Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Writing Adventures For Greyhawk

Mon Apr 12, 2004 4:05 pm Writing Adventures For Greyhawk

I have a few questions in relation to the subject:

with greyhawk and its cities etc are you supposed to take the stats from cities, eg: population, races distribution and ruler and just build the city yourself and map it yourself from scratch how you like it. or do the cities have thier own maps that you can accquire.
is there any specific way that the world of greyhawk is supposed to look. are you supposed to imagine it in a specific way or can you imagine it as you see fit and act accordingly (hopefully people wont take that as me doing somthing extravagently stupid with the setting which i'm not) itsj ust that you know when you try to write your own setting etc you visualise how you see it and when you read someone elses setting you know that you will not ever be able to imagine it how the author did cuase your not the author. has that little or large importance in greyhawk. as i find this matter burdening.

also does the setting assume that your gonna fill in the areas with more places, eg more small towns and villages etc.

Mon Apr 12, 2004 4:16 pm

some cities have maps in vearious 1st and 2nd edition products, most however do not (The city of Greyhawk itself has an intire boxed set dedicated to it).

Everybody is going to picture the world of greyhawk somewhat differntly in thier heads, simply because of the way we immagine things, I might envision the cairn hills as looking something like the dry deserty hills of northern arizona, replaceing catcuses with scrub oak and such,while Gary or Abysslin might picure it much different... in the end it realy does't matter how we picture it in our heads as long as it fits the general description given.

finaly, yes, the setting does assume that you will make up some small settlements and such yourself. only Cities (IIRC pop 5k+) appear on the map, and there may even be small citties that do not appear on the map.

hope that helps :)

Mon Apr 12, 2004 6:35 pm

I concur with the previous respondent, with a few additional comments:

The original boxed set, From the Ashes, and various other texts give a few pointers to what the various societies look like. You can extrapolate from the histories that most of the cities were not planned, and therefore should be mapped out as chaotic, disorganized places. Greyhawk, Dyvers, and similar cities are perfect examples. The few "planned" cities include Chendl, and in my campaigns I made Rel Mord, Rauxes and Niole Dra have organized and planned central cores surrounded by the rabbit warrens of rapid and random growth.

Also, feel free to fill in the country-side. A good rule of thumb on the distance between villages and towns is that farmers or serfs moving good from the farms to the villages couldn't make much more than 8 miles a day with a horse and wagon. Since they would want to get there and back
in a single day, most villages end up being no more than 8 miles apart so that no one lives more than 4 miles from a village. Towns would likely be about ever four villages, but it depends on the feel you want.

The basis for this 8 mile rule is echoed in the layout of the great plains of North America - where this was the basis of the almost regular spacing.

Of course, in very hilly, forested, or mountainous terrain the rule should be modified - of course, in such terrain, the population would also likely be lower.
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