Customer Reviews

Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons)

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
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This supplement contains anything and everything you could ever want to know about the city of Greyhawk, the area around Greyhawk, and much of the entire Flaness continent.

It does NOT contain ready-made adventures, so those of you who are looking for a module you can buy and play (like the old days), can forget it. It does, however, contain so much ready-to-use stuff that you could design your own related adventures for decades without running out of ideas.

There is a complete history of the entire continent, then a more focused history on the city itself. The city is then outlined in very fine detail, including the entire political and economic setting (with people), as well as the weather and holiday schedule.

There's enough information here to keep you (as a DM) and your characters busy for years including low-level burial grounds and abandoned castles or city alley intrigue to full-scale orcish wars and dwarven armies. Just be ready to put in the work to flesh out the details once you've decided where you want to direct the party to go!

This is a good addition to the world of Greyhawk campaign setting. More for the updated and conflict resolved history of Oerth and Oerik than for anything really new. Its focus is more on the city of Greyhawk than on the rest of the Flanaess. This is good for starting a campaign, but not if you are somebody who already have long estiblished campaigns going on in the World of Greyhawk.

The author being Roger E. Moore was a wise choice of for this project, as he is responible for much good stuff to come out about the D&D game. He wrote lots of articles about it and was editor of Dragon Magazine for several years as well. He contributed many of the non-human deities to Greyhawk back when Gary Gygax was still manning TSR and activily developing Greyhawk.

Is is good that Greyhawk has once again become the home of the Dungeons and Dragons game.

All in all, a solid product.

However, if you are a long time gammer, much of the information contained within is stuff you already knew and either used, or didn't use. Its one biggest draw-back as I see it is the aceeptace of most of the enforced story lines on it. The greatest stength of the orignal world of greyhawk was that there was no enforced campaign historys. But, you can't just toss all the Greyhawk Wars/From the Ashes stuff either, I guess. Too many people using it.

But then, thats almost a religious issue amoung RPGers. Still, its good that Greyhawk is no longer dead.

I could not agree more with bd (other reviewer) this book contains everything you would ever want to know about the City of Greyhawk and the world around it. But I do not recommend this book to the newbie, only for the fact that it is best used to make your own adventure modules. So if you have some experience with gaming and DMing then I highly recommend this book it will create hours, days, months, and possibly even years of future fun for you and your fellow gamers.

I am running a campaign set in and around the city of Greyhawk, and this particular book has proven to be more useful to me than any of the other Greyhawk accessories, including the boxed set of the City of Greyhawk. The area map is excellent, and the place-by-place descriptions of the different sections of the city are arranged in a very user-friendly manner. All in all, a great book.

Compared to the original Greyhawk boxed set, or even the City of Greyhawk boxed set, this new "return" of Greyhawk is pathetic. TSR killed Greyhawk several years ago, and it seems they are intent on killing it by default again by not releasing quality materials. Fortunately I am an old Greyhawk fan and DM, and have a ton of material to reference and plenty of in-house produced stuff. One who is new to the world will be terribly disappointed. Shame on you TSR/WotC, for doing a disservice to this rich and vibrant campaign.

Have you ever wished that you could have all of the essential information and darkest secrets of the Free City of Greyhawk in one volume, compiled at your fingertips? This giant, 128-page guide (for the DM's eyes only!) gives full details on the people, cultures, shops, sights, dungeons, and arcane magic of the most famous and majestic city in roleplaying. Also includes a gorgeous color poster map of the surrounding regions, a 16-page map booklet, and more! The ultimate reference for a classic Greyhawk campaign.

It appears to me that TSR's attempt at rejuvinating Greyhawk is a pathetic joke. I was really excited when I heard that all of this new material for Greyhawk was being released, so I went out an obtained most of the new stuff (feeling now like I have been burned), oh well. I have noticed one definite thing about all of the new Greyhawk books so far and that is that the artwork is second rate, and the material is all very vague. Can someone tell me why they do not include a new map with this campaign guide? I mean a full size map like the old one Greyhawk had (this would have helped out alot). They give hardly any background (detailed background) about the whole Greyhawk world in this book. I ended up looking through "From the Ashes" and other earlier crusty Greyhawk material to scrape together details and backgrounds of the surrounding areas of Greyhawk. There is plenty of info on the city of Greyhawk itself, but hardly anything else. I started up a small campaign based around the new Greyhawk and it died simply because of how flavorless and bland Greyhawk seems to have become. My players didn't give up, I did. The new Greyhawk to me is painfully boring and dull. There just isn't enough detailed information in this book to build an ongoing, successful campaign. Not unless you want to put ALOT of your own work into it. As of to date, I have to say that Forgotten Realms and Planescape are the best campaigning worlds TSR has put out. Greyhawk is so far behind both of those worlds, it's a shame. Until TSR can show me that they are serious about bringing back Greyhawk and start cranking out more worthy supplements for it, I'll be hanging out in the Realms and in the Planes.