Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, Chapters 1-3

Okay, so now we're going to dive into the expanded Greyhawk Gazetteer designed for the Living Greyhawk campaign. There are quite a few similarities with the earlier Gazetteer product that I reviewed back in September. However, this is greatly expanded from that product. Unfortunately, I don't have the map that came with it, just like I didn't have the map that came with the earlier product. I'm going to have to print off my own copy, I suppose. Pain in the butt, but it is what it is.

So, since this product is a chunky 192 pages, I'm going to take a few days to go over the whole thing. The first three chapters are quite short, so I'll cover them in this post. We begin with the first chapter, entitled Greyhawk's World. This is an overview of the world of Oerth, specifically the Flanaess where the Living Greyhawk campaign takes place. The Flanaess has a standardized calendar and a standard seven-day week. However, unlike our own calendar, their rest and worship days aren't side-by-side. Instead, the equivalent of Wednesday (Godsday) is the day of worship in the middle of the week; the last day (Freeday) is a day of rest.

The Oerthian year is 364 days long. There are twelve months of 28 days, plus four quarterly festivals that are a week long each. The climate is temperate but mostly mild, and there are nine general geographic divisions on the Flanaess, centered on the city of Greyhawk. These regions are the Baklunish West, the Bitter North, the Western Nyr Dyv, the Sheldomar Valley, the Empire of Iuz, the Thillonrian Peninsula, Old Aerdy West, Old Aerdy East, and the Isolated Realms, which is the outskirts where jungles and deserts prevail. We are also given a map showing the migration of the Oeridian, Baklunish, and Sueloise peoples into the Flanaess from the west.

Chapter 2 discusses the races of Oerth. In particular, there are six major groups of humans: The Baklunish, the Flan, the Oeridians, the Olman, the Rhennee, and the Sueloise. The Olman are basically Central Americans; the Rhennee are gypsies from another world who ended up in the Great Kingdom long ago. The Flan are the original inhabitants of the Flanaess; the other three migrated, as shown in the first chapter. There are no racial advantages or disadvantages to any of these subraces of humans; they're all just the straight, basic human from the Player's Handbook. The differences are just flavor and window dressing for role-playing purposes.

The demihumans are listed next; the elves have subraces mentioned (gray and wild), but again, no racial differences; they're all just plain elves. In addition to the standard PH races, there is also mention of gnolls, hobgoblins, orcs, goblins, kobolds, and 'other folk', which is basically the Monstrous Humanoid category from the Monster Manual, plus the ogres and trolls, of course. Gotta have ogres and trolls.

We then get a full page on the various languages in the Flanaess; there are five major human languages, one of which (Ancient Suloise) is almost never spoken since it's practically forgotten. There is also a list of regional dialects in the Flanaess, such as Lendorian and Olman. This is a great roleplaying hook, but it can also be practical; the wizard who can read Ancient Suloise can decipher the runes on that pillar and figure out where a great treasure is hidden, for example.

Chapter 3 covers the history of the Flanaess. I always thought the Twin Cataclysms were much older, but apparently it was only a thousand or so years ago in campaign time. That makes the whole 'post-apocalyptic' concept a lot closer. It's like adventuring in Egypt in the 11th century or something.

I mentioned earlier that there is a common calendar; that applies only to the days, months and weeks. In terms of years, there are no fewer than six different calendar dates at the same time. The campaign's current time is 591 CY (Common Year),but it's also 1235 in the Oeridian Record, 6106 in Suloise, 5053 in the Olven Calendar (the Olven are the elves), 3250 in Baklunish, and 2741 for the Flan. Yeah, that's going to get confusing. I'd just stick to the Common Year date myself.

There are four pages covering the history of the setting; the first one covers the immediate aftermath of the Invoked Devastation that took out the Bakluni civilization, and the Rain of Colorless Fire that retaliated against the Suel. The survivors of these Twin Cataclysms, as well as the barbaric Oeridians, decided to migrate east in search of habitable land. The next three pages give a brief outline of important historical events, including the sacking of the Temple of Elemental Evil and the imprisonment of the demoness Zuggtmoy in 579, the Greyhawk Wars, and the aftermath of that series of conflicts. It's not a lot, but it gives the bare bones; Greyhawk aficionados will already have all of this info at their fingertips and then some.

So, that's a bit of a whirlwind tour of the opening chapters of this book. Tomorrow I'll cover Chapter 4, which is by far the largest in the book, covering more than 100 pages. Needless to say, I won't be going into great detail.