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The Scarlet Brotherhood

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The Scarlet Brotherhood is a regional sourcebook for the Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game .

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66-712: The Scarlet Brotherhood detailed the Scarlet Brotherhood lands, the Tilvanot Peninsula , Hepmonaland , and the Amedio Jungle . The sourcebook was notable for being the first source on the Olman people since The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and for detailing many new nations and realms south of the Flanaess for the first time. The Touv people and their pantheon were invented for this book. Several new monsters, including

132-641: A military history buff and pulp fantasy fan, was a central, founding figure in the Castle & Crusade Society . The C&C Society, as it was known, served enthusiasts of miniature wargaming in the Middle Ages and published an occasional newsletter known as the Domesday Book . Following up on a promise he made in Domesday Book #5, Gygax presented the "Great Kingdom" map c. June 1971 in Domesday #9, to be used as

198-498: A 34" x 44" (86 cm x 112 cm) two-piece color map of the Flanaess. Reviewers were generally impressed, but some remarked on the lack of a pantheon of Greyhawk-specific deities, as well as the lack of any mention of the infamous dungeons of Castle Greyhawk. Game designer Jim Bambra found the original set "disappointing", because "there is only so much information you can cram into a 32-page booklet, particularly when covering such

264-505: A dungeon setting. He and Arneson agreed to co-develop a set of rules, and Gygax quickly developed a castle and dungeon of his own, "Castle Greyhawk", set within his portion of the Great Kingdom map. Castle Greyhawk is sometimes considered the first dungeon in Dungeons & Dragons and pioneered the roots of the mega-dungeon format of gaming. Two of his children, Ernie and Elise, were

330-580: A fantasy supplement for the Chainmail ruleset for medieval miniatures that he was co-writing with Jeff Perren . Released in the late spring of 1971, this booklet included rules for fantasy monsters, wizards and magical weapons. Around the same time, in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Dave Arneson , impressed by the " Braunstein " role-playing games of fellow wargamer David Wesely , developed the Barony of Blackmoor as

396-450: A few evil deities to provide some villainy. In Chapter 2 of The Gnome Cache , which appeared in the second issue of The Dragon , a shrine to St. Cuthbert (spelled St. Cuthburt ) was mentioned, which was the first published reference to a Greyhawk deity. In 1976, Gygax invited the science fiction/fantasy writer Andre Norton to play Dungeons & Dragons in his Greyhawk world. Norton subsequently wrote Quag Keep , which involved

462-525: A few of the adventure modules, were published by TSR. Although Gygax originally intended to immediately publish more details of Greyhawk in Dragon on a regular basis, other projects intervened, and it was not until the August 1981 issue of Dragon that Len Lakofka , in his column "Leomund's Tiny Hut", outlined methods for determining a character's place of birth and languages spoken. Gygax added an addendum concerning

528-503: A fractious place where chaos and evil were in the ascendant and courageous champions would be needed. In order to explain how his world had arrived at this state, he wrote an outline of a thousand years of history. As a military history buff, he was very familiar with the concept of waves of cultural invasions, such the Picts of Great Britain being invaded by the Celts , who were in turn invaded by

594-476: A freelance artist in Lake Geneva, developed a full color map on a hex grid. Gygax was so pleased with the result that he quickly switched his home Greyhawk campaign over to the new world he had created. Ultimately, the original Castle Greyhawk was never published for public play, instead with many of the elements of Gygax's original campaign becoming the seed for other adventures. In the late 1960s, Gary Gygax ,

660-590: A game setting for the Society. Members thereafter began claiming territories, including member Dave Arneson , who was an officer of the organization, and frequent contributor to the newsletter. Arneson claimed a territory he named Blackmoor , a setting he had already begun developing in his home campaign, and Gygax reserved for himself a territory on lake Nyr Div. In addition to historically-based medieval wargaming, both Gygax and Arneson were enthusiasts of adding fantasy elements to their games. To this end, Gygax created

726-528: A group of gamers who travel from the real world to Greyhawk. It was the first novel to be set, at least partially, in the Greyhawk setting, and according to Alternative Worlds , the first to be based on D&D . Quag Keep was excerpted in issue #12 of The Dragon (February 1978) just prior to the book's release. From 1976 to 1979, Gygax also shared some glimpses of his home campaign with other gamers when he set several TSR Dungeons & Dragons adventures in

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792-556: A large area". Before the folio edition was released, Gygax planned to publish supplementary information, using his column "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" that appeared on a semi-regular basis in TSR's Dragon Magazine . In the May 1980 issue, Gygax gave a quick overview of the development of his new The World of Greyhawk folio. For players who planned to use large scale army tactics, he gave details of

858-403: A map of North America, adding new cities and regions as his world slowly grew through ongoing adventures. The city and castle of Greyhawk were placed near the real-world position of Chicago, his birthplace; various other places were clustered around it. For instance, the rival city of Dyvers he placed in the area of real-world Milwaukee. Gygax also continued to develop the dungeons underneath

924-417: A new fantasy world of Yarth. The Flanaess is the eastern part of the continent of Oerik, one of the four continents of Oerth, acting as the setting of dozens of adventures published between the 1970s and 2000s. In late 1972, Dave Arneson demonstrated a new type of game to a group of gamers in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, including game designer Gygax. Gygax agreed to develop a set of rules with Arneson and get

990-512: A new magical spell for the game, he would sometimes use the name of a wizard character from his home campaign to add verisimilitude to the spell name, such as Melf's acid arrow , Melf being a character created by his son Luke. Some of the characters who became synonymous with Greyhawk at that time included: Gary Gygax wrote a short story titled "The Expedition Into the Black Reservoir", subtitled "A Dungeon Adventure at Greyhawk Castle", which

1056-469: A new world for them afterward. With the release of the AD&;D Players Handbook in 1978, many players were intrigued by the connection of Greyhawk characters to magical spells such as Tenser's floating disc , Bigby's crushing hand , and Mordenkainen's faithful hound . The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide , released the following year, also made references to the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk. Players' curiosity

1122-406: A pantheon of deities custom-made for humans in the world of Greyhawk. In addition to his original Greyhawk deities, St. Cuthbert and Pholtus, Gygax added seventeen more deities. Although later versions of the campaign setting would assign most of these deities to worship by specific races of humans, at this time they were generally worshiped by all humans of the Flanaess. Shortly after the release of

1188-474: A part of an evil country; and still others might take a neutral stance and simply try to collect gold and treasure from both sides. TSR originally intended to publish The World of Greyhawk (TSR 9025) early in 1979, but it was not released until August 1980. The World of Greyhawk consisted of a 32-page folio (the first edition is often called the World of Greyhawk folio to distinguish it from later editions) and

1254-438: A player, and appointed Rob to be co- Dungeon Master of Greyhawk. This freed up Gygax to work on other projects, and also gave him an opportunity to participate as a player, creating characters like Yrag and Mordenkainen . In order to make room for Rob Kuntz's dungeons, Gygax scrapped his bottom level and integrated Rob's work into the Greyhawk dungeons. Gygax and Kuntz continued to develop new levels for their players, and by

1320-407: A player, often going one-on-one with Rob Kuntz as Dungeon Master, Gygax immersed his own characters in politics and large-scale battles. Knowing that there would be some players looking for a town in which to base their campaign, and others interested in politics or warfare, Gygax tried to include as much detail as possible about each region, including a short description of the region and its people,

1386-463: A second level for the dungeon. At the next play session, Ernie and Elise were joined by Gygax's friends: Don Kaye , Rob Kuntz , and Terry Kuntz . About a month after his first session, Gygax created the nearby city of Greyhawk, where the players' characters could sell their treasure and find a place to rest. As Gygax and Arneson worked to develop and publish the rules for Dungeons & Dragons through TSR , Gygax continued to design and present

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1452-469: A setting for Braunstein style games. Arneson based his game around the village, castle and dungeons of Blackmoor. The castle itself was represented on the table by an actual plastic kit model of a medieval castle. Arneson informed the players that instead of controlling regiments, they would each take one individual character into the castle of the Barony of Blackmoor to explore its dangerous dungeons. Arneson drew from numerous sources but quickly incorporated

1518-442: A simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and friends, but it was rapidly expanded to include not only a complex multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of Greyhawk, and eventually an entire world. In addition to the campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures published in support of

1584-626: The Drow series and the Giant series respectively. Numerous projects were planned to add more depth and detail to the setting after the publication of the initial folio, but many of these projects never appeared for various reasons. In 1983, TSR published an expanded boxed set of the campaign world, World of Greyhawk , which is usually called the Greyhawk boxed set to differentiate it from other editions. According to game designer Jim Bambra , "the second edition

1650-501: The Bredthrall , and many new plants and flora were created for this book as well. The sourcebook was written by Sean K. Reynolds , and published by TSR in March 1999 for 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons . This Dungeons & Dragons article related to Greyhawk is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Scarlet Brotherhood Greyhawk , also known as

1716-606: The Romans . In creating a similar pattern of history for his world, Gygax decided that a thousand years before his campaign began, the northeast corner of the continent had been occupied by a peaceful but primitive people called the Flannae, whose name was the root for the name of that part of Oerik, the Flanaess . At that time, far to the west of the Flanaess, two peoples were at war, the Bakluni and

1782-567: The World of Greyhawk , is a fictional world designed as a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game . Although not the first campaign world developed for Dungeons & Dragons — Dave Arneson 's Blackmoor campaign predated it by about a year —the world of Greyhawk closely identified with early development of the game beginning in 1972, and after being published it remained associated with Dungeons & Dragons publications until 2008. The world itself started as

1848-420: The Great Kingdom map, which included local areas based on real-world maps, Gygax decided to create an entirely new and greatly expanded version of Oerth . Needing many more original names for all of the geographical and political places on his map for the new and expanded areas, Gygax sometimes resorted to wordplay. He had previously used Perrenland on the Great Kingdom map, named after Jeff Perren , who co-wrote

1914-691: The Greyhawk campaign. Although it detailed new spells and character classes that had been developed in the dungeons of Greyhawk, it did not contain any details of their Greyhawk campaign world. The only two references to Greyhawk were an illustration of a large stone head in a dungeon corridor titled The Great Stone Face, Enigma of Greyhawk and mention of a fountain on the second level of the dungeons that continuously issued an endless number of snakes. The 2004 publication 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons suggested that details of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign were published in this booklet, but Gygax had no plans in 1975 to publish details of

1980-424: The Greyhawk world, since he believed that new players of Dungeons & Dragons would rather create their own worlds than use someone else's. In addition, he did not want to publish all the material he had created for his players; he thought he would be unlikely to recoup a fair investment for the thousands of hours he had spent on it. Since his secrets would be revealed to his players, he would be forced to recreate

2046-474: The LGTSA purchased a considerable number of Elastolin figures, which motivated Perren to develop four pages of his own rules for these miniatures which focused on mass combat. Perren and Gygax created this set of medieval miniatures rules and called it Chainmail , publishing the first set of these rules in a fanzine for the Castle & Crusade Society known as The Domesday Book . Perren and Gygax also designed

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2112-637: The Oeridians, the Aerdi, began to set up an empire. Several centuries later, the Aerdi's Great Kingdom ruled most of the Flanaess. The Aerdi overkings marked the beginning of what they believed would be perpetual peace with Year 1 of a new calendar, the Common Year (CY) Reckoning . However, several centuries later, the Empire became decadent, with their rulers losing their sanity, turning to evil, and enslaving their people. When

2178-536: The Suloise. The war reached its climax when both sides used powerful magic to obliterate each other, in an event called the Twin Cataclysms. Refugees of these disasters were forced out of their lands, and the Suloise invaded the Flanaess, forcing the Flannae to flee to the outer edges of the continent. Several centuries later, a new invader appeared, the Oeridians, and they in turn forced the Suloise southward. One tribe of

2244-477: The castle. By the time he was finished, the complex labyrinth encompassed thirteen levels filled with devious traps, secret passageways, hungry monsters, and glittering treasure. Although details of these original Greyhawk dungeons have never been published in detail, Gygax gave some glimpses of them in an article he wrote for the European fanzine Europa in 1975: Anyone who made it to the bottom level alive met Zagyg,

2310-551: The continent of Oerik and asked TSR's printing house about the maximum size of paper they could handle; the answer was 34 x 22 inches (86 cm x 56 cm). He found that, using the scale he desired, he could fit only the northeast corner of Oerik on two of the sheets. This corner of Oerik became known as "the Flanaess", so named in Gygax's mind because of the peaceful people known as the Flannae who had once lived there. Gygax also added many more new regions, countries and cities, bringing

2376-443: The dungeons and environs of Castle Greyhawk to his circle of friends and family, using them as playtesters for new rules and concepts. As the players began to explore more of the world outside of the castle and city, Gygax developed other regions and cities for them. With play sessions occurring seven or more times a week, Gygax did not have the time or inclination to create the map for a whole new world; he simply drew his world over

2442-561: The fact that Gygax was increasingly involved in other areas of the company, meant that of the seventeen Greyhawk adventures published in the two years after the folio edition, only four were written or co-written by Gygax: In 1981, TSR also published the super-modules D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth and G1-2-3 Against the Giants , both being compilations of previously published modules from

2508-517: The fantasy supplement of Chainmail into his games. After about a year and half of play, Arneson (Blackmoor) and fellow gamer David Megarry ( Dungeon! boardgame) traveled to Lake Geneva in November or December 1972 to pitch their respective games to Gygax, who at that time was a representative of the Guidon Games company. Gygax was immediately intrigued by the concept of individual characters exploring

2574-466: The first players, and during their first session, as Tenser and Ahlissa , they fought and destroyed the first monsters of the Greyhawk dungeon; Gygax recalled them as being either giant centipedes or a nest of scorpions. During the same session, Ernie and Elise also found the first treasure, a chest of 3,000 copper coins which was too heavy to carry, much to the children's chagrin. After his children had gone to bed, Gygax immediately began working on

2640-500: The folio edition, TSR released the adventure module C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan , designed to familiarize players with the Olman race of the Amedio Jungle . Largely based on Aztec and Incan cultures, this adventure introduced the first published deities of the Greyhawk campaign: Mictlantecuhtli , god of death, darkness, murder and the underworld; Tezcatlipoca , god of sun, moon, night, scheming, betrayals and lightning; and Quetzalcoatl , god of air, birds and snakes. This area

2706-473: The game published; the game eventually became known as Dungeons & Dragons . Gygax designed a set of dungeons underneath the ruins of Castle Greyhawk as a testing ground for new rules, character classes and spells. In those early days, there was no Flanaess; the world map of Oerth was developed by Gygax as circumstances dictated, the new cities and lands simply drawn over a map of North America. Gygax and Kuntz further developed this campaign setting, and by 1976,

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2772-401: The game, as well as for RPGA 's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from 2000 to 2008. The World of Greyhawk is located on a planet called Oerth. Oerth has an axial tilt of 30 degrees, which causes greater seasonal temperature variation than on Earth and is controlled by wizardly and divine magic that shifts weather patterns to be more favorable to the populace. Castle Greyhawk

2838-414: The insane architect of the dungeons. Zagyg is a reverse homophone of Gygax , and it was Gygax's inside joke that the person who had designed the dungeon—himself—must be insane. Only three players ever made it to the bottom level and met Zagyg, all of them during solo adventures: Rob Kuntz (playing Robilar ), Gygax's son Ernie (playing Tenser ), and Rob's brother Terry (playing Terik). Their reward

2904-449: The lands within a radius of 50 miles had been mapped in depth, and the lands within a radius of approximately 500 miles were in outline form. Following yet more work, in 1978 Gygax agreed to publish his world and decided to redevelop Oerth from scratch. Once he had sketched out the entire planet to his satisfaction, one hemisphere of Oerth was dominated by a massive continent called Oerik. Gygax decided to concentrate his first efforts on

2970-664: The number of Greyhawk deities to an even fifty. For the next eight years, Greyhawk would be primarily defined by the information in this publication. Jeff Perren Jeff Perren is a game designer , a hobby shop owner, and an early associate of Gary Gygax . Jeff Perren was an early member of the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association along with Gary Gygax , Terry Kuntz and Rob Kuntz , Ernie Gygax, Mike Reese , Leon Tucker, and Don Kaye . Perren created his own set of rules for Siege of Bodenburg , and shared these rules with Gygax. Early in 1970,

3036-488: The number of political states to 60. Needing original placenames for all of the geographical and political places on his map, Gygax sometimes resorted to wordplay based on the names of friends and acquaintances. For instance, Perrenland was named after Jeff Perren , who co-wrote the rules for Chainmail with Gygax; Urnst was a homophone of Ernst (his son Ernie); and Sunndi was a near-homophone of Cindy, another of Gygax's children. From Gygax's prototype map, Darlene Pekul ,

3102-488: The original World of Greyhawk folio (1980), Gygax was asked to produce a map of the world and decided to create something new which still featured many of the locales from his original world of Oerth but with new geography. Gygax also connected Dave Arneson 's Blackmoor to his world by including a country by that name in Oerth. In his later novel Dance of Demons (1988), Gygax destroyed Greyhawk's Oerth and replaced it with

3168-433: The overking Ivid V came to the throne, the oppressed peoples rebelled. It was at this point, in the year 576 CY, that Gygax set the world of Greyhawk. As Gygax wrote in his World of Greyhawk folio: "The current state of affairs in the Flanaess is confused indeed. Humankind is fragmented into isolationist realms, indifferent nations, evil lands, and states striving for good". Gygax did not issue monthly or yearly updates to

3234-556: The physical appearances of the main Greyhawk races. In the November 1981 issue, Gygax gave further details of racial characteristics and modes of dress. In the December 1982 issue, David Axler contributed a system for determining weather in the world of Greyhawk. Gygax later said he thought a system of fourteen charts for determining the weather was too cumbersome, and he personally did not use it in his home campaign. The folio edition had thirty two pages, and information about each region

3300-468: The players wanted Gygax to create and customize a specific deity so that cleric characters could receive their powers from someone less ambiguous than the gods . Gygax jokingly created two gods: Saint Cuthbert —who brought non-believers around to his point of view with whacks of his cudgel —and Pholtus , whose fanatical followers refused to believe that any other gods existed. Because both of these deities represented aspects of Good, Gygax eventually created

3366-503: The private armies that were commanded by some prominent Greyhawk characters from his original home game: Bigby , Mordenkainen , Robilar , Tenser and Erac's Cousin . Gygax also mentioned some of the planned Greyhawk publications he was overseeing: a large-scale map of the city of Greyhawk; some adventure modules set in Greyhawk; a supplementary map of lands outside the Flanaess; all fifty levels of Castle Greyhawk's dungeon; and miniatures army combat rules. None of these projects, other than

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3432-411: The remaining forty three regions in the March, July and September 1982 issues. In the August 1982 issue of Dragon , Gygax gave advice on how to adapt deities from the previously published Deities and Demigods for worship by non-human races in the Greyhawk world. A few months later, he published a five-part series of articles in the November 1982 through March 1983 issues of Dragon that outlined

3498-622: The rules for Chainmail with Gygax, but for the new Greyhawk map he added many more such names of friends and acquaintances. For instance, Urnst was a homophone of Ernst (his son Ernie) and Sunndi was a near-homophone of Cindy, another of Gygax's children. Gygax gave only the most basic descriptions of each state; he expected that DMs would customize the setting in order to make it an integral part of their own individual campaigns. His map included arctic wastes, desert, temperate forests, tropical jungles, mountainous cordillera, seas and oceans, rivers, archipelagos and volcanoes. Gygax set out to create

3564-593: The state of affairs as presented in the folio since he saw 576 CY as a common starting point for every home campaign; because each would be moving forward at its own pace, there would be no practical way to issue updates that would be relevant to every Dungeon Master. Gygax was also aware that different players would be using his world for different reasons. When he was the Dungeon Master of his home campaign, he found that his players were more interested in dungeon-delving than politics, but when he switched roles and became

3630-579: The time the Greyhawk home campaign drew to a close in 1985, the castle dungeons encompassed more than fifty levels. While many players participating in the Gygax and Kuntz home campaign were occasional players, sometimes not even naming their characters, others played far more frequently, and several of their characters became well known to the general gaming world before publication of the Greyhawk campaign setting. Some of these characters became known when Gygax mentioned them in his various columns, interviews, and publications. In other cases, when Gygax created

3696-452: The title of its ruler, the racial makeup of its people, its resources and major cities, and its allies and enemies. For the same reason that he had created a variety of geographical, political and racial settings, he also strove to create a world with some good, some evil, and some undecided areas. He felt that some players would be happiest playing in a mainly good country and fighting the evil that arose to threaten it; others might want to be

3762-416: The world of Greyhawk: In addition, Lawrence Schick set his 1979 TSR adventure S2 White Plume Mountain in Greyhawk. Despite fan curiosity, the original Castle Greyhawk was never officially published outside of Gygax's home campaign. In 1975, Gygax and Kuntz published a booklet called Supplement I: Greyhawk , an expansion of the rules for Dungeons & Dragons based on their play experiences in

3828-575: Was a character that had been created by Gygax's childhood friend Don Kaye before Kaye's untimely death in 1975. The fourth, a hero-deity named Kelanen , was developed to illustrate the "principle of advancement of power". Of the ten adventures set in Greyhawk published by TSR before the folio edition, all but one had been written by Gygax. However, the new availability of information about Gygax's campaign world and TSR's desire to make it central to Dungeons & Dragons encouraged many new writers to set their adventures in Greyhawk. This, combined with

3894-565: Was condensed into a short paragraph or two. Gygax realized that some players needed more in-depth information about the motivations and aspirations of each region, and the history of interactions with surrounding regions. With this in mind, Gygax decided to publish a much longer description of each region in Dragon . The first two articles, covering seventeen regions, appeared in the December 1981 and January 1982 issues. Due to his involvement in many other TSR projects, Gygax handed responsibility for completion of this project to Rob Kuntz, who covered

3960-564: Was further explored in The Scarlet Brotherhood (1999), which expanded the Olman pantheon, and newly introduced the Touv people, including their nine gods. Also included in the March 1983 issue of Dragon was an article detailing four unique Greyhawk characters. The first two quasi-deities — Heward and Keoghtom—had been created by Gygax as non-player characters (NPCs). The third, Murlynd ,

4026-401: Was further piqued by the ten Dungeons & Dragons modules set in Greyhawk that were published between 1976 and 1979. Several of Gygax's regular columns in Dragon magazine also mentioned details of his home campaign and characters that inhabited his world. Gygax was surprised when he found out that players wanted to use Greyhawk as their campaign world. Rather than using his own version of

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4092-549: Was much larger than the first and addressed itself to making the World of Greyhawk setting a more detailed and vibrant place". This edition quadrupled the number of pages from the original edition to 128, adding significantly greater detail. One major addition was a pantheon of deities: in addition to the nineteen deities outlined by Gygax in his Dragon article, another thirty-one new deities were added, though only three received full write-ups of their abilities and worshipers. This brought

4158-418: Was organized religion. Since his campaign was largely built around the needs of lower-level characters, he did not think specific deities were necessary, since direct interaction between a god and a low-level character was very unlikely. Some of his players took matters into their own hands, calling upon Norse or Greek gods such as Odin or Zeus , or even Conan's Crom in times of dire need. However, some of

4224-464: Was published in the August 1974 issue of Chicago small press magazine El Conquistador . In the first issue of The Dragon published in June 1976, Gygax prefaced Chapter 1 of his serialized novella The Gnome Cache with a note that the story's setting, Oerth , was very similar to Earth in terms of geography. One facet of culture that Gygax did not address during the first few years of his home campaign

4290-504: Was the most famous dungeon in Oerth, the home campaign world of Gary Gygax. Players in the earliest days of this campaign mostly stayed within Castle Greyhawk's dungeons, but Gygax envisioned the rest of his world as a sort of parallel Earth, and the original Oerth (pronounced 'Oith', as with a Brooklyn accent) looked much like the real-world Earth but filled with imaginary cities and countries. Several years later, when TSR produced

4356-498: Was to be instantly transported to the far side of the world, where they each faced a long solo trek back to the city of Greyhawk. Terik and Tenser managed to catch up to Robilar along the way, and the three journeyed back to Greyhawk together. By this time, a dozen players crowded Gygax's basement every night, with over 20 at times on weekends and the effort needed to plan their adventures took up much of Gygax's spare time. He had been very impressed with Rob Kuntz's imaginative play as

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