Greetings Greyhawk enthusiasts! It's a few weeks away from
Gary Con 2020 and I just finished a piece for the upcoming
Oerth Journal #32 which will be available in limited print for those who attend the convention this year! Never fear though,
Greyhawk Online will have it ready for download as well, and I'm quite sure there will be a ton of extra download material that you won't see in the print version. Keep an eye on the OJ ink at Greyhawk Online for this newest publication!
Speaking of publication, I finally got tired of waiting for fate to intervene so I made a couple purchases. Yes, I am talking about old
Gary Gygax novels. Lately I've been hearing people talk about the content in these novels, but I've always been a bit snobbish in only reading game publications. I certain did already own a couple books,
Saga of Old City and
Sea of Death come to mind. But now after hearing about
Night Arrant and
City of Hawks for the umpteenth time I just bought these two novels online.
This is significant because my goal has always been to try and find these novels in the wild and buy them, but I don't go to enough cons and book stores to make that life-quest feasible anymore. I got lucky. These are some used copies, in good condition and they didn't cost all that much which is nice. The cover art cracks me up. I've always been skeptical of pulp fiction and comic book covers not representing the story inside. Man do I hope there is a giant vulture getting shot with a lightning bolt! So now comes my next conundrum, what is the chronological reading order for these
Gord books?
Can anyone help out?
12 comments:
Nice find! I have all these, have not read them since the 80s/90s.. I am doing a campaign for my 2 boys and friends so am rereading them.. 😃
Wiki has the details you need: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gord_the_Rogue
Of note:
Night Arrant is a collection of nine short stories about Gord's adventures, in his early twenties, in the City of Greyhawk.
City of Hawks is a retelling of the events that occurred in Saga of Old City. Gord's rise from simple beggar to master thief are detailed, as is his search for his true heritage
The rest are the main series.
IIRC Krista Siren had some info on her pages about reading order, perhaps?: https://greyhawkonline.com/gordmain/.
Ah yes, here's her listed order:
1. Gygax, E. Gary Saga of Old City Random House Inc. dist. TSR Inc., Lake Geneva WI, 1985.
2. Gygax, E. Gary City of Hawks, Berkley Publishing Group, NY, 1987.
3. Gygax, E. Gary Dragon # 100 “At Moonset the Blackcat Comes” 1985.
4. Gygax, E. Gary Night Arrant, Berkley Publishing Group, NY, 1987.
5. Gygax, E. Gary Artifact of Evil Random House Inc. dist. TSR Inc., Lake Geneva WI, 1986.
6. Gygax, E. Gary Sea of Death, Berkley Publishing Group, NY, 1987.
7. Gygax, E. Gary Come Endless Darkness, Berkley Publishing Group, NY, 1988.
8. Gygax, E. Gary Dance of Demons, Berkley Publishing Group, NY, 1988
To that, you need to add some of hte short stories publishing outside of the main sequence, too:
"Celebration of Celene in Elric: Tales of the White Wolf, ed. Edward E. Cramer, White Wolf, 1994
"Evening Odds" in Pawn of Chaos, ed. Michael Moorcock, White Wolf, 1996
"At Moonset Blackcat Comes" in Dragon #100
and, lastly and leastly,
"The Return of Gord" in Dragon #344 (which was co-written or mostly-written K R Bourgoine)
I haven't ever re-read it or "A Wizard's Thief" (also by KRB) in Of Dice & Pen since both were pretty bad.
Allan.
Saga of the Old City and Artifact of Evil are the first 2. I ready them when I ran a campaign that intersected with Tharizdun, who comes up in the Gord novels.
Saga of the Old City and Artifact of Evil are the first 2 Gord novels, and both were published by T$R and set in Greyhawk.
The next stories published by New Infinities pick up the tale, with Sea of Death. Night Arrant takes place between Saga and Artifact, then City of Hawks sort of retells the Saga of the Old City, but jumps forward where the rest of the New Infinities novels complete the series.
The weird thing (if I remember correctly) is that Gary was prohibited from using Greyhawk proper names as they were all licensed to T$R. So the place names and such in the New Infinities series are similar to the actual Greyhawk names enought to figure them out, and the maps in the books are almost exactly Greyhawk maps.
The series after City of Hawks is Come Endless Darkness (with Tharizdun, that's him on the cover) and Dance of Demons.
Wow! Thanks guys for the info. Looks like I have some books left to acquire to get the full story. I'm especially intrigued by the City of Hawks retelling SoOC which I have read. I hope that won't be confusing. Good stuff!
Which ones are you still missing, Mike?
Allan.
Allan: Looks like all I need is Come Endless Darkness and Dance of Demons.
I think it was Dance of Demons, the very last book was horrible. Buy only to end the story and for completeness.
quantum: Oh for sure, I am doing it for collecting-sake. I'm terrible at finishing novels these days. The internet ruined my attention span :D
I'm not a fan of the Gord books as narrative prose but for inspiration, atmosphere and resource information about the Greyhawk setting as well as the devilish and demonic planes, these are priceless.
For the completionist, LibraryThing (think wikipedia, but for people's book, CD, DVD, etc. collections) is a good resource to check. It has a fair chunk of RPG material, including really old stuff like Judges Guild material and newer stuff including some Kickstarter books. If the item has an ISBN, it is probably there (it would thus miss the short stories in Dragon Magazine).
The Gord stuff (by publication):
https://www.librarything.com/series/Gord+the+Rogue
and by books with the character:
https://www.librarything.com/character/Gord+the+Rogue
I've found it a great resource for finding holes in my 70s and 80s era material. The caveat is that since it is crowdsourced, the error rate (typos, omissions, duplicates) is likely to be higher.
HJB: Thanks the heads up! :)
Congrats on your find, Mike. The earlier books are best. Not a fan of the final two. Gary was not the best writer, IMHO, very pulpy, but he had his moments. I recall inhaling these as they came out, even though I was more into Asimov and Clark, and cyberpunk at the time, mainly because I was in a mild hiatus at the time. And let's be honest, it was Gary!
Enjoy!
Post a Comment