Ultimate Greyhawk & Tales from the Yawning Portal

Let me tell you about a place called Greyhawk.

I haven’t had a chance to do more than a fast scan of WotC’s new hardcover, Tales from the Yawning Portal. I have to say I was super happy to have a bunch of adventures from across D&D’s history converted 5e. Especially The Sunless Citadel, which was the first D&D adventure I ever ran and Against the Giants, a classic I’ve been dying to run for a long long time.

The 5e version of Against the Giants is set for 11^th level characters and fits perfectly into the Ultimate Greyhawk campaign I hope to run one day. I also think that it might be useful as a guide to convert older D&D modules to 5e. The thing I’ve noticed is that treasure and magic in old modules tend to be on the high side. This may be because that’s how xp was gained back in the day, but it’s an easy thing to fix.

Traditionally, the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief is placed in the Jotens between Sterich and Geoff. I feel however that for a campaign that features the Temple of Elemental Evil, it would be better served placed in the Kron Hills. I feel that there is much more incentive for the players to get involved if the giant raids begin happening in the area they have spent so much time in. At an appropriate time, I would have a mixed contingent of giants and their allies attack Homlet and then have the players decide how and if they will track the raiders back to the Steading.

Fee Fi Foe Fum, I smell the blood of  adventurers!

Finally, this would lead the players into the Underdark and all the way to the Vault of the Drow. One of the story elements I really liked from D&D 4e was that it was Lolth’s Webs that had chained and imprisoned Tharizdun. In order for the Chained God to be free, Lolth’s webs needed to be weakend and destroyed. Thus, in my mind at any rate it makes much more sense of why the drow are involved in all this and how you can make allies from enemies.

The Liberation of Geoff

 It has been way to long since I’ve sat down at the kitchen table with a bunch of friends and rolled some dice. I’ve been playing a lot of Magic but the itch to run a game is becoming too great to ignore. Since I’ve been on summer break I’ve had time to start brainstorming ideas and trying to plan out a campaign. As I put pen to paper I was reminded of one of my first D&D memories. I’ve probably previously written about this somewhere on this blog of playing in the “Steading of the Hill Giant Chief”, and of how my character, an ineffective illusionist, who turned invisible during a massive battle in the main hall of the Steading. Since then I’ve always wanted to run or play in the “Against the Giants” trilogy.

I love this cover!

Much later, when I finally started roleplaying on a regular basis a friend of mine showed me the Liberation of Geoff book. The cover of that book still to this day evokes a feeling of fear and wonder in me. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Monte Cook said that this is what good D&D book covers should do. They should provide a sense of action and adventure, a promise of what awaits those that delve into the world held between those covers. I love how those two characters are either getting ready to ambush those two giants, or they are hiding from them know that if they are found they are as good as dead. I almost prefer that it be the latter. I feel like in some ways “Against the Giants” is more of a series of infiltration and spy missions than hack and slash combat ones. But then I guess there’s nothing wrong with opening a can of whip ass on giants either…

Long story short, I’ve been planning a D&D 5e sandbox campaign in the Lost Lands of Geoff (The name of the former Grand Duchy still makes me cringe however). As I went through my old note books I even discovered that I still have ideas written down from 2008! Furthermore, I’ve been following and very impressed with Simon Forster’s “Against the Giants” campaign that’s now at session 214! You can read all about it at his “The Sky is Full of Dust” blog. This campaign was started in 2012 and is still running 4 years later! So clearly there is lots of adventuring to be had in this part of Greyhawk. I love the idea of the characters taking on the role of resistance fighters. One of the ideas I had was to modify the liberated city of Hochoch and make it more like Osgiliath in “Lord of the Rings” movie. The liberated portion of the city would be a highly defended and rebuilt area on the East Bank of the river, while on the West bank would be city ruins infested with bandits, monsters and other hazards. The basic hook is that there is little fight left in the people to take back the Grand Duchy. Even if there was, there is even less money to finance and support an army. Instead, Grand Duke Owen I, has sent out word to bands of adventurers across the land. Letters of Mark are being given out to help liberate the lands. Great rewards await those adventuring companies brave enough to strike out into the dangerous wilderness and help the brave people still trapped in slavery behind enemy lines.    

How I envision the City of Hochoch in my campaign.

Wisdom From PLANET ALGOL

I finally found the blog post that I was talking about when I referenced the idea of an Ultimate Forgotten Realms campaign. That blog was of course the most rad and greatly missed PLANET ALGOL blog the blog post can be found here.

On a similar train of thought I've been writing up some notes on an Ultimate Greyhawk. The idea being that this is a reboot of the Greyhawk Setting. One of the campaigns I've always wanted to run was the classic Temple of Elemental Evil,  Against the Giants, and Descent into the Depths series of modules.

One of the things that often happens is that as I gear up to run this I get so obsessed over canon that I just give up. However now that I allow myself to be unshackled from the chains of canon I can just run with it and really make it my own campaign.

So I started with the village of Hommlet. I have the beginnings of some actual notes that take the village in some very radical directions from what Gary wrote. But you know what I think that's what Gary would've wanted. For us to take his toys and run with them. To make them our toys, to make it our game and play it anyway we felt was the most fun for us.