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Although Kord is not my favourite deity I think you underestimate his influence. He's still one of the three most powerful deities in the pantheon and the grandson of the leader of that pantheon. ...

My depiction of Korenth Zan was heavily inspired by Robert Gould's illustrations of Elric, and so the Suel Imperium as I imagine it was heavily inspired by Michael Moorcock's Melnibone, in particular ...

The actual Suel people would have been more influenced by the gods they worshipped. These gods actually exist, have priests, cast miracles, and directly impact the lives, and souls, of the people. ...

My gut feeling has always been that the common folk don't have the time to be as invested in Good vs Evil due to the fact they're busting a gut tilling fields, surviving plagues and generally surv ...

Awesome thread topic, and exactly the kind of thing I love to speculate on.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that most of the Suel during the Great Migrations were thoroughly vile. The ...

You mentioned in a previous thread that the party is going to shrink in size a bit. How many PCs will be in the party once some of them leave? One of the reasons I love your thread is because I ...

The journey just getting to the Starfall has been just as exciting as actually starting to explore it. Your players are all very, very lucky to have you as their DM.

You mentioned in a previous th ...

In heychadwick's thread on discussing where to set Rime Of The Icemaiden in Greyhawk, it was noted that Blackmoor is almost completely underdeveloped. I really enjoyed Fred Weining's article on Blackm ...

If you're looking for the edge of civilization with a lot of less-than-moral frontiersmen and roughnecks, with a bunch of nearby barbarian types, then why not use some of the northernmost Bandit Kingd ...

Awesome! Thanks so much!

Have Chapters Six through Eight gone through alright?

So who generally plays Umbra? Is she a DMNPC, or do your other players take turns playing her? I notice she hasn't done much in the last couple of sessions.

You make me eager for Tuesday afternoons. I love large parties and your campaign logs are a pleasure to read.

How familiar are your players with Greyhawk canon and the contents of the classic modu ...

I was reading through the 1983 boxed set books the other day, and I noted how many encounter tables listed sylvan elves, and how few listed high elves. High elves only seemed to be common in places li ...

You could also go with 'killing and then eating anyone with a soul is Evil, but doing the same to creatures with spirits isn't (necessarily) so.'

That makes sahuaghin and orcs fine to eat. And elv ...

I'm 38, so I might be a kid by Greyhawk standards. I first started contributing to Canonfire when I was 20, so there's that too.

As to what the attraction of the setting is for me, it may have to ...

I like Vestcoat's, Vlucan's and WingOfCoot's explanations about why the empires didn't grow into the Flanaess proper, and I'd add that the Yatils and Crystalmists provided formidable natural barriers. ...

One of the players in my campaign was a Lizardman Druid. he always chopped lumps off of any kills in order to stock up on provisions, regardless of what/who it was.

His justification was that it wa ...

My thought was that between 591 and 998 CY, the Great War for the fate of the Oerth (and ultimately the multiverse) will be fought, where to win, the forces of Balance (or at least everyone who do ...

It wouldn't necessarily be evil, but I think a lot of humans and demihumans would be disgusted at the idea of eating monsters like lizard men, minotaurs, koalinth and sahuagin, largely because they're ...

The Great Western Gate might be metaphorical, in that Sterich (and arguably Geoff and the Yeomanry) are the gates protecting the Sheldomar lowlands against the giants of the mountains. They were most ...

A ditz, definitely. A harridan? Nah, more like a vixen or minx.

I have some reflections on Alignment in this campaign between posts 108 and 109. Let me say here that for this, my first 5e ga ...

Boy, Willa doesn't like Aurora at all, does she? What's Aurora's alignment, anyway? I've seen you describe her alternately as a harridan, a ditz, etc.

Q1. What is your favorite realm or region in the World of Greyhawk setting?

I've always been particularly fascinated by the Grand Duchy of Geoff, showing how old and new cultures might blend togeth ...

You submitted Chapter One: Seeing the Forest And The Trees *twice*, and also Chapter Four: A Simple Question *once.*

Missing Chapter Two and Chapter Three.

Damn it, that's what I thought. Sorr ...

I have a few more chapters of The Honor Of The Crown ready, but I can't remember which ones I've submitted to Canonfire beyond the first one. Can somebody confirm them for me?

In writing Keoland, I've had a strange combination of royalist France and Imperial Russia, along with modern America, of all places. Strange combination, I know, but hear me out.

The imperial Fren ...

I've read through this whole thread, and I just wanted to say bravo. You make the setting come alive with all the little details, and I love how you're willing to go your own way when it benefits your ...

Aside from the obvious suggestion of Vecna, the destruction of House Malhel could be equally disturbing. Depending on how old the elf storyteller is, she might actually have lived through those events ...

Thanks for linking to this CruelSummerLord!

I enjoyed reading your articulation of the Brotherhood's steps.

Regarding the Fodder step, since it sounds like you've retained Sargent's depiction of ...

Hopefully folks won't mind me resuscitating so many old threads, but as I read old discussions, I sometimes feel moved to respond and hope that others who expressed past interest might update the comm ...

Most of what is posted below is from my own version of things, so take it with as many shakers of salt as you want.

The LGG noted that the Hold of the Sea Princes had the single best fleet in the ...

I read through this relatively recently. If it is not the first published murder mystery for RPGs, it is certainly one of the first.

I have to ask, for anyone who has either run it or played in it ...

I very much like the idea of cultures being as unique as they can be. There will always be comparisons to real world things, as that is that is the point of reference we have; the baseline that we ...

People of the Plentiful hunting grounds was most likely added by the person fleshing out Gygax's notes. Very telling is the original 'Ataman'.

My main objection is that Amerind culture makes no ...

Okay, time for a question that's been nagging at me for a long time but that I only remembered to ask now. Anyone who worked on the LG Naerie campaign would be especially welcome.

In reading the r ...

Another thing I just realized, and I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned, yet.
There's a user who used to be pretty popular on the boards here, Chibirias mka Maria DelTorre, was a huge advocate of th ...

It's at rpg.net, in the D&D/fantasy d20 subforum, in the "Let's Read" thread for the 3e Book of Vile Darkness. (A thread mainly discussing how terrible the book was.)

Post 1,188.

https://fo ...

What if we just declare electrum to be a base element along with all the other metals D&D uses for coinage? All of the other coin metals have their own entries on the real periodic table, so why s ...

Certainly nothing wrong with Native American Flan for your own campaign, but care to dispute the points I made about Flan being a conglomeration of European peoples such as Balts, Helvitii, celts, g ...

I agree with SirXaris that knights are separate from cavaliers. Wizards, rogues and clerics could all fill various roles in the Knights of the Watch or the Knights of Luna, and they would still be ful ...

Can you post or page reference the Amerind illustration?

I was recently reading a Gygax quote about the published setting where he talks about using it instead of his home campaign version. The ' ...

The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks.

Some Post-Gygax material o ...

Gygax's home campaign was based on the north american map. The published Greyhawk setting is not. Also you are confusing physical appearance with culture. The areas depicted as having unadulterated ...

The Flan=Amerind seems to come down to the Rovers entry. Who-ever wrote the blurb for them was thinking Amerind but Gygax's notes were describing them as Cossacks. Their chief is an Ataman which i ...

This kind of topic has always been of great interest to me and I can see value to both CSL and rasgon's approaches. For me the key is to foster consistency in my gaming world to help create a strong s ...

The Bone March-Ratik alliance is not exactly secure. Gary Holian told me about the Key of Spinecastle, which inspired me to have Count Dunstan as the provisional Marquis. He needs the Key for the ...

I also love the mix of political intrigue and humanoid combat/dungeon crawls that exists in the Bone March, Ratik and North Province area. My own take on the Greyhawk Wars involves Bone March being ef ...

This thread made me want to ask-what's Blackmoor's general society and culture like? Most of the canon sources don't really describe what everyday life is for Blackmoorians or what their character is ...

Okay, three more elven questions:

1) Is CruelSummerLord's article from the postfest the only speculation/follow-up/source for what's going on in the Spindrift Isles? It's the only thing I've ever s ...

I've been thinking a lot about elves lately, so I hope it won't be interpreted as threadjacking if I post a few of my own questions:

• For those playing editions after 1e, did you retain the elven ...

There are two trends I hate in fantasy gaming and fiction. The first is making the elves a "perfect" race that are somehow more enlightened, more moral, more skilled, and overall better than humans in ...

One thing I'd like to ask is whether Oerth Journal articles have to be 'canon-compatible'.

The reason I've never submitted anything to the OJ is because I always thought material had to be compati ...

You know, I'm glad the Rant of a Malcontent is well-received.
A lot of folks got a little bent when Ghosts of Saltmarsh came out because of the agent of Iuz in the small, out-of-the-way town of Saltm ...

I just don't see an american indian culture fitting into a european-middle-eastern - eastern european style fantasy setting when there are plenty of primitive nomadic cultures from these regions to st ...

Greyhawk includes, as we all know, a number of joke-names, anagrams, zany NPCs, and even a couple of funny and bizarre gods (Wastri, Zagyg).
Some D&D monsters that are part of the setting are ri ...

Thank you so much!

I hope I wasn't a pest about this-I couldn't even remember if I submitted it or not!

I hate to ask this, but did I post the latest chapter of For Crown Or Country, the one titled Total Party Kill? I've noticed it doesn't usually take this long for something to be uploaded after submis ...

The 1e version of Dragon of Dreams is just sitting, unread and unused, in my storage closet so I'll dig it out and see what there is to mine there. The idea of getting some of the players to play ...

Alternatively, have you played the video game Final Fantasy VII?

In it, the hero Cloud suffers a mental breakdown when his memories are shown to be false and the villain twists his perceptions to ...

If you don't mind using Dragonlance sources, then the 1E adventure 'Dragons Of Dreams' and the 3E update 'Dragons of Spring' describe the Silvanesti Nightmare. The adventure centers around the nightma ...

I'd be interested in considering what the Flanaess's buffalo population would be like. The Flan could (and may still do in some parts of the world) use techniques like 'buffalo jumps' to drive them ov ...

There are a few reasons:

1) As others have pointed out, adventurers have plausible deniability. Adventurers don't have many of the same political considerations tying them down that rulers might. ...

Apocatequil and Xilonen: mentioned in Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan

The Scarlet Brotherhood (page 64) claims that Apocatequil is another name for Tezcatlipoca. I think that Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan ...

-To some extent, there's the old Dragon articles and Living Greyhawk's Nyrond Gazeteer 593 gave an update on Nyrond's navy. Other than that, there are the force cards from the Greyhawk Wars game. ...

The revival of this thread got me thinking, and I wonder whether Braeden and Holthchilde were overstating their case. Aside from places like the Pale, Iuz and probably Medegia, most Flanaess governmen ...

Wow-you definitely put a lot of thought into this. While I appreciate your using my work, please do not take it as a definite state on canon, which I regularly ignore when I come up with something I l ...

Let me know if you find these useful.

Yes they will be helpful, even if only by guiding where I go with my campaign.

Thanks for all the help everyone!

I agree that they seem to have been in ...

I leave out everything and play pure fantasy, as that is why I got into D&D to begin with. I enjoy genre-specific settings for the most part. Genre-mixing is all too often poorly done, and so pres ...

The debate on "acceptable anomalies" at Canonfire had a contribution by Tarelton that clearly explained for me why I'm so against the idea of things like robots, spaceships and laser guns in my versio ...

I try to keep my vision more medieval...

Eyeglasses -- believed to have been invented in 1285
Potato -- discovered circa 1492
Tomato -- discovered circa 1492
Tobacco -- discovered circa 1492
C ...

What kind of modern "anomalies" do you accept in your version of Greyhawk? By anomalies, I mean things that didn't necessarily exist in the real-life Middle Ages and were created more recently, but th ...

To me, many planar lords such as the arch-devils, demon princes, oinodaemon, the lords of the elemental planes, and other such deities can all grant spells if they are worshiped by mortals, as the bel ...

Building on tarelton's comments, given that Greyhawk is a world with a lot of bulk coinage, gems and other related materials available as plunder, the promise of lining one's pocket with that kind of ...

More questions, with my take added:

There are roughly 70 Knights in Veluna (something like that), but doubt they are equally divided across the Dioceses (and Archdiocese). I imagine there are more ...

Other D&D campaign settings have reflected some of the preferences or beliefs of their creators. The multiple conspiracies and gambit pileups in Forgotten Realms apparently mirror the kinds of plo ...

Regarding the finances of the Furyondy and Veluna branches, I think we are looking too closely at a cash economy like our modern one, and not considering that this is a semi-medieval world.

The pri ...

1) I think that while the Knights are largely independent of the governments of the states they're affiliated with, the states pay many of the Knights' costs. I see their independence as mostly being ...

Okay, this all makes a lot more sense. The LGG didn't really describe what exactly the Skeptics believed in, so I assumed it had to do with atheism, which in turn left me wondering how they explained ...

We're probably familiar with the LGG's references to the philosophy of 'Skepticism', developed by the Urnstian thinkers Daesnar Braden and Elbain Holthchilde. Justinian briefly made it the intellectua ...

We're all familiar with signs of rulership in the Flanaess, such as the Throne of the Lion in Keoland, the Throne of the Sun in the Pale and most infamously the Malachite Throne in the old Great K ...

I took Jason Zavoda's comments about our not discussing here more as a challenge, so let's see if we can get some more discussion going here.

Giving characters theme songs is common in everything f ...

Have I ever told you how much I love you? Happy

Would it be possible to do this for Chapter Seven too?

I want to thank Cebrion for posting my latest Silver Wolf story...and I want to curse my mouse for messing up one of the paragraphs again and myself for not noticing it.

Would it be possible to ha ...

1) Yes, I would say that Greyhawk's churches do pay taxes, although in keeping with the Free City's libertarian and monetary character these are generally kept pretty low, something like 2-3% of incom ...

What are the elements of Greyhawk that keep you coming back? I'm curious as to why exactly Greyhawk appeals to all of us. For me, it's...

-The shades of grey: The forces of good can be at each othe ...

"Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins" says that certain 'long field sports' are played at the Free City Arena. I always took that as a subtle nod to Gary Gygax's love of football, so it could easily be a s ...

The trusty 1983 boxed set alignment map depicts Blackmoor as LE, NE and N in alignment. Blackmoor is also one of the most remote and inhospitable realms in the entire Flanaess. This made me envision B ...

Regarding the Gord novels and their implying that the EEG was all just an Iuzian hoax, are they even meant to be taken as canon? I'm asking because this "EEG is a hoax" thing contradicts everything we ...

Could someone provide a little clarification between the canonfire article "Gods of the Flanaess: The Elder Elemental God" and the "Dark Druids" module?

I just bought the latest version of Dark Dr ...

Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I'd be interested in feedback on my revised Ghosts of the Past pseudo-novel.

Since the story extends over nineteen articles, I'll just link to the [url=http:// ...

I'd suggest you take another look at some of the orders of knighthood in the Flanaess, as they don't always seem fitting for paladins:

The Knights of the Watch are hinted in the LGG as having impe ...

I should note that Mr. Bloch doesn't actually mind FtA himself. I cite him because his blog articles were what helped me articulate just what bothered me so much about FtA in the first place.

And ...

There's probably no Greyhawk product more controversial than From The Ashes. If you're familiar with my Canonfire contributions, you're no doubt aware of the fact. However, it wasn't until recently th ...

Has there ever been a canonical myth as to how the Oerth was created? If not, what have you invented as your creation myth?

I've alluded to my own version of the myth in my Gods of the Flanaess se ...

These are the sorts of questions I've been answering for years in my Gods of the Flanaess contributions to Canonfire. Examples of what I'm talking about can be found in those articles, but I'll try an ...

I feel obliged to defend Keoland's martial honor:

I think largely history is written by the "winners" and if we view the canonical lore from the Greyhawk supplements as general collections of histo ...

Bah! Long live Imperial Keoland! Obviously the OP has been subscribing to some sort of propaganda.

My post-GH Wars campaigns focuses on a movement afoot to restore the Imperial Keoland expansio ...

One thing about Tavish I, I think it's a bit facile to say he confederated the Sheldomar Valley purely "with the pen, not the sword." The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer tells us he "raised armies in great ...

CruelSummerLord,

Good points and I concede you're right. Keoland has never enjoyed any long-term expansion. Maybe their history of defeats shows that the Suel STILL aren't as martially competent a ...