I support the cause and I'm even somewhat interested in seeing the reprints. The 1e Dungeon Masters Guide is my all time favorite rulebook after all. I even have the mini version! No one is surprised by this P.R. move as it comes on the heels of their much heralded next edition of D&D which promises to win back older gamers. That's what turned on the light bulb in my head. Now, when Mearls and company claimed D&D Next would somehow be "backwards compatible" with previous editions, this led to many online bloggers calling for Wizards to put up or shut up and bring back the sale of old books on PDF. While that hasn't happened yet, the fact that their next move was releasing three classic books in print is quite intriguing. I'm no expert here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but there is hardly any production time needed to reprint old material beyond making a new cover and sending it off to the printers. Even advertising is a breeze over the internet these days. So, if they can do this for a charitable cause, they can certainly do it, at will, for their own profit. The point I'm rambling towards is this:
There is one book that we Greyhawk fans got stiffed on way back before Wizards came along and bought D&D from TSR. It is already highly praised, fully developed, and it only needs covers. Yes folks, I am talking about Carl Sargent's unpublished Ivid the Undying. Sure we all own the PDF. It's been freely available all over the internet for years, but what true blue collector of all things Greyhawk would pass at a chance to own a real tangible hard (or soft) copy of Ivid? Not me. What is in it for Wizards is throwing a huge bone to a large segment of the Greyhawk community that they want back for their next D&D run. Indeed, publishing this "obscure" book could attract new buyers as well just out of the surge of online hysteria that would surely follow from such a monumental move. That's my dream product for D&DNext. It's not a full on rally call for them to support new Greyhawk (yet), but it could be a nice boost in the right direction...
Update 4/28/2021: Removed link to the memorial fund and the broken link to Wizards' article. Take the post as is I suppose!
5 comments:
An interesting possibility, Mike: I've wondered if WotC's support for the Gygax Memorial Fund is perhaps an opening move to bring Greyhawk back for real or not.
The publication of Ivid and perhaps other Greyhawk unpublished materials (like Shadowlands, Starstrands, Castle Greyhawk, El Raja Key, etc.) sounds like a fun possibility. I hadn't thought of Ivid first, but it's an intriguing idea.
Allan.
How could you forget Kuntz's Kalibruhn Supplement, Alan? There is a wealth of almost-published material to get into our hands.
That's just it, either Ivid or Kalibruhn could/would be just a beginning or more goodies to come.
After all, it's just a s easy and inexpensive for them as you're said. And it would go a long way to proving that they're serious about getting "us" back.
You got it guys. Wizards has been in retro-mode for the last two years in my opinion since they made their "red box", so given the current climate why not all the ideas above someday?
Thats going to be one expensive cover charge! It can be done this may be a feeler to see where they are to go from here.
Later
Argon
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