We Were Strange Before You Thought it Was Cool

I was sitting down this evening and thinking about playing Dungeons & Dragons when it occurred to me that I hadn't done a Greyhawk poster in a while. So I figured that I should fix that tonight.

The question though remains: how do we bring more eyes to Greyhawk? How do we get Dungeon Masters who have never plumbed its depth to start exploring it's caverns, forgotten citadels, and foreboding tombs?

Well I Just had Tremendous Fun on The Greyhawk Channel!

Did the show on the Greyhawk Channel. Had a lot of fun even though my microphone had me sounding like a hillbilly Kermit the Frog. Still fun.

Watch Tales From the Green Dragon - With Charles Akins! from thegreyhawkchannel on www.twitch.tv

Right, so now that I've done that and had so much fun I want to do more. Hit me up kids!

Tomorrow, I'm on the Greyhawk Channel

First let's listen to some funky tunes:


Now, I'm going to be on the Greyhawk Channel tomorrow at 3:00 PM. You should all come on over and talk shit with me. It'll be fun!

I'm so ready to have fun with this. I hope you kids will join me.

I'm Being Interviewed!

That's right kids! 

On Wednesday, March 7, 2018 I will be interviewed on The Greyhawk Channel by DM Shane at 3:00 PM EST. We're going to be talking about all kinds of nerdy shit and you should totally join us and talk shit with us on the chat! Got questions you've always wanted to ask me but don't want to leave a comment on the blog? Here's you chance to do just that! 

I'll even be wearing clothes - I think! 

So join us in two days on The Greyhawk Channel! 

He didn't give me a banner yet so I'm using my own Greyhawk shit!

Ratik, as Far as that Goes.

Yesterday my brother was looking at the World of Greyhawk map and he noticed the land of Ratik. He was curious about the little nation, and I'll be honest here, I was too. In my years of running in Greyhawk I never ran across the province as I tend to focus south of the Nyr Dyv and out west towards the Sea of Dust.

Ratik was new territory for me to explore; and the thing is, Ratik appears to be new territory for everyone else too. As best as I've been able to tell it was only mentioned in four places: (1) the World of Greyhawk Boxed Set, (2) in an article in Dragon 57, (3) the Living Greyhawk website, and (4) the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. That's not a lot of information to go on.

Mounted Knight by Arthur Pyle

In the World of Greyhawk Boxed Set (pg. 32) the Archbarony is revealed to be an offshoot of Aerdi and to be a province ruled by the rather competent Ratik line. They have strong connections with the dwarves and gnomes of the area and are respected by the raiders and nomads surrounding them. When the hordes of humanoids began attacking Ratik not only weathered their advances but drove them out of their lands. Unfortunately this sent the humanoids south into the Bone Marches where they wrecked havoc.

Aside from the prosperous logging industry the only aspect of the Ratik description that I found worth noting was that in the north Ratik woodsmen were armed with bows and patrolled that boarder while in the south "hillrunners" were equipped with slings and watched the southern boarder. 

The article from Dragon 57, Developments from Stonefist to South Province by Gary Gygax, (pg. 13 - 16) is largely a battlefield report. While there are some interesting tidbits here it largely points towards the steady development of the fractious area without anything all that substantive given away. The only thing that I found interesting was that the dwarves in the Rakers (the mountain chain to the west of Ratik) are largely holed up in their mountainous fortresses as they are being besieged by gnolls and like-minded humanoids.

After this all I found on the area is from the Living Greyhawk website and Gazetteer (pg. 88 - 91) which largely express the same information though with the Gazetteer providing more depth to the reader. Our leader is now Lady Evaleigh of Ratik and the barony is now completely divested from Aerdi. To be perfectly honest, while this provides the reader with the most information on the area from any of the sources I have it's largely a mess. This brings up one of the problems that I have with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. While it provides players with some of the most current information on the setting as of its publication it also tends to feel a bit like the authors are attempting to throw everything they can think of at the players. It makes things feel rushed and discombobulated at times (especially in less developed areas like Ratik). 

So that's as much information as I have on the nation of Ratik. If anyone else has anything to add from any of the official sources (Living Greyhawk, modules, the magazines, and so forth) please let me know because I would love to continue fleshing out the little nation-state. 

A Research List

Living Greyhawk Gazetteer

1. Al'Akbar
2. Allitur
3. Atroa
4. Beltar
5. Beory
6. Berei
7. Bleredd
8. Boccob
9. Bralm
10. Celestian
11. Cyndor
12. Dalt
13. Delleb
14. Ehlonna
15. Erythnul
16. Fharlanghn
17. Fortubo
18. Geshtai
19. Heironeous
20. Hextor
21. Incabulous
22. Istus
23. Iuz
24. Jascar
25. Joramy
26. Kord
27. Kurell
28. Lendor
29. Lirr
30. Llerg
31. Lydia
32. Mayaheine
33. Merikka
34. Mouqol
35. Myhriss
36. Nerull
37. Norebo
38. Obad-Hai
39. Olidammara
40. Osprem
41. Pelor
42. Phaulkon
43. Pholtus
44. Phyton
45. Procan
46. Pyremius
47. Ralishaz
48. Rao
49. Raxivort
50. Rudd
51. St. Cuthbert
52. Sehanine Moonbow
53. Sotillion
54. Syrul
55. Telchur
56. Tharizdun
57. Trithereon
58. Ulaa
59. Vatun
60. Vecna
61. Velnius
62. Wastri
63. Wee Jas
64. Wenta
65. Xan Yae
66. Xerbo
67. Ye'Cind
68. Zagyg
69. Zilchus
70. Zodal
71. Zuoken

Questions Yet to Be Answered

• What is the point of having so many gods when many overlap each other? Is it a flavor thing or is it simply the glut that often accompanies a setting over time?
• Should some of these gods be culled from a completed list? 
• Any god left on the list should have a reason for existing beyond X does Y but with a slight difference. It must be distinct and provide a reason for choosing them over the others. Is it possible for this to occur with an unmodified list?

Goals
Unspecified. 

Greyhawk as a Post Apocalyptic World

At it's core the world of Greyhawk is a set in a post apocalyptic time period. The two great empires of old, the Suloise and Baklunish, waged a war that devastated both empires and reshaped the continents. The story that is told in official publications is that the end of these empires came about due to the "Invoked Devastation," a magical attack so devastating that it's like could never be seen again. The thing is that we're talking about an event that is millennia old within the timeline of the fictional world of Greyhawk and what could pass for magic today might have been advanced technology then. 

Imagine for a moment that our world as we know it were to end in a thermonuclear war tomorrow. The very landscape might change depending on how many bombs were used and their power. Everything touched by the radioactive fallout would be changed. Mutations would run rampant on those that survived as their bodies would have to develop new ways to cope with the radiation and the new environment that the world presents them. In the survivors of this nuclear apocalypse we would see new evolutionary developments. As the millennia pass they would slowly crawl their way back into the arms of civilization and as they did so it is inevitable that they would eventually discover ancient technologies. What would they think of our phones, computers, statues, cars, and air planes? Would they know what they were or would they think us wizards who bent the very fabric of reality to our whim?

I think that their reaction would be as Arthur C. Clark once said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." They wouldn't have the understanding necessary to distinguish the difference between a gun and a magic wand. Our whole game world could be nothing more than the by-product of a civilization not understanding what they're dealing with. The monstrous creatures they encounter could be mutated animals and human beings or evolutionary excursions as life keeps trying to find new ways to exist. The various races of the planet could be aliens from the far corners of the galaxy who have been trapped here so long that they can't remember being from anywhere else. Demons, devils, and dragons could all be extra-dimensional beings who have made it here through tears in the fabric of space-time leftover from the nuclear devastation. Magic, in all its various forms, could be the expression of a particular mutation within the wider population that is either gaining prominence or being weeded out of the species. 

Art by Moebius

With this understanding of the world of Greyhawk we could easily imagine it being akin to M. John Harrison's Viriconium, the wildest comics from Heavy Metal, or from the works of Moebius. It could be Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars. However you liken the setting, the point is that the world has become far more exciting and wide open again rather than bound by the trappings of a semi-Medieval world and that makes it reinvigorating to my imagination. I hope it does to yours as well. 

Reader Mail: Where Would You Start an Adventure in Greyhawk?

Last night I received an email through my fancy little contact box over there on the left of the page that was a really good question. So I thought I would throw it up on the blog, along with my answer, so that other Greyhawk enthusiasts could join in with some suggestions to help this reader out.

Hi! . . . I'm starting a campaign soon that's going to be set in Greyhawk. No one in the group has played In Greyhawk. I've been reading up on the setting, and I'll be using the LGG [Living Greyhawk Gazetteer] as my reference. What are the top areas to start a Greyhawk campaign for players new to the setting? There's so much information in the LGG that I'm having trouble choosing where to get started . . . 

Greyhawk Adventures Cover by Jeff Easley

Dear Reader, 

Without knowing what your group is into it's hard to give you a definitive answer as to where you should start adventuring. The World of Greyhawk has so much to offer your group from swashbuckling adventures on monster infested waters with the Sea Princes; to crossing a seemingly endless waste in the Sea of Dust as they search for lost cities hidden beneath the ash of a ruined civilization; to infiltrating the dreaded kingdom of that vile demigod Iuz; to the political intrigue of the Great Kingdom with its mad king and devilish lords; and of course there's the dungeon that gave the world its name. Greyhawk just is a land of plenty and you'll find something for every interest you could ever have waiting for you! 

But that isn't really helpful, is it? 

No. 

If I were to suggest a place to start adventuring I would pick the city of Dyvers. It's a free city located just on the southwestern portion of the Nyr Dyv (a lake of fathomless depths with monsters slumbering somewhere deep within that occasionally rise when particularly bad storms or earthquakes disturb their sleep) along the Verbobonc river. It's smaller than the more famous Greyhawk and has a natural rivalry with its sister city. I often describe it to my players as a city the size of Nashville; large and sprawling but not so big that you can't find your way around it. To the north you have the Kingdom of Fuyrondy (a land of noble knights standing against the ever present evil of Iuz and his demonic armies). To the south the Gnarly Forest where I usually put wild beastmen, goblins, and necromancers. Then there's the Wild Coast and the Orcish Empire of the Pomarj where all good adventurers go to die. 

As for getting everyone together I usually start them off having just been released from the city militia or having just graduated from the various colleges, universities, seminaries, and academies that their assorted classes would use. Then I tend to provide them with a few close-ish locations for them to explore. Often I tend to tie their first adventure to a character's family or friends to help establish them in the world. I like adventures that have them hunting down someone missing as it's easy to connect them with the slavers of the Wild Coast or the machinations of Iuz's armies. Then I just let the players craft their story from there. 

The other good thing about Dyvers is that it's fairly close to many of the big adventure locations in classic adventures like Maure Castle, Castle Greyhawk, the Temple of Elemental Evil, the Bright Desert, and so on. So if you have access to those adventures it will be fairly easy to get the players there from Dyvers. 

Hope this helps and don't hesitate to contact me again if you need more, 

Charlie 

P.S. Oh! Before I forget you should always remember that while Iuz is the biggest threat to the world that the Great Kingdom is not to be discounted as an enemy if you want to avoid demons. The king is mad and periodically purges the nobility (and, well, if we're being honest here most anyone else he remembers exists). His agents are fanatical in their devotion to him and act on his word as though it were the Holy Word of a god. They're a great enemy to throw into the game even if only for a mild distraction.

A Line in the Sand for One of the Oldest Settings in D&D

On December 19. 2017 Dungeons & Dragons Creative Director, Mike Mearls, did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit which I found an interesting read. Among the many questions he was asked was one about his favorite setting. Mike answered, "I'd love to tackle Greyhawk, but I'd want to approach it from the original [Gary] Gygax material, ignoring most everything post-1983 (unless he was the author)."

That's an interesting way to go in re-imagining the setting as it both eliminates a rather large swath of weak material but also some beloved adventures that came after Gary Gygax was forced out of TSR. Kick out the Greyhawk Wars, World of Greyhawk, all the Carl Sargent stuff, all the Living Greyhawk material, and all the stuff published by Wizards of the Coast throughout the tail end of Second Edition and all of Third Edition. Essentially it would reset the world at the Greyhawk Boxed set with the whole setting on a tenuous peace with armies posturing and occasionally raiding across the boarders but without the outright war that characterized the setting throughout the majority of its published existence. 

I'm conflicted about this proposed reset. On the one hand I hate some of the changes that came to the setting after the Greyhawk Boxed Set and really hate the way that the world was reshaped by the Greyhawk Wars; but on the other hand I really love some of the Carl Sargent stuff (seriously, Sargent rocks and to completely lose his influence from the setting would really be a bit difficult for me). Still, at this point the Greyhawk setting has been largely neglected and pushed to the side so often that just to have some light from someone who loves it would be . . . amazing. 

Rary the Traitor by Ben Wootten

Listen, as a setting the World of Greyhawk is just a few short years away from being a forgotten memory that used to be a place played in back when the game first started. It's a relic waiting to be discarded. That needs to change before it gets forgotten and left to those few of us still waving our flag out here on the boarders of ignoble oblivion.

Greyhawk deserves to have a new generation of players care about it the way that I do after reading Carl Sargent. It needs to have authors that love the setting exploring it and pushing the game in a way that the Forgotten Realms simply can't compete with anymore. It needs to have boarder wars and devils walking the face of Oerth again. It needs to be a place where players go when they've gotten over the triteness of Faerun and are looking for somewhere new to explore where the canon warriors haven't entrenched themselves on every hill and loudly proclaim, "That's not how it goes in the books!"

There is so much potential in Greyhawk for new players. It's the land where the greatest adventures are set and where the best game designers made bold choices. It's a place where the great experiments of D&D were often first tested and where many of the most beloved spells, items, devils, gods, and non-player characters were first pushed out in the world. It can be that place again, and if the way we get it there is to let go of things like Sargent and the post Gygax material, then we should. 

Come on Mearls. Make us proud and do something breathtaking with the setting. 

The Greyhawk Wars

So last night I was reading a bit of Carl Sargent's work on Greyhawk and it got me to thinking how much fun it would be if we were to get some new exploration of the Greyhawk Wars time period or the era shortly thereafter. There's so much fertile ground to explore there that I would love to see it done. 

Perhaps I will.

Anyway, while I was thinking about it I made this thing. It's a bit massive when you blow it up, but I like it all the same.

If you like it, please share it with your friends, with the people at Wizards of the Coast, and with random strangers you meet at game shops. Spread the word about Greyhawk kids!

Sober Thoughts about the Newest Adventure from Wizards of the Coast

Last night I spent a bit of time, sober, looking at what Wizards of the Coast is doing with the latest adventure path and I'm just so damned disappointed with what we're getting. Again we're getting a re-imagining of a classic adventure. Again we're seeing a classic Greyhawk adventure and villain being transferred into the Forgotten Realms. Again I'm fucking disappointed. 

I fully understand that the Forgotten Realms is the engine that pulls the Dungeons & Dragons train right now, but I'm also aware that the only reason that is the case is because they have spent the better part of the last twenty years pushing that setting to the fore while minimizing all their other settings. They could have just keep all these re-imagined adventures in Greyhawk and they would have sold just as well while reinvigorating the setting for a new generation of players - or they could have moved us into Eberron and done something really interesting with all that settings lore. Fuck, they could have come up with a wholly new setting and it would have been better. I'm just so done with being in the Forgotten Realms in all the published material. I want to see adventures set in Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, and Eberron. 

Fucking bring on Planescape. I'm ready to move on to new worlds and fertile ground.

by Dean Ellis

Let's Make Bad Decisions Together

I've been thinking a bit about the amount of gods that we tend to throw into our role-playing game worlds, and in particular in the World of Greyhawk, and how as a community we tend to overpopulate them. Often the gods tend to cross over each other offering the same opportunities for a player mechanically while providing a limited difference in the character's narrative, if any at all. Take for example the way that the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, the last real supplement on the World of Greyhawk as a whole, dealt with gods. In it players are presented with an option of 71 gods in all their various power levels. Each is presented with its own lore and their respective domains. Largely though it feels superfluous; like a tacked on afterthought, barely worth mentioning but still too expected to be left out of the book. 

On its face the obvious solution to this glut of gods is to limit the players choices in the matter and to focus on a core group that the Game Master finds palatable for the adventure. It's not a very satisfactory solution to the issue, though, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The problem is that if you pick twelve gods to focus on one of your players is bound to have a love for some alternative god, such as Dalt, and if you allow the one exception then why not another? And suddenly your twelve is now sixteen, or 20, or 30 and your setting is dealing with a divine bloat all over again. 

Recently I've been considering a solution that feels a bit more satisfactory to my delicate sensibilities and that explains away the overlap in a fashion that I can accept. Instead of having a world filled with dozens or hundreds of individual gods there is a single, all encompassing god and all the various incarnations that people worship are just aspects of that being. Even the conflicts between the various aspects of the god are simply expressions of its natural conflicts; the various thoughts and urges within a being played out on a cosmic scale.

More later. 

Tales from the Yawning Portal

More like tales from your boring-ass uncle who can't get over the fact that he's not playing high school football anymore.

Seriously, I'm not saying that I could do better but it is ridiculous that Wizards of the Coast expects us to buy yet another rehash of previously released material.

Update 1/7/2017

I've thought more about this and I realized that the reason why I'm so dissatisfied with this latest product announcement is that Wizards of the Coast has proven itself capable of providing us with quality reinterpretations and imaginings of classic adventures throughout this edition. So it feels like they're taking a short cut here and not giving us everything that we deserve as consumers. 

Listen, I know that they have a plan and it has been working throughout this edition but I really am at a point where I just want something set in another world than the Forgotten Realms. I would love to see them begin exploring Eberron, Dragonlance, Dark Sun,  or ~places hand over heart~ Greyhawk again. They proved with D&D 4e that they were fully capable of putting out excellent setting books that would rival the D&D 2e stuff; and now that they've shown themselves so capable throughout this edition it's time to do that again. 

As of right now I don't see any reason to pick up the Yawning Portal as I have all of the original adventures it is based on. Of course if it hits a really good sale I might pick it up because I'm a fucking collector who's been steadily purchasing all of 5e since it's release and that's what collectors do. 

A Healthy Disregard for Religion Could Do All Our Games Some Good.

One of the things that I have always liked about the older version of the world of Greyhawk is that there was always a pronounced bit of disregard when it came to religion in the game world. You could openly worship H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods in Greyhawk City and so long as you kept your sacrifices to animals you purchased and to people who were down for getting offered up to the Elders no one gave two shits about what you were doing. Unfortunately that all changed in the game world as TSR moved away from that disregard of religion and instead made the decision that the choice of your religion could color your character in a more pronounced way. As a result you couldn't be an open worshiper of of an "evil" god, such as Nerull, or else some self-righteous paladin from one of the "good" religions was going to make it their life's goal to plant your character's ass into the ground and see if you could grow a better person from your bones.  

This decision to make religions matter in this fashion drove a lot of choices that players could have made into these underground and secretive places where a division within the players was built not on who got the most loot but on who was worshiping the wrong, imaginary deity. It infected every aspect of the game as cults always worshiped evil gods bent on doing harm to the whole world and a worshiper of Nerull or Vecna was always up to no good. In a lot of ways it simplified the world into this trite, little thing that mattered less. 

Don't get me wrong: there should absolutely be unifying forces in the world, and religion is a powerful unifier; but there is no reason to make the choice of a religion dictate whether a character is a good or evil actor in the game. We have lot of other reasons to kill the latest non-player character (NPC) we come across without dropping an imaginary religion into things as a moral panacea for our actions. 

More later. 

Seems like a Fight's Brewing.

Wonder what this is all about?

How Should We Be Describing Areas in Role-Playing Games

Last night I was reading reddit when ran across a novice Game Master (GM) asking for help in describing their game world. This particular GM had been running an adventure with lots of boxed text descriptions of each room which they had faithfully read as their players had explored. With experience, however, this GM had begun wondering if this was right or if they should be a bit more imaginative with the descriptions. The answers to this question left me feeling rather unfulfilled so I thought that I would explore the question more fully here.

When I first began running Dungeons and Dragons twelve years ago I ran games that came exclusively from my own imagination. I didn't pick up an official adventure from TSR or Wizards of the Coast for two years; and by that point I had already established my own style of describing the worlds my players were exploring which was heavily influenced by the pulp authors that I frequently read. As a result the boxed text felt heavy and unwieldy so I wouldn't run a published adventure because I arrogantly felt like running one would be akin to putting the training wheels back on my bike. 

The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth cover, by Erol Otus, 1981

It wasn't until I really started getting into the Greyhawk setting that my view on published adventures changed. I can remember reading The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth and it suddenly occurred to me that by ignoring the published adventures, and their ubiquitous boxed texts, that I was missing out on all of this really exciting stuff that other Dungeons and Dragons players had experienced. So I began to attempt running published modules. 

The first module that I attempted to run as it was written was David Cook's Dwellers of the Forbidden City. It was a challenging adventure for my players but as a GM I found it just as challenging to keep it interesting for them when it came time to read the boxed text. The problem was solidly my fault as instead of using the text as a starting point from which I would build the description I stubbornly stuck to reading it as it was written. 

Dwellers of the Forbidden City cover by Erol Otus, 1981

That was a mistake. 

One of my strengths as a GM has always been my ability to describe the locations that my players explore with a brevity that leaned heavy on mood and the big details. Without question my style is influenced by the Robert E. Howard novels I read and loved. A good example would be this passage from Son of the White Wolf:

". . . THE SUN WAS not long risen over the saw-edged mountains to the east, but already the heat was glazing the cloudless sky to the hue of white-hot steel. Along the dim road that split the immensity of the desert a single shape moved. The shape grew out of the heat-hazes of the south and resolved itself into a man on a camel . . ." (Howard)

In that short extract everything about the location is told in three sentences and as a GM, and storyteller, I'm always looking to emulate his style. I love the quickness of it and how a mood for the reader is so easily established. 

After my failure with Dwellers of the Forbidden City I decided to take a different approach with all future published modules I would run and try to bring a bit of Howard's style into the descriptions. Now I could do it on the fly but often it meant that I would end up missing things. The tone might get slightly off because I hadn't read far enough to know the location wasn't all that important or that the current non-player character (NPC) would be a pivotal character in the adventure. So I found myself doing a lot of prep work in order to make the published adventures work in a way that satisfied me. 

I would begin by making a copy of the adventure that I could write notes in without feeling guilty. I would then read the entire adventure before I began making notes I would need. I had to know what was happening; who the villains, throwaway characters, and heroes were. Then I would go back through a second time and make my notes. I would jot down a few quick thoughts on how I wanted this NPC to sound or the mood that this location needed to give the players. I highlighted things that I wanted them to discover and that I wanted to find quickly (like the villains' characteristics, weapons, and spells). And the night before I would read out loud the parts I thought we would touch in the session to my wife (when she wasn't playing), attempting to use all of my notes, to see what was working and failing.

All of that prep work I do has often paid off in ways that have taken my running of the adventures from cumbersome affairs into things that my players still talk about today - but it also made me incredibly hesitant to run the larger adventures. As you can imagine, published adventures end up being a lot more work for me and when I look at an adventure that's 250 pages long or more I have a hard time justifying spending that much time on it when my only reward may be my players looking at the start and saying, "Well, this is fucked. We're going the other direction away from the dragon and towards the bar." But Greyhawk has a way of rewarding my efforts. I consistently find myself enjoying the villains that I discover in these modules more than I did previously when I only knew their names and had read through their wiki descriptions. The locations I prepare for never go to waste as I can always find the time to let my players discover a crashed space ship or a hidden shrine to some foul demon princes looking to destroy the multiverse. 

In Greyhawk, there's always a hungry dragon.

Works Cited

Howard, Robert E. "Son of the White Wolf." Project Gutenberg Australia, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601081.txt. Accessed December 1, 2016.

It's One O'Clock and I'm Fairly Certain the Rocket Won't Wait.

This evening I was reading a RPG book where the authors spent seven pages detailing how time passes in their game world. The days and months of the year were given these silly names. The phases of the moon were described, with each given a special name. Worst of all the hours were called out in a quasi-Latin style. It was clear that the intent was to create a sense of verisimilitude for the world that they were describing but instead it all came off a bit contrived and silly. This setting isn't unique in this foolishness. Just a quick pass through my game library and it seems like in practically every amateur and professional setting I've been presented with the latest 'unique' calendar and denotation of time. Over and over again it seems that the authors can't wait to tell me all about how special their world's understanding of time is. 

Why, it's not Monday here; it's First-Day. 

January? No, no. You're saying it wrong. It's Fireseek. 

What time is it? Why it's half past Qui'Tar Jut! 

Now maybe you're players are really into learning the minutia of your world and are all about calling the various months by these setting specific names and using the tongue-twisting variations for the hours - but I've yet to play in a group that was willing to expend the effort. Instead the days always revert back to Monday, Tuesday while the hours go back to One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, and so forth. 

For a while it bothered me that my players couldn't keep to the imaginary calendars I had brought to them and that they didn't care enough about the days of the week to use their 'proper' names. Then one day I had an epiphany: they don't have time to fool with this stuff because all they want to do is play the damned game. To my players calling Monday, First-Day was useless. It didn't improve their immersion into the game world because it produced a jarring, mental disconnect that pulled them out of it. They had to think to call it First-Day instead of just knowing that it was Monday. Calling January, Fireseek didn't tell them anything useful because they had to remember that Fireseek was a cold, snowy month. All I was accomplishing by forcing such contrivances on them was making my games worse. 

As I'm getting older I'm finding that the best policy as a Dungeon Master isn't to get cute and come up with special names for the things I'm doing - after all, my orc isn't any less an orc if I call him a Thute - but rather to build on the cultural and societal touchstones that my players can identify with and readily assimilate into their play. My games use regular names for the hours, days, and months of the year, but major events become the names of the years within the game. When they destroyed the city of Kimber by triggering a massive earthquake that swallowed it whole, the year became known within the game's world as "The Year Kimber was Swallowed." My non-player characters (NPCs) could mention it as a touchstone within a conversation and the players immediately knew when it took place in relation to where they existed in the game now. It gave the world a greater depth than telling them that the year was 447 CY. To them 447 CY might as well be 1779 BC. It was a meaningless number that they weren't all that interested in remembering, but those major events stuck with them and gave them a grounding in the world. 

The Prelacy of Almor, Part 1: Where It All Begins

The campaign that I've been thinking about running for the last few months will be based in the Prelacy of Almor; a small state formerly situated between the Kingdom of Nyrond and the Great Kingdom of Ahlissa. Now if you're like me then it's likely that the only thing you knew about the Prelacy of Almor is that it was utterly destroyed by the Great Kingdom during Ivid the Undying's expansion and what wasn't conquered by him was absorbed by Nyrond. Or you could be like my lovely bride and just laugh every time I try to say Almor with my southern drawl bastardizing it into a terrible mess of false consonants and invented vowels. Regardless of where your knowledge about the Prelacy of Almor begins I'd like to discuss how I'm using the little state and where I'm envisioning the campaign going as it progresses.

Prior to the Greyhawk Wars the Prelacy of Almor really didn't have a lot of attention paid to it in the published materials for the setting. In truth the only real information that I could find on the state was found in the 1983 Boxed Set where it's description is fairly short and uninspiring:

. . . Originally a clerical fief of Aerdy, Almor grew in power and independence as the Great Kingdom became weak and decadent. The various petty nobles and the Lord Mayor of the town of Innspa swear allegiance to the reigning prelate - usually a high priest. The state is only loosely organized, but it has a strong spirit of freedom and justice based upon religious precepts. The peoples are mainly farmers and herdsmen and fisherfolk. In the far north there are some foresters. Militia contingents bear crossbow, spear, or polearm (fauchard or glaive most commonly). Standing forces number around 5,000 total horse and foot, plus the nobility and gentry. The Prelacy is strongly supported by Nyrond as a buffer between that realm and that of the Overking, and pay a stipend to help support the standing army of Almor . . . (Gygax)

The only enlargement on the state's description that I could find prior to the Greyhawk Wars came from a Rob Kuntz article in Dragon Magazine #65, Greyhawk's World: News, Notes, and Views of the Greyhawk Campaign (pg. 11 - 12), which discusses the efforts of Almor and Nyrond to block the Great Kingdom's expansion of its boarders. This paucity of information on the Prelacy of Almor is a blessing as it allows me to build the state in a way that not only suits my purposes but provides me with a loose enough framework that I can let my players really push the story in any way that appeals to them without the Canon Nazi in my head screaming out, "THEY CAN'T DO THAT!"

Now after the Great Kingdom expands the Prelacy of Almor recieves more attention but I have no interest in exploring that era at this time. For my purposes it becomes far less interesting when you already know the outcome of the war; when you know that your only hope is to salvage through the ruins of hamlets and towns looking for the bits and pieces that you can sale to ruthless traders. No, it's far more exciting when you can explore the intrigue of states waging a cold war and steadily bringing up the temperature. That side of things makes my mind race with excitement and has gotten me to begin working on a new campaign for the first time in months - and that means I need to chase and nurture it once I've caught it.

More later.

Works Cited

Gygax, Gary. A Guide to the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting, A Catalogue of the Land of Flanaess Being the Easter POrtion of the Continetn Oerik, of Oerth. Random House. United States of America. 1983. Print.

Prelacy of Almor Series

Let's Play a Game . . . (regional map)

The Prelacy of Almor, Part 1: Where It All Begins

Let's Play a Game . . .

Here's the game. In the map above that I'm going to be using for my next adventure there are quite a few things different about it from the traditional maps of the region but if you're familiar with the area at all you should be able to tell where it is and roughly when it takes place. So the question is: In what nation is the adventure being set? Bonus points if you can tell me why it's set there.

• First correct answer receives 50 meaningless Dyvers points and an imaginary pony named Carl that never gets tired.
• Second correct answer receives 25 meaningless Dyvers points and an imaginary pony named Bill. Careful, he bites.
• The third correct answer gets an imaginary sandwich made of sand, liverwurst, and hate on Pumpernickel - the bread that hates you as much as you hate it.

Good luck!

O' Greyhawk, Where Art Thou?

The other day Christopher Perkins, Principle Story Designer for Dungeons and Dragons at Wizards of the Coast, put out a poll that went like this:

_______________, for the win.

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) February 22, 2016

Out of the 2,829 votes Greyhawk got 538. Every other setting presented as an option by Perkins beat us by an average of 200 votes. That's just embarrassing.

I mean I get it; I really do. Dark Sun had a pretty popular relaunch during Fourth Edition (those Dark Sun books are actually really cool and you should totally check it out). Dragonlance still sells a ridiculous amount of novels and was really well supported throughout Third with an official Campaign Setting book and a bunch of third party releases from Margaret Weis and the Sovereign Press group. And of course Eberron was fully supported throughout Third and Fourth editions with supplements, adventures, novels, art, and articles on the website and the magazines. 

By contrast Greyhawk hasn't had anything officially published by Wizards of the Coast since 2007's Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. Largely we've been absent from the conversation and we've seen Cannonfire, arguably the largest community of Greyhawk enthusiasts, steadily growing silent over the last few years. We're at a point as a group where we either need to become active in proselytizing the setting to other D&D enthusiasts or we need to recognize that the setting is going to become a footnote in the game's history. People will read about in Wikipedia as the place where Gary Gygax ran his games, and that will be all they'll know about it, and that's a damned shame.

The thing about it all is that we know Greyhawk shouldn't be left to such an undignified fate. As a setting it was home to many of the greatest adventures in the early days of the hobby. They're so good that even today we're seeing them shape what many people view as the standard of what a good adventure in our hobby looks like; which is great, but they're being moved out of Greyhawk and into the Realms as Wizards of the Coast uses them for inspiration and transplants them. They're creating a new standard of what good looks in modules like Princes of the Apocalypse for a whole new generation of fans that may never even think to go out and pick up what inspired their favorites. 

Greyhawk is a setting that I've found had enough room in it for my version of it, and for +Mike Bridges' version for it, and +Joseph Bloch's version for it, and for every other version you run into without the sort of cannon pissing contests that crop up every time you so much as mention the Forgotten Realms. The reason for that is that Greyhawk is so flexible as a setting: we have space ships, wars with demons and gods, artifacts so powerful that their names have been in every edition since they first appeared back in First Edition, all the named spells in every Player's Handbook came from characters that exist only in Greyhawk. Two of the most successful times in this hobby's history came about when Greyhawk was active: First and Third edition. In First, Greyhawk helped establish what was possible in the game and the adventures set there are still talked about today.  In Third, we saw the return of Greyhawk as it was the edition's setting; it was flexible, and by and large, loosely defined for this edition. In doing so it offered a level of freedom for new players that let them carve out their own Greyhawks and brought people like me into the community with this hunger for the setting.

Greyhawk is the setting that gives us the opportunity to do our own thing when we start out. We don't have a library of fiction that has established a narrative for our world that our Players feel we must hold tight to our bosoms. Our setting isn't filled to the brim with godlike non-player characters (NPCs) who shuffle our players' characters about the world like chess pieces; and quite frankly, the NPCs die far too easily in our setting for them to even hope to attain that level of Machiavellian power.

So how do we turn this about and bring Greyhawk back to the forefront? How do we get Wizards of the Coast to recognize what we see in this setting?

The simplest answer is that we have to get vocal about the setting. We have to tell the ladies and gentlemen of Wizards' D&D team that we want Greyhawk to come back with this edition of the game. We have to talk to them on Twitter and email the Wizards corporate office. But more than that we have to go to the places where people are talking about Dungeons and Dragons and role-playing games and engage them about the setting. We need to open Greyhawk up on reddit, and we need to encourage people to join it on Facebook. We need to be champions for Greyhawk, because if we aren't then no one else will be.