Do most people use the boxed set to play out the wars between armies and use that experience as the background in their campaigns or are they keeping the board game battles seperate from their role playing? Because if you use the board game outcomes, then you won't have the same back story any more as comes out in later Greyhawk products...but maybe you don't care either way....
I bought that simply because it had the word "Greyhawk" on the box. At the time I was quite disappointed to find all that wargame stuff inside. But I kept it for the sake of having a complete set. I still haven't played any of the battles, nor do I intend to. It's strictly a historical piece for me.
Used to be one of my favorite board games. We spent hours playing that game. Essentially, I had never considered using any board game session as a flow into my rpg campaign. _________________ Kneel before me, or you shall be KNELT!
I think that the very scope of large battles would quickly "drown out" an adventure and I would never want to mix the two. As you said, the change in back story would be significant.
Honestly, I haven't even gotten to the Wars yet (sad, but true admission), even though I have been playing since the 80s. However, I can say that I see the Wars boxed set more as reference material and have no intentions, personally, of running any of the battles contained therein...
That said, I will admit that I may just have my PCs involved in some of the battles mentioned therein, but in a campaign setting instead.
The Greyhawk Wars boxed set is really two separate items: a history of the wars for DMs to use and players to enjoy in their own campaign, and a war game based upon the story.
It is my opinion that rpg should not be mixed with the war game, specifically because the war game is something intended to be played over and over again with different winners each time (in the vein of Axis and Allies). If you only played it once, then tried to apply the results to your rpg campaign, your players would be a bit disappointed since they would already know the results of any battles they played out in rpg format.
I enjoyed the war game, but only got to play it about a half dozen times as none of my friends really liked it. Oh, well.
...Honestly, I haven't even gotten to the Wars yet (sad, but true admission), even though I have been playing since the 80s... I see the Wars boxed set more as reference material...
-When (if!) I get to the 582-584 era, I can use the "historical" background- Osson's ride and the defense of that pass in Ulek (whose name I forget) are obvious ones.
I have played the game, it's Ok.
I used to use the cards that had the different countries armies as a reference for the size and type of the various field armies (large populations and areas would have a lot of the total forces bogged down in security). Each infantry piece being 2,000 men, each cavalry piece being 1,000 men and his mount, and each ship as 1,000 men and their vessels. The method breaks down a bit once you get past gnoll, but it helps.
However, I lost the bloody cards. I've been looking for replacements ever since.
I thought it was interesting that the six major powers had the same number of "teams" which would be leaders or adventuring parties. It might explain in part why Iuz and the Brotherhood did so well, despite their small populations. I assume that Cobb Darg et al and Archbaron Alain et al are both represented by pieces.
There was a thread here which tried to take the magic items and come up with game versions. I don't know what happened to it.
I wondered if the writers for From the Ashes used the results of wargames as input to the final results...
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