There are so many things about the history of this world that I really have no clue about. I know about the world itself, the kingdoms, and the generals current history. Its just the past ... the early days I do not know about that much. I mean places like Blackmoor ... heard there is a huge story behind that. The Sea of Dust, the early days when the Great Kingdom pretty much owned everything.
Where is the best place to go, or what book is best to read to really, REALLY learn about Greyhawk in depth?
I was the same boat as you are now about 2 years ago. But theirs hope !
1st- if you have a ? just ask here. Theirs alot of people here that knows just about everything about GH ( dont ask me, i suffer from "sometimer's", sometime's i remember and sometime's i dont )
2nd- Theirs a good book out their called " greyhawk, The adventure begins " it's a 2nd edtion book that came out in 1998 but has alot of info that might just help you. I picked a used one up at my local game store.
Baron Zemo gave some really good advice there.
The first suggestion - asking advice here - is one of the best ways to find things out. Many of us know a lot about different things, and many of us have our favorite topics ... others are generalists, and know about faried topics ... and then there are some that know a mind-boggling amount about just about every aspect of GH that you could imagine. <points an accusatory finger at Rasgon>
One of the best ways is to participate in the Thursday night chats in GreyChat. If you have mIRC, it's really easy to use, or you can use the link that's on the lefthand side margin to join the chats. There's almost always great people in there, and though the topics stray every once in awhile, it's not diffictul to get people to talk until they are blue in the face about just about any GH topic.
The second suggestion - read the old material - is another good one. In addition to The Adventure Begins I would also suggest the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. It has a great summary of GH history, and serves as a great primer on just about anything that you could want to know. It's all fluff and background material, with essentially no crunch or mechanics in it. Also, the GH wiki is a wonderful tool, and you can go page-to-page, following a line of research. There's even a basic timeline in the wiki. The greatest thing about the wiki is that it's all cross-referenced, and there's even alot of outside links and you can follow them to where other stuff is. I would suggest those two books first, alongside the wiki, and then branch out from there, once you've found topics that you particularly want to delve into. Another option is out-of-print material that can be found on the web (such as the City of Greyhawk boxed set, and From the Ashes).
The last, and most obvious, is using Canonfire. There is a plethora of articles here that have been fan-written that are great summaries of material that is so fragmented that it's difficult to find in one place. Often, there is stuff that is fanon as well, but there are a lot of straightforward articles that are solid canon-based. Don't be afraid to browse the articles, and just do searches for things that pique your interest. Don't limit yourself to reading things cover-to-cover... let the research lead you.
I pretty much own everything released in actual books hehe I am a huge collector of the game. But recently I got on this train of collecting PDF books for the game. As time progresses my table top gaming has evolved and I use a Lap Top PC now for alot of my DMing etc for my games.
I am backing my PDFs up on a large portable HD and have each world on a seperate flashdrive disk. If ever I lose one I can pull it from my back up files. This is alot safer than real books because you can lose everything in real life, its easy to protect virtual stuff.
Anyways to get back on track I am about to begin grabbing everything for Greyhawk I can find. Most of my stuff I have scanned and created the books in PDF form myself but there is still alot I did not have so trying to get that as well.
I do not have the above mentioned book ... The Adventure Begins, but a friend has it so going to grab it to get my copy done soon. Thanks, will read it hard hehe.
oh and I "do" appreciate everyones input, it means alot.
One thing I found out is really important is to understand what people mean whey they are talking about Greyhawk History and Cannon...
It's a little tricky; but here's how I basically understand it....
First: There is the "Greyhawk" history that came out of Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz, Dave Arneson and the other 'founders' home games....while this is not considered 'cannon' in published matieral; it is nontheless the foundation for everything that came later. So, when reading of Robilar and Tenser's trip to China or the freeing of the 9 gods under Castle Greyhawk or Robilar and Mordenkainen's adventures in the City of the Gods in Blackmoor...these are frequently QUITE different than what's in published game material as the 'official' history of the Greyhawk world
Second: As alluded to above; the matieral in the published game stuff is considered 'cannon'; and the best sources of info include the original Greyhawk Folio (1980) and Box Set (83); the City of Greyhawk, Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes Boxed sets (My personal favorites; these were all published between 89 and 93); the book you own (Greyhawk the Adventure Begins) and the Greyhawk Gazetter.
Last: All of the 3rd Edition era "Living Greyhawk" stuff which had the timeline moving forward from 591 to 597 (I believe)....I don't believe it's considered cannon as other than the Gazeteer (which only covers the period thru 591 CY).
Anyway, I hope this helps; and as others have said: there are several EXTREMELY learned Greyhawk 'sages' on this site....Rasgon, Cebrion, grodog; and many, many others!
yea I understand most of the early stuff is the bible where the 3.0 and some of the 2.0 stuff is NOT. Me .... I will not even try to stick with cannon, I am sure I will shape my world to how i want it to be. Thats why I was searching for a place to call my AD&D family that would bring me in the fold with my Greyhawk campaign ran MY WAY hehe
So many sites really dont want you even talking on there forums about non cannon stuff which is silly as long as you stay with the spirit of the world and the game.
I would NEVER destroy Garys world, got to much respect for him to do that but I do however want to run a post war campaign which is not considered cannon and shape things my own way and style and have a place to tell my stories which I hope is these forums.
oh and where do folks post there campaign journals around this place at? aka each gaming session they would come here and ppost there nights journal of there game.
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So, I'll stop dolling out the advice. I mean, you know, "Icarus" was never very good at following advice given to him, anyway. 
