes they can't. It really depended on the author).They have this religion that's centered around pain and suffering. They are also virulently anti-machine; all of their technology is organic and alive, from the clothes they wear to the weapons they use to the ships they fly in. No, I don't know how they made a weapon that's a living thing and yet somehow capable of blocking a lightsaber. They just did. Also they worship pain and suffering, did I mention that? They're basically what would happen if you crossed the Cenobites with the Tyranids.The Yuuzhan Vong destroyed their home galaxy (or at least rendered it uninhabitable) in countless wars and so are migrating to the GFFA to invade and conquer it. There's like a bazillion of them. They succeed in pushing all the way to Coruscant and seizing it, chiefly due to the New Republic being pants-on-head retarded for no easily discernible reason, especially once actual major worlds like Ithor fall to them. In the meantime all that stuff happened. Also the entire story is told over the course of I think something like twenty or so novels.Individually the novels range from mediocre to okay with one or two actually good ones in there, but there's just way too many of them to no real benefit, exacerbating all the other problems.Oh, to cap it off, the big thing about them being that they're immune to the Force? Yeah it turns out the guy actually running the show of the Yuuzhan Vong was a powerful (as in, Sith Lord level) Force user, a freak Vong who could use the Force for Reasons.
>>93387198Oh, one of the bigger problems of the Yuuzhan Vong is that rather than simply being an outside-context problem, which would narratively work for them, instead they were retroactively added into the then-canon at multiple points. In the first Knights of the Old Republic (4000 BBY) you have Canderous Ordo talking about having seen weird asteroid-looking fighter craft that fired lava; that's a nod to the Vong. Then novels set during the Imperial era started suggesting that Palpatine created the Empire specifically to prepare the Galaxy for the coming of the Vong, so that was championed by the pro-Imperial side of the fandom ("Palpatine HAD to do all this evil shit for THE GREATER GOOD! See he was never really a bad guy!") for a while, not helped by Imperials in-universe remarking several times that the Empire would have been better able to deal with the Vong than the Republic, to the point where one of the novels actually felt a need to address it, which is at least a point in its favor when Han takes an Imperial down a peg.>"What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong–killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn't have worked. They'd forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that's what the Empire would have done."
>>93387198>>93387233Thanks for explaining this. How would you fixed the Yuuzhan Vong?
Someday vast swaths of The Internet will just be bots talking to other bots about Star Wars. When it takes over all of Tik Tok and YouTube will be the day we blacken the skies.
>>93387326Lucas and or Filoni was going to have them appear in a TCW episode described a bit like X-Files one. Giant ship, unexplained motives etc. Never got beyond concept stages.
>>93385459Don't know, I'm playing in Mystara.
The important question is: will Wastri be included in the new 5.5E DMG as a god you can worship?
>>93388589You can worship the god of having gay sex with your own butt if you want.
>>93388669Isn't that the Egyptian creation myth?
>>93388589Always nice to be featured in somebody else's screencaps lol. I would imagine not though.
>>93385569Bollocks. It's got terrible layout, worse art, and pompous, unnecessarily florid language that a modern reader without a university degree in English would struggle to parse. It's full of unnecessary bullshit like a harlot encounter table; it treats villains as two dimensional mooks; it can't conceptualise of women outside of princesses, priestesses or whores; the much wanked-over appendix of suggested reading is increasingly irrelevant and difficult to source copies of; and most egregious of all, the book fawns obsequiously over human male fighters like Gary had suppressed homoerotic tendencies towards Arnie in Conan the Barbarian.I've been playing since I was 7 and DM'ing since I was 14. I don't need some dusty old cokehead's essays telling *me* how to fucking DM, and even if I did, there's about 732 different articles in old issues of Dragon Magazine that spell it out without sounding like a complete wanker.
>>93385569Gary's true legacy is one of resentment towards players more creative and cunning than he was.He wanted everyone to play human fighters; when they didn't, he nerfed Magic Users and demihumans.His players started testing every step with a ten foot pole; so he created instant death, no saving throw dungeons like Tomb of Horrors.His players searched in refuse in corners for coins and discarded items, so he created rot grubs.His players started listening at doors before entering rooms, so he specifically created a monster that hides in wooden doors and crawls down earholes.On and on, pure seething from a man who thought himself brilliant but got bought down with a thud like one of those drinking bird toys. Who brought Lorraine Williams to the table, again? Oh yeah... Gary. Who blew thousands of dollars living it up in Hollywood and only created a dozen episodes of a mediocre, meandering cartoon with no resolution to show for it? ...Gary. Who stole Arneson's ideas and froze him out, just to act like a little bitch when it happened to him too?Gary, Gary, Gary.
>>93388819>>93388908lol you seem mad - did you lose at a game or something?
>>93385963Buddy, it's all in Designers & Dragons, written by Sharon Applecline, independently of any one gaming company. Educate your ignorant ass.
>>93385970Based.
>>93388744No, there were several, and you're thinking of the one where Ra yanked his crank and shot creation all over the place.
>>93388931>Typical 4chan basement dweller, doesn't understand human interaction enough to understand the difference between anger and contemptBegone, sewer dweller
>>93385459I don't give a fuck what fanfiction some later talentless IP owner is trying to sell. Come up with something new and unique yourselfs for once WOTC, stop labelling your shit with the famous titles of the past just to make your shit sell.
>>93389149It seems that contempt is the emotion you're projecting onto Gary for wanting challenge/stakes in his game and anger is what you're feeling towards this strawghost and people of a like mind such as myself.
>>93385541And then they copyrighted it all and took it all down, so hardly anyone has access to the hundreds of adventures those tens of thousands of people wrote because it drew attention from the shit WOTC were trying to sell on other settings. WOTC are a bunch of cunts.
>>93388819>>93388908It's amazing how much butthurt he still causes from utter tertiaries who know nothing about the guy or how he played.
>>93388997>Buddy, it's all in Designers & Dragons, written by Sharon Appleclinefucking lol that's the evil disingeneous cunt who runs RPGnet.He doesn't know jack shit about D&D or Gygax.You literally couldn't cite someone with worse credibility on the subject you dumb fucker.
>>93389740>owner of RPGnet.WHAT
>>93389760VP of the company who runs it to be precise. He's in charge of it along with some other scumbags.
>>93385502>Gygax Pontificates.gifCostanza belittles
>>93385549>>93388997Gygax not only grew the game to being as huge as RPGs has ever been it was at thet top of it's profit while he was in charge, the only notable terrible decisions came from the Blumes who went on a spending spree behind his back before selling off their shares to a corporate vulture who leeched as much money as she could into IPs owned by her family (Buck Rogers) before selling it off to the corporate raiders at WotC.Fucking kill yourself for even mentioning tripe written by actual subhumans from that godforsaken corporate whore site who misquote and outright lie while pretending to cite Jon Peterson's work.
Have a rare mid-90s Greyhawk adventure that I just now came across in my prep for tomorrow's game. I suspect that this is the adventure that laid the groundwork for the entire Western Verbobonc Rhynehurst/Glory segment of Living Greyhawk several years later.
>>93385459Canonically, Oerth is dead. WotC is non-canon outside of tourists
>>93390646Do you mean as a result of the events in Fate of Istus or as a result of the events in Die Vecna Die!? Or The Apocalypse Stone? Or Elder Evils? From The Ashes? Or was it destroyed before it ever existed by the Invoked Devastation and The Rain of Colorless Fire?
>>93387326Nine books instead of twenty. First three are the Vong arriving and invading, third book ends with a major victory even as the Vong continue to be a threat elsewhere. Second three are the Vong campaigning through the galaxy and concludes with them seizing Coruscant. Final three reveals that the Vong spread themselves too thin and the Galaxy unites to throw them back, concludes with them becoming hippies just like the actual books.Tone back on the pain worship and overall try and make the books fit the tone of the OT (i.e., keep 'em PG rated even if you're writing for adults). Set in stone how the Force affects and does not affect the Vong. Zero evidence that they have ever visited the Galaxy before, they are a completely, 100% outside context problem that no one was aware of, least of all Palpatine. Have their leader be just as immune to the Force as everyone else. Have their general amphistaffs and crab armor be just as useless against lightsabers as anything else, but maybe introduce some breed of amphistaff and crab that's lightsaber-resistant and wielded by elite troops rather than literally every Vong.Have the New Republic be less pants-on-head retarded and less slow to defend the Outer and Mid Rim. This is a government made up of people who have been fighting a civil war for 19+ years, they're going to recognize a major threat when they see one.Chewbacca's death was actually fairly badass in hindsight. Anakin Solo's was bad because he was kind of being set up to be the main hero of the series until Lucas suddenly mandated his death, so ITTL we somehow either convince Lucas not to ordain that or else know from the start that it's going to happen so that it can be better set up. Dial back on the trauma. Star Wars is not a series that benefits from characters suffering PTSD on the regular.
Today's Adventure bump.Note, this is just the Adventure I prepped this week. I expect it's more likely my Players will head back to either the Suel Temple (Beltar's Doman) or the ToEE armed with new information they'll receive from Betham the Gnome Sage as a reward for their rescue of Keenbolt and his Raiders from the Giants. If they follow up on the hook that one of the captured mercenaries who were framing Gnomes for raiding the Southern Human holdings, someone at The Braying Ass Inn will tell them (maybe) that the guy who hired that group flashed a badge of the Silver Watch from Rhynehurst, the shady alternative port up the river a piece from Verbobonc.
>>93389265Punishing players for having enough creative thinking to listen at a door isn't "challenging" them. It's a DM who wants to win. It's adversarial DMing.
>>93393903Ear Seekers have been a thing since before your daddy was a glimmer in your great granddaddy's eye. Your complaint would have only been valid before 1979. Check your doors before you Listen.
>>93397884>Ear Seekers have been a thing since before your daddy was a glimmer in your great granddaddy's eyeD&D came out in '75, right? My dad was 11 years old at the time.
>>93385459My dad died before I was really old enough to have the attention span for the hobby. I've been playing for a while in newer game systems, but I just recently got all of his old books out of storage to dig through. Looks like the two settings he had the most of are Greyhawk and Ravenloft.Where's a good place to start among these, anons? Any other resources online I should check out?
>>93400849Gem of the Flanaess and Folk Feuds and Factions are the core of a City of Greyhawk campaign. There should be a set of cards with it that look like pic related that have a small city or nearby adventure printed on each side and those are the intro to city play. There's also a couple maps but they've been scanned many times and are widely available. You have the second of the big city adventure path, the Falcon series but there are three other modules, WGA1-4. That Castle Greyhawk module you have is a joke module generally considered non-canonical and supplanted by WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins.Basically to answer your questions flip through both Gem of the Flanaess and Folk Feuds and Factions until you find something that tickles your imagination and center the start of your campaign around that. Try to find those cards for your Lois level mood setting play and lay the hooks for the larger mini-adventures found in Treasures of Greyhawk (referencing the Glossography and Gazetteer for the locales' background and flavor as you go). See if you can find a copy of WGA1 Falcon's Revenge to also drop the hooks for along with the other hooks and when your players go foir that, shift gears into that series which has major events happening.
>>93398317The OD&D LBBs were published in '74 but Ear Seekers didn't officially appear until the AD&D Monster Manual 2 in '77 but still there's no reason you should be surprised by them in 2025.
>>93401953The Glossography and Guide both seem older. Are those pretty much supplanted by Gem and FFF like how Castle Greyhawk is retconned out or do they pretty much cover different things?
>>93388819Yep, sounds based to me.
>>93393903>players start to recognize your DM style and anticipate your challenges>they begin to become bored and and discontent>they relax and you introduce a new challenge as a foil to their established strategy>they now are forced to have fun and think outside the box againAdversarial=\=challengingClearly you were DMing at 14 and clearly that’s the last time you thought about your approach
>>93404561Yeah you do seem like someone who like the sounds of hairy nutsacks touching.
>>93404363The Glossography and Guide are about the entire continent of Oerik/The Flanaess. Gem and FFF are specifically about the City of Greyhawk.>>93404591It is! Have some "terrible art" from the 1eDMG - this is a joke that still half a century later gets made all the time as if they think they're the first ones to come up with it.
>>93404363Other guy gave you a good answer about usage so I'm just chiming in to say that you're correct: the Glossography and Guide are older. They're from the World of Greyhawk boxed set, which is a slightly expanded version of the World of Greyhawk Folio, the first Greyhawk setting product ever. The folio is a lot more beautiful than the boxed set, but the boxed set is arguably better for content since it contains all the same stuff and then some more.
>>93385519>What's more confusing is why WotC has decided to move away from the Realms as the default and instead moved to Greyhawk, since it's not like the Realms' popularity has gone downhill or anything, not with the success of Baldur's Gate 3This is baffling but I think the people behind the scenes just refuse to understand vidyaJust like GW killed off FB then had to revive it in a hurry because them newfangled video games created demand again
>>93406128>This is baffling but I think the people behind the scenes just refuse to understand vidyaThe new CEO of D&D used to manage the Warcraft IP as his job.
>>93406223Yeah and it's pretty rock bottom right now however
>>933889089/10 seethe - impressive.
>>93410290It's amazing how normalcy and tradition enrage some people.
>>93413877Yes it's amazing how nogames you and this faggot >>93410290 are
>>93413983lol what makes you think that, Sport? I think it's pretty clear from my posts that I've been DMing on the reg for decades. It just makes you look ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
>>93414019From your posts it looks like you gargle dicks all day.
>>93413983>guy who reads RPGnet lies about history seething and calling people nogames>can't even get the most basic facts right that a wikipedia article would still tell himlmao reminder that discordfagging circlejerks over /tg/ shit does not qualify as roleplaying
>>93414463Good job green texting you showing you don't know anything and is retarded nogames.
>>93414463Is it AI? Do they train AI to do this? I think it's starting to hallucinate.>[OBJ 41e1b4]-sarcasm-[OBJ 081c2f8b]-terminology-[OBJ 0c93d8]-insult-[OBJ 21a12f]-terminolog- *beep boop*
>>93414604Some people are just so retarded they might as well be AI.
>>93414686So what he's on about is supposedly that encyclopedic history of gaming that came out a few years back says that Gary is an awful person? Or is it just that by reading deeper into history and uncovering such obscure figures as Dave fucking Arneson or Brian Blume it seems unfair to them that Gary gets pretty much all the credit? Or does it really say that in that book series? Apparently I'm seeing here it was written by a guy from RPGnet which I was aware of existing but I never seem to find myself there for any really useful information and that's about as much as I care about that. And this is a man named Sharon?
>>93414686Such as >>93414604 and >>93414775
>>93415105>beep boop... ERROR
>>93415355Enough about your posts
>>93385521>Because most people simply do not give a shit about Greyhawk as a setting. Forgotten Realms is the setting that people give a shit, at least for the last 20some years.bro you repeated his question, you didn't answer it
I wonder if moving to Greyhawk means they could ditch the FR in WotC’s shortsighted ways.Greenwood has been vocal about how WotC views him being alive unlike Gygax or Arneson as a hinderence.And he has also been mentioning in social media about WotC only giving him 5K for BG3 and nothing for the D&D movie.Maybe they think they can finally terminate that TSR contract.
>>93413983>>93414051Stop being retarded, anon. You're arguing with people who play Greyhawk on the regular.
>>93417441Possible. Hasbro and Wotcee are run by lawyers these days and if they can squeeze old-timers like Greenwood out of future contracts to save $5K they'll do it. Greyhawk is still something they own 100% and can drain dry in any way they want.
>>93417803>t. the one being retarded and also does not play anything.
>>93417818It's just funny how 35 years ago TSR was clearly concerned about the exact opposite.
>>93417441>>93417818>>93417884If anything the move away from the realms and to Greyhawk seems like a intentional move to just ignore Ed as much as they can.A big thing of note is that Ed was basically absent for most of 5e's lifecycle on account of taking care of his wife until she passed. Its only been in the last year or two that he has actually gone back to being an active presence within D&D and in that time he has been basically locked out of anything going on at Wizards itself. However he still has that agreement in which anything he says about the realms unless contradicted by a ID holder source is canon.So it seems to me that they see his power to make statements like the Drow Breastmilk or non-reproductive Incest ones as not worth continuing to use a setting that they only ever used as a dumping ground for random ideas anyway.
>>93390910Gord the Rogue series. Oerth dies at the end. WotC is making corporate fan fiction.
Anywhere i can get a nice sexy pdf with 1 inch hexes of the Greyhawk map, maybe even split up into seperate maps?
>>93419179More like WotC is wise to ignore some shitty books that most people don't even bother to read.
>>93385459they made a deal with Ernie Gygax that they would publish Greyhawk if he shut the fuck up
>>93419679https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2021/12/happy-needfest-digital-darlene-greyhawk.html
To get back to the actual thread topic, what can you guys tell me about the mad king of Aerdy? Resources for Greyhawk lore are pretty piss poor and all I know is that they have a demon summoning throne and that successful generals were made into undead. I'm trying to get background info on Ingo the Drover in Saltmarsh and all the book gives you is that he tried to lead a coup and is in hiding.
>>93422408https://www.acaeum.com/library/ividundying.pdf
>>93422451Thanks man
>>93422567No problem. I regularly have Great Kingdom agents attempt to recruit players who have shown an inclination to Evil but so far no takers lol.
>>93422591Who wants to work for a lich-king who'll turn you into a zombie or ghoul just because he didn't like the look of your face this morning? It's a shit job working for Ivid, there are no takers.
>>93385721You have to realize Gary helped pioneer the RPG as we know it and had his life's work and characters (of his children and friends too) stolen from him and subsequently shit on. You'd probably be pissed too. The people that forced him out of his company ran it to the ground.
Oh boy, I can't wait to see how lame and gay WotC makes drow, when Vault of the Drow still has the best take on it. It's one thing to make them lame in Ed's hippie playground.
>>93434103Drow priestesses will now be topless. To show off their double-mastectomy scars.
>>93438901Gary pretty explicitly described Eclavdra's tits.
