New: D&D Adventure Quiz

Attention grognards and Greyhawkers. Over at Wizards of the Coast they have a nifty quiz to test your knowledge of classic module covers. It's got two levels of difficulty too, Heroic and Epic. I got 13/17 on both. Those pesky Slaver modules always confuse me. Try it out, it's pretty fun.

Update 05/08/2021: Sorry folks. Quiz is gone.

Explaining the Unexplained: Carl Sargent

Carl Sargent is best known in gaming circles for being the lead developer of Greyhawk during much of 2nd edition from 1991 to 1997. The timeline advancing From the Ashes and the unpublished Ivid the Undying are among his most ambitious works during that period. Few remember however, that before Sargent worked as a freelancer on RPGs, he had a PHD in experimental parapsychology and taught at Cambridge, where he became a published author on the subject of the paranormal. These impressive credentials must surely contributed to Sargent's quick ascension to TSR and into the fore of Greyhawk.

Recently a friend of mine obtained one of his books, Explaining the Unexplained, Mysteries of the Paranormal (co-written by Hans J. Eysenck) and I must say it sheds a new light on Sargent's vision of Greyhawk. Eysenck I must add is a psychologist with over 70 books under his belt, so I assume he did a greater share of the writing. With that in mind, a large part of Sargent's contribution, being the parapsychologist was likely on the methods of testing the phenomenon of psychic abilities. The book is quite interesting, covering subjects like psychics, ESP, dreams, mind over matter, life after death and so on.

Not surprisingly then, the Explaining the Unexplained has a section (in mind over matter) about testing PK (psychokinetic ability) with cards, dice and even RPGs:

"...certain environments create strong desires and wishes through incentive motivation of much subtler kinds than bribery. Human beings are extremely curious and many psychology experiments show that the simple prospect of learning how well one has done in some test or other is a powerful motivator. If the test is presented in an appealing and attention-grabbing way, curiosity becomes a powerful motivator. External factors very definitely affect how internal motivations are strengthened and expressed."

"There are obvious ways in which this line of testing might be carried forward....Very relevant here are 'fantasy roleplaying' computer games, such as those based on the world best selling Dungeons and Dragons game..."

"In these games youngsters play the roles of...warriors, wizards, witches, and rogues. Confronted with deadly puzzles, riddles, and traps, and mighty enemies and monsters..."

"The games are addictive and are constructed to help...develop problem solving skills of many kinds. The powerful intrinsic motivation is that of solving riddles and puzzles."

"And because the game commands intense concentration, the player would soon forget that he was being tested at all. Further, these games take place in 'worlds' (not unlike Tolkien's famour Middle Earth) in which magic exists and is real...Why should PK effects not exist too? If belief is an important factor, these games certainly aid in suspension of disbelief."

That leads us back to Greyhawk and the psychology of Sargent himself. Given his body of work, the way some elements found their way into "Sargenthawk" make more sense. Several notable examples out of From the Ashes:

Spinning Helix of the Archmages (a paranormal phenomenon that aids in divinatory powers)
Lyzandred's Tomb (a lich who favors testing heroes not with monsters but puzzles, traps and games)
Doomgrinder (another divinatory mystery)
Zendreldra's Tower (crazy psychic crone who predicts a great flood)
Philidor (mysterious blue skinned wizard who curiously has among other topics, sagely knowledge in astrology, metaphysics and sociology)

I could go on, but it's evident Sargent was a good fit for developing a fantasy world. I wonder if he got tired of testing the paranormal in favor of writing RPGs (or was he combining both?). We'll never know for sure. All I know is Greyhawk was lucky to have drawn such a talented mind to the setting.

Castle Greyhawk: Breaking and Entering

The weather is colder and I'm slacking as usual. Time to plug our twenty-first episode of the Castle Greyhawk graphic novel. Follow the link to read the entire quest from the beginning plus additional written content by author Scott Casper or you read the current page compliments of Maldin's Greyhawk.

Artist's commentary: This page was tricky for reasons I can't pin down. Perhaps it was the perspective of the circular stairs or the crashing through a door. You never realize how complex drawing a rectangular door is until you need it to open or be damaged. I'm still experimenting as I go with different methods of depicting light in the dark. As they are going into an old tower I'm sure I'll get a good workout of those skills.

New: Greyhawk Adventurer's Atlas Part 2

Welcome back Greyhawkers, it's time for a new installment of Braggi's blockbuster mapping project, the Greyhawk Adventurer's Atlas. Last time we debuted part one The Baklunish West and the Atlas' corresponding Appendices. This time up Braggi focuses on the cold northern Flanaess:

"This installment details the northern lands of the Flanaess including the Tiger Nomads, the Archbarony of Blackmoor, the Rovers of the Barrens, the Thillonrian barbarian lands of Stonefist, Fruztii, Cruski and Schnai."

The GAA is an incredibly useful resource for any Greyhawk player or dungeonmaster - combining published material and even some suitable fan works into their distinct regional areas. There's many more issues to come so give it a look, you won't be disappointed.

DOWNLOAD THE ATLAS PART 2

Mortellan's Greyhawk Art

My best friend will appreciate this post the most. For years I've had some rather large works of art collecting dust that I did during our "silver age" of Greyhawk gaming. We were all in college and we had ALOT of time to play D&D. Countless hours were devoted to creating maps, floorplans and artwork for our home campaigns. After all this time I finally got the urge to dig out two of these Greyhawk masterpieces and take some half-way decent pictures of them. Both of these pieces were drawn on a full 22" x 30" sheet of stonehenge paper (texture kind of like vellum) and finished in colored pencil (Prismacolor). They're simply too big to scan properly. Many of you have only seen my goofy cartoons or semi-serious black and white drawings, but these are examples of what I can do given unlimited time and patience. Enjoy.

First is a picture of the legendary Cruskii fighter Valkaun Dain. Here we see him sailing home from a quest on his longship down the river Skyr in Dainland. Valkaun is wearing his signature shadow dragon hide armor and carrying his runic sword of sharpness. This is just a cropping of the entire scene. Click here on the pic to see the detail and go here for the full illustration.

Then there is the infamous "three towers". When Valkaun and his compatriot the archmage Mortellan finished clearing out all three parts of the Greyhawk Ruins, they used their vast wealth of gold and gems (and god knows how many Wall of Stone spells) to rebuild the above ground castle that once belonged to Zagig Yragerne. I think going by the 2e Castle Guide rules they cost the PCs a cool one million g.p.

Due to the glaringly liberal scale used in the maps to Greyhawk Ruins, all three towers were 300 feet in diameter. I can't even begin to remember how high they were, but to keep proportion you can figure it out from the picture. What's more amazing is we drew all the floor plans to every level of these monstrous towers, no, skyscrapers. Why? Because we could!

Click on the pic to see a close up of the central keep, then go here to see the new Greyhawk Castle in all its glory.

Greyhawk Reading: Quag Keep

Okay folks, as promised, I have finally started reading Andre Norton's classic proto-Greyhawk novel Quag Keep (1978, published two years before the Greyhawk Folio). This topic is by no means groundbreaking. Indeed a few sources of mine have talked about it in recent memory. The Piazza forums had a thread on it last month, and before that Canonfire's forums had a discussion about locations in the novel. Then there's Grognardia's review from a few years ago which is the best overall I can find. Half way through and I'm struck by a couple things already.

One, it's the geography. I'm a fan of Greyhawk in all its forms be it the game setting World of Greyhawk, "Gordhawk" or whatever. Sadly, there is no map of this version of Greyhawk that Norton writes about unless it's in the sequel to Quag Keep which I haven't looked into yet. Maybe some intrepid fan will tackle the subject. At any rate as Nellisir on the Canonfire forums listed the many geographic similarities and differences between this world with the canon world most know (with my own added comments):

Greyhawk (same city, mentions a thieves quarter, could be much the same as Gygax's Gord novels)
Grand Duchy of Urnst (north of Greyhawk, is east in the game setting)
Hither Hills (half-elves scorned by true elves- could this be the Kron Hills or the Cairn Hills?)
Yerocunbry (Gygaxian tongue-twister, brings to mind the Yeomanry, perhaps misread when coffee was spilled on Andre's notes? :P)
Faraaz (a holy land, at best maybe this is analogous to Ket?)
The Great Kingdom of Blackmoor (north of Urnst, perhaps a combo Aerdy-Blackmoor mashup)
Koeland (probably a misspell since it's later called Keoland, said to have three tributaries)
Var (no clue)
the "Northern Clans" (followers of the High Horned Lady, perhaps an allusion to the Horned Society or just the Rovers of the Barrens?)
the River Vold (Sounds like a major river, perhaps the Velverdyva in the published setting?)
Grand Duchy of Geofp (next to a western mountain chain, which has the Dry Steppes and the Sea of Dust on the other side, wow that's accurate!)
Narm (no idea but they raid the Steppes) 
Duchy of Maritiz (island nation. Could be Admuntford in the Nyr Dyv?)
Great Bay (unsure of this body of water but Lichis the Golden Dragon battled Ironnose the Great Demon from Blackmoor, out over the Great Bay down to the Wild Coast ending in an unnamed boiling sea)
Wild Coast (can only assume it's the same Coast we know near Greyhawk)
Dry Steppes (north of the Sea of Dust, pretty spot on)
Nomad Raiders of Lar (they live in the Dry Steppes, could this be, gasp...Ull?)
Sea of Dust (can only assume it's the same dangerous location we know);
The Seven Swamps (where lizardmen are found)
Troilan Swamps (part of the Seven Swamps?) 

So yeah, without a map to reference, Norton's Greyhawk is a mish-mash of locations that were either cribbed from Gygax's notes prior to publication (and before Darlene had cemented their placement) or just plain made up for character development purposes and nothing else. But hey, no fault there that's how world building is done. There's still some good elements to work with here if one was inclined to borrow from Quag Keep for their campaigns, not to mention the classic Chaos versus Law theme is employed here.

My second notion from reading this book is the setup of the plot. Norton is a decent writer in my opinion but adapting characters with D&D class roles to a serious fantasy novel always seems to be awkward; nevermind that this one talks about wargames and miniature companies as well. Now another common issue with D&D fiction has been the old theme of "taking someone from the real world and dropping them in the world of D&D". As Argon mentions on the forums:

What I find interesting is how Norton approach to the novel has lent itself to many spin-offs. One the Dungeon and Dragon cartoon players were actual people from the real world who are transported to a D&D world. Many modern cartoons also involved taking kids from this world and transporting them into the games universe. Yugi oh, Beyblade, Chaotic, and many more.
It seems she may have inspired this approach for future writers of fantasy Sci-Fi fiction.

I also thought of the D&D cartoon immediately when I started Quag Keep. Argon is partly right about this plot device except nowadays D&D fiction has consciously got away from this setup, I imagine due to social stigmas D&D garnered from people being too "into their games". That's too bad though, because the trope is WAY older and more expansive than even Norton or D&D. Fiction routinely takes people out of modern Earth and thrusts them into the fantastic. Several notable examples (I'm sure there's many more):

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Chronicles of Narnia
John Carter of Mars
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Flash Gordon
Peter Pan

That's my final thought and question. If the trope works for these classics, why is it hokey when a D&D novel or cartoon does it? That's all for now, back to the book.

Castle Greyhawk: Facing Death

It's been a busy a busy but fun weekend and I still need to plug the milestone twentieth episode of our Castle Greyhawk graphic novel. As usual you can read the entire tale plus additional story content on our dedicated blog through the link above or read the current page compliments of Maldin's Greyhawk.

Artist's commentary: We've moved inside the castle now and the architectural nuances are still challenging. I can't wait till they get inside the keep itself though, twenty pages has been quite the journey.
I often reference pictures for the slightest reasons. This time I needed to research a proper way to position the handles/straps of a kite shield in order to visually leave room for a couple torches. I think the way I found works. I apologize to any shield experts out there though. Yrag is a veteran and can craft his shield however he wants!