I want a good story, interesting characters grounded in the world around them. I do not want a GH supplement.
As for an author, I would love to see Michael A. Stackpole. His work on the Battletech, Star Wars, and Shadowrun licenses were standouts. I can highly recommend his original fantasy series The DragonCrown War Cycle.
The problem is, without someone at WotC to create a GH story bible, someone that cares enough about the background to shepherd the project through the publishing cycle... I just don't see new books that would be a fun read and provide a sense of the Greyhawk setting in our future.
I want a good story, interesting characters grounded in the world around them. I do not want a GH supplement.
As for an author, I would love to see Michael A. Stackpole. His work on the Battletech, Star Wars, and Shadowrun licenses were standouts. I can highly recommend his original fantasy series The DragonCrown War Cycle.
The problem is, without someone at WotC to create a GH story bible, someone that cares enough about the background to shepherd the project through the publishing cycle... I just don't see new books that would be a fun read and provide a sense of the Greyhawk setting in our future.
My two coppers,
Bryan Blumklotz
AKA Saracenus
Stackpole!?!? I'm sorry if he's your favorite, but what a hack! Some of the worst excuses for novels ever written were his Jedi novels. If he's the best GH could get, don't bother.
I would much rather see some previously unknown but life-long fan of Greyhawk write some new books than an established author that doesn't know or love the setting churning out some #words=$$$ books.
I'll read anything with Greyhawk on it just to see what they are doing, but from past experiance I know my peeves will be 1) The author not knowing the setting he/she is writting in well enough to avoid errors like the Balklundish Scarlet Brotherhood Monk in ToEE. 2) WotC forcing them to keep the book so short they can't do a good job and 3) That they keep rehashing old Greyhawk stories (and badly at that) rather than developing new ones that fit well into the world.
Ahem to what Saracenus says...
Thats what id be interested in, a good quality written book, maybe even a triology. It doesnt need to be some big epic, world changing story (as like the original dragonlance saga), but just a quality story with some intelligent reference to the greyhawk world and some detail to flesh out a certain region/race/organisation or whatever. To be honest, when the original books came out thats what I thought they were going to be. I was a bit disappointed when I discovered they were based on the classic modules, and even more disappointed when I read the ones I did...
I think doing books based on the modules was a poor idea. There just isn't any way to do a decent job in a few hundered pages compaired to what some of us spent months or years roleplaying. It was disappointing to see the author try to rush though the adventure when you knew that there was so much more story and flavor there that they weren't touching.
Against the Giants they used the Paladin to avoid the whole upper floor of the Hill Giant Steading, Temple of Elemental Evil to meet hardly anyone in Hammlet and nobody in Nulb. I think I agree with Phantasm and the others that have expressed the feeling that it should be a series set somewhere new or focusing on and developing something reletively unknown within Greyhawk.
I find it very interesting that WotC has allowed such glaring errors in their novels. I think that the greatest challenge that WotC has to overcome is not story or author, but the fans. Greyhawk fans are rabid when it comes to canon. I think that if a series of novels were written in southern lands away from Iuz or even in the once former Great Kingdom (Ahlissa or the Northern Province), the opportunity exist to not get caught up in canon.
I think that WotC should also return to it's roots so to speak. Pixies, demi-humans, etc. generally do not help the the reader relate to the character or the story. Used as supporting characters, these elements are great, but I digress. Make a character or group of characters that need to travel the world and see just how brutal the villains are and just how grey the world can become with politics is an option. Throwing little things into the story like the different dress and languages would help sooth traditional fans. An honest heroic group of characters would reinvent WoG and get folks away from the anti-social grunge hero or batman the dark knight type of hero. I would love a story where the characters and the reader don't realize the main villain is say...a Rakshasa?
I see and hear too many young players talk about how they have a halfdrow-half demon character running around with an Ogre paladin who has been befriended by a dread necromaner who has baby beholder as a familiar, while their friend the druid with his dire wolf is running around the local town gathering information "discreetly." Yes, that was a run on sentence. But my point has been made; let's see a group of characters that need to work together to be victorious instead of focusing on each others overwhelming abilities to crush the ever so tolerant and overmatched peasant classes and villains.
I see and hear too many young players talk about how they have a halfdrow-half demon character running around with an Ogre paladin who has been befriended by a dread necromaner who has baby beholder as a familiar, while their friend the druid with his dire wolf is running around the local town gathering information "discreetly." Yes, that was a run on sentence
Without sounding too much like an old fart, this is exactly what is wrong with 3.5 and Living Greyhawk. Although, 1e had rules to play the Gold Dragon, it was never taken seriously.
That combined with skills & feats that before were just the Referee's imagination.
Sorry, off topic, I know but if 3.5 is going to inspire fiction we have to think how to combine the heroic with the romantic. And, that is what is missing from Greyhawk today. It inspires the Epic but lacks the mysteries of the old Gary Gygax's adventures.
I agree with you completely. I am an old fart There needs to be a certain fantasy continuity. I still look at the old artwork in the 1st ed books and get a strange feeling about the game. There's a certain lurking mystery. Who knows what that band of halflings is doing, where they are coming from or where they are headed and do you really want to start trouble with them? Monsters should be mysterious, terrible beasts that have a purpose in an area. Demons and drow, at least in WoG, are some of the most feared entities known. Most of the monsters out there are unknown to the locals and even the ones that are scare the crap out of them. Just my two coppers.
Imagination is definately one of the things I miss from first edition... PHB, DMG, MMI, MMII, FF, UA and that was about it; and the last three you didn't really need. So much was left up to us to dream up and enjoy the process of the dreaming.
My major grip with second edition was that, after they came out with the main books they kept coming out with books that were, frankly, garbage. Usually 50% telling you how to do things that should have been left to your imagination (like how to pick and play character personalities), 40% reprinting things already printed somewhere else, 5% charactersheets, tables, indexes, etc. and finally that 5% of actual new material that everyone had to buy the book to see.
Of course WotC has taken all that and taken it to an even further level of 'lets give em as little as possible for their buck'
I just wish they would go back to the formula of a small set of well thought out core rule books and then spend the rest of the time developing the campaign worlds and publishing modules. To bad what would be good for the game isn't good for Hasbro's short-term profit margin.
Interesting thought; what is good for the game isn't good for Hasbro's short term profit. I'm not sure I agree with this, but that's a different matter. What would be good for Hasbro's shareholders would be a series of quality novels and from there video games. WoG has so much material to offer that it's simply staggering. I can imagine a few of the novels lines:
The Sheldomar Valley Trilogy
The Dim Forest Chronicles
Path to the Paynim
Return of the Horned Society
Ahlissan Saga
Hardluck in Hardby
The Pale Inquisition
Shadows of Sterich
Rage in Ratik
Crimson and Onyx; the secret war in Berghoff
Tales of the Bright Desert
Weird of the Wild Coast
Medegian Honor
Nyrond Hope
The March of the Ulek States
The Almor Heresy
Flinty Hills; the Stout War
I mean geez, there is so much that could be done. How many game supplements could be made? Just my two coppers.
My quic backround: I started playing AD&D in 1981 when I was 11. I blinked and 14 years went by . I read all the Gord of Greyhawk books by Gary when they came out and still like picking them up every now and then. I am somewhat familiar with the whole fiasco with his ex-wife and how she got control of D&D and she sold it and Coast asked him back to chair it(ok, maybe I don't know all the details...).
My question is: Everyone here is talking about what authors would do justice to the WoG, but what is stopping Gary from doing them? He seems like a natural choice for more books on Gord? Maybe I'm missing something...
I would definitely NOT buy any novels, since a) none of those I've seen so far adequately capture the feel of the setting, IMO (except, perhaps, for those written by EGG himself), b) I don't like reading books based on D&D because I feel the two genres (fiction and roleplaying) do not mesh well, and c) because I find that authors' interpretations of established setting usually do not gibe with my own interpretations. None of this is to criticize anyone, it's simply a personal perception.
Would it become canon? Given that no author to date (including EGG) has yet to produce a work that is truly consistent with established canon (or even close, in most cases), I doubt it.
This is all very interesting. I agree that most of the material concerning Greyhawk has been subpar. It is a shame because as someone stated earlier there is so much that can be done. I would like to see a novel about a fresh group of adventures in some region of the world that has very little to do with previous modules.
I do think that all the modules have the making for a very good novel if the writer, assuming they have talent, were allowed to write a novel without restriction. To clarify, I mean not limited to 250 pages, and did not have to showcase the game in their writing.
Even the latest, or should I say last, Greyhawk module seemed to be an updated rehash of an old theme. I would definitely buy whatever book they did publish only because I am hoping to use their own greed against them. I do enjoy the writings here on Canonfire and would also love to see a Greyhawk novel here.
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But my point has been made; let's see a group of characters that need to work together to be victorious instead of focusing on each others overwhelming abilities to crush the ever so tolerant and overmatched peasant classes and villains.
What would be good for Hasbro's shareholders would be a series of quality novels and from there video games. WoG has so much material to offer that it's simply staggering. I can imagine a few of the novels lines:
