The Wayfarer's Inn

Rafael · Fear me, I am Admin! Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 984

Har har...

Will still take a while before I complete them, so, don't expect too much trouble from my side until the end of the year or so...

First and foremost, I want to playtest that adventure extensively before I edit it... (Or better, let YOU edit it...

)

Maraudar · Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:56 pm Post subject:

Rafael · Fear me, I am Admin! Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 984

I have been toying with the idea to get that one for a while.

Since buying the original is merely out of question, can you recommend me which PDF seller is the best? - Paizo or RPGNow (who is a bit more expensive, but usually provides very good scans)?

Rafael · Fear me, I am Admin! Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 984

Just bought the PDF at Paizo, together with the *From the Ashes* and *The Shattered Statue* PDFs.

Bah, those downloads are sloooow...

Omote · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:27 pm Post subject:

My Greyhawk takes place in 596CY. Personally I got into GH in about 1992-1993. My first "big" GH item was From The Ashes, and went with it. I do like the idea of the Greyhawk Wars. I think it made the setting my dynamic, epecially from a historical point of view. However, my current campaigns are set well after the end of the wars, to provide "stability" to the classic setting. I have used what happened during the wars to spark a few campaigns, especially around Geoff and The Gran March. I had one totally fighter party that played in a military campaign in the Gran March and throughout the Lost Lands. That was a blast.

I have used the wars, and soldiers from the wars to drop information regarding uncovered and lost palces to the PC in the 596 years. This has worked well too.

.....................................................Omote
FPQ
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Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Castles & Crusades Society
"My God is weird. My God is scared. My God taints a pretty picture." -KT

Extempus · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:29 am Post subject:

My campaign has been running since September 1981, and the date was 581 CY (I'd assumed that the game year was equivalent to the real year, and since the older stuff I read was from 576 CY, and since I then thought the game had been around since about 1976, I figured it should be 581 in 1981!); I tried to keep the dates concurrent (relatively speaking), but it's now Planting 602 CY, and it's definitely a postwar Greyhawk. In fact, by the time I was aware there had been not one but two wars, I assumed the first war had already happened, and we took part in the second war (it took several years of real time to get through it too!), but it occurred in the mid-590's rather than the 580's.

The characters entered Oerth through a gate and made it their home, noted the Kron Hills had not really been claimed by any nation, and so took it for themselves after clearing out the Moathouse and draining the swamp (where they founded their capital, Kron City), and when they adventure on Oerth, it's generally in the central Flanaess (Greyhawk is a major ally, as is Furyondy, Onnwal, the Duchy of Urnst and the Wegwiur, and Iuz is their implacable enemy); otherwise, they've been known to travel to other worlds, parallel Primes, through time and even to Earth in the 6th (where they met King Arthur), 15th (where they dealt with Vlad the Impaler) and 20th Centuries.

I basically use Greyhawk source material from just about anywhere, which means 1e, 2e, 3e and Dragon, plus we borrow ideas from others (such as <gasp> Judges Guild!) and create a lot of our own stuff too.

Most recently, we captured Rary the Traitor and Robilar in the Bright Lands, dealt with the pirates on the eastern side of Woolly Bay, and have currently been drawn into conflict with Pomarji pirates and will shortly be dealing with the Slavers and the Earth Dragon cult...

Sir Clarence · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 11:16 am Post subject:

Extempus, when I read that your PC's are plane-hopping, time-travelling and capturing persons like Rary and Robilar, I suppose that they're all extremely high-level. Given the fact that your campaign runs since 1981 (Continuously? In that case you're a hot candiate for the top ten of longtime campaigns over at Dragonsfoot!) this might be the answer of course, although this would also mean that the same characters that were created back then would be still alive!

Being a DM who has an ongoing campaign running since 1982 (not Greyhawk though), with three original characters from that time still active and in the hands of the same players, I'm always interested to hear other's stories about such long campaigns. Care to elaborate on it a little more?

Extempus · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 11:28 pm Post subject:

My oldest surviving character is my priest (actually the 3rd one I created), and he is now 24th level. My wizard is 23rd, the ranger is 22nd, and I have a half-orc Grandfather of Assassins (also now a low-level priest of Shargaas). My campaign had a few quiet years early on (when I was in the Air Force, but there was still the odd adventure with other players here and there), but has otherwise been continuous since 1988 with no breaks, using the same characters with two of the same original players (my dad and one of my brothers).

We've been rather unsuccessful in starting with new 1st-level characters, because all the established ones are so powerful now and have their own nations that it's really more fun to play them, because we know we can actually get things done! I'm not sure where to start in elaborating on things, but to forewarn you, my campaign is not strictly medieval like so many others: we all like action/adventure and science fiction, and so many elements of each appear (for instance, Rary's and Robilar's troops used a magical brooch of communication to stay in contact with each other, and they are exactly like communicators from The Next Generation).

My brother once DM'd an adventure in which we encountered a huge magical dreadnought that swallowed smaller vessels and attacked villages and cities along the coast (the Dreadnought was directly inspired by the Liparus in The Spy Who Loved Me), and my dad DM'd one in which we encountered sky pirates who used a flying ship, a vimana, to raid villages; both of these adventures occurred on other worlds, not Oerth. After having captured the first vimana, we began to encounter and capture others, and after an unfortunate encounter with Iuz' lackey Kermin Mindbender experimenting with his own vimana (we discovered from Lesser Boneheart member Vayne that Kermin had an interest in such things, but he could never make the magic permanent; it turns out all the vimanas were enchanted 5,000 years ago on another world, and we were in control of the only gate there, and so secured several more for ourselves, some of which we've leased out to Belvor IV of Furyondy), we've taken several steps to ensure that none of them are ever destroyed.

Since Kermin lightning bolted our ship and nearly destroyed it, we have since covered each of them with magic resistant paint, and installed giant pearls enchanted with various abilities that simulate a starship's shields and cloaking device, and have recently given them artificial intelligence much like Zen, Slave and Orac on Blake's 7, such that all we need do is give orders and the vimanas run themselves.

One of the best adventures I ever DM'd was when we were searching for the Five Blades of Corusk, and discovered one of them was in the Sea of Dust. I'd been wanting to adventure there for a long time, and finally came up with a great idea: once they found Stalker, they explored the city of Zinbyle and discovered the residence of Slerotin, and found evidence that they had been there already. In fact, they found their Space and Time Interdimensional Vehicle, which looks like a small crystal pyramid, in Slerotin's courtyard, and so they knew they had to travel back to the final days of the Suel Imperium to discover how it got there. The Suloise were not evil as so many in the present believed, but were just regular folk, mostly good like everywhere else. They met and befriended Slerotin and his old friend Kevelli Mauk, the man who founded the Scarlet Brotherhood, and realized they had to ensure his survival or they'd be in danger of seriously altering history. I'd intended Slerotin to die in the Rain of Colorless Fire, and he wrote the final words in his journal, just as the characters found 1,000 years in the future, but at the last moment, as he was about to go outside and see what the strange lights were that were falling from the sky, I suddenly decided against it and he accompanied the characters back to the future, where he now teaches Suloise history at Kron City University (and he occasionally adventures with us too). They teleported to The Null, a device not unlike a stargate on Stargate: SG-1, except that it was a trilithon arch instead of a ring, and escaped the Rain of Colorless Fire.

Each of our characters has a medallion enchanted with tongues and comprehend languages, so speaking, reading and writing other languages is no problem; in fact, whenever they encounter someone who speaks another language, they occasionally ask why the characters' lip movements don't coincide with what they're saying, and they have to explain it's magic that enables them to understand (like watching a Japanese martial arts movie dubbed in English).

The level of technology is much higher too, equivalent to ca. 1800 (pre-industrialization), and there is universal education in most countries; feudalism exists only in evil nations, and many are seeing the benefits of a free market system such as exists in the Kron Hills. Two printing presses were recovered from the Sea of Dust, and so now there are two newspapers in the Flanaess, The Greyhawk Gazette and The Greyhawk Enquirer (we obviously don't take the campaign too seriously, lol), both of which have created a new industry: there are now reporters, artists who do the pics, editors, typesetters and so on, with the usual stories, letters to the editor, advertising and op-ed pieces, and Nerof Gasgal even has a regular column in the Gazette!

The Kronites (as they're often called) are a bane to evil nations throughout the Flanaess and have certainly vanquished more than their fair share of bad guys, but there are always more: Turrosh Mak, Stalman Klim and the Earth Dragon are next on the list...

Sir Clarence · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 4:21 pm Post subject:

Thank you for that really elaborate description of your campaign, Extempus. A very interesting read! Your campaign is not only one of the highest level campaigns that I've ever heard of but also one of the most unusual ones because of your open-minded inclusion of all kinds of different genres other than fantasy. Not that there aren't many other high-level campaigns of that range around, but yours has obviously developed slowly and steadily towards that end, which should be the natural course of all campaigns IMHO and not the powergaming approach that takes your character from level 1 to 10 and above within the course of one or two years.

The genre-crossing approach is another aspect that I really like. It's true to the spirit of the original D&D game with all it's weird crossovers between fantasy, SF, wildwest and horror. And although my own campaign must be comparably boring with its fantasy-orientation compared to yours, the players and I always had lots fun when 'weird' elements crept in, like crashed starships for example....

I've more than once encountered the problem of starting with new characters when players got used to play more powerful characters of levels 8 and above. Many seem to loathe the idea of starting out anew with only a handful of hit points and bad AC. The solution to this 'dilemma' that I found for myself is to let them earn XP's fast at the beginning to get quickly past levels 1-3. From that point on, characters stand on safer ground and usually have more options at hand.

I greatly enjoyed reading about all the changes that you have made to good old Greyhawk which is exactly the advantage that this setting has over other more detailed ones like FR for example. It's so easily customized.... I've heard about so many different Greyhawks from so many different people, and the settings are all that different! That#s absolutely fascinating.

Extempus · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:29 am Post subject:

We actually do have some low-level characters, but they adventure infrequently, although I like to include them whenever I can. Plus, there are always so many possibilities for characters as well that I decided to have a little fun and created an alu-demon wizardess and a frostman fighter/cleric/magic-user (using the description in the 1e Fiend Folio, frostmen cannot go beyond 2nd level as a priest or wizard), and he can be formidable when dealing with 0- and low level types, especially with his ice vision (well, Superman has heat vision, so...).

Other than an occasional adventure dealing with undead, we don't really get into the horror aspect of adventuring, but prefer the sci-fi/action/adventure/comic book elements along with swords & sorcery (I thought The Doomgrinder had a very comic book feel to it, with the Doomgrinder turning out to be a gigantic juggernaut threatening to destroy Greyhawk unless it's somehow stopped; I wouldn't have been surprised if the Justice League showed up to try their hand at stopping it!).

We did away with experience points many years ago, mainly because calculating and keeping track of them was tedious and time-consuming, and I instead independently came up with and adopted an approach not unlike the one Dave Hargrave used for his Arduin stuff; I figure that after several adventures, the characters have enough experience to advance in level, and that works out to be every 2-3 years real time. They advanced fairly rapidly at first, but it levelled off after the first 4-5 years, and that's why it's taken a quarter of a century for my priest to attain 24th level... at the rate we're going, it'll be around 2020 by the time he reaches 30th level and works on becoming a god, so there's many more years of adventuring to do...
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Yep, I'm the same Extempus from the WoTC message board...