foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 476
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Post by foster1941 on May 15, 2019 17:17:02 GMT -5
Another irony here is that while the ERK Archive DVD proved Rob's point that the original Greyhawk campaign was very different than the published/AD&D World of Greyhawk, it did so in a way that's not at all flattering to the earlier version. The WOG (from T1 through the Gord novels) does seem have been created mostly from whole cloth by Gary for publication and a lot of the supposed depth and history faked (i.e. Gary pretended he was drawing on 10+ years of play and existing development when really he was making most of it up in the moment) but nevertheless it still has a thematic, tonal, and aesthetic consistency that is interesting and compelling on its own terms - the wheels within wheels of plots and factions, the cosmic struggles being played out on the mortal scale, the juxtaposition between large-scale history and personal-scale adventure, etc. - in a way that is (at least from the way it's presented in the ERK Archive) totally absent in the earlier version, which seems to have been a completely arbitrary kitchen-sink hodgepodge with no larger-scale organization or theme at all beyond what would keep the players at the table entertained and coming back (or what Rob was interested in the moment - i.e. when Cthulhu Mythos stuff suddenly becomes very prominent out of nowhere). It all feels like it was just thrown together in the moment without any forethought or plan. All of the larger-scale theme and organization appears to have been totally post-hoc, created later and then retconned as an explanation or backstory for things that had already happened.
Rob seems to be trying to position the published WOG as some sort of cheapened commercial bastardization of the pure, original Greyhawk concept, but at least from the evidence we've seen the truth seems nearly the opposite - that the published WOG is a silk purse made out of a sow's ear, taking a bunch of random and arbitrary stuff and fashioning it into something like an actual consistent and interesting fantastic world. Rob seems to have a philosophical point to make that the earlier version was better because it was more imaginative and free and limitless while the later version was more limited and commercialized, and maybe there's even a point to be made (though AFAIK Rob doesn't make it) that if you're concerned with playing at the table rather than trying to sell product that the earlier model is a better one to emulate - to focus on the moment and not overthink things, that your players will only care about being challenged at the table, not the history or large-scale organization of your multiverse - but if that's the point he wants to make it seems like the vehicle for doing so is an essay, not an entire line of products.
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Post by geneweigel on May 16, 2019 8:26:58 GMT -5
Its like Darth Vader's development. A potential Darth Vader only exists in the first STAR WARS movie.
He was supposed to be a knight with a breathing apparatus boarding the ship who was normally covered in flowing robes. Then Lucas flipped on the idea and wanted it throughout the movie. Fusing him with earlier concept of a side character knight with cyborg attachments to fit the bill. The mockup art by McQuarrie also had slight sexual references not as direct as Twiki but it must have been part of McQuarrie's style. Also McQuarrie's choice of perspective on the hall battle art made Lucas say he was tall as well. The costume designers added a little more samurai to the style then they had the problem of it being lost on the sets so the "gun-metalled" the shit out of it.
Then later after the story turned in the next film "Luke's father" is again fused with another side character, a knight's son named "Anakin" from the original notes. Then the final draft "Luke's father/Anakin" is fused with Vader. Blah, blah, blah...
Rob in this analogy would be the costume designer as a sort of secondary concept designer and not the McQuarrie role as the intentional and specific concept designer which would be the second of Gary's two "hats" (the other "hat" would be a Lucas role with Arneson relegated to a personification of San Diego Comic Con enthusiasms for a major motion picture version of sci-fi serials.).
Is that too little/much credit?
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Post by GRWelsh on May 16, 2019 9:20:43 GMT -5
I can sympathize with Rob because I also remember my earliest years of role-playing as a time of immense creativity and experimentation -- not just by me, but the people I played with. Yet if I showed everyone my maps and notes surviving from that time, it would be underwhelming. That doesn't mean I'm lying and it wasn't a time of great gaming, but simply that the historical artifacts by themselves do not convey what the experiences were actually like. Part of why that early gaming was so great is because it was prior the codification and blandification of everything, so we had to be creative and do a lot of it ourselves.
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Post by geneweigel on May 16, 2019 10:02:22 GMT -5
I can sympathize with Rob because I also remember my earliest years of role-playing as a time of immense creativity and experimentation -- not just by me, but also the people I played with. But if I showed everyone my maps and notes surviving from that time, it would be underwhelming. That doesn't mean I'm lying and it wasn't a time of great gaming, but simply that the historical artifacts by themselves do not convey what the experiences were actually like. Part of why that early gaming was so great is because it was prior the codification and blandification of everything, so we had to be creative and do a lot of it ourselves. Heh, I know some of my characters were crossed out and recycled even if they weren't dead to use as an NPC basis. Some had been used multiple times, etc. But that was the low end. Early on I had a desire for something interesting so most characters could not be average in any way. This especially applied to NPCs. I would act as if they were real and were off doing something. Probably not something to recommend. Specifically, back to Rob, I liked Rob but he is too far from my game table mentality to actually imagine him fitting in with the usual set of goons that I have. I'm not an authoritarian type DM by any means but I take command and take no shit. That would not work well with his style. At first I thought we were of the same mind but he is more of a showboater with deliberate conspicuous moves (i.e. "winning" and being first in line ALA Robilar in TOEE.) and I, as an actively creative type player, get mistaken as the same type of showboater because of accidentally conspicuous moves ( i.e. seizing the game in patterns of play and sometimes design features that are intuitively in character but usually "win" by serendipitous default.). I believe that is why he was so harsh on me as a DM as I had noted all the "quiet" players were left in peace but him seeing me reflectively provoked "Quij carpets" for everything that I did.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 476
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Post by foster1941 on May 16, 2019 11:50:13 GMT -5
If you look at the stuff in the ERK Archive that Rob was doing c. 1975-77 there does seem to be sort of an emerging theme based around an increasing emphasis on Cthulhu Mythos elements with more focus on interdimensional travel and other planets and elaborate "magitech" stuff (like Eli Tomarast's enchanted hands in WG5) that has a very different feel than the good-evil/law-chaos "outer planes" cosmology that became official in AD&D and central to the published World of Greyhawk. The Rob-version was eclipsed and largely forgotten in the published version - there are some sort of vestigial hints of it with Tharizdun in WG4 and references to the Lost City of Elders in WG5 - and maybe that's what Rob has in mind here, a desire to go back down that "road not traveled" which he thinks is more interesting and compelling than the direction in which Gary took things (more grounded in "straight" fantasy). But even so, the presentation of that material in the ERK Archive is very sketchy and incomplete - it seems even there like a lot of potential ideas that never came to full fruition, or at least never made it into writing (and may well have only been apparent in Rob's mind but not to the players at the table*), so one has to wonder how much of what Rob would produce regarding that material now would be a real representation of play and thought modes from the 70s - finally putting into writing things that were always there conceptually - vs how much is 2019 Rob newly creating things that he thinks he could or should have done then, and whether Rob even acknowledges a difference between the two.
*Take, for example, Jim Ward. From everything I've ever been able to tell he was only ever about the action at the table - killing monsters, gathering treasure, and leveling his guy up. Rob may well have had elaborate plans and plots developing at a slow burn and interconnections between all of the adventures and deep mysteries and behind-the-scenes machinations of wheels within wheels, but even if I did I strongly suspect all of that stuff went right over Jim's head and he didn't care about any of it at all as long as he got to fight cool monsters and gather cool new treasures and keep leveling up and getting cool new powers. I'm sure we've all had this experience as DMs - we think we've come up with something really deep and awesome and the players only care about the surface and probably would have had just as much fun if we'd been throwing random encounters at them.
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Post by geneweigel on May 16, 2019 13:04:22 GMT -5
If you look at the stuff in the ERK Archive that Rob was doing c. 1975-77 there does seem to be sort of an emerging theme based around an increasing emphasis on Cthulhu Mythos elements with more focus on interdimensional travel and other planets and elaborate "magitech" stuff (like Eli Tomarast's enchanted hands in WG5) that has a very different feel than the good-evil/law-chaos "outer planes" cosmology that became official in AD&D and central to the published World of Greyhawk. The Rob-version was eclipsed and largely forgotten in the published version - there are some sort of vestigial hints of it with Tharizdun in WG4 and references to the Lost City of Elders in WG5 - and maybe that's what Rob has in mind here, a desire to go back down that "road not traveled" which he thinks is more interesting and compelling than the direction in which Gary took things (more grounded in "straight" fantasy). But even so, the presentation of that material in the ERK Archive is very sketchy and incomplete - it seems even there like a lot of potential ideas that never came to full fruition, or at least never made it into writing (and may well have only been apparent in Rob's mind but not to the players at the table*), so one has to wonder how much of what Rob would produce regarding that material now would be a real representation of play and thought modes from the 70s - finally putting into writing things that were always there conceptually - vs how much is 2019 Rob newly creating things that he thinks he could or should have done then, and whether Rob even acknowledges a difference between the two. I think of it like my world is in contact with the TSR GYGAX published WORLD OF GREYHAWK concept and the Land of Oz or the Dying Earth is on the same wavelength with a doorway ready to lead adventurers to any of those. The same for a Kuntz-entric WORLD OF GREYHAWK but not for Williams' Worlds those lead straight to a world of entitled costumed convention goers... *Take, for example, Jim Ward. From everything I've ever been able to tell he was only ever about the action at the table - killing monsters, gathering treasure, and leveling his guy up. Rob may well have had elaborate plans and plots developing at a slow burn and interconnections between all of the adventures and deep mysteries and behind-the-scenes machinations of wheels within wheels, but even if I did I strongly suspect all of that stuff went right over Jim's head and he didn't care about any of it at all as long as he got to fight cool monsters and gather cool new treasures and keep leveling up and getting cool new powers. I'm sure we've all had this experience as DMs - we think we've come up with something really deep and awesome and the players only care about the surface and probably would have had just as much fun if we'd been throwing random encounters at them. I don't even know what planet Jim Ward is on. He always seemed to be the wrong guy in the right place at the right time. I've thoroughly convinced myself that he was never involved in anything and he's been pushing forward other people's efforts always even METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA seems to be repackaged from other TSR things. They must have had a policy in Williams' TSR to never deliver on anything like TSR's former product. Either he picked up the bad habit or he isn't who he says he is.
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Post by Scott on May 18, 2019 13:12:34 GMT -5
In recent years I've started delving into the history of Blackmoor deeper than I have previously. It seems it's more like what I was expecting Greyhawk to be. From the very beginning it was a much more world based campaign than Greyhawk was. Much more depth on every level. Greyhawk was, during the original era (Tenser, Robilar, etc.), what the original set was, there's a base town with a really big dungeon close by. Anything beyond that was winged on the fly, or rolled randomly. Gary may have had some vague notions of the big picture, but I don't think it ever materialized. Once publication of the WoG became a reality, Gary started building a world, but as stated above, other than a few names, it had very little basis in the home campaign he'd been running. T1 really shows the potential of what could have been. It really is a great adventure on so many levels, but Gary could never keep it together, and although you could always see those tantalizing bits of potential, nothing after ever lived up to the quality or depth that T1 hinted at.
Rob has shown that he's capable of quality stuff. I think he's always had a bigger vision for the game than Gary had, but he could never get anything going. He's published some good adventures, but nothing that came close to the depth Gary showed he was capable of, and he's never been able to sustain any momentum.
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Post by geneweigel on May 18, 2019 15:16:33 GMT -5
Working on modules I can relate more to different threads of development especially with the part one of my multi-volume set of adventures. So I can see what Gary told me that he needed to get away from the the castle's busy involvement to T1 as a move to get a dynamic adventure out now in an encapsulated self-contained form.
Blackmoor has always seemed to be a mess.
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Post by GRWelsh on May 20, 2019 10:06:23 GMT -5
Blackmoor was a mess on paper, but definitely not just a town and dungeon even very early on, with its world-building region map, seasons of battle, and PC and NPC strongholds. My impression upon reading THE FIRST FANTASY CAMPAIGN was that Arneson wasn't as good at organizing his thoughts and getting them down on paper as coherently as EGG was, but it must have been a fun and imaginative campaign to play in! The early Greyhawk campaign seemed to be a town and nearby dungeon with the surrounding environs mostly undefined or placed on the OUTDOOR SURVIVAL boards as needed, all set on a continent vaguely similar to North America with Greyhawk located roughly where Chicago was on or near a great lake. It is interesting to look at Dave Megarry's copy of the Great Kingdom map and the Domesday Book #9 map to see how the continent looks like an upside-down North America, and how Blackmoor is northwest of the Lake of Unknown Depths where Greyhawk would be placed just as Minneapolis is NW of Chicago.
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Post by geneweigel on May 29, 2019 12:13:21 GMT -5
Its funny I had bought a Stratego game at a Salvation Army type store when I just went to Maine recently. The kids don't want to touch it so I was thinking that this thing can't be played solitaire like chess or checkers and bored out of my mind ,as I stared at all the pieces that I lined up. the thought crossed my head about jazzing it up somehow with some kind of negotiation chance on a dice ( I also had bought a Parcheesi set). Is this where Arneson was at? Probably.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 5, 2023 14:24:49 GMT -5
So I'm finally looking at this EL RAJA KEY ARCHIVE (2016) and apparently it says the Barbarous Coast is dead:
Well, that puts things in perspective...
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 6, 2023 12:02:05 GMT -5
Rob's enthusiasm for that project seemed to be at its height when we were all frequenting his Pied Piper boards circa 2006. I'm not sure if he ever developed it further after that time, but I don't remember reading any more about it. I check in on his TLB website now and again and buy things that he puts out, but I don't remember seeing anything specific to the Barbarous Coast. I was always curious how the Wild Coast was used in the early days of the Greyhawk Campaign since it seems like the ideal place for higher level characters to carve out their own little fiefdoms. From what I remember, this happened but mostly in proximity to Greyhawk City (Terry to the north, Rob to the SW, Ernie to the NE, an evil high priest NPC to the south, etc.) prior to the published version of the World of Greyhawk coming out in which EGG referenced Tenser, Mordenkainen, etc. being from the Wild Coast.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 6, 2023 14:38:54 GMT -5
Yeah, the "what if" seems to mean way past our old fawning of it being "dead in the water" and it appears its at "Titanic" status beyond salvage. Plus the then active contradictions by E. Gary about the Coast is probably why he chose to skuttle the ship and move on. Then perhaps post-Gary thinking it's not worth it to make another "Sargent-hawk".
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 9, 2023 9:08:38 GMT -5
Rob has a couple of new items out:
The Return of Robilar. Rob Kuntz celebrates the 50th year of his character’s birth in the play-tests of the D&D™ game with this nearly 40,000 word and lavishly illustrated volume! There’s so much meat on this one that we can’t even choose a piece to preview!
El Raja Key’s Arcane Treasury. This 72,000 word resource book by Eric Shook and Rob Kuntz takes magic items to the next level. Many of them are adventures in their own right! Included in it is a send-up item to Dave Trampier, TSR's penultimate artist BitD!
UPDATE: It looks like Rob is publishing everything via PDF now to keep costs down. I bought these items along with the free download of the Barbarous Coast map, and I'll read them this evening and post my thoughts.
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Post by Scott on Aug 9, 2023 16:54:07 GMT -5
Is that a new Arcane Treasury? I thought I had a print version of that from years ago?
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 10, 2023 7:28:48 GMT -5
It's not a new Arcane Treasury. It's a PDF of the print version originally published in 2008. I didn't realize that when I said "new" since I never got the print version.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 10, 2023 14:30:55 GMT -5
I am bugging out. I thought that I made another comment. That arcane treasury was what I was involved with but it was not to be. I have some concepts that need rehabilitation from that effort.
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Post by GRWelsh on Aug 11, 2023 12:03:29 GMT -5
My impression is that it was written mainly by Eric Shook, VP of Pied Piper Publishing. If Rob and Shook were brought on by EGG in the early 80's to help develop the World of Greyhawk, that's a pretty good lineage! Unfortunately, many things did not come to fruition in the mid 80's as hoped.
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Post by geneweigel on Aug 11, 2023 13:16:56 GMT -5
I was given Rob's outline of categories to come up with magical ideas but the time frame of "right now to hand over to Kenzer" and the handing over of his entire business to me sounded not doable. So I was like slowly backing away. My versions of some of the content is still sitting in a folder.
The Shook take on the ERKME magical book was after I was long gone from the early 2000s version of PPP. So I didn't interact with Eric except through his various political head knockings on Facebook and him trying to mutually ascertain Rob's status through emails.
I stopped talking to ENS after the 2007 convention because I sensed a lot of misguided animosity coming my way from him that I still don't know what to make heads or tails of.
Out of Rob's various "hangers on", Shook was a way lot friendlier to me than Mornard though, who I now sort of feel bad for after being around him during that Gary movie showing.
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