In 1999, Hekaforge released the Lejendary Earth Gazateer by EGG for his Lejendary Adventure game. I had not had the opportunity to pick up a copy until this past Gencon.
IMO, EGG is the finest builder of campaign settings that roleplaying has produced, with WoG being his best creation.
After WoG, EGG created The Epic of Aerth (EAerth) for the Dangerous Journeys game. In EAerth, EGG winks at WoG by providing several noticeable "tie-ins" to WoG via his earlier Gord writings. To me, EArth has always been a sort of ersatz WoG supplement, much in the way the Gord and Sagard books can serve as apochryphial WoG source material.
I was hoping for more of the same from the Lejendary Earth Gazateer (LEG). While I have not searched LEG with a fine tooth comb, no WoG references jump off the page at me. It appears EGG moved in an entirely new direction with this design.
The LEG on its own terms is an okay product. It does not provide a complete campaign setting, however, noticeably lacking a map with even rudimentary political boundaries, though several world maps (bw) are provided. However, several followup products are mentioned that would likely have filled this "hole." To my knowledge, these followups have not been produced to date. Troll Lords Games is releasing an "essential" version of Lejendary Adventures, however, that may address gazateer issues. I think LEG is worth picking up as another EGG design, but not for any obvious WoG connections.
Aerth is much closer to Gary's home Greyhawk campaign then the published WoG is, at least map wise. Gary's campaign was set in North America. Greyhawk was Chicago, Dyvers was Milwaukee, Nyr Dyv was one of the Great Lakes. In an old Dragon article it mentions Mordenkainen riding into the west to aid an evil associate. The evil associate was Robilar, but he didn't go west to the other side of the Steppes, or Sea of Dust, he went east, across the ocean to deliver an early version of the evil Orb of Might to a temple of Zuggtmoy located where France would be. When players reached the bottom of the Greyhawk Dungeons, the ended up taking a ride on a magical slide that went through the middle of the Oerth/Aerth/Earth/etc. and spit them out in China. The stories of the adventures they had while trying to make it back to Greyhawk make it clear that the lands they were travelling through were based on a map much closer to Earth (i.e. Aerth) than any map published for the WoG.
That is EGG's home campaign, which is completely different than the WoG, but I agree that both Aerth and Lejendary Earth make valuable resources for any campaign.
Scott
Lejendary Earth is closer to Oerth than Ærth is in terms of tone and magic. I have the PDF versions of the Lejendary Earth Gazetteer and Noble Knights and Dark Lands, which covers the continents of Varan and Apphir (like Europe and Africa) in more detail. The Gazetteer is more the high-level historical and geographical overview, while NKDL covers states and regions at slightly more detail than the original Greyhawk folio/box. It's the more useful book for borrowing adventure hooks and descriptions, and includes among many adventurous set-ups one rather like Greyhawk Castle and another like the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth -- Greyhawk nods of a sort.
I also agree that Epic of Ærth is a wonderfully dense volume with lots of great things in it, including some marvellous artifact names. The Helvetia (Switzerland-analogue) writeup, for instance, shows us some of how Gary envisions Perrenland (as does his article on Swiss military tactics in Dragon #22).
The most valuable recent Greyhawk sourcebook, though, is Gary's Living Fantasy, which sets out his vision of how the quasi-medieval D&D or LA society works, and complements the original Greyhawk boxed set perfectly.
After WoG, EGG created The Epic of Aerth (EAerth) for the Dangerous Journeys game. In EAerth, EGG winks at WoG by providing several noticeable "tie-ins" to WoG via his earlier Gord writings. To me, EArth has always been a sort of ersatz WoG supplement, much in the way the Gord and Sagard books can serve as apochryphial WoG source material.
Yeah, there's a reference to the sword "Fragarach" as being an artifact to one of the Avalonian kingdoms. And we all know where Fragarach first appeared: ToEE of course!
Aerth is much closer to Gary's home Greyhawk campaign then the published WoG is, at least map wise. Gary's campaign was set in North America. Greyhawk was Chicago, Dyvers was Milwaukee, Nyr Dyv was one of the Great Lakes.
It's funny you say this. I've always pictured the Bandit Kingdoms region to be a kind of "medievel Wild West" with the Rift Canyon being modelled on the America's Grand Canyon. Would this be close to the mark?
Has the Bandit Kingdom geography ever been described as having lots of mesas and platueus and being a dusty and parched regioin?
I don't know about the Bandit Kingdoms in general, but I think I remember the area around the canyon being designated as rough broken land on the map.
Scott
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