History In most cases, I refer to the  Oerth Journal #1  timeline for details when there are gaps to fill. Oerth is very ancient. Lots of eldritch races lived in the pre-history before the elves began to float to the top some 10-30k years ago. There was a 4e-style Dawn War at some point, before the Gods of Law and the Elemental/Demonic Forces of Chaos (I am undecided on this), where the cosmic status quo was established and started the current Aeon. The elves began to assert themselves sometime in the aftermath of this. Anything before that is unknown even to elves and is basically 'eldritch'. Leave blank to fill in with whatever zany stuff you want. Known Examples: Wind Dukes of Aqaa, The City of Gods. "Prior" to all that was also a 'Mythic' Aeon - Time wasn't quite linear back then, so in many ways this is a lot closer to the present Aeon than other Aeons that exist in linear time. The Dawn War is somehow mixed into this, even though it happens i

This is the first entry in a series on Mythic Greyhawk. Upcoming entries will include Religion & Cosmos and History, Kingdoms & Cultures and what else I end up thinking of. One of my favorite GH illustrations. A baroque wizard sitting on an owlish griffon on top a ruin with an adventurous landscape in the background - somehow the image still has an earthy naturalistic character. All very Greyhawk. M ythic Greyhawk takes the Greyhawk Folio as its base (and looks at the boxed set more often than not) and borrows freely from other sources, whilst discarding and altering just as freely. The starting year is 576 CY, although most lands outside the great kingdom use Oeridian Record, of which the year is 1220. Mythic Greyhawk is a world much like a medieval Europe. The following paragraphs are obvious truths to all its inhabitants: The strange exotica of faraway lands usually more exotic than the tales told of them. All the faerie tales are terrifyingly true.

The original Greyhawk Folio states of itself: "The world of greyhawk is yours now -- Yours to do with as you wish. You can mold new states out of old ones or inflame ancient rivalries into open warfare as you tailor the world to suit the needs of your players." To me, this is a feature of Greyhawk worth more attention. Of course, there is implicit permission to do so with any setting embedded into the very nature of roleplaying, but few settings put it out as their Raison D'Etre and then follow through. As I mentioned  in my previous entry , part of the beauty of Greyhawk is how many things it leaves unsaid. This is what the makers of the boxed set wanted you to see when thinking of Greyhawk The Folio is a scant 55 pages, and was never originally meant to be a fully fleshed out world. It is presented as a skeleton for DMs to  "use as the backdrop of a new campaign without changes; or, as an alternative, city, country or geographical descriptions can be

I've written about Greyhawk before without ever telling the story of my own relationship with the setting. I came to it rather late, in the late 90s when it had been long discontinued (even the From the Ashes  reboot had been discontinued), at a time where I considered myself savvy in the worlds of Dragonlance (my first D&D world), Forgotten Realms (cool things in there, but why is it that  popular?), Dark Sun and Ravenloft, and the only thing I knew of Greyhawk was as the red-headed stepchild of TSR. My first real encounter with Greyhawk though was through a Danish magazine, SAGA, written back in 1992, that did an "intro to greyhawk" article titled "Greyhawk - The oldest of all worlds" that caught my imagination. Scan of the original article from Saga #14 Click here to read an English translation in pdf This seemed like a setting that had room for all the things I expected from a genuine D&D fantasy setting. More room for medievalism, more k

Into the Unknown  is an Old School game that seeks to blend the Basic & Expert rules and style of play of the '80s with the current 5th edition ruleset of the world's most popular roleplaying game. Get it here in print and pdf! (Also,  Pick up your free character sheet here ) What does the Game have? The game is divided into five digest-sized booklets, optimized for use at the gametable: Book 1: Characters  holds all you need to quickly create a new character (52 pages) Book 2: Playing the Game  has all the essential rules for players to get going (28 pages) Book 3: Magic  is strictly for those players whose characters are spellcasters (54 pages) Book 4: Running the Game  has everything a Game Master needs for running old-school games (85 pages) Book 5: Monsters  holds a selection of ready-to-use critters, complete with morale scores and treasure types (65 pages) These are all laid out and edited to be as quick to scan and find what you are looking for

"You all meet in a tavern" is classic stale D&D fare that no one minds and no one loves. Reading  Martin Kallies' gripe with tavern meetups over on Spriggan's Den  not long after reading  Blackrazor's musing on Luln, the original B/X home base  got me thinking. Let me first re-quote the passage about Luln before we get into what that says about the assumptions of the starting setting: "Composed primarily of persons who have fled Black Eagle Barony, merchants who have come to trade with the Baron, and some non-humans who have left the wilderness, Luln is a base town for adventurers exploring the Haunted Keep, also called Koriszegy Keep and the surrounding land. Somewhat lawless and open, the town can provide most of the basic needs to any group of adventurers. The town is poorly defended, relying on the goodwill and capabilities of both the Baron and the Duke for its defense. Approximately 500 people live in the town." (from Cook/Marsh, page X60)

Having reviewed some oldies in Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk , the time has come for a setting from the 90s. The early 90s saw TSR embark on the most ambitious period of setting creation that hasn't been matches before or since, releasing no less than seven settings in boxed sets with full support in five years. One of them, developed under the working title of "War World" as a setting meant to support the Battlesystem rules, was Dark Sun, released in 1991. Dark Sun has a special place for me personally. It was the first setting I bought that was brand new when I picked it up. Settings like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance all had history by the time I discovered them, but Dark Sun I got to explore from the beginning of it when I picked up the original boxed set at my local game store. Grognard retrospectives typically argue that this period was the start of the nadir for old school gaming as sandbox exploration, resource management and deadly encounters set in