2E Greyhawk Wars Campaign:Prelude to the Series

Hail to thee, Greyhawk mavens! I hope you enjoyed my recent three-part epic Iuz-Furyondy War report. For those who missed out, I've been going through old 2E Greyhawk campaign notes of mine, and boy did I do A LOT OF WARS, but really isn't that what Gygax wanted? Back in AD&D's heyday, Gary supplied troop numbers in the setting books and he kept adding battles with Flanaess troop info in the pages of Dragon Magazine. War was inevitable and Carl Sargent is who brought it to us via a host of 2E supplements like the questionably useful Greyhawk Wars board game, Iuz the Evil, The Marklands, and the unprinted Ivid the Undying. To wage the many wars for my World of Greyhawk campaigns, I tried a mess of mass combat systems that all came out in the 80's and 90's, such as Companion Set's: Warmachine (my favorite), Battlesystem (I still use their counters), Birthright (loved those troop cards), and yes, even the Greyhawk Wars board game I'm afraid. This "silver age" of D&D gaming was probably our longest running campaign in terms of one continuous storyline. Ah, to be young again!

The upcoming series of wars I plan to present was recently rediscovered AFTER I posted my Iuz-Furyondy War on Greyhawkery. Chronologically however, that war is one of the last in our 2E campaign, so I'm going to pull a Star Wars prequel on you guys and go back to the start now. Disclaimer, I probably only remembered the huge Iuz-Furyondy War because I had done detailed maps and kept meticulous track of casualties. These remaining wars, timelines and assorted notes were written mainly in a narrative fashion, so battle data will not be as forthcoming. The upshot is there will be more detail in what was going on with my player's heroes during these worldwide events.

Here is a preview of the war chronology so you can see what I'll be writing about. You'll notice that my timeline was well ahead of published timeline of Greyhawk products (576-591 CY). I usually adapted new material to our ongoing campaign as it came out:

Great North War 605 CY to 609 CY
Great Kingdom War of Succession 610 CY to 611 CY
Pomarj-Celene War 610 CY to 613 CY
3-Month aka "Scarlet" War 613 CY
Schnai Civil War and Aerdy Civil War 616 CY
The Greyhawk Wars aka "The Bandit War" 617 CY to 618 CY
Battle of Bellport Harbor 623 CY
Iuz-Furyondy War 627 CY to 629 CY (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Having dredged up material for eight more wars (wow) I have additional 2E campaign material I may write up that coincides with these events:

Final 2E Campaign Map of the Flanaess 638 CY
The High Ring (magocratic power group)
Revealed Land of Black Ice Colonization and Map
The Night Shadows (barbarian power group)

I hope this ends up a good trove of game material and ideas for your own Greyhawk campaign. Stay tuned!

Update 06/27/2021: Added links to associated articles that followed this prelude, for ease of navigation. Or you can find them all in the page tab for Best of Greyhawkery.