Early development In the late 1960s,
Gary Gygax, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.
Home campaign (1972–1979) As Gygax and Arneson worked to develop and publish the rules for
Dungeons & Dragons through
TSR, Gygax continued to design and present 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, 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 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: ::Before the rules for
D&D were published, "Old Greyhawk Castle" was 13 levels deep. The first level was a simple maze of rooms and corridors, for none of the "participants" had ever played such a game before. The second level had two unusual items, a Nixie pool and a fountain of snakes. The third featured a torture chamber and small cells and prison rooms. The fourth was a level of crypts and undead. The fifth was centered around a strange font of black fire and gargoyles. The sixth was a repeating maze with dozens of wild hogs... in inconvenient spots, naturally backed up by appropriate numbers of Wereboars. The seventh was centered around a circular labyrinth and a street of masses of ogres. The eighth through tenth levels were caves and caverns featuring Trolls, giant insects and a transporter nexus with an evil Wizard (with a number of tough associates) guarding it. The eleventh level was the home of the most powerful wizard in the castle: He had Balrogs as servants. The remainder of the level was populated by Martian White Apes, except the sub-passage system underneath the corridors which was full of poisonous critters with no treasure. Level twelve was filled with Dragons. ::The bottom level, number thirteen, contained an inescapable slide which took the players clear through 'to China', from whence they had to return via "Outdoor Adventure". It was quite possible to journey downward by an insidious series of slanting passages which began on the second level, but the likelihood of following such a route unknowingly did not become too great until the seventh or eighth level... ::Side levels included a barracks with Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Gnolls continually warring with each other, a museum, a huge arena, an underground lake, a Giant's home, and a garden of fungi. Anyone who made it to the bottom level alive met Zagyg, 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 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 a player, and appointed Rob to be co-
Dungeon Master of Greyhawk. 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 the time the Greyhawk home campaign drew to a close in 1985, the castle dungeons encompassed more than fifty levels.
Significant player characters 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 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: •
Murlynd: Gary Gygax's friend
Don Kaye created Murlynd for the second-ever session of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign in 1972. Gygax later recalled that
Murlynd was the first attempt by a player to make a creative name for a character; in the early days, most players—including Gygax himself—simply used their own name as a basis for their character's name, e.g. Gary was
Yrag, etc. According to
Robert Kuntz, Murlynd did not get his trademark "six-shooters" in actual play, but they were given to the character in tribute to Don Kaye's love of the
Western genre. Although Gygax did not allow the use of gunpowder in his Greyhawk setting, he made a loophole for Don Kaye by ruling that Murlynd actually carried two magical wands that made loud noises and delivered small but deadly missiles. His name is used for the
Unearthed Arcana item, ''Murlynd's Spoon''. •
Robilar: Robilar was a fighter belonging to Rob Kuntz. Like Murlynd, Robilar was also created for the second-ever session beneath Castle Greyhawk in 1972, rolled up on Gygax's kitchen table. Gygax suggested to Kuntz the name of Robilar, after a minor character in Gygax's novella
The Gnome Cache. Because Kuntz was a constant player, Robilar rapidly gained power and possessions. As the city of Greyhawk was developed, he also became the secret owner of the Green Dragon Inn in the city of Greyhawk, where he kept tabs on happenings in the city. Kuntz quickly grew impatient with play when it involved more than a couple of players, and often played solo adventures one-on-one with Gygax. Robilar was not only the first to reach the 13th and bottom level of Gygax's Greyhawk dungeons, but on the way, he was also responsible for freeing nine demi-gods (whom Gygax revived a decade later as some of the first deities of Greyhawk:
Iuz,
Ralishaz,
Trithereon,
Erythnul,
Olidammara,
Heironeous,
Celestian,
Hextor, and
Obad-Hai). Robilar was also the first to enter Gygax's
Temple of Elemental Evil, and conquered it completely. Robilar also freed the demoness Zuggtmoy from her prison at the centre of the Temple. Kuntz later related that Gygax was very dismayed that his masterpiece dungeon had been destroyed by a single adventurer, and as punishment, Gygax had an army pursue Robilar back to his castle, which he had to abandon. Robilar also lost possession of the Green Dragon Inn. •
Tenser: Tenser was a wizard played by Gygax's son Ernie. In the earliest days of Greyhawk, Ernie often gamed with Rob Kuntz (Robilar) and Terry Kuntz (Terik). At one point, using their combined forces of loyal henchmen, the three controlled access to the first level of the Greyhawk dungeons while they ransacked the lower levels. Tenser became the second character to reach the thirteenth (and bottom, at the time) level of the Greyhawk dungeons, when he noticed that Robilar was missing and went in search of him. Gary Gygax included the name
Tenser in the names of two spells, ''Tenser's floating disc
and Tenser's transformation''. •
Terik (or Teric) was a character created by Terry Kuntz. Terik often adventured with Tenser and Robilar in the days when the three controlled the first level of the dungeons of Greyhawk. and Gygax often referred to Yrag's various adventures in columns and interviews.
Yrag is simply
Gary spelled backwards. •
Mordenkainen: This was perhaps Gygax's most famous character, and also his favorite. Mordenkainen was created in early 1973, and his name was drawn from Finnish mythology. Due to constant play, often with Rob Kuntz as DM, Gygax advanced Mordenkainen into a powerful character. Gygax never revealed exactly how powerful Mordenkainen was, simply stating that the wizard had "twenty-something levels". Even years after he last played Mordenkainen, he would not disclose any of Mordenkainen's powers or possessions. Various spells from first edition bear his name, such as ''Mordenkainen's faithful hound
, Mordenkainen's lucubration
, and Mordenkainen's sword''. •
Bigby: Bigby started life as an evil low-level wizard non-player character in Rob Kuntz's dungeons of Greyhawk. Gary Gygax, playing Mordenkainen, managed to subdue him, and forced Bigby to become his servant. After a long time and several adventures, Mordenkainen managed to convince Bigby to leave his evil ways behind, and Kuntz ruled that Bigby had changed from an enemy to a loyal henchman, and therefore Gygax could take over Bigby as a player character. Thereafter, Gygax developed Bigby into a powerful wizard second only to Mordenkainen, and used his name to describe a series of
hand spells, e.g. ''Bigby's crushing hand
and Bigby's grasping hand''. For a time after this, Rob Kuntz ruled that all the names of Mordenkainen's future henchmen had to rhyme with Bigby. This resulted in Zigby the dwarf; Rigby the cleric; Sigby Griggbyson the fighter; Bigby's apprentice, Nigby; and Digby, Mordenkainen's new apprentice who replaced Bigby. •
Melf: Melf was an elven character created by Gary Gygax's son Luke. Gary Gygax borrowed Melf's name for the spell ''Melf's acid arrow''. •
Rary: Rary was a wizard created by
Brian Blume and played only until he reached the 3rd level, at which point Blume retired him, having reached his objective, which was to be able to call his character "Medium Rary". Gygax borrowed the name for the spells ''Rary's mnemonic enhancer
and Rary's telepathic bond''. •
Otto: Otto, like Bigby, started life as an evil non-player character wizard in the dungeons of Greyhawk. Tenser and Robilar defeated him in combat, and when given a choice of which master to serve, Otto chose to serve Robilar, thereby becoming a character controlled by Robilar's creator, Rob Kuntz. Thereafter, Otto accompanied Robilar on many adventures, including Robilar's destruction of the Temple of Elemental Evil. After three years of game time, the result was the Obsidian Citadel, an octagonal castle which housed the Circle of Eight and their armies. After Gygax was ousted from
TSR,
Carl Sargent and Rik Rose remolded Gygax's old "Circle of Eight" in
The City of Greyhawk boxed set into a new plot device. Instead of a group of eight companions belonging to Gygax, who sallied forth from an impregnable bastion to fight evil, the Circle became eight wizards brought together by Gygax's own creation now owned by TSR, Mordenkainen. Game designer
Ken Rolston described this new Circle of Eight as "a powerful and influential local organization of wizards".
Wolfgang Baur found the Circle of Eight a small but knowledgable organization, central to the mythos of the
Greyhawk setting, with all its members being important.
Greyhawk firsts The first publication to mention Greyhawk Gary Gygax wrote a short story titled "The Expedition Into the Black Reservoir", subtitled "A Dungeon Adventure at Greyhawk Castle", which was published in the August 1974 issue of Chicago small press magazine
El Conquistador.
The first mention of Oerth 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.
The first deities of Greyhawk One facet of culture that Gygax did not address during the first few years of his home campaign 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 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 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.
The first Greyhawk novel 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 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.
The first Greyhawk adventures published by TSR 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 the world of Greyhawk: •
Lost Caverns of Tsojconth (1976), republished in 1982 as
S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth •
S1 Tomb of Horrors (1978) •
G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (1978) 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 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 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 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.
Development of geography Rather than using his own version of 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. 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 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, 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 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.
Publication TSR originally intended to publish
The World of Greyhawk (TSR 9025) 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 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 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 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.
More information about every political region The folio edition had thirty two pages, and information about each region 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 the remaining forty three regions in the March, July and September 1982 issues.
Deities of Greyhawk 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 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 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 was further explored in
The Scarlet Brotherhood (1999), which expanded the Olman pantheon, and newly introduced the
Touv people, including their nine gods.
Non-player characters of Greyhawk 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, 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".
TSR Greyhawk adventures published after the folio edition 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 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: •
S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (Gary Gygax, 1980) •
A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity (David Cook, 1980) •
A2 ''Secret of the Slavers' Stockade'' ( Harold Johnson & Tom Moldvay, 1981) •
A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords (Allen Hammack, 1981 ) •
A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (Lawrence Schick, 1981) •
Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (David C. Sutherland III & Gary Gygax, 1980) which is usually called the
Greyhawk boxed set to differentiate it from other editions. According to game designer
Jim Bambra, "the second edition was much larger than the first and addressed itself to making the World of Greyhawk setting a more detailed and vibrant place". Over the next few years, he planned to unveil other areas of the continent of Oerik, giving each new area the same in-depth treatment of history, geography, and politics as had been accorded the Flanaess. Gygax had also mapped out the other hemisphere of Oerth in his personal notes. Part of this would be Gygax's work, but Len Lakofka and
François Froideval had also created material that Gygax wanted to place on Oerth.
Frank Mentzer, Creative Consultant at TSR at the time, wrote four
RPGA tournament adventures taken from his home campaign setting of
Aquaria (published by TSR as the first four of the R-series modules: R1
To the Aid of Falx, R2
The Investigation of Hydell, R3
The Egg of the Phoenix, and R4 ''
Doc's Island). Mentzer envisioned them as the first part of a new Aqua-Oeridian'' campaign set somewhere on Oerth outside of the Flanaess. However, by this time, Gygax was in Hollywood on a semi-permanent basis, approving scripts for the Saturday morning
Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series and trying to land a deal for a
D&D film. Not only was Gygax's own output of Greyhawk-related materials greatly reduced, but the company began to shift its focus and resources away from Greyhawk to a new campaign setting called
Dragonlance. (TSR, 1985); cover art by
Clyde Caldwell. The first
Greyhawk Adventures novel, and the first featuring "Gord the Rogue". The success of the Dragonlance series of modules and books pushed aside the World of Greyhawk setting, as TSR concentrated on expanding and defining the world of
Krynn.
Greyhawk modules In the two years after the Greyhawk boxed set appeared, TSR published eight adventures set in Greyhawk. Five were written or co-written by Gygax, and the other three were from TSR's United Kingdom division: •
EX1 Dungeonland (Gary Gygax, 1983) •
EX2 Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (Gary Gygax, 1983) Both of the EX adventures, although nominally set in Greyhawk, transported characters through a planar gate into an alternate reality. •
UK1 Beyond the Crystal Cave (Dave Brown, Tom Kirby &
Graeme Morris, 1983) •
UK2 The Sentinel (Graeme Morris, 1983) •
UK3 The Gauntlet (Graeme Morris, 1984) •
WG5 ''Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure'' (Robert Kuntz & Gary Gygax, 1984) •
WG6 Isle of the Ape (Gary Gygax, 1985) •
T1–4 The Temple of Elemental Evil (Gary Gygax & Frank Mentzer, 1985)
Dragon articles From 1983 to 1985, the only notable supplement for the Greyhawk world was a five-part article by Len Lakofka in the June–October and December 1984 issues of
Dragon that detailed the Suel gods who had been briefly mentioned in the boxed set. In the December 1984 issue, Gygax mentioned clerics of non-human races and indicated that the twenty four demihuman and humanoid deities that had been published in the February–June 1982 issues of
Dragon were now permitted in Greyhawk; this increased the number of Greyhawk deities from fifty to seventy four. Other than those articles, Greyhawk was only mentioned in passing in three other issues until Gygax's "Gord the Rogue" short story in the August 1985 issue
Dragon. Gygax then provided some errata for the boxed set in the September 1985 issue, which was the last mention of the Greyhawk world in
Dragon for almost two years.
Gygax departs Shortly after the release of the boxed set, Gygax discovered that while he had been in Hollywood, TSR had run into serious financial difficulties. Returning to Lake Geneva, Gygax managed to get TSR back on firm financial footing, but different visions of TSR's future caused a power struggle within the company, and Gygax was forced out of TSR on December 31, 1985.
Greyhawk without Gygax (1986–1987) After Gygax left TSR, the continued development of Greyhawk became the work of many writers and creative minds. Rather than continuing forward with Gygax's plan for an entire planet, the setting was never expanded beyond the Flanaess, nor would other authors' work be linked to unexplored areas of the continent Oerik. According to Gygax, TSR's stewardship turned Greyhawk into something very different from what he had envisioned. In 1986, in the months following Gygax's ousting, TSR turned away from development of Greyhawk and focused its energies on a new campaign setting called
Forgotten Realms. In 1986 and 1987, only three Greyhawk modules were released,
A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords,
S1-4 Realms of Horror and
GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders, all being collections of previously published modules rather than new material.
Greyhawk novels continue without Gord the Rogue Gygax's novel
Saga of Old City, released in November 1985, and
Artifact of Evil, released two months after Gygax's departure from TSR, proved to be popular titles, and in 1987, TSR hired
Rose Estes to continue the series, albeit without Gord the Rogue, to whom Gygax had retained all rights. From 1987 to 1989, Estes produced five more novels under the
Greyhawk Adventures banner:
Master Wolf,
The Price of Power,
The Demon Hand,
The Name of the Game, and
The Eyes Have It. A sixth book,
Dragon in Amber, appeared in 1990 book catalogs, but was never written, and the series was discontinued.
The dungeons of Greyhawk revealed In its 1986 Summer Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog, TSR had listed a new Greyhawk adventure called WG7
Shadowlords, a high-level adventure to be written by Gary Gygax and
Skip Williams. This adventure was canceled after Gygax left TSR, and the catalog number WG7 was reassigned to a new adventure,
Castle Greyhawk, released in 1988. It was the first new Greyhawk adventure in three years, but it had nothing to do with Gygax's original Castle Greyhawk. Instead, it was a compilation of twelve humorous dungeon levels, each one written by a freelance author. The puns and jokes often referenced modern culture—
the Amazing Driderman,
King Burger,
Bugsbear Bunny, and the crew of
Star Trek—and the module also included an appearance by Gygax's Mordenkainen in a film studio.
Greyhawk revived (1988–1990) By 1988, with the first series of
Dragonlance adventures drawing to a close, and
Forgotten Realms doing very well, TSR turned back to
Greyhawk. In the January 1988 issue of
Dragon, Jim Ward - one of the original players in the dungeons of
Greyhawk, creator of the wizard Drawmij, and now working for TSR in the post-Gygax era - requested player-input about what should be included in a hardcover sourcebook for
Greyhawk. He received over five hundred letters in response. In the August 1988 issue of
Dragon, he outlined the ideas from readers that had been included, The following year, in conjunction with this boxed set, TSR published a trilogy of
World of Greyhawk Adventure (WGA) modules by Richard and Anne Brown - WGA1 ''
Falcon's Revenge, WGA2 Falconmaster, and WGA3 Flames of the Falcon
- set in the city, and centered on a mysterious villain called The Falcon. A fourth WGA module, WGA4 Vecna Lives!
by David Cook, was published the same year, and featured the first appearance by Vecna, formerly a mythic lich in Dungeons & Dragons'' lore, now promoted to demigod-status.
Modules released under the Greyhawk Adventures banner TSR also released five new
World of Greyhawk (WG) adventures, which used the
Greyhawk Adventures banner: •
WG8 Fate of Istus (Various authors, 1989) •
WG9 Gargoyle (Dave Collins & Skip Williams, 1989) •
WG10 ''Child's Play'' (Jean Rabe & Skip Williams, 1989) •
WG11 Puppets (Vince Garcia & Bruce Rabe, 1989) •
WG12 Vale of the Mage (Jean Rabe, 1989) In 1990, TSR also published
WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins, a module and sourcebook about Castle Greyhawk by TSR writers Blake Mobley and
Timothy Brown. Although this was not the Castle Greyhawk of Gygax and Kuntz, it was the first serious attempt to publish details of the castle.
A new vision of the Flanaess (1991–1997) Game designer
Rick Swan noted the apparent lack of a central vision for Greyhawk material, describing the Greyhawk setting up to this point as "a crazy quilt, where odd-shaped scraps of material are randomly sewn together and everybody hopes for the best. How else to explain a setting that encompasses everything from the somber A1-4
Scourge of the Slave Lords adventure to the King Kong-inspired WG6
Isle of the Ape to the cornball humor of WG7
Castle Greyhawk? It makes for an interesting mess, but it's a mess nonetheless...
The City of Greyhawk [is] the most credible attempt at smoothing out the rough spots". In 1990, TSR decided that the decade-old world of Greyhawk needed to be refreshed. Rather than follow through with Gary Gygax's plan to develop new regions beyond the boundaries of the
Flanaess, the decision was made to stay within the Flanaess and reinvigorate it by moving the campaign time line forward a decade, from 576 CY to 586 CY. The main story vehicle would be a war fomented by an evil half-demon named Iuz that involved the entire Flanaess, which would allow TSR to radically alter the pattern of regions, alliances, and rulers from Gygax's original setting.
The Greyhawk Wars In order to move players from Gygax's familiar
World of Greyhawk to their new vision, TSR planned a trilogy of modules that would familiarize players with events and conditions leading up to the coming war, and then take them through the war itself. Once players completed the war via the three modules, a new boxed set would be published to introduce the new storyline and the new Flanaess. Two
World of Greyhawk Swords modules,
WGS1 Five Shall Be One by
Carl Sargent and
WGS2 Howl from the North by
Dale Henson, were released in 1991. These described events leading up to the war. The third module was reworked into
Greyhawk Wars, a strategy
war game that led players through the events, strategies, and alliances of the actual war. A booklet included with the game, ''Greyhawk Wars Adventurer's Book'', described the event of the war. In 582 CY (six years after Gygax's original setting of 576 CY), a regional conflict started by Iuz gradually widened until it was a war that affected almost every nation in the Flanaess. A peace treaty was signed in the city of Greyhawk two years later, which is why the conflict became known as the
Greyhawk Wars. On the day of the treaty-signing, Rary—once a minor spellcaster created and then discarded by Brian Blume, but now elevated by TSR to the Circle of Eight—attacked his fellow Circle members, aided and abetted by Robilar. After the attack, Tenser and
Otiluke were dead, while Robilar and Rary fled to the deserts of the
Bright Lands. Rob Kuntz, original creator of Robilar, objected to this storyline, since he believed that Robilar would never attack his old adventuring companion Mordenkainen. Although Kuntz did not own the creative rights to Robilar and no longer worked at TSR, he unofficially suggested an alternate storyline that Robilar had been visiting another plane and in his absence, a clone or evil twin of Robilar was responsible for the attack.
From the Ashes In 1992, after the two
World of Greyhawk Swords prequel modules and the
Greyhawk Wars game had been on the market for some months, TSR released the new Greyhawk setting,
From the Ashes, a boxed set primarily written by
Carl Sargent that described the
Flanaess in the aftermath of the
Greyhawk Wars. It contained a large 4-color hex map of the area around the city of Greyhawk; two full-color, 32"x21" fold-out poster maps of the continent (east and west), and 20
quick adventure cards, and two 96-page books. The first book,
Atlas of the Flanaess, was a replacement for Gygax's original
World of Greyhawk boxed set, with some changes. Many human gods from previous editions were not included, although one new demigod,
Mayaheine, was added. This had the net effect of reducing the total number of human deities from fifty to twenty-eight. Deities of other races were increased from twenty-four to thirty-eight, but unlike the full descriptions that were given to the human gods, these were simply listed by name. Like Gygax's original boxed set, each region was given a two to three hundred word description, although some details included in the older edition, such as trade goods, total population and racial mixes, were not included in this edition. A number of regions—Ahlissa, Almor, Medegia and South Province—no longer existed after the Wars or had been folded into other regions. One new region—the Olman Islands—was detailed. This had the net effect of reducing the total number of regions from sixty to fifty eight. 's map of the Flanaess included in Gygax's setting was reproduced as an 11"x17" black-and-white map printed on the inside cover of the
Atlas. The second book, the
Campaign Book, was designed to supplement, rather than replace, the four-year-old
City of Greyhawk boxed set. It included updates to the city and its environs, and gave details of some new non-player characters and possible adventure hooks. In Gygax's setting, the major conflict had been between the Great Kingdom and the lands that were trying to free themselves from the evil overking. In Sargent's world, the Great Kingdom storyline was largely replaced by the major new conflict between the land of Iuz and the regions that surrounded it. Southern lands outside of Iuz's were threatened by the
Scarlet Brotherhood, while other countries had been invaded by monsters or taken over by agents of evil. Overall, the vision was of a darker world where good folk were being swamped by a tide of evil. Game designer Rick Swan concurred with this multi-step approach, writing that
Greyhawk Wars "took another step in the right direction by shaking things up with a much-needed dose of epic conflict... veteran designer Carl Sargent has continued the overhaul with the ambitious
From the Ashes. By combining heroic tradition with elements of dark fantasy, he's come up with a Greyhawk campaign that is both familiar and refreshingly unexpected". The boxed set was supported by the publication of two new source books in 1993, also written by Sargent.
WGR4 The Marklands provided information about the good realms of Furyondy, Highfolk, and Nyrond that opposed Iuz, while
WGR5 Iuz the Evil detailed information about the lands of Iuz, and emphasized the prominent new role that Iuz now played in the world order. In addition, a number of adventures were also published, as much to provide more source material as for adventure: •
WGQ1 Patriots of Ulek was the first module published after
From the Ashes, and advanced the storyline in
Ulek, threatened by invasion from Turrosh Mak of the
Pomarj. •
WGR2 Treasures of Greyhawk, by Jack Barker,
Roy Rowe, Louis Prosperi, and Tom Prusa, was a loosely connected series of mini-adventures—for instance, exploring Bigby's home, travelling to the demiplane called The Great Maze of Zagyg, and trading riddles with a
sphinx. Each mini-adventure focussed on a unique treasure in the Flanaess. •
WGR3 Rary the Traitor by
Anthony Pryor was both an adventure module and a source book about the
Bright Lands, the new home of Rary and Robilar following their murder of Tenser and Otiluke. •
WGR6 The City of Skulls, by Carl Sargent, and
WGM1 Border Watch, by Paul T. Riegel, were modules highlighting the struggle between
Furyondy and the lands of Iuz. As Gygax had done ten years before, Sargent also used the pages of
Dragon to promote his new world. He was working on a new source book,
Ivid the Undying, and excerpted parts of it in the April, June and August 1994 issues.
TSR drops Greyhawk In late 1994, TSR canceled Sargent's new book just as it was being readied for publication, and stopped work on all other Greyhawk projects. Nothing more about Greyhawk was ever published by TSR, with one exception: in May 1995, a
Dragon column devoted to industry gossip noted that the manuscript of
Ivid the Undying had been released by TSR as a computer text file. Using this file, several people have reconstructed the book as it might have appeared in published form. By the end of 1996, TSR found itself heavily in debt and unable to pay its printers. Just as bankruptcy in 1997 seemed inevitable,
Wizards of the Coast stepped in and, fueled by income from its
collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, bought TSR and all its properties.
White Plume Mountain,
Descent into the Depths of the Earth,
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks,
The Temple of Elemental Evil,
Queen of the Demonweb Pits,
Keep on the Borderlands, and
The Tomb of Horrors. In an attempt to attract players of other
D&D settings, WotC released
Die, Vecna, Die!, by Bruce R. Cordell and Steve Miller, a three-part adventure tying Greyhawk to the
Ravenloft and
Planescape campaign settings. Published in 2000, it was the last adventure to be written for
D&D's 2nd edition rules.
Third edition (2000–2008) In the editions of
Dungeons & Dragons published by TSR, the setting of the game had not been specifically defined—
Dungeon Masters were expected to either create a new world, or purchase a commercial campaign setting such as Greyhawk or
Forgotten Realms. In 2000, after two years of work and
playtesting, WotC released the
3rd edition of D&D, and defined a default setting for the game for the first time. Under third edition rules, unless a Dungeon Master specifically chose to use a different campaign setting, his or her
D&D game would be set in the world of Greyhawk.
Living Greyhawk '' (
Wizards of the Coast, 2000), an updated sourcebook for the campaign setting. With the release of the 3rd edition of
Dungeons & Dragons,
RPGA—the organized play division of WotC—announced a new massively shared
living campaign,
Living Greyhawk, modeled on a 2nd edition campaign called
Living City. Although
Living City was relatively successful, RPGA wanted to expand the scope of their new campaign—instead of one city as a setting, the new campaign would involve thirty different regions of Greyhawk, each specifically keyed to a particular country, state, or province of the real world. Each region would produce its own adventures, and in addition to these, RPGA would provide worldwide
Core adventures. To provide the level of detail needed for such a venture, WotC published the
Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, the most in-depth examination of the world of Greyhawk ever produced, and the official starting point for not only the campaign, but also for all home campaigns from that point forward. Concurrent with the release of the 3rd edition ''
Player's Handbook, Living Greyhawk
debuted at Gen Con 2000 with three Core
adventures: COR1-1 Dragon Scales at Morningtide
, by Sean K. Reynolds; COR1-2 The Reckoning
, by Sean Flaherty and John Richardson; and COR1-3 River Of Blood
, by Erik Mona. WotC also released The Fright at Tristor'' by Keith Polster (2000), designed as an introductory adventure to the Living Greyhawk campaign world. Unlike previous campaign settings, in which the calendar was frozen at a point chosen by the author, the
Living Greyhawk calendar did advance one year in game time for every calendar year in real time: the campaign started in 591 CY (2001) and ended in 598 CY (2008), at which point over a thousand adventures had been produced for an audience of over ten thousand players. During this time, the campaign administrators incorporated most of WotC's new rules into the Greyhawk world, only excising material they felt would unbalance the campaign. In 2005, the administrators incorporated every deity ever mentioned in official Greyhawk material previous to the
D&D 3rd edition, as well as all deities mentioned in the new 3rd edition source books. This tripled the number of deities in the campaign from about seventy to almost two hundred. Despite the massive amount of world and storyline development, none of the
Living Greyhawk storylines or changes to the setting were considered official, since the regional adventure modules were produced by volunteers; this material only received a cursory vetting by RPGA campaign administrators, and no review by WotC personnel.
Wizards of the Coast Greyhawk releases Despite the popularity of the
Living Greyhawk campaign, Wizards of the Coast did not produce much material for Greyhawk after the 25th anniversary
Return to... series of adventures and the
Living Greyhawk Gazetteer: •
The Standing Stone, written by
John D. Rateliff (2001), had several minor references to the Greyhawk setting. •
Red Hand of Doom, written by James Jacob (2006), was not set in a specific campaign world, but did contain instructions for where to set the adventure within Greyhawk,
Forgotten Realms, and
Eberron. •
Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk by Erik Mona, James Jacobs, and Jason Bulmahn (2007), was an update to TSR's 1990 release
WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins. Otherwise, Wizards of the Coast left the development of the Greyhawk world to RPGA's
Living Greyhawk campaign and concentrated on producing new source books of expansion material for the core rules of
D&D.
Fourth and fifth edition of D&D (2008–present) Fourth edition At
Gen Con 2007, WotC announced that the
4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons would be released the following spring, and Greyhawk would no longer be the default campaign setting under the new rules system. For this reason,
Living Greyhawk was not converted to the new rules system; instead, it was brought to a conclusion at
Origins 2008. In 2009, WotC released
The Village of Hommlet, by Andy Collins, which updated Gary Gygax's original 1st edition
Village of Hommlet to the 4th edition rules for characters of 4th level. It was not available for purchase, but was sent as a reward for those who joined the RPGA. In March 2013 the adventure by Collins was reprinted in issue 212 of
Dungeon, but now for characters of 3rd to 5th level.
Fifth edition When the ''
Player's Handbook for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons
was released in 2014, several references to the world of Greyhawk appeared throughout the descriptions of various races and classes, and a partial list of Greyhawk deities appeared in the book. The Monster Manual, the second released book of the 5th edition, did not include any direct references to Greyhawk but did mention Explictica Defilus from Against the Cult of the Reptile God in the Naga entry, and tied the creation of ghouls to Doresain, the "King of Ghouls", from the Greyhawk adventure Kingdom of the Ghouls
by Wolfgang Baur from Dungeon'' #70. In April 2017,
Tales from the Yawning Portal was released. It contained seven older modules now reprinted and updated for the fifth edition of
Dungeons & Dragons. Four out of the seven were old Greyhawk modules:
Against the Giants,
The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan,
Tomb of Horrors, and
White Plume Mountain. In addition the book also featured advice how to place the other adventures within the Greyhawk setting, or how to change the name-giving tavern Yawning Portal in Waterdeep from the Forgotten Realms into the Green Dragon Inn from the City of Greyhawk. In May 2019,
Ghosts of Saltmarsh was released for the fifth edition of
Dungeons & Dragons. The book compiles new versions of classic adventures that are located around Saltmarsh in Greyhawk (
The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh,
Danger at Dunwater, and
The Final Enemy), or are generally naval themed. In May 2024, it was announced that the updated ''
Dungeon Master's Guide would feature Greyhawk as a sample campaign setting, and that prominent characters from the Greyhawk campaign setting would feature heavily in the art of all three updated core rulebooks. In December 2024, Wizards of the Coast announced Legends of Greyhawk as a new convention campaign which debuted at MagicCon: Chicago in February 2025. However, while this campaign is inspired by "past and current organized play campaigns", it uses separate rules from the standard D&D Adventurers League program. At Gen Con, in July 2025, they announced an expansion of Legends of Greyhawk
as their "newest D&D organized play campaign" with various premier organizers assigned locations within the Greyhawk setting to create adventures for. Samantha Nelson of Polygon'' reported that it "will run at several other conventions this year before being made widely available for organized play in 2026". Nelson explained that players go from level one to three "after playing at least three adventures" and the "decisions players make in these early adventures will shape the future of the campaign, which is entering its beta phase. The campaign will grow and evolve based on the decisions players make at events worldwide, shaping the future of the campaign and the way that players experience the Grayhawk setting". ==Unofficial Greyhawk sources==