Sea Princes Campaign Rambling

I've been working a lot lately and haven't had much a chance to update the blog. With nothing newsworthy going on, I decided to air some thoughts and brainstorms I have on my ongoing series of Hold of the Sea Princes campaigns. Today I'm running one at Twilight Comics in Swansea, IL for one of my long time groups. If any readers live around that area or you serve at Scott Air Force base, you should definitely check out the store.

This will be our fifth or sixth session and I've covered a lot of ground including Jetsom Island, the Jeklea Bay coast, Port Toli and soon, today I'll be featuring Keoland's main port of Gradsul. The best info on the port of Gradsul can be found in the Living Greyhawk Journal #1. If you can find a PDF or old print copy of this magazine I highly recommend it because the article on Keoland is written by my good friend and Greyhawk author, Gary Holian.

As for Port Toli, there is really little to go on, but from conversations I've had with people I've turned it into a metropolitan hotbed of danger, intrigue and dubious morals. Mind you, my game is played at the gold box timeline of 576 and after. Post-Greyawk Wars Sea Princes ruled by the Scarlet Brotherhood is not the environment for high seas fun that I want. Yet. If I get around to it, I'll try to do some write ups of the locations and set-pieces I've developed for these parts.

Moving a game from port to port is a challenge for DMs in that you have to keep players engaged and interested in the tasks and destinations you provide. A good method I advise is to use random weather, sea encounter charts (mind are cobbled from all editions) and most importantly custom crew event charts to make the travel in between planned encounters less tedious and it creates subplots that you may not have otherwise thought of beforehand. A simple storm blowing a ship off course or a random fight breaking out on deck between NPCs might get you more mileage than a scripted encounter and for a long term campaign filler encounters are invaluable.

I'm brainstorming another future campaign for my Sunday group too. This one will differ slightly from my current Monday group but they share the same continuity which helps in writing overall. This game is going to be more epic in scale though, so I'm contemplating starting at 3rd level! This leads to my last thoughts on D&D. My Monday group uses Pathfinder rules, which has been a good transition from my old 3,5e games. The Sunday group I'm with uses 5e rules pretty much exclusively now. I did a couple test runs DMing the new rule set in a Ravenloft setting and it's pretty fun. My only concern is trying to adapt over some of my hybrid Basic/1e/3e seafaring rules to 5e.

I haven't seen much in the way of seafaring rules yet from Wizards and given their current love of the Realms I can't see that happening soon. I could be wrong but does Faerun have any kind of high seas story to its setting? I remember reading a Moonshae novel way back in the day and I know they have an inner sea sourcebook of some kind, but high seas, I'm not sure. What I mean here is I'm not waiting. I'll cobble some house rules like I always do when the time comes.

That's all for now, back to your normal gaming day.

Graz'zt and Zuggtmoy Minis

Just saw this on ENWorld the other day. Yup, the first mini ever of Zuggtmoy and new minis of demon lords Graz'zt and Orcus from Gale Force 9. What else can I say about this?

Update: ENWorld has just reported there is a Demogorgon mini and damn it's fantastic looking!

Castle Greyhawk: Fire and Ice

Welcome back again loyal Greyhawk readers! It's high time I promoted a new page in the third chapter of our ongoing Castle Greyhawk graphic novel. Check out page twenty-seven plus follow some lead-in literature by wily wordsmith Scott Casper. On our site you can also check the archives and follow the entire Castle Greyhawk story from the very beginning.

Artist's Commentary: An alternative title for this page could also be "Frozen Assets". Anyhoo, the party has ventured into the ice cave and found treasure frozen in ice. I'd like to say this is a "Mike" type encounter, anything to keep the players from having loot, but this situation actually happened to me as a player this year in a game I am playing in. Go figure.
This page continues to test my artistic skills. Ice effects, lighting, icy breath, fireballs in motion. What else you got Scott? ;)

Stay tuned for next page, it is gonna be a blast!

Greyhawk is Ugly

I'm playing devil's advocate here, so hang on. Yesterday I was reading how it was the late Dave Arneson's birthday. The co-creator of D&D is of course famous for Blackmoor, which is a setting in its own right yet inexplicably part of the World of Greyhawk as well. That got me rethinking how Greyhawk, the setting many of us love is really an ugly patchwork of disparate settings, genres and authorial voices. Contrast that with rival Forgotten Realms, and you'll see why Greyhawk isn't a very marketable setting as a whole.

I'm not a Gygax historian by any means so my facts and chronology might be skewed, but I do know enough about the setting that I can look at the parts that make up the whole and see how hard it would be to defend the setting to a newcomer. The basis for the World of Greyhawk is naturally, an adaptation of Gary's home game and if I'm right Robert Kuntz's Maure Castle game as well. It's not uncommon for writers to collaborate on fantasy settings; Dragonlance is a successful example. A couple DMs building a homebrew world is ideal in fact, though Gygax does get a lion's share of the credit. Ed Greenwood by comparison is also considered the singular voice behind the Forgotten Realms but it's early development wasn't burdened by additional or outside the home setting material (cultural analogs Kara-Tur and Al-Qadim notwithstanding). Greyhawk however, during the infancy of D&D was intentionally designed to be a kitchen sink setting that liberally borrowed from many of TSR's brightest authors.

This spirit of creative diversity at first can be taken as an advantage, but once you try to explain the origins of this crazy quilt of a setting it becomes rather unwieldy. So you already have Gygax and Kuntz's campaigns and then Blackmoor (and the Duchy of Tenh) in what I can only guess is an homage to Arneson's campaign because the two bear little resemblance except in name. Add to this Lenard Lakofka's Lendore Isles campaign nestled comfortably on the edge of the map. Jim Ward's classic sci-fi game Metamorphosis Alpha was given a nod in the World of Greyhawk via the adventure Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Genre bending hero Murlynd features heavily in early Greyhawk canon and I suspect he may have once been intended as a link to TSR's western-themed RPG, Boot Hill. Stranger yet is author Andre Norton's involvement in writing the novel Quag Keep. It's name is also thrown in the game setting despite there being no further similarity.

The patchwork nature of the setting goes "beyond the Flanaess" too, the setting nearly saw the inclusion of Frank Mentzer's Aquaria setting and it's now fairly well known from the Dragon Annual #1 map of Oerth that much of what was planned to be in the western half of the world was somehow based on the French graphic novel Black Moon Chronicles. By the time all these things are in place, the incorporation of Moldvay and Cook's classic The Isle of Dread into Oerth for Paizo's Savage Tide AP seems even less surprising.

So what is a fan of Greyhawk to think? Luckily the setting has been around long enough that later writers and fans have done all the heavy work justifying how these parts work (or don't work) together. Or you can ignore ramblings like mine and enjoy the diversity. Yet for published Greyhawk to continue one day or even reboot as the case may be, I'm afraid it may be necessary to tear up this quilt and focus just on the cohesive or "iconic" parts of the setting.

Greyhawk Comic Rewind: Waldorf

Hey all, let's have a look at one of my favorite classic Greyhawk comic strips from 2007 featuring the Dragon Magazine legend, Waldorf. Back in the mists of D&D prehistory, people had to write actual paper letters and send them by pony express to the editor to have them published in the forums of the magazine. Often if the letter was outrageous enough other people would write letters about your letter! Internet forums just don't have the same zing as a nice character debate done in print. Check it out...

Here is the editor's responses to the famous Waldorf letter(in italics), followed by a deluge of other equally wacky letters that came in response to Waldorf's. This is classic Dragon Magazine comedy:

Of course. However; you forgot to enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. We regret that Waldorf must lose the experience points and gold for his victory.

• Dear Dragon: My friends and I have been playing the AD&D game for over six years now. Our major characters have levels in the millions, maximum scores for almost every ability, and can obliterate five planes of the Abyss in a round. We have moved on to other games and have developed other major characters in those games. We have created creatures that are barely a challenge for our characters. After a while, role-playing got boring. I haven’t played for about two months. I would like to know how I can have fun with these high-level characters.

Perhaps you should meet Waldorf.

• Dear Dragon: Stop making your game. I killed all the monsters. 

All but Waldorf.

• Please tell Waldorf that I have successfully completed making my savings roll, and ask him how much damage I took from the atomic bomb.

P.Y.

No address given, but we assume it was Greyhawk

• My character, “Fist” Xavier Redlance, has become ultimately powerful. . . . He owns three or four completely paid-for and fortified castles. He and his mount, a 14-HD cloud dragon (“Phantom ”), could wipe out Tiamat in one round of combat, or obliterate five tarrasques or even Waldorf. He is a 60th-level knight/23rd-level bard/23rd-level druid/l4th-level illusionist. . . . His two weapons are a mounted Dragonlance and a + 6 two-handed holy avenger. He is also psionically imbued. Tell Waldorf that not all of the planet was obliterated. “Fist” Xavier has two of his castles completely surrounded by granite (i.e, they’re three miles underground). The one thing he hasn’t done is design a device to clean up postexplosion radiation, but he is currently working on the problem. He can come out because his armor is resistant to just about any substance known to man (or Waldorf).

Travis Fox
Virginia Beach VA

• Recently, my AD&D® game character, Mirv the Outrageous (a 360th-level mage who had developed long-range space travel and left his home in the Forgotten Realms) discovered a small barren world. There were only a few inhabitants on it, on a 3 x 4-mile island with a castle. After infiltration, Mirv and his comrades discovered the castle’s name: Castle Waldorf. Beneath the castle, working in a salt mine, were the deities of the realm. What a horrible fate. So Mirv and his friends returned to their ship and destroyed all of the remaining life on the island through the use of saturation bombing (phosphorus and antimagic bombs) and Mirv’s favorite spell, power word nuke, a tenth-level spell. They then returned to the island in radiation gear and liberated the poor gods who, due to their lives among the stars, were immune to radiation at ground zero. Unfortunately, the owner of the isle was standing directly at ground zero when Mirv’s spell hit. We truly mourn his loss.

Jake Lovell
Louisville KY

• I was a little disturbed when I read the letter about Waldorf in issue #137. Well, it just so happens that my 421st-level magic user, Alkeronus, was in outer space for the last year and just decided to come back to Greyhawk. Alkeronus was, of course, ticked off, so he decided to destroy Waldorf and his castle. With his supreme power, Alkeronus made the sun go supernova, which completely disintegrated the planet. Waldorf is dead, and I expect the character to never be used again. Waldorf, you should have known better than to mess with Alkeronus'’s alehouse!

Wade Beckman
Sioux Falls SD

• We regret to inform Waldorf the magic-user that he is in eternal servitude to Shamogroth Darkmane, a 511th-level Krynn minotaur barbarian and his 89-person barbarian horde. Shamogroth was on his home plane avenging the destruction of his original barbarian tribe, so he was absent during the holocaust. Unfortunately for Waldorf, Shamogroth returned to his home forest to see that it was devastated. Shamogroth then searched for the only safe place on Oerth to return from the Border Ethereal: Castle Waldorf. By now, Mr. Darkmane was very steamed (and a little hungry), so he and his group of barbarians (ranging in levels from 100 to 300) plundered the castle and destroyed it and all within, save Waldorf and the deities. Shamogroth released the gods, who promptly did away with Waldorf’s power by exposing him to a little Negative Material plane torture, then repopulated Greyhawk. Shamogroth is now an epic hero and is watched over by the good and kind gods, and Waldorf is now chained to the bottom of the Valley of Eternal Pain, created by Shamogroth and his divine friends. Sorry, Waldorf.

James Collins &Jason Ross
Woody CA

• In response to this so-called wizard Waldorf’'s recent letter, I will not send my character sheets to Mr. Waldorf, simply because I am the most powerful being in Greyhawk. Maybe you have heard of me: I call myself the Dungeon Master. And just let me say that I’ve been getting pretty annoyed with Waldorf lately, so watch it!

D.M.
Spotsy VA

• My 1st-level assassin from Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms was teleported to the world of Greyhawk. He survived the dangers of radiation with his suit of + 5 radiation-proof leather armor. He sought out Waldorf’s castle and made it into the throne room while wearing his cloak of elvenkind, then shot Waldorf with his blowgun and a needle of slaying cheaters doused with Type A cheapo poison he bought at the Waterdeep Assassins’ Guild. Waldorf dropped with one shot. My assassin then freed all the gods under the castle, and they have started to repair and rebuild the world of Greyhawk. I think that for this deed all the people at TSR, Inc. need to send me a written thank you....I also think Waldorf should mail me his character sheet and list of possessions and magical items, so I can total the experience points for my new 14th-level Guildmaster Assassin.

Chris Bishop and Trent Ocobock
Yakima WA


Here is your “thank you.” The editors also wish to thank Bloodstone of Furondy (a 386thlevel magic-user) for decapitating Waldorf with a sling, Natricia (a 394th-level magic-user/214thlevel fighter/296th-level cleric) for recreating Greyhawk and challenging Waldorf (“as his damage was such a bother to fix”), Oharan Morshall (“The Drow From Below” who replaced Lolth) who suggested polymorphing Waldorf (“Waldorf Slaad has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”), and all the other characters (and players) who wrote to us.

Live long and prosper.
Dragon #173

• Dear Dragon, Recently, Parevé Dotrose (a 564th-level magic-user and 34th-level illusionist) teamed up with Megahnan Whitewolf (a 567th-level mage of high sorcery) to perform the greatest deed of 1991: the great resurrection of Waldorf, king of the nuke! Parevé and Megahnan traveled to the Realms by way of spelljamming and sought out the cleric known as Darklight Moonbeam. They were escorted to Moonbeam’s temple by a fleet of toxic dragons and welcomed by Darklight himself. After a nice dinner, Darklight allowed them to gaze upon his most recent creation: a wand of Waldorf resurrection +36. Needless to say, the two mages were speechless. Megahnan convinced Darklight to help in the plan to bring Waldorf back to the land of the living. So, Darklight gathered up his gear and his merry band of 100 kenders in order to depart on a great adventure.
• After Darklight had used the wand (and the kender band had “found” all of the things there were to “find”), Waldorf was resurrected. But Waldorf had become a lich! The wand had malfunctioned and just happened to cast a spell that transformed the nuclear man into a mean and nasty undead. Of course, Waldorf wanted revenge on his enemies, who had seemed to come out of the woodwork to kill him. Thus, Parevé, Megahnan, Hanibal the Minotaur (46th-level warrior), and Nicodemis (20th-level sage) wandered the multiverse, slaying the enemies of their lich leader. The first to fall was “Fist” Xavier Redlance. Megahnan polymorphed Xavier’s pet cloud dragon (14 HD) into a salamander and swallowed him whole. Next, Megahnan broke Redlance’s holy avenger +6 with the ancient hammer of Kharas, then finished him off with a 46th-level bolt of plasma.
• Next, Megahnan used his ring of Mirv finding to locate the human known as Mirv the Outrageous. Megahnan quickly coughed on Mirv’s band, infecting them with the horrid “burning fever” from the DRAGONLANCE® saga, then turned to face Mr. Outrageous himself. Megahnan won the first attack and slew Mirv with one hit from his sword of infinite slaying. 
• Thirdly, Hanibal captured Shamogroth Darkmane while Parevé killed Darkmane’s band of 89 barbarians with his newest 42nd-level spell, spirit rollingpin. Darkmane fought Hanibal and killed Nicodemis (who was along for the fun) in the process. Hanibal became mad and ran Darkmane through with a footman’s dragonlance. Shamogroth died a coward, screaming for his mommy.
• Lastly, Waldorf, Hanibal, and their new slave, Thor (mentioned in issue #152) killed the hundreds of other characters who dared to try to challenge Waldorf in 1989. To top it all off, Waldorf and his new twin dragon steeds, Tiamat and Takhisis, fought a hard battle with the powerful being known only as “Dungeon Master.” Of course, Hanibal was there to help in the battle, so the DM died also. So, now that Waldorf lives again, he will begin to control, mold, and shape the world of Greyhawk as he wishes.

I sorta knew this would happen, sooner or later.
Dragon #177

• Dear Dragon, I have had it with Waldorf and the 100 + level campaign. I’m stuffing a hammership with nilbogs and ramming Waldorf’s castle. If I act fast, I can catch all of his demi-followers at the victory celebration. The nilbogs will convert all the damage they take into hit points and wipe out the survivors. The End (I hope!).

Douglas M. Burck
Boyd KY

Your plan worked perfectly Congratulations. Waldorf is officially dead!

But as few know, this is what really happened:

From page 98 of The Adventure Begins:

Waldorf the Archmage (CN human male, Wizard 1, hp 1) is the 64 year old owner of the Roc and Oliphant Tavern. "Waldorf is notorious for his tall tales, most of which allegedly concern his past life as a deity. (He says he was eventually thrown down and made mortal by other jealous gods after a great battle in space.)He is a master storyteller for a failed wizard, and his grandiose but straightforward lies are the envy of all."

Greyhawk Wish List

Here's a nostalgic post I've been mulling over for some time. As an avid fan and collector of all things setting related, I have nearly everything you'd want to run a Greyhawk campaign. What's left for me to get in this long dry spell? Definitely not minis. Well for one, there is tons of old lead mini sets, Chainmail mini sets and even pre-painted plastic Greyhawk minis, but I have enough minis, so no thanks. Luckily, there is still some quirky merchandise out there that a collector like me might be interested in finding...

Bigby's Tee: This one is a recent creation from a tee shirt contest a couple years past. I could not find it in time for GenCon which irked me but lo and behold its now on ThinkGeek's site. Well done guys. I can easily get this cool tee so let's move on to the rare stuff.

Olidammara's Dice: These are high on my wish list for Greyhawk related stuff. A pair of six-siders with the symbol of Olidammara god of rogues on one face. If you haven't heard of Olid's Dice they are an artifact only seen in 3E's Epic Handbook. There is still a Olid's dice utility on Wizard's archive that may still function too. I'm sure I can find this on Ebay someday, then I'll be able to tempt my friends who can't resist random stuff like the Deck of Many Things. Runner up here would be the Fist of Emirikol another cool D&D die that has some rules attached to it. 

Mini World of Greyhawk Boxed Set: Any one remember these little gems? There was a whole slew of mini books and boxes that came out in the 90's. All I ever collected was the mini DMG. I'd love to know what kind of shrink ray they came up with to reduce everything perfectly including the maps. I'm sure I can acquire the mini boxed set. My best friend has one in fact...;)

Gord Novels: There is several titles of these alternate-Greyhawk Gygax novels floating out there and I already own a couple, but the ones I'm most keen on locating is Come Endless Darkness and Dance of Demons. The last two in the series which also have the most Graz'zt and Tharizdun action I hear. Those two novels shouldn't be too hard to get, but like comic books it's something I'd love to stumble upon and be surprised than chase it down. That's all for now. If anyone has other ideas or even has the items listed above, I'd love to hear about it.

Update 06/09/2021: I now own the Olid Dice and the Gord novels. Still need the mini box set and t-shirt though.

Update 04/07/2022: I got Dance of Demons at GaryCon XIV

About Wizards Forums Closing

It's a light week for me, so I'll talk a bit about WotC closing their community forums in October. From a personal POV those forums have been dead to me for many years now. The once decent Greyhawk forum (a sad subforum of "Other Worlds") saw cross-traffic between it and places like Canonfire and ENWorld then was suddenly and effectively abandoned at the outset of 4E, I'm not sure people moved on to other forums because there was no good 4E Greyhawk material to discuss since Wizards DID publish Greyhawk material in eDungeon/Dragon, and also put out reprints of classic books. Maybe these efforts were discussed in other locations on the Wizards forums, but as a dedicated forum to Greyhawk, the community was long gone from there by the time 5E rolled around.

I definitely agree with their sentiment that technology has changed things. Forums still have their place, since they are best for finding news and information in long form. For quick topics however, discussion and Q&A type things, blogs and social media are easier to follow on a daily basis rather than a forum thread which runs in the dozens of pages. So in short, no sadness here about Wizards dumping their forums. Much like their current adventures, the task of community building is better handled by other sources.

p.s. you can contact me on Twitter @GreyhawkMike