Hall of Fame: City of Greyhawk boxed set

As a young Dungeon Master in the early 90’s I frequently ran parties through the wonderful campaign setting of Greyhawk. Sure, from time to time we found adventure in the macabre land of Ravenloft or ran through Dragonlance as it burned, but our heart really belonged to Greyhawk. Nowadays I am strictly a homebrew setting type of DM, but there is one aspect of Greyhawk that I refer to from time to time. The City of Greyhawk boxed set is probably the most useful, thorough, and cool campaign supplement that I can possibly imagine. It came out in 1989 and I still find it to be extremely relevant and, despite the fact that I have read it about a thousand times, I always find something in it that I can throw into an adventure.

For a single supplement it really contained a lot of information. Inside of the box the eager DM finds waiting for him two books, four very large maps, and an entire series of short modules. The two books are really the heart of the boxed set; Greyhawk: Gem of the Flanaess details the actual city, while Greyhawk: Folk, Feuds, and Factions is all about the inhabitants of Oerth’s primary city. As a teenager I was really just beginning to hone the craft of creating adventures for players, most of the time they were one shot style games that had little to do with the previous sessions. The characters would continue and sometimes NPC’s would resurface, but the idea of actually having the PC’s inhabit a world that lived and moved not only around the PC’s, but even in their absence, was not just a novel idea but one that may have been over the head of a thirteen year old. The Greyhawk boxed set changed all of that for me. For the first time I saw a game world that existed outside of a module, that is the citizens of Greyhawk had lives that they lived that had nothing to do with the invasion of evil giants or the secret slavers latest attempt to capture unsuspecting folks. It made them so much more real, and in turn really contributed to the world that the PC’s were looting their way through. Something clicked with me and I continue to design worlds like this to this day.

I have a confession. I thought that the maps were so cool that I had one hanging on my wall as a poster. I was 27. Kidding about the 27 part, but it was hanging in my bedroom for a long time. The four maps are phenomenal. Three of them show the city from the same point of view and scale, but each has a different spin on things. One of them (my poster) has a nice color detail of the city. The buildings are all visible and the city teems with life and action. Another map shows the city with very little details, but all of the buildings and areas are marked with a number and letter, which corresponds to an entry in the Gem of the Flanaess book. I’d gaze longingly at my poster and when a building seemed intriguing to me I would look it up and learn all about it. What’s that weird building that looks like a temple at the foot of the Grand Citadel? Oh, it’s the Lord’s Tomb. It even lists the guards that will typically be there, even some of the jokes that they make when killing time. The third map shows the same view, but reveals the underground of the city. Sewers, secret passages, crypts, and even cisterns! Wow, that is some level of detail. The fourth map places Greyhawk in context with the world around it, which is cool, but why would you ever want to leave Greyhawk?

It’s not just that the boxed set contained so much information, for what is quantity without quality? But the information contained within was top notch. The NPC’s in particular were all well thought out and they all made sense. They were not just one dimensional foils for the PC’s or overly generous benefactors anxious to part with magic items. They had agendas! They had lives! They did things. One of my favorites was the detailed descriptions of Mordenkainen and the Circle of Eight. A group of nine powerful wizards, I had been using their spells for years without knowing a thing about them (for the most part, I had picked up some info here and there). Now I knew everything about them, including their relationships with one another and why they created the types of spells that they did. It was a revelation to my inquisitive mind. I had no idea that Otto was obese. Shocking. I also appreciated how several of the NPC’s were presented at several stages of their career, making it easy to drop them into any campaign. One of my favorites was Varmai Zendeihei, a young lawful good warrior working to benefit the folks of Greyhawk. Over time she discovers a paired of cursed bracers created by Vecna and slowly transforms over time into an evil, trusted agent of Iuz. The book contains stats for her various incarnations and levels of power over different points in time.

The adventure cards that came with the book were also excellent and great for a night of adventuring, usually on the outskirts of the city. Inside the box are 23 of these adventures. They were short (all the info was on both sides of a single piece of paper) and usually quirky and compelling. They range from simple (watching over a shop while the keeper is out of town on business) to deadly (retrieving a broken staff from the crypt of a lich). My personal favorite was Vote for the Goat, in which the party is hired to provide protection for a goat that is running for political office. Great stuff all around.

Of all the TSR products of my youth, the City of Greyhawk boxed set may be my favorite. Certainly the one with the most impact. It just seemed so limitless to me in it’s scope and ambition, and what was capable with a game of D&D. Do they still make things like this today? I have no idea. I hope so. I was at the bookstore the other day and noticed the obscene amount of 4th edition material that is out there, perhaps there is another City of Greyhawk out there somewhere. I would think not though. Flipping through the Greyhawk boxed set one thing that jumps out is the lack of numbers. It is not entry after entry of feats, spells, magic items, and prestige classes. It is about enhancing a game through NPC’s and a rich world to explore, rather than by elevating the power level and providing the PC’s with endless opportunities to specialize their characters.

Complete Mage

I try not to buy D&D books at full price when there are so many readily available used. Because of that I have been slowly adding to my 3.5 collection of material for the last several years and I just got around to purchasing The Complete Mage. I have mixed feelings on it, it’s not awful but certainly isn’t one of the better books. I suspect that power gamers love it since some of the classes (like the Abjurant Champion) are really powerful and the reserve feats are pretty ridiculous.

I really like Warlocks and one of the reasons I got this book was that I knew there was a lot of new material for them in it. The invocations are neat and well balanced, I especially like Otherwordly Whispers and Swimming the Styx. The Warlock prestige classes don’t make too much sense to me. I thought that the big idea behind Warlocks was that they draw their power from non Arcane and Divine sources, but the Eldritch Disciple and Eldritch Theurge are just the opposite. Seems like fluff following mechanics, which is never a happy marriage in my mind. The Abjurant Champion seems a little overpowered, but still decent all around. To me it makes sense that a fighting type would dip into magic for the sake of protection. The only real issue is that they have access to all the wizard spells, maybe they should be limited to abjurations and one or two other schools. I would like to see one in action. My favorite prestige class in the book is the Unseen Seer, a rogue who dabbles in divination magic. But, like the Abjurant Champion, they get access to all schools of magic and only need one level of wizard to get into it. And it advances Sneak Attack (at a slightly lower rate) and throws in some extra abilities. Again, a little overpowered when compared to something like the Arcane Trickster but I really like the flavor of a divination magic wielding rogue.

The heritage feats are fun; I dig the idea of characters having some sort of weird ancestry (in this case Fey and Demonic) that comes into play during the game. None of them are all that powerful but they could add a lot roleplaying wise. On the other hand, the reserve feats are just absurd. As long as a spellcaster keeps a certain spell in reserve they are basically given some sort of power that they can use all the time. Come on, like wizards need more options. Example: Wind Guided Arrows allows the caster to use an immediate action (it doesn’t even have to be their turn!) to give a +2 (for allies) or a -2 (for enemies) to any attack rolls with a ranged weapon. All they have to do is have an air spell of 3rd level or higher available to them. Wow. Others allow for summoning creatures, shooting lightning, seeing in the dark, and a whole host of stuff. One of the only real drawbacks to being a spellcaster is running out of spells. In a way this removes that because it allows the use of some other powers without burning up spell slots. So now, in a lesser encounter, the wizard has no need to use up a spell. They can save everything for the serious encounters. Boo.

The book also has a bunch of advice for building different types of casters, which is sort of helpful but actually the part of the book that I found to be the most enjoyable on purely a reading level. I skimmed a lot of the book, but I think I read the entire Arcane Archetypes section. It was practical and well written enough, though it sort of steers the player into the realm of power gaming. I haven’t really spent any time yet with the new spells in the book so I shouldn’t comment on them.

If you are real into arcane magic I would think that this book is nice to have, though not essential. Realistically I don’t see a ton of the material in here finding it’s way into my campaigns. Probably some NPC’s will employ a couple of the feats or the prestige classes. I wish I had this for the Warlock NPC who had been badgering the PC’s for a couple of months, but now he is dead and never got to benefit from it. Sucks for him.

Hall of Fame: 2nd Edition Complete Book of Thieves

I can’t even begin to think of the hours of my life that I have spent reading Dungeons and Dragons books. Thousands at least. And I don’t want any of them back. They’ve all been well spent as far as I’m concerned. Since I’ve been about ten years old they’ve been my default entertainment the way that others use television. I’ve owned and read well over a hundred different role playing books, but if I had to pick a favorite of all time it would be the 2nd Edition Complete Book of Thieves. To me, this book was the best. It had the perfect mixture of new statistical information, as well as really interesting ideas on running campaigns that used thieves, how to create thieves guilds that made sense, and cool new items. But more than anything it was really well written and the subject matter didn’t seem that far fetched and rammed down my throat. Perhaps I was gullible in my youth, but I felt like I really needed to have this book because it was so relevant. Now I feel that most of the books are written just to be a product that can be sold.

Until this book was published classes did not have a great range of options available to them. If you had a 5th level thief, he probably didn’t look that different from your buddies 5th level thief. But this book presented the ideas of kits, which were essentially ways that you could customize your thief to fit into a certain type of character. (Disclaimer: All of the Complete books had these and I don’t know what order they came out in, so I can’t say for sure that the concept was introduced in this book. But it was to me.) Now maybe your thief is more an acrobatic Swashbuckler with the skills to match, while your friend has rolled up a sneaky Cat Burglar for himself. I loved it. I think I probably rolled up characters for everyone of the two dozen or so kits in the book. Of course, barely any of them ever saw the light of day, but such is the plight of a longtime DM. This was definitely the precursor to the advanced skill system and prestige classes of 3.0/3.5.

I couldn’t wait to find ways to get new items like the housebreaker harness, face black, and listening cones into my campaigns. Sure it may have been weird that everyone in town walked around with a sword hidden inside of a cane, but it was cool to me. I still remember some of the NPC’s presented in the book, and it’s been years since I have read it. And the art was excellent. I’m pretty sure it contained that awesome painting of the thief luring someone into an alley with some jewelry, while a knife wielding gnoll lurked in the shadows.

The writing in the book was engaging and really the emphasis of the subject, the numbers and rules all followed suit after the text established the tone. Maybe that doesn’t make a ton of sense, but it’s what really carried the book. For example, the writers came up with the idea of the Thug, a kit who was more focused on the brutal, physical aspect of being a thief. They thought of what they wanted him to be and then wrote up some rules around that. I feel like the inverse is probably true now. A designer has an idea for a power and then tries to find a way to incorporate it into the game. How else could the Green Star Adept possibly come about? In the end the game benefited by having a type of character that could exist in a game world. D&D is first and foremost a role playing game, not a roll playing game and this book nailed that concept.