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Post by GRWelsh on Feb 20, 2013 9:47:55 GMT -5
Has anyone used Yggsburgh to flesh out a home-made version of the original Greyhawk City and immediately surrounding lands?
What I keep thinking of is doing is creating a hex region map with 1 hex equalling 1 mile and taking inspiration from the Darlene Yggsburgh area map, even though the geography isn't an exact match. The ruins of Castle Greyhawk would of course be placed much closer, only a few miles Northeast of the city, near the Grey Run. And then incorporating other features we know about the local geography like Thistleby, Barony of Cairnway, evil fighter lord south of the city, etc. My Greyhawk City map would be a cleaned up version of what appears in the "City of Hawks" -- probably with scale reduced by about a third. Ideally, I'd love to make a poster-sized map of the City of Greyhawk that had the look and scale of Lankhmar from the 1980's. That's never going to happen, but a more abstract version with a key for major area sites and detail taken from the Gord books is plausible to do.
How did the original explorers of the Greyhawk Dungeons get from the city to the dungeons? From the north gate of the city? I've always wondered about that.
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Post by Scott on Feb 20, 2013 13:03:57 GMT -5
I would if I had a group that wanted to do some of that style gaming. I've looked at it, tossed around a few ideas, but have always ended up putting it on the back burner.
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Post by GRWelsh on Feb 20, 2013 17:53:23 GMT -5
I would if I had a group that wanted to do some of that style gaming. I've looked at it, tossed around a few ideas, but have always ended up putting it on the back burner. What about our gaming group of Mark, Eric, Ray, etc.?
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Post by Scott on Feb 20, 2013 21:12:30 GMT -5
I didn't think you guys were interested in the old big dungeon style campaign.
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Post by geneweigel on Feb 21, 2013 10:10:09 GMT -5
The novel version has continuity to the original campaign but so does Yggsburgh. The City product by TSR that Williams destroyed would have been very close to the novel version. In my opinion, I'd grade all of them weakly tied to the original campaign. The final project of the TSR city would have included aspects that made it more tied to the original campaign. The information provided by Gary made a rainbow bridge to the original campaign however its so rude and unfinished its like a dream and a nightmare at the same time. According to Gary n the hypothetical TSR WoG version, the entirety of the original campaign city would be in the town of Greyhawk residing entirely in the Foreign Quarter. As it keeps what I call the Gygaxian D&D design philosophy to make it not too drastically changed but more content and more layers. Yes, it gets even worse that this. Thats the ultimate reason why this dried up. When it was a free website I was Gygax's assistant for everything involving World of Greyhawk but the minute it was publicly announced that there might be money involved in Castle Zagyg it was like a gold rush with all sorts of ghouls with prepackaged, pre-made dungeons/adventures being proposed everyday to him for years. I recall him writing me out of the blue just before the end and it all weighing heavily on his mind but that and bag of chips got us (the real WoGgers) all a bag of chips! Anyway, if you're going with the focus on C&C Yggsburgh and novel City of Hawks to recreate the route to the castle then its either north or west. I might go with asking Ernie because I wouldn't trust anyone else in the bullshit factory (Ward, Kuntz, etc). That where is Robilar's castle shit took the cake!
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Post by GRWelsh on Feb 21, 2013 10:58:27 GMT -5
I know it is impossible to get to a "true" City of Greyhawk, so I suppose all I would really want to try to simulate would be the closest thing to the Gygaxian city as envisioned for the 1980 WoG Folio/1983 WoG boxed set and perhaps for the Gord novels as well (which I don't think were signifiantly different, right?). So, the "City of Hawks" map could be a reasonable basis for it.
I know the "original" Greyhawk was more like a little frontier town, right? So that makes sense about the original being small enough to fit in the Foreign Quarter. I have always thought of Old City as a fictionalized tribute to this "original" Greyhawk -- a way to incorporate it into a newer vision of a large city.
The Yggsburgh material would be a secondary resource, not the main basis of it. I love the look and idea of the Darlene regional map, and that scale -- I just don't think the geography is quite right for Greyhawk. But, it's usable as inspiration.
It's still worth doing, IMO.
Gene, have you ever seen any of EGG's City of Greyhawk maps? Either original or any other incarnation?
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Post by geneweigel on Feb 21, 2013 11:33:25 GMT -5
No, I completely worked on the CITY OF HAWKS map from Gary's writing without him in 1991-1992 then later with him in 2001-2002. Only he saw all the crap we did together in final form (which is a mess) but I had thrown together abstract maps with locations on the website for a while and almost everyday Gary wanted more detail. I have a lot of versions of the Thieves Quarter almost in final form but it was a lot of work and he was demanding. My first check was going to be after the comic books of SAGA, ARTIFACT, DARKNESS, SEA and DANCE were out in that order otherwise I would have to wait and see. Anyway, thats what he said. Looking back I think I should have been tougher on him considering this was being done to make him look good! The idea was for the map to eventually be redrawn in the comic. Daniel Horne was supposed to redraw the City of Hawks map with the way that Gary and I firgured it in there with the swamp, etc. but I never even seen that if there was one.
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Post by geneweigel on Feb 21, 2013 11:43:15 GMT -5
He spoke to me on the phone about where everything was in proportion to the original campaign and how it fit within the CITY OF HAWKS map. I also have not seen:
Eric Shook's illustration of any Dunfalcon maps
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Post by geneweigel on Feb 21, 2013 11:44:46 GMT -5
TSR locked up all his stuff so they probably have the unpublished WoG product in Hasbro if it hasn't been stolen by now.
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Post by GRWelsh on Feb 21, 2013 11:48:07 GMT -5
I didn't think you guys were interested in the old big dungeon style campaign. I am. I didn't hear any complaints while you were running Castle Zagyg: Upper Works last year. You wanted to take a break from it -- we didn't quit.
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