Sunday, December 30, 2018

New Gazetteer at Greyhawk Grognard

Greetings Greyhawk enthusiasts! It's almost the end of another Common Year, and my esteemed colleague, Joe Bloch over at Greyhawk Grognard has come through with his best Baklunish article yet! Lately he has been updating the western Baklunish lands and pantheons in the spirit of Gary Gygax's 80's era Dragon magazine columns. Now the pages of "Dragonne" magazine takes us Beyond the Flanaess to catalogue the lesser known nations of the Baklunish West that until now have only been referenced in brief over the decades.

This article is set in the fashion of the World of Greyhawk Guide, posed as the lost Volume IV (which the boxed set is volume III). This work thus wonderfully encapsulates all the sections and formatting you would expect in this scholarly type of guide. Here, the sage presents the following realms:

Ataphad Islands
Bakhoury Coast
Janasib Islands
Malikate of Komal
Mur
Sharifate of Risay
Qayah-Bureis Islands

In addition there is information on geographical areas such as the Gulf of Ghayar: Tyurzi Mountains, Rumikadath River and the Verdured Heights.

Mr. Bloch further enhances this guide by adding random encounter tables for these regions just as they are featured in the original Flanaess Glossography. Also, what good World of Greyhawk guide wouldn't be complete without a Darlene inspired map of this entire Beyond the Flanaess region? Joe had mapped the entire world of Oerth in this style years ago. I imagine he will keep working outward now cataloguing the regions just like in this well-written article.

Download this now. It's a MUST HAVE.

Update 06/24/2021: Had to remove the link to Joe's BTF maps. He doesn't have them hosted for download currently.


1 comment:

Greyhawk Grognard said...

Thanks so much for the kind words, Mike! It's worth pointing out that I completely redid the map for this article, fixing all sorts of problems with my originals way back in the day.

My plan is, indeed, to work outward from the Flanaess, including a personal favorite region of mine, Zindia, next up once I'm done with the Baklunish lands. But I'm taking my time, and trying to get it right, both in terms of content and presentation.

The goal is to make it feel like these were things that you photocopied out of a magazine back in the 80's to use in your Greyhawk campaign, just like I did with those beautiful articles back in the day.

So glad you like them. :-)