Those other bits I have released? Are because I was getting antsy waiting to finish this.
I have had this sitting around for over a year, but I just could not finish it. I had an outline, a really vague outline, but I did not have the inspiration to go any further. Then Paul "Artharn the Cleric" Jurdeczka volunteered. He immediately fell down the rabbit hole, researching the parts assigned to him, both canon and TNC, and then . . . BAM!
Also, a shoutout to "Greyhawk" Mike Bridges of the Cultists (and others) comics. He is a big Baklunish fan and I asked him to pick a winner which he did.
Oh, what is this?
My take on the Wars.
They have been an issue for many people, including me, since they came out. So, I went in, hit up some Gygax material, and revised them, plus some of the aftermath.
Mind you, I did not trash everything, as quite a bit of what Zeb Cook, Carl Sargent, and Roger Moore did are worth keeping, but I think I smoothed out some of the harsher edges, set up a better transition, and added more meat to the individual wars. I especially worked at making them more than just a 2-year blip, setting up the history from 575 (and before in a few cases) and continuing the events to 591 for some of them.
I like most of your conclusions - especially how the various wars were almost completely independent of each other. But, I don't like every bit (like how Iuz took over "almost all" of the Vesve forest. What happened to the elven nations therein? How was Lerrick the lich involved? Also, I don't remember you describing the death of Tang, the Horrific in his assault on Stonehold. Did I miss it, or did you decide that Tang didn't die?
That's perfectly okay, however, as I don't want my Greyhawk campaign to be the exact same as anyone else's. Per Gary Gygax's own statement, I hope every DM makes the campaign world their own, not feeling bound to canon or anyone else's decisions, but taking what they like and leaving what they don't.
I tried to include as much as possible from the official history, using the EGG/RJK material to set it up better. That is why Iuz still winds up eating the Vesve.
As for Tang, that was one of the things Paul stepped in to write. He fell in love with Tang and I gave him "permission" to keep Tang alive. If Paul did not like Nyrond so much, Tang would have ended up storming Rauxes to take out Ivid!
I expect not all of it will be to everyone's taste. There are events I would redact entirely myself. Still, like all of my TNC stuff, hopefully it can serve as a model for others to do similar revisions for their games and get past the total frenzy over anything and everything Wars, FtA, and tAB related. As I say, there is good stuff there, and I recognize the limits they were working under. I do not have any such limits, so I can go further in changing stuff.
I am still digesting the material presented in this! Thanks for the download. I think it is a great synthesis of different sources and makes for a compelling alternative.
Now I, for one, liked the Greyhawk Wars event for the most part. I certainly can see why some fans would not, especially if it wrecked something they were designing. But for me, I thought that what was the use for having a great backdrop if nothing happened. Having an evil demi-god pull off a major land grab raises the stakes greatly, and having Aerdy and the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Giants pile on while the one big event occurs sounded plausible to me.
One sticking point to the plot line was the large scale invasion of devils and demons, changing the setting's character to an extreme degree, and that is a fair critique. I just modified it a bit myself to keep the setting more grounded. But intelligent minds can disagree about that.
I certainly synthesized and changed up aspects of Greyhawk I do not like, so I like seeing what others thought and crib off of what I can as needed.
Thanks again and I will get back to reading it some more.
Personally, I think the best treatment is to not try to bundle them together into "The Wars", like some epic WW2 thing, which reduces it to a good vs. evil fight that none of the combatants were really cognizant of.
There were multiple wars that happened to go on at the same time, just as there had been for centuries. Iuz vs. Furyondy/Horned Society/Bandit Kingdoms, Nyrond vs. Great Kingdom, Scarlet Brotherhood vs. Iron League, etc.
It was a time of great turmoil, but nothing especially different from other times of great turmoil in the Flanaess over the last thousand years.
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