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xaeyruudh
Master of Realmslore
USA
1853 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Aug 2013 : 22:33:21
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The Realms is what it is because of Ed. And I'm not just tooting his horn (I anticipate a snicker from THO) because in this case it doesn't matter whether you personally like his style. The point is that he's ridiculously prolific, and a lot of people do like his style. Gary Gygax wrote a lot too... probably at least ten times what we've seen, but Gary's loss of basically sole creative control over Greyhawk was worse than the situation we have with the Realms. A better way of saying that might be that Ed didn't lose as much influence over the Realms as Gary lost over Greyhawk.
Gary also had an uphill battle. He was trying to get the world excited about D&D and about Greyhawk. In contrast, Ed didn't have to fight for the Realms to be popular. He puts a lot into it, but D&D already has a fanbase, and WotC is doing the legwork as far as attracting more fans to the game (no judgment about their skill, at this particular moment), and the authors & fans are pulling people into the setting. So where Gary's attention was divided, Ed's can be focused.
Greyhawk seems to have been developed from large to small, at least once you get beyond the city itself. Look at the map, find a space, write about it. I'm not minimizing the quality of the writing; I'm just simplifying what seems to have been the process. There's some of that in the Realms too, but according to Ed that's not how he built the Realms. It was from small to large. Forget the map for a second, picture a tavern, describe it, walk outside, talk about the street and the people on it, and the intersecting streets, and when you've got a good feel for that town and how it works, pick a road leading out of town. Now you can look at the map. Figure out where this place is getting all the goods it needs, and what it's selling to other towns, and how far away those places should be to enable produce and meats to remain fresh in the absence of refrigeration technology. Keep going to new towns, with a keen eye on the larger scale but investing your energy in the little places; the big things will take shape as an organic result. This focus on details, and Ed's love of words and relationships (not just between people but also places and things), is what makes the Realms bigger than the paper it's printed on. Greyhawk doesn't have nearly as much of that. None of WotC's other settings have had this delectable concoction of wonder.
That's why I say that the Realms is what it is because Ed is what he is. Not because the other authors don't matter... they do, because a world is too big of a place for one person to describe. But the best authors will share the qualities Ed has, which make their work live and breathe. Greyhawk (or Planescape or Spelljammer, as I look back at the top of the page to see the actual topic  ), in order to shine like the Realms, needs an Ed. Someone insanely prolific, with a talent for creating four-dimensional images using words, and a quirk that turns every name they see into the lifestory of a person, a house, a city, a civilization, a world. |
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Therise
Master of Realmslore
1272 Posts |
Posted - 22 Aug 2013 : 23:14:10
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Greyhawk was my first setting, and I absolutely still consider myself a fan of Greyhawk. I will say, though, Greyhawk is an entirely different kind of beast than the Realms with entirely different problems and issues. For one thing, Greyhawk has never (in my opinion) been the kind of setting that takes itself very seriously. There are certainly many people who are very serious about creating things for it, but when Gygax threw in things like the "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" and explained most of the extremely weird mythological monsters as "some wizard did that," it was the setting for a fun excursion but not immersion.
The Realms, on the other hand, has almost always been about deep, immersive stories. History, ecology, unique poison-brewing, the Realms had it. Over the years, fans have asked for more depth, more detail, and Ed has always been happy to provide. I don't think Gygax necessarily wanted that kind of immersion, and in many ways pulled away from Dave Arneson who could have provided exactly that.
Back near the end of Dungeon as a print magazine, the brilliant people at Paizo made one of the single best adventure paths I have ever seen: the Age of Worms. It was set in Greyhawk, and you could tell that people like Erik Mona deeply loved Greyhawk. It had all the quirky Greyhawk-ish bells and whistles that you'd expect from Gygax and his setting, and culminated with a fight against an evil god's avatar. It had a really nice set of instructions for how to modify it for the Realms (by Eric Boyd, IIRC), but it clearly was designed in-and-out for that tone and feel of Greyhawk.
Where Greyhawk often involved death-around-every-corner scenarios and yet also kept a weird sense of humor (consider "Mishka the Wolf-Spider" and "Zuggtmoy" as scary fiends), the Realms pulled much more for heroic stories in a more generalized fantasy world. No doubt, the Realms has its own weirdness and serious quirks, but it's much more PC-friendly and much more "standard" fantasy imagery. Where the Realms goes even better, you'll get monster ecologies and deep history that explains things in a much deeper story than Greyhawk ever did. It could have had that with Arneson, had things worked into more of a partnership and the whole weird company control stuff hadn't been going on at TSR. The whole "Greyhawk Wars" thing also didn't help that setting one bit.
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Female, 40-year DM of a homebrew-evolved 1E Realms, including a few added tidbits of 2E and 3E lore; played originally in AD&D, then in Rolemaster. Be a DM for your kids and grandkids, gaming is excellent for families! |
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High
Australia
31799 Posts |
Posted - 23 Aug 2013 : 05:34:05
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quote:
Originally posted by jerrod
Which is more popular fr or gh? I started with d&d,then krynn,forgotten realms,ravenloff,and planescape.
I think it would depend on which D&D-era you're asking about.
Certainly, during much of the 1990's, the FORGOTTEN REALMS, PLANESCAPE, SPELLJAMMER, and RAVENLOFT had enjoyed enough popularity for them all to be supported by extended product lines. [Some more so than others, of course.] |
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Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
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Scribe for the Candlekeep Compendium -- Volume IX now available (Oct 2007)
"So Saith Ed" -- the collected Candlekeep replies of Ed Greenwood
Zhoth'ilam Folio -- The Electronic Misadventures of a Rambling Sage |
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The Return of Planescape and spelljammer
