More Greyhawk News to Cheer your Sunsebb!

Darlene's Greyhawk Map with Hex Coordinates 

Zach Henderson's Map

We got discussing module hex coordinates in the Flanaess Geographical Society group on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ghmaps/posts/5868854479844570/ (building in part on some September discussion at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ghmaps/permalink/5621068317956522/, where I was looking for a map-based mechanism to ID hex locations on Darlene's map), and Zach Henderson created this fabulous map:

 

Zach Henderson at work
on Darlene's map

You can download Zach's full map file freely at https://www.dropbox.com/s/xjogcd7xltwqv4c/WoG_Map_Coordinates_v2.jpg.

Thanks Zach!  

Paul Stormberg's Module Hex Coordinates

During that same discussion about TSR module locations, Paul Stormberg of The Collector's Trove, Legends of Wargaming, and Legends of Roleplaying fame, shared the list of known hex coordinates for classic-era TSR modules set in Greyhawk. Paul's list draws in part on the module locations as defined in the Glassography to the World of Greyhawk booklet (1983 boxed set, page 30), but expands upon it as well:

In any case here is the "official" World of Greyhawk Glossography locales and another set done in Polyhedron 10. Both have some problems with their locations and likely have some "windage" applied to them by fans over the years to mark "better" locations:

 

• A1 A4-101 (Poly #10: A4-101)
• A2 A4-102 (Poly #10: B4-103)
• A3 A4-104 (Poly #10: Z3-103)
• A4 A4-104 (Poly #10: Z3-103)
• C1 A4-137 (Poly #10: Y3-135)
• C2 A4-92 (Poly #10: Z3-91)
• D1 M5-138 (Poly #10: M5-141)
• D2 M5-138 (Poly #10: M5-141)
• D3 N5-138 (Poly #10: M5-141)
• Q1 N5-138 (Poly #10: M5-141)
• EX1 D4-86
• EX2 D4-86
• G1 P5-129 (Poly #10: N5-126)
• G2 S5-134 (Poly #10: V5-128)
• G3 M5-138 (Poly #10: N5-139)
• I1 Y-109
• L1 B-78
• L2 (Module: "18 miles south[-east]" of B-78
• L3 (Module: "18 miles south[-east]" of B-78) 
  
• N1 K5-113/H5-112
• S1 K2-97 (Poly #10: L2-100)
• S2 T3-70 (Poly #10: U3-69)
• S3 A6-119 (Poly #10: Z5-118)
• S4 E5-88 (Poly #10: M5-141)
• T1 O4-98 (Poly #10: N4-95)
• U1 (Poly #10: U4-123)
• U2 (Module: V4-124) 
• U3 (Module: W4-125)
• UK1 (Poly #10: O4-124)
• UK2 (Module: E5/137 and F5/138) 
• UK3 (Module: E5/137 and F5/138) 
• WG4 F5-88
• WG5 (Module: X3-86) 
• WG6 D4-86 (Greyhawk Castle Locale)
  

 

Compiled module locations are also shows on the Canonfire! map at http://www.canonfire.com/cf/ghadventures.php (but you don't get hex coordinates with them too).

 

Lenard Lakofka GenCon "AD&D Open" Tournament Adventures Newly Re-Discovered!

Tentatively identified as rounds 1, 5, and 6 of the 1982 GenCon Open tourney:

Recently sold by Michael Cox of The DragonsTrove:

• 4001 The Guildmaster's Museum by Mark Shoemaker at https://www.ebay.com/itm/275539255792
  
• 4005 A Minor Threat by Lenard Lakofka at https://www.ebay.com/itm/234778960945
  
• 4006 Threat from Nowhere - The Gift at https://www.ebay.com/itm/234778960944
  

I'll pull the details from the auctions and add them to my Greyhawk Tourney History page, if applicable (I don't immediately see any Greyhawk content in them, but will dig some more).  I've also been in touch with Matt Shoemaker, who maintains the GenCon Events Database at http://www.best50yearsingaming.com/.

Lenard was a fan of The Companions' hex grid maps, which helped me to ID the last round of the tourney as possibly also created by him. 

I also recently confirmed that Lenard co-wrote  "The Great Deck" (by LL and Wm. John Wheeler), "Cards of Minor Power" (by Wm. John Wheeler, with LL and Peter L. Rice), and Magical Treasures (by Wm. John Wheeler and Peter L. Rice, with LL and others) in The Companions' Treasure Trove I: Cards of Power 1982 generic D&D supplement.  

I'll add these details to my Lenard Lakofka Index over the holidays.

grodog's GaryCon XV Events Submitted and Approved

I also submitted two events to run at GaryCon XV in March 2023.  Both have been approved but not scheduled formally yet, so take the date/times below with a grain of salt for the moment:

• LEGIO V—Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk Level Keyed by grodog     
• Queued for Scheduling     
• Thursday at 19:00     
• 5 hours      
• LEGIO V—Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk Level Keyed by grodog     
• Queued for Scheduling     
• Saturday at 19:00     
• 5 hours
  

 Here's the event's long description text:

Explore grodog's version of one of Gary Gygax's unpublished Castle Greyhawk dungeon levels. The Chessboard level existed in either the Original or Expanded Castle Greyhawk. grodog has a copy of the original map, but not the original key.  So, you're playing Gary's (slightly modified) map with grodog's key.

Bring your graph paper, dice, and a healthy dose of paranoid courage! 6th-8th level charcaters provided.

==

The Lake Geneva Legio V began as a handful of gamers who have attended Gary Con since its inception. We have grown over the past few years to include like-minded individuals united by a respect of Gary Gygax and his legacy. We are the dedicated attendees who love Gary Con for the camaraderie it establishes, the Game Masters who run games from across the decades, and the committed gamers who spend these four days in a fervor of dice rolling and old-school good times.

Although events run as LEGIO V Presents will use a variety of rule systems, our focus is on games authored by Gary and his contemporaries as well as those systems whose designers pay homage to these pioneers.

 

On Friday night, I will also help DM one of the rounds for Paul Stormberg "Legends of Roleplaying" AD&D Open tourney.  That's usually at 6pm. 

grodog Interviewed Twice in One Week!

October was a rare month with two interviews for me:

Shane Plays

Shane Stacks of Shane Plays interviewed me on Sunday afternoon 9 October 2022, and it just went live last night:

OSRIC & The OSR with Allan T. Grohe Jr. - Episode 264- 11/30/2022

RPG developer and publisher Allan T. Grohe Jr. (aka "grodog") joins to talk AD&D retroclone OSRIC, the OSR, Black Blade Publishing, John Eric Holmes, and RPG goodness in general. Allan LOVES him some Greyhawk. The skills he learned tracking down early information on Greyhawk helped lead to his main non-RPG career. How active is the current AD&D 1E and/or OSRIC scene? What is Allan’s definition of OSR, and does he feel it’s important? The legal importance of OSRIC to the OSR community. ‘zines are often lauded, but at one time Dragon magazine was a sort of “D&D website” in its day as well. Watching an RPG project happen behind the scenes. Shane offers a mild defense of rules lawyers. “Vanilla” fantasy is not a derogatory term. Cthulhu and Delta Green. Look, just hit Cthulhu with a boat. Shane has figured out Lovecraft’s indescribable color. Thunderdome match: Strongheart versus Warduke.

You can listen at https://shaneplays.com/osric-osr-rpg-allan-grohe-podcast/ and on YouTube or your podcast platform of choice (see the main link).   

 

College of Wooster Gaming Research

Within the same week, on Thursday evening, 13 October 2022, Laura Jentes---who is working on a gaming history MA thesis at the College of Wooster (in Ohio)---interviewed me about my experience gaming in the later 1970s through to the present.  

This is part of her research on the oral history of gaming (she also wrote a bio on Gary Gygax as part of a class she took last year).  All of the content and research will be shared later in the spring once her work has concluded, and I'll share the news when it becomes available.

I'm off to Philly to visit my family and friends in South Jersey on Friday, and I may perhaps try to drop in on PAX Unplugged, too.  We'll see how the timing shakes out.

And that's all the news that's fit to print, for the moment, anyway ;)

Allan.

UPDATE 2 - Charting The Flanaess: a Settlements Distance and Mileage Chart

In May 2018 I began work on building a Settlements Distance and Mileage Chart for the Flanaess, but the project has lain fairly fallow until last month.

Since before the start of the year, our team of Greyhawk fan contributors have been working on material for the Greyhawk Seminar (details in last month's update), and I've been doing my part in that effort too.

As part of some of that work, I've realigned my mileage distances chart data to include only those settlements that appear on Anna B. Meyer's Flanaess map excerpt for the handouts.  In doing so, I removed a few cities from my original swag list, and added a few more, which meant that last Sunday I performed the rest of the Darlene map measurements to drive my distance calculations formulas.  

Here's where things stand at present:

grodog at work -
fitting the Flanaess into spreadsheet cells

With the change from some of the original settlements that are now out-of-scope for the map area in the new handouts, and adding in the new ones, I've now completed distances for 17 of the 130 locations, which is 13.1% of the overall effort.  A little progress goes a long way---although not so far in this case, since all of these settlements are in the Central Flanaess and are pretty close to one another! ;)

Allan.

UPDATE 1 - Charting The Flanaess: a Settlements Distance and Mileage Chart

In May last year I began work on building a Settlements Distance and Mileage Chart for the Flanaess, but the project has lain fairly fallow until recently.

Greyhawk Seminar at GaryCon 2019

A crew of six of us will host a Greyhawk seminar at GaryCon XI in March 2019, focused on the state of the state of Greyhawk fandom.  The seminar is titled "Celebraing Greyhawk: A Fandom Renaissance" and the event description is:

Greyhawk fans have been creating and sharing content online for 25+ years, across many platforms. Join Bryan Blumklotz, Mike Bridges, Allan Grohe, Carlos Lising, Anna Meyer, and Kristoph Nolen as we celebrate and showcase Greyhawk resources created by the fans who champion one of D&D's oldest settings. Reference handouts will be provided, and perhaps prizes if we get our act together!

• Bryan “Saracenus” Blumklotz – Bryan is the lead administrator for the CanonFire! A Greyhawk Resource! Facebook group and is creator of the World of Greyhawk Heraldry site.
• Mike "mortellan" Bridges – Mike publishes the Greyhawk blog Greyhawkery and co-hosts the weekly Legends & Lore show on the Greyhawk channel.
• Allan "grodog" Grohe – Allan publishes his grodog's Greyhawk fan site and is co-founder of Black Blade Publishing (OSRIC, Rob Kuntz’s The Original Bottle City, etc.) and The Twisting Stair mega-dungeon design zine.
• Carlos "caslEntertainment" Lising – Carlos writes and publishes OSRIC adventures set in Oerth and in Avremier via casl Entertainment and Patreon.
• Anna "GH Maps" Meyer – Anna publishes her Flanaess maps and founded the Flanaess Geographical Society Facebook group.  She also co-hosts the Legends & Lore Greyhawk show with Mike Bridges.
• Kristoph "Icarus" Nolen – Krisoph is leading the redesign of Greyhawk Online and showcases his artwork at http://wkristophnolen.daportfolio.com/.

Additional informationabout the seminar  (including a recording of the session and any distributed handouts) will appear on Greyhawk Online at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/seminar.

Charting the Flanaess Update

One of the seminar handouts I'm planing is a working prototype for the mileage chart,  limited in scope to the Central Flanaess in and around the City of Greyhawk, so I’ve been working on that recently by measuring out the distances from city to city on the Darlene map, in millimeters:

grodog at work -
measuring the Flanaess in millimeters

Once the measurements are complete, I enter the raw data into Excel in the first/upper set of cities listings.  The green, red, and yellow highlighted rows are my fact-checking:  I want to insure that the figures true-up across each row and column, and then in total as well:
 

grodog at work -
fitting the Flanaess into spreadsheet cells

The second/lower set of cities listings is where I convert the measured distances in mm into scale miles (I’ll eventually do kilometers as well), based on this data and formula logic:

1. One Folio Darlene hex = 55 mm across = 10 scale leagues/30 scale miles
2. Convert the raw distance between each city into a ratio relative to the hex sizes on the Darlene Folio maps:  (X mm/55mm). 
3. Multiple the ratio by 30 miles to derive the final distance figure

Like in the first/ upper set of cities, I also fact-check the figures to insure that they match properly. 
 
I think I’ve also found a good methodology for how to manually count out of the Darlene map mileage distances:  I’ll simply print a copy of the “Index to the Cities & Features of the Flanaess” page from the Glassography and measure out the distances for each listed city, one city to a sheet.
 

 
Interesting aside #1:  of the 130 settlements that appear in the Glassography index, about 50 appear in the general region of the Central Flanaess.  That’s 38% of the cities squeezed into an area only that occupies only 25% of the Darlene mapspace. 
 
Interesting aside #2:  looking at each page of the original maps to calculate the settlement density will also be an interesting exercise to go through, I think. 
 

Minor Complications

One of the major issues I’ll want to call out in the data is a possible discrepancy in measurement when the distances span both of the Darlene maps:  maps can shift around, the hexes could be misaligned, etc., so measuring across both maps will be more challenging and more prone to error than when measuring within either map alone. 
 
In my prototype data set, only Luekish, Radigast City, and Riftcraft appear on the right-hand map, so I calculated all of the left-hand map’s distances first, then measured the right-hand ones back to the left, and wrapped up with the right-hand-only mileage. 
 

Next Steps

Once I have a better understanding of the scope included in the map handouts that we’ll distribute at the seminar (and we will post all of the handouts to Greyhawk Online, and at minimum an audio recording of the seminar as well), I will update the list of cities to feature any other major ones that aren’t already included in the chart, which will finalize the initial prototype data set. 
 
Sometime after GaryCon, the rest of the long-haul work will begin, likely to occur in three phases: 

1. Count out all of the distances in the left-hand map.
2. Count out all of the distances in the right-hand map.
3. Count out all of the distances that span both maps.

I’ll continue to post updates here as I make further progress!
 
Allan.

Charting The Flanaess: a Settlements Distance and Mileage Chart

So, over 24 months ago I began a discussion in The Flanaess Geographical Society trying to locate a Greyhawk-specific distance/mileage chart for cities.  After some lengthy sleuthing, ideas bouncing, and general rummaging around in our collective memories, we came to the conclusion that such a chart didn't exist after all, so I suggested deriving and calculating the distances between settlements across the Flanaess using Darlene's and Anna Meyer's hex maps.  And, as with many things in internet discourse, that was that. 

Fast-forward to the present.  Given the approach of summer and the imminence of more-active campaigning in the World of Greyhawk (today was our two sons' last day of school until August), I've begun mulling this mileage chart over in earnest once more, and over the past week or two I've begun to build it.

So, I began with the 1983 boxed set's An Index to the Cities & Features of the Flanaess, from the inside back cover of the Glassography booklet:

An Index to the Cities & Features
of the Flanaess

I mined it for its 130 city names and their associated hex-coordinate locations.  Those formed the backbone for the spreadsheet that I began to build in MS Excel:

grodog's Settlements Metadata Worksheet

Once I had that, I immediately began to expand the baseline settlements listing to include known and named settlements not present the original list, starting with the classic 576 CY Gygaxian era of Greyhawk.  I've already re-combed through the 1980 Gazetteer and 1983 Guide and Glassography booklets, and started in on the various Gygax and Kuntz articles from The Dragon.  Through this mining, I've added a bunch of new settlement names to the baseline list---Blackmoor (the ruin), the free town of Deskpoint, and the small town of Dingaverge (in hex A4-54), to name a few---and I'm sure many more will follow in time:

grodog at work,
constructing Greyhawk

For this project, I have several (too many) goals in mind, of which, the first is probably the least important, despite being the most immediately-useful and -visible tool that will result from these efforts:

1. To create an atlas-style mileage chart that displays the distance between cities in Greyhawk;   something along the lines of this, from Call of Cthulhu's Sourcebook for the 1920s:

   

   Sample distances from Chaosium's classic
   Call of Cthulhu RPG

2. To capture the settlement-specific metadata that's embedded within Darlene's Greyhawk maps:  name, size, hex location, type (capital, walled, free, etc.), port type (sea port, river port, both), population, etc., as well as working to document or to derive additional, relevant metadata like settlement population percentage relative to total national population, settlement elevation above/below sea level, trading partners, et al.
3. To build a metadata model that describes the key attributes for Greyhawk's settlements so that they're clearly defined across publishing eras while also compiling the explicit information scattered across various canon and non-canon sources, in errata, etc.  This, right here, is the major scope-creep/feature bloat aspect of this project.
4. To marry the settlement-related metadata within this model to the robust metadata and information already captured within Jason Zavoda's wonderful Encyclopedia Greyhawkania Index (easily the best research tool available to the Greyhawk fan community, and one that's unfortunately under-leveraged by most fans), and to use that to help build out the settlement metadata across Greyhawk's later publishing eras.
5. Laying a metadata foundation that could be leveraged by Anna Meyer during her next big Greyhawk mapping project.  

When I'm done, all of that metadata will be used to populate the Settlements Distance and Mileage Chart, which I've built a template for in another tab in Excel:

grodog's Settlements Distance
and Mileage Matrix Chart

This project will take quite awhile to complete in full, but I should be able to build out a basic derived distances mileage chart fairly quickly, using just the baseline 130 cities---or at least I think so, since I just have to count the number of hexes between two points on the maps and multiple that figure by 30 miles per hex.  It'll be easy, right?

Right???

Allan.

PS - 19 Jan 2019:  Update #1 is available.