Castle Greyhawk Four New Dungeon Level Maps Revealed

 CZ Act 1 "Alpha Preview" Map

TLG published a Castle Zagyg "Alpha Preview" to CZ1 backers on 2 April 2026, showing one-quarter of The Cellars, level 2 of Castle Zagyg:

Castle Zagyg Preview Map of
Level 2, The Cellars

Included along with the map were 12 pages of keyed encounters, all again labelled as an "Alpha Preview" so that we're ready for any and all typos and other errors in the text and map.  I may review the encounter keys later sometime---the map is all that caught my eye in the content thus far.  

Zach Howard of Zenopus Archives fame began a thread on 12 April 2026 to discuss the map and key details in Dragonsfoot's Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk forum:   Castle Greyhawk Dungeon Level 2 [possible spoilers].  Trent Smith (of Mystical Trash Heap fame, and his Storm Fetish Productions rules and adventure designs are brilliantly Gygaxian) and other DF members have begun delving into the analysis, including me.

CZ Act 2 Backerkit Launch Map

The new Backerkit Castle Zagyg campaign preview launched on 7 April 2026 and revealed the complete map for the second level of Castle Zagyg, its full title revealed as Level 2 The Deep Cellars:

Castle Zagyg Level 2 Map,  
The Deep Cellars

The lower-left portion of the map is same one from the CZ preview sent out to backers from the first campaign, but with further changes made.  

The other three maps are all new to me, and I don't recognize them from my Castle Greyhawk or El Raja Key research thus far.  I'll be doing some additional digging to see what (if anything) I find in my archives, but for the moment each of the other quadrants appear to be newly-revealed-to-the-public level maps, which is of course a wonderful thing!

CZ Act 2 Lower-Left Map

Here's a zoomed in version:

Zoomed-In Map Version of
Castle Zagyg Level 2 The Deep Cellars

Many differences exist between this map and the Alpha Preview version from earlier in the month, which I plan to review in depth alongside all three versions of the map.

Three versions, you ask?

TSR Version by Eric Shook

A much earlier version of same the lower-left corner of the CZ2 preview map was rendered by Eric Shook for the early 1980s Greyhawk revival at TSR, and was later sold at auction in the mid-2000s by Paul Stormberg of Legends of Role-Playing and The Collector's Trove fame:

Eric Shook's Castle Greyhawk rendering
from TSR c. 1982

This map was one of six different levels auctioned at that time, four others from Castle Greyhawk's dungeon levels.  The auction also included one of my favorite level designs of all time, which Shook designed for Steve Marsh's Starstrands planar project that was, alas, never published by TSR.  That map was quite radical for its time!:

Eric Shook's unpublished Starstrands map c. 1982,
original photo by Paul Stormberg

Side-by-Side Analysis - Added 16 April 2026

I've completed my initial comparison of the three maps, and here's an image of them together, with changes highlighted in yellow and green:

All 3 maps compared
by grodog

Changes Logged Across the Three Versions

At a high level, the changes made are most prominent working from the 1980s Shook version of the map (on the left side in the above picture) compared to the initial preview released on 2 April 2026, in the middle in the above picture.  The changes from the Alpha Preview version (middle) to the Backerkit launch image (right side) are more-minimal, and mostly involve changing doors back to secret doors, which in fact help to correct and realign the movement and flow of the map to be closer to the original 1980s map than the Alpha Preview version.

It is also worthwhile to note that the Shook Map wasn't completed:  some areas on it are drawn without any access points, and there are no secret doors shown on the map at all.  (Presumably those would have been added in the next step of revisions and updates to it).  So, some of the changes introduced in the later revisions to the map may have been present on the original, and simply not completed at the time of Shook's draftings.  

1980s Shook Map Changes

The changes from this map to the Alpha Preview version are significant and run across the entire level.  They include: 

• Changes to fit the level into its new configuration as part of a larger, combined level spanning four separate original levels of one sheet each
• modifying the corridors along the north and east edges of the sheet to be 20' wide---which is a change I like, since I'm a fan of large corridors in general!
• adding entry points due north of 295 on the top edge of the map, and in the NE corner of the 20' wide corridor, along with another door on the eastern wall just north of 284
• simplifying several corridors by straightening them out, in particular in the SE quadrant of the level, but also in the NW quadrant's corridor north of 2-100
• Moving some corridor intersections and/or chamber walls:
• the huge NE chamber accessed by the long, winding corridors is 10' narrower (288 in the later versions)
• the chamber immediately south is also narrower by 10' (287 in the later maps)
• Removing most of the stairwells and pits, and the ramps/slides:
• stairs gone in the later versions include those that flank 2-108, east of 293 in the top-center, west of 285, 
• ramps and/or slides at 2-101 and 289 are changed to stairwells; when first seeing this level, my speculation was that one of these was the slide to China at the bottom of Gary's original Castle Greyhawk
• Altering the flow of the loops Gary built that connect sub-sections of the level to each other, and simplifying access to previously-less-accessible areas:
• 285 now has 2 doors that enter it vs. just one 
• the 2nd B to the right of 294 has two doors entering, instead of just one on the N wall, and either a false door on the S wall or a one-way door (this is the only door drawn as such on the level, so it's hard to know which the symbol might represent; it's possible the western-wall door leading into the 2-101 slide in Shook's map may also be another partially-drawn one-way door, which may edge the symbol closer to that function vs. false door)
• the archway into 284 is opened up, which creates a second entry point into that room 
• the corridor west of 284 no longer intersects as a four-way east of 286, which squeezes out one of the rooms in the stacked room maze due south of 286; the "S" corridor leading to the removed pillar west of 285 also provided another route into 284 and 285, but in the later versions only one path leads to those keys now
• Simplifying corridor and room flourishes:
• removing the rounded niche in the N wall of 296
• squaring off the rounded edges of 2-105 and 2-106
• removing the pillar west of 285
• removing most of the "end cap" square pillars on long hallways like east of 2-105, west of 2-103, east of 2-101 (south of the added doors/secret doors)

Some new features were added in the Alpha Preview map too:

• A covered pit appears in the eastern corridor leading into 2-105
• A well is added at 2-102
• Pillars are added to 288 and 296
• A door is added to the 290 stairwell, which is also moved deeper into the corridor vs. Shook's original placement
  
  

Changes from Alpha Preview to BK Launch Map

The revisions to the later version of the map largely focus on secret doors, more-specifically changing standard doors into secret doors:

• The standard doors entering these key #s all became secret doors:  O by 295, 2-103, 2-105, 2-108, 285, the offset series of secret doors that lead into 288 from the east, 291
• The dead-end corridor/corner south of 292 was added, which provides another entry point into the SE sub-section of the level
• The inaccessible dead-end east of 2-108 is opened up on its eastern wall in the BK Launch map, with what looks like might be an archway

In general, these changes restore some of the difficulty in finding and accessing areas that had been made more open in the Alpha Preview map, by making the chambers harder to find, or less-accessible in terms of obviously-open paths leading to them (while still adding the secret doors as further possible entry points).  For example, in the Shook Map, 2-103 was only accessible from stairs down from its flanking chambers, which led to a seeming dead-end corridor, that seemed to have a trapdoor leading up into the center room.  

Continuing Review

I updated this post on 16 April 2026 with all of the text between this section and the Side-by-Side Analysis section above, along with the Starstrands map and comments.

More to come! :D

Allan.

grodog's Approach to Designing Mega-Dungeons - Part 1: the Maps

...or, a Meditation and Reflection on What grodog Likes Best about Playing in AD&D Mega-Dungeons

Introduction

This post is my response to a recent discussion of my mapping style and inspirations over on reddit, begun by user SydLonreiro, who asked

For my first AD&D dungeon, I would like to map it like Grodog, but I don’t know how to do it. I’m not sure whether he developed a specific method for doing so, or whether some of you map large dungeon levels in this way. I want to create a dungeon the way Kuntz would, and map it in this style, because it seems like the right approach for preparing my sessions — and I love this type of map. 

I was quite tickled to discover the thread after Heather and I returned from dinner celebrating St. Valentine's Day (we never go out on a Valentine's date on the actual day/weekend when it's usually so crazy-busy), and I spent some time this weekend noodling a bit in response to SydLonreiro and also to user chaoticneutral262, who raised some Qs/concerns about mapping style relative to encounter keys that I plan to tackle a bit later.

And, as it turns out, SydLonreiro is building his own mega-dungeon for use among his friends, and plans to run it in a very "Gygax 75" manner using OD&D, which is quite cool.

grodog's Inspirations and Design Sources

To begin to answer some of SydLonreiro's questions on the mapping front, I tend to wear my key inspirations on my (tie-dyed) sleeves, including:

• The original mega-dungeon levels of Castle Greyhawk and Castle El Raja Key designed by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz in particular, alongside a variety of other old-school designers like Jennell Jaquays (Caverns of Thracia) and Phil Barker (Empire of the Petal Throne's Jakallan Underworld)
• In the OSR/contemporary era, I particularly favor works large-scale dungeon designs by Richard Barton, Chainsaw, Anthony Huso, Gabor Lux, Tony Rosten, Keith Sloan, and Trent Smith, among others
• Architectural artwork including M. C. Escher's non-Euclidean optical-illusions, Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons which echo with a vastness that definitely catches my eye, and Philippe Druillet's Elric Le Necromancien--first published in the year I was born!

Some of my favorite dungeon design articles include these pieces:

• "Hints of D&D Judges - Part 3: The Dungeons" by Joe Fisher in The Dragon #2 (August 1976) - another excellent example of early dungeon design advice that stands the test of time; I particularly like Fisher's active and imaginative example treasures, use of watery areas, and recounting of Castle Greyhawk lore
• Gygax's various early 1970s articles about D&D play and design, mostly-summarized on my web site at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle_sources.html 
• The Players Handbook's section on "Successful Adventures" in pages 107-109
• "The Dungeon Architect"--Roger Musson's classic from White Dwarf 25 (June 1981), 26 (August 1981), and 27 (October 1981) is an excellent three-part series that covers dungeon origins, NPCs (creators, raiders, inhabitants), and dungeon construction (architecture, traps/tricks/teleporters/etc.), and dungeon design models (silly, ecological, etc.).  Reprinted in Best of White Dwarf Articles Volume 2 (complied in 1983), where I first read it.  I'd still love to reprint this someday (along with some of Paul Vernon's WD articles too)!
• Gabor Lux's "Dungeon layout, map flow and old school game design" originally published on ENWorld 15 July 2006 and reprinted at K&KA on 12 July 2011
• Matt Finch's "Megadungeon Tactics: Mission-Based Adventuring" in Knockspell #4 (Spring 2010)
• Trent Smith's essays on adventure design in his Heroic Legendarium pages 97-118

We've enjoyed some good discussions about design theory articles like the above over on ODD74 at essential references for dungeon designers and K&KA at megadungeon resources.

grodog's Mega-Dungeon Design Aspirations and Touchstones

The design approaches exemplified through the works created by our past and present masters come together as a set of internal tendencies and design northstars that I aspire while working on my mega-dungeon levels.

These lurk behind the scenes in my Favorite Mega-Dungeons post as well as some of my favorite adventures too:  both the original list, and my expanded and revised lists.  The qualities I called out as key to my favorite designers' levels were:

1. Best Environments to Explore and Map
2. Most-Fun Encounters
3. Most-Fun Puzzles, Enigmas, and Centerpiece Encounters
4. Coolest Maps

I listed a fifth and sixth pair of attributes too (Best Presentation in Print and Pulls It All Together), but at the time I'd not felt that any in-print products did a mega-dungeon justice, and that few published ones managed to pull it all together as a complete product.  Tomb of Abysthor (Necromancer Games, 2001) and Maure Castle (Paizo Publishing, 2004-2006) come closest, with ToA at 7 levels with 2 sub-levels and MC published 4 levels with 3 sub-levels (including the free "The Warlock's Walk" level on the now-defunct Pied Piper Publishing discussion boards and in The Oerth Journal #23).  Rob outlined a vision defining 18 total levels for Maure Castle, but Paizo lost the licenses for Dungeon and Dragon, so the series ended, incomplete.  Caverns of Thracia (Necromancer Games, 2004) and Foolsgrave are runners up,  at 4 levels with 2 sub-levels and 3 very very large levels, respectively.  CoT is about the same size as The Temple of Elemental Evil, but is significantly more complex and interesting as a dungeon, so I don't consider ToEE a mega-dungeon and generally consider Thracia as the minimum viable footprint to be a "true" multi-level mega-dungeon.  Foolsgrave, however, counters that since it's levels are substantially larger than the three other published mega-dungeons combined:  its three levels are built from 29 levels worth of footprint—the other mega-dungeons' levels were drawn at one sheet per level, and total only 18 sheets worth of dungeons.  It captures that majesty and scope that's so essential to the mega-dungeon exploration experience.  

I'm sure you've already noticed that #1 and #4 both focus on the maps, and that's a huge factor in my design approach:  I almost-always begin with drawing a map then keying it, rather than building the keys and designing the map to fit them (which really is something I should try sometime...).  And #2 and #3 are really both two sides of the same coin on the encounter keys—I just emphasize the puzzles, enigmas, and centerpieces a bit more by calling them out specifically over the dungeon dressing, monsters, treasures, traps, hazards, and riddles encounter types.

In thinking about these while working on a recent article about Anthony Huso's OSR designs, I revised and expanded those first four precepts to six:

1. Compelling and Imaginative Creativity
2. Inspiring Environments to Explore and Map
3. Fun and Challenging Encounters
4. Great Layout and Information Presentation
5. Modular but Filled with Inspirational Expandability
6. Tempered in the Crucible of Campaign Playtesting
   
   

And while they track to my general adventure design sensibilities, my favorite mega-dungeon design preferences remain fairly rooted in the idea that bigger = better.  In a 2016 discussion on putting the "mega" back in the mega-dungeon, I wrote:

My sense is that mega-dungeons are driven by both focus and size. 

In terms of focus, a mega-dungeon that grounds an entire campaign is a campaign dungeon—and IIRC Trent Smith coined that term some years ago. In my mind "mega-dungeon" and "campaign dungeon" are related but not synonymous terms. I have placed several mega-dungeons in my Greyhawk campaigns—Castle Greyhawk, Blackmoor Castle, Maure Castle, a series of inter-related ruined Suloise dungeon complexes below the Sea of Dust, a great dungeon carved out of the glacial Black Ice, etc., etc. Other than Castle Greyhawk and Maure Castle, however, none of the others are campaign dungeons in my games, since they're not the focus of my players' activity. Castle Greyhawk provides that primary focus (with some interleaving with Maure Castle from time to time), so it is the campaign dungeon in most of my Greyhawk campaigns. 

In terms of size, a mega-dungeon is sufficiently large that it cannot be completed during game play. That size can be accomplished in a variety of ways, depending on how the DM approaches their dungeon design: 

• very large individual levels: I try to vary the sizes of my dungeon levels by creating them using differently-sized graph sheets, and I have 8.5x11 sheets that are 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 20 squares per inch, 11x17 sheets that are 5, 6, 8, and 10 spi, and 1 big pad of 17x22 sheets at 4 spi. You can fit a LOT of dungeon onto an 8 spi 8.5x11 sheet, much less an 11x17 one, let me tell you! The gigantic poster maps of Undermountain, Mammoth Dungeons, and Armaron are probably the best examples of this style of dungeon that have been published (that I'm aware of). Barrowmaze's poster maps from the KS also fall into this scale (although I'm not sure whether poster maps were done for Barrowmaze Complete or not??), and the large and inter-related cavern levels in Castle of the Mad Archmage do as well. Phil Barker's Jakallan Underworld from EPT also falls into this category, along with Arden Vul. 

• lots and lots of levels and sub-levels: the levels can be in physical proximity, and thus attached to the dungeon, or adjacent at the planetary or planar levels, and potentially exist physically in another multiverse. Rappan Athuk features many small levels, as do the Mines of Khunmar. 

• connections to other large dungeons: Scott Casper created teleporters between Castle Greyhawk and Maure Castle in his Castle Greyhawk webcomic, for example, which intertwines both of those mega-dungeons, effectively doubling their already prodigious sizes, with the added complexity that you could be teleporting within a level, across levels within the same mega-dungeon, or across mega-dungeons! 

• vastness of the environs: think of Erebor or Moria in terms of simply how huge they are, regardless of whether they're really mappable as levels at all; Holmes' "Underworld" in his Boinger and Zereth fictions is said to delve the entire planet: "What race or races built the maze, no one knew. In the opinion of the sages of Caladan, many layers of dungeons and underworld were laid down, one atop the other, as the world crust was formed, so that now no one knew or even guessed how many levels extended below the surface" (Maze of Peril back cover text).  This also suggests another scope of "mega"—that of depth below the surface, which naturally brings to mind the G-D modules and drowic underworld, Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, Pellucidar, etc., etc.

For related discussion, see putting the "mega" back in the mega-dungeon at K&KA and Megadungeon Definition? at Dragonsfoot.

Foolsgrave - Chainsaw's Ultimate Mega-Dungeon

I still don't think that anyone has topped Chainsaw's brilliant Foolsgrave levels, which are vast and beautiful and visible from inception through conclusion in his Foolsgrave (development thread, spoilers) at K&KA, with the finished maps shown below at https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=225505#p225505:

Old Level 1

New Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

More to follow, later in the week!

Allan.

Resources Recommendation for Greyhawk's and Dave Arneson's Blackmoor

Over in /r/osr/, user acathiadm asked a question about the Egg of Coot:

I am doing a take on the Egg of Coot, in Blackmore, Northern Greyhawk. If you have ideas for frozen machinery and alien type things in a D&D world, please share. I am trying to be connect where possible to the work of Arneson. Any links and suggestions would be appreciated (including traps/monstrous encounters.) Happy Halloween group.

 
reddit wouldn't allow me to post my reply (the error message was uninformatively useless, but I suppose it may have been too many characters?), so here's my response, based on some info I shared with Carlos Lising a few years ago, with some quick updates.

grodog's Blackmoor Resources Recommendations

Some other excellent Blackmoor in Greyhawk and -adjacent resources to consider checking out include:

• Frederick Weining's "The Archbarony of Blackmoor" in Oerth Journal #5 (January 1997): https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal/
• Carlos Lising's adventures DC1 - Across Black Moors and G2 The Witch Queen's Lament (set nearby): https://www.caslentertainment.com/
• Wolfgang Baur's adventures "Raiders of the Black Ice" Dungeon #115 (October 2004) and "The Clockwork Fortress" in  Dungeon #126 (September 2005)

Modules and Sourcebooks

The rest of these are more Arneson-specific in theme/focus, so more about Blackmoor the setting vs. Blackmoor in Greyhawk, but you can certainly leverage them too.

• First Fantasy Campaign @ https://www.acaeum.com/jg/Item0037.html
• "Journey to the City of the Gods" by Rob Kuntz and in Oerth Journal #6 (November 1997) and the draft version is published in El Raja Key Archive (see below): https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal/
• DA1-4 @ https://www.tsrarchive.com/dd/dd2-da.html and https://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/modpages/da.html
• "Garbage Pits of Despair" is a two-part Blackmoor adventure by Arneson in Different Worlds magazine: Part 1 - "The Slave Raiders" in #42 (May/June 1986) and Part 2 - "The Dragon Hills" in #43 (July/August 1986) at https://www.diffworlds.com/dw_37-47.htm
• 3.x Blackmoor books from Zeitgeist at https://www.tsrarchive.com/d20/cmp/cmp.html and https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2236/Zeitgeist-Games 

History/Articles About DA

Two great sources for additional Arneson and Blackmoor info include both Havard Frosta and Daniel Hugh Boggs; both with blogs at http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/ and http://boggswood.blogspot.com/

• Blackmoor GHO Wiki entry @ https://www.greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Arn
• Secrets of Blackmoor @ https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sobfinal
• Dave Arneson's "My Life and Roleplaying" in Different Worlds #3 (June/July 1979) @ https://www.diffworlds.com/dw_01-12.htm
• Dave Arneson: True Genius by Rob Kuntz (Three Line Studio, 2016), and the El Raja Key Archive too: https://threelinestudiostore.com/DAVE-ARNESONS-TRUE-GENIUS-p546587973 and https://www.tlbgames.com/collections/archive/products/el-raja-key-archive-dvd-standard-edition
• RJK blog posts @ https://lakegenevaoriginalrpg.blogspot.com/search?q=arneson and https://lordofthegreendragons.blogspot.com/search?q=arneson
• Arneson's "Roots of D&D" from Wargaming #4 (FGU 1978)
• Jon Peterson's PatW, The Elusive Shift, Game Wizards

You might also consider the recent Kwalish-themed 5.x releases, which have a similar science-fantasy vibe: Bart Carroll's Lost Laboratory of Kwalish (WotC 2018) and Troy Alleman's The Arm of Kwalish (Cannibaal 2025).

Allan.

Greyhawk News You Can Use in the Month of Planting!

Black Blade - GaryCon booth review at Black Gate

John O'Neill of Black Gate Magazine visited our Black Blade Publishing booth at GaryCon last month, and rote a very nice piece about the booth and the books at https://www.blackgate.com/2023/03/26/gary-con-report-black-blade-publishing-and-limitless-adventure/.

Allan working BBP's GaryCon booth
(photo by John O'Neill)

The article nicely updates John’s rediscovery of our booth back at GaryCon X at https://www.blackgate.com/2018/03/13/the-1001-treasures-of-black-blade-publishing-and-goodman-games-gary-con-2018-report-part-ii/.

It’s sometimes difficult to appreciate the breadth and depth of excellent content available in the greater old-school, OSR, and Greyhawk gaming communities, and John’s article does a great job summarizing the passion that we bring to this hobby. 

It’s a true pleasure to help introduce gamers to the myriad of wonderful books, adventure modules, fiction, and other fan-created projects at GaryCon and North Texas RPG Con each year.

 

Tonisborg Review, 2002 Gygax Video, and the Marmoreal Tomb Shambles into Unlife

Two news items via Trent Smith’s always-insightful blog, The Mystical Trash Heap:

1. Trent’s excellent review of The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg, recently reprinted via Kickstarter by the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary team
   
   
2. A recently-rediscovered 2002 interview by Peter Michael Garcia with Gary Gygax at GameFest 2002 (Richmond, VA) at https://vimeo.com/809850827 (23 minutes):

2002 Peter Michael Garcia interview
with Gary Gygax

 

The video was shared on Facebook by Ernie Gygax, and Trent reshared it from there.

Ernie’s and Benoist Poire’s Marmoreal Tomb Kickstarter also began to ship product in March, after the long-delayed project was rescued through the assistance of Troll Lord Games, who completed production and fulfillment.  I wasn’t a backer, but the new books do look pretty good, per a picture that Anthony Huso shared recently from his blog:

 

The Marmoreal Tomb in all of its glory
(photo by Anthony Huso)

 

What’s Up in the Greyhawk Fan Community

The community has been pretty busy of late---creating, announcing, and delivering several new projects!:

• Ben Ball’s Peoples of the Flanaess download is at https://www.mediafire.com/file/zbmel607ngy0zfj/Peoples_of_the_Flanaess.pdf, and offers pre-defined lists of names for each of the 61 cultures, nations, and named regions in the World of Greyhawk. Each d30 table includes columns for female and male names, alignment, hair color, hair texture, complexion, and eye color.  Follow-up discussion is available at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse (where Ben also shared some brilliant encounter tables for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, too!).
  
  Ben’s work aligns nicely with the Greyhawk naming discussion on Canonfire! that Marc-Tizoc Gonzalez began, and which I mentioned in last month’s news update.
  
  
• The new Gulf of Ghayar Gazetteer can be downloaded at https://www.annabmeyer.com/2023/04/19/gulf-of-ghayar-gazetteer/.  Designed by Crag and supported by the Greyhawk fan commuinity, the 96 page PDF details the full scope of the Dramidj Oceanic region, located at the extreme northwest of the Flanaess, beginning at Ekbir and sweeping westar beyond.
  
  
•  Jay “LordGosumba” Scott, Anna Meyer, and I hosted another discussion with Rob Kuntz on Saturday morning, 22 April 2023---Earth Day, so perhaps we should have made it an Oerth Day chat, but we didn’t think of that and instead we discussed the origins, history, and continuing development of Rob’s player character, Lord Robilar (and a few other topics).  You can watch the recording on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1800551316 and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mH6A85uMC8:
  
  
  
  
  And if you missed last month’s widely-ranging discussion with Rob, the recording is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGKXKPS6kA.
  
  
• Jay also recently announced the dates for Virtual Greyhawk Con 4:  this year it’s being held from 6-8 October 2023!:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Last, but certainly not least, a new Greyhawk fanzine is in the offing, Visions of Greyhawk:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Evan “FormerlyKnownasNorker” Cummins announced the new zine on Canonfire! at http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=9716 with a pointer to this four-page download:  http://www.canonfire.com/visionsofgreyhawk/VisionsofGreyhawkProposal.pdf:
  
  

  VISIONS OF GREYHAWK is a new e-zine being made by and for World of Greyhawk enthusiasts. It will be hosted on Canonfire.com. As that website has done for the hobby for over two decades, this e-zine will present mini-modules, lore articles, reviews, new monsters and magic, and more, regardless of the version of the rules employed.

  
  Zine submissions opened on 15 April 2023, and Gary Holian added some commentary in the above Canonfire! announcement thread: 
  
  

  My two cents. The Oerth Journal continues to exist and we should be proud of of it as one of the longest running zines in fandom. But this is more about Canonfire and its new direction.
  
  I will be relaunching the [Canonfire!] site soon, with updated forums and using a modern Wordpress installation as a base. That should greatly improve the signup process and the search engine, both of which are functionally broken in many ways. We'll work on ways for people to discover and re-discover all the great content on this site.  [snip]
  
  Why the name Visions of Greyhawk? I suggested we choose a name that leaves no doubt what the content is about, targeted for people far and wide who are not just members of Canonfire, but it will be hosted and promoted on CF.

  
  The editorial team has been firming up as new community members volunteer to help support the zine, and currently includes (as of 19 April 2023):
  
  
  • PROJECT EDITOR: Ewan Cummins
  • CONSULTING EDITOR: Gary Holian
  • LAYOUT AND DESIGN: Lee Schaidle
  • ASSISTANT EDITORS: Gary “hedgeknight” Francisco

Visions of Greyhawk is still accepting volunteers for assistant editorial positions.  To volunteer your help in editing or layout and design, or to submit an article or a piece of artwork, emails visionsofgreyhawk@gmail.com.

Since the new zine is positioned as complimentary to the Oerth Journal rather than competitive with the OJ, I remain cautiously optimisti that the community can support multiple zines.  We’ll see!

 

And that’s all for the month of Planting!  Happy Oerth Day everyone (yet-again blogger ate my content yesterday afternoon, so this being posted a day late and a post short), and see you next time!

Allan.

GaryCon XV Convention Report - 21-27 March 2023

GaryCon XV has come and gone, and---as usual---I had a wonderful time at the convention playing AD&D, celebrating the life and games of Gary Gygax and the rest of the old-school guard, and catch up with friends old and new!

The Ugly, the Bad, and the Great

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ugly and the Bad won't take up too much space in this post, and The Great far outweighs these two, they remain important to share nonetheless. 

The Ugly: COVID

To get the Ugly out of the way first:  I caught COVID at GaryCon XV.  Because I worked the vendor hall at our Black Blade Publishing booth, I interacted with a LOT of folks at GaryCon, so I've shared this information as widely as I can on Facebook.

This is the message I sent to the players in my GaryCon XV games via TableTop Events messaging:

 

Hello Fellow GaryCon Gamers!---

As some of you will already be aware from my post on Facebook, I tested positive for COVID on Friday 31 March 2023 after presumably being exposed at the convention.  I had meant to send this out on Friday, but forgot, so if this is the first time you're hearing this news, I apologize.  

If you played in one of my GaryCon games, or visited the Black Blade Publishing booth, you may have been exposed too.  If we interacted, you should consider testing whether you're showing symptoms, or not.  (I was masked while working the booth on Saturday and Sunday of the convention after hearing rumors of COVID cases at GaryCon).  

The CDC guidelines on testing and isolation are at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/if-you-were-exposed.html and https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/isolation.html and have changed since I had last reviewed them.  For what it's worth, I tested negative twice on the evening of Monday 27 March and Wednesday 29 March before I tested positive four days after my return from Lake Geneva on Friday, 31 March.  

I hope that you remain healthy, that you recover quickly if you do get sick, and I look forward to gaming again together in the future!

Allan.

 
The Bad: Not Much!

With COVID out of the way, I don't have any significant complaints about the convention.  I was pretty tired after the con, and moreso than in years previously.  I attributed that initially and in particular to working the booth alone (it was about 6 hours to set up, and 4 hours to tear down), but some could have been COVID tiredness too. 

Dave Conant and Travis (a volunteer) did come by the booth while Jeff Talanian and I were chatting, and asked for feedback.  We spoke about noise in the louder events rooms, which is a recurring problem that's hard to solve.  

The only other possible complaint is the new location of the vendors hall in the Forum (this was the second year there), but we haven't crunched the numbers on our sales data yet to see how we did, so complaining would be quite premature ;) 

The Great:  all the rest! :D

Other than COVID, the rest of the of GaryCon was  awesome, as always.  

It's always a treat and a treasure to catch up with old friends, to meet folks for the first time who I've only known online via a username, and to game with both groups at the table. 

Black Blade Publishing booth and New Old-School Games!

Allan at the Black Blade Publishing
booth at GaryCon XV

Our Black Blade Publishing booth was one of mainstays in the hall.  It's always a pleasure to introduce gamers to wonderful works created by our friends and fellow designers.  You can browse through some pictures of the booth in my Facebook profile (they're publicly visible) in my GaryCon XV photo album, and John O'Neill of Black Gate Magazine also shared his walk-through pictures of our booth too---John's are more-current than mine, in fact, and show the booth in its "final form" from Saturday ;)

New products to highlight in the booth this year included:

• Black Blade's newest 17"x22" hexagonal mapping pads
• John Eric Holmes' Maze of Peril (his 1986 novella; this was placeholder stock until we reprint Tales of Peril) 
• Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated series, volumes 1-6, including OAR#6 The Temple of Elemental Evil, which also featured in Paul Stormberg's "Legends of Roleplaying" tournament on Friday night
  
• Lenard Lakofka's L3 Deep Dwarven Delve (along with a number of other TSR classics reprints)
  
• Richard Barton's The Halls of Arden Vul (we sold out of copies by Sunday!) 
• Alex Bates' Fire-Pearls of Aya-Ghan adventure
• Handy Haversack's The Hybrid Bone Effigy Crucible of the Urgent Chimera adventure
  
• Joe Bloch's Adventures Dark & Deep "Tomes" series:  Swords of Cthulhu, Adventures Great and Glorious, Book of Lost Lore, and Book of Lost Beasts
• Larry Wickman's Gamewick Games titles:  Pittsburgh 68, Roswell 51, and Innmouth 32
  

We also promoted new PDF-only products from Rob Kuntz' Three Line Studio (both Gargax's Glorious Gewgaws and Pryce's Price, his 50th anniversary of OD&D tributes to Gary Gygax), and Carlos Lising's Hounds of Oerth, a new casl Entertainment charity supplement supporting the ASPCA.

Other GaryCon XV New Releases and Acquisitions!

Anna Meyer's seminar handout,
two new Lenard Lakofka modules,
and more!

 

The Lenard Lakofka Archive announced the release of two new AD&D adventures, which are free to download from Anna Meyer's web site:  LA1 The Lighthouse and LA2 Devil's Dung. These are newly-published adventures written by Lenard and released to the public for free in PDF form.  I playtested a still-unpublished adventure ("Ravages of the Mind") at Virtual Greyhawk Con 3 last October, so keep an eye out for more new Lakofka materials in the future!  And thank you to the archive team for their hard work---these modules wouldn't exist without time time, talent, and treasure donated by Troy Alleman, Daniel Boggs, Richard Di Iola, Anna Meyer, Josh Popp, Lee Schaidle, Dan Smith, and of course to Lenard Lakofka.

Anna B. Meyer shared her 2023 cartography seminar handout at https://www.annabmeyer.com/2023/03/12/gary-con-xv-handout/ and it's gorgeous!  Anna has many new projects coming this year, including new Greyhawk and Meyerhawk heraldry, and updates to many of her maps including her new Oerth v2 project!  Anna also took the time out of her busy schedule to deliver my copies of Lenard's new modules; thanks Anna! :D

In addition to the above highlights, I also picked up a copy of some old homebrewed character sheets from Shawn and Devon Hibbs at their Die Cast Games booth (the Burntwire Brothers, as they're known among the Acaeum crowd).  I had bought the exact same set from them last year, so I'll be opening the shrink wrap on one of them to see what's on the backs of the sheets.

Zach "Zenopus Archives" Howard also graciously gifted me with a 5e handout that Steve Marsh provided at one of his games at the North Texas RGP Con.  It had caught my eye because it includes a new class that's oriented toward shadow magic (which was first professional gaming publication way back in 1987 in White Wolf Magazine #11).  Thanks Zach! :D

COVID Comforts for grodog

While I've been isolating at home, in addition to reading some of the goodies above, I've also been re-reading Roger Zelazny's second Chronicles of Amber series, which focuses on Corwin's son Merlin.  On my last trip to NJ I had picked up Seven Tales in Amber, which collects Roger's last stories in the series (primarily his short stories from Amberzine).  

The Merlin stories have lately been scrabbling aroud in my backbrain, along with Anthony Huso's Night Wolf Inn (recently given a five-star review from Prince of Nothing at Age of Dusk), so I read through them the past few days while isolating:

COVID comforts for grodog

"Where there's a whip, there's a way..."

My reading pile also includes a new-to-me puzzle dungeon entitled Aberrant Reflections.  I haven't fully read it yet, but the publisher is directsun Games, and I hope to carry them in our booth in the future.

John Popson of Effincool Miniatures also hand-delievered a box of wonderful Rankin-Bass-inspired goblins above, which I will to paint and mix in gleefully with my Max Carr Dungeon Dwellers goblins from Heritage :D  Thanks John!

The last title I leave you with is a book that was recommended to me by Eli Elder, and it looks like it'll fit in quite nicely in my 1:1 solo aquatic Greyhawk campaign with my son Henry:

 

I don't have a copy of this in-hand (yet!), but Knight Owl Publishing's Aquatic Adventures looks like a winner based on my flip-through of Eli's copy at the con. 

Until the next time, when I'll provide a run-through of the games I DM'd at GaryCon XV.

Allan.

Special Guest Interview with Rob Kuntz livestream on LordGosumba's Gabbin' #236

Jay Scott---with Anna Meyer and me also participating---interviewed Rob Kuntz on Jay's Gabbin' at Lord Peak's Haven #236 livestream show yesterday morning.  The show came together very quickly, so I didn't have time to announce it ahead of time.  If you missed it live, you can watch the recordings on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1748868999 and YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGKXKPS6kA (video below links to YouTube):

 

 

Discussion References

Our widely-ranging discussion delved into various aspects of OD&D and Greyhawk's playtesting and early publishing history, including (among other topics):

1. The original, now alas lost, Greyhawk campaign map drawn by Gary (lost by Chris Schleicher, who printed the Domesday Book newsletters for the Castles & Crusades Society): 

Domesday Book Great Kingdom map
by Dave Megarry

Domesday Book Great Kingdom map
by Dave Arneson (and colored by grodog)

 

The lost map was 8.5"x11" in portrait orientation (not landscape) featured more text and graphical/artistic detail than the two above, and was in Gary's handwriting. 

That map would have chronologically been developed somewhere between the above two Domesday Great Kingdom maps and the art order sketch maps that Darlene used for the Folio poster maps (and which survive in photocopy form from Lenard Lakofka's archives):

 

Darlene's published
1980 Greyhawk Folio maps

 

For some excellent analysis and discussion about the original Castle & Crusade Society Great Kingdom maps, see these additional resources:

• Dan "Aldarron" Boggs' blog at http://boggswood.blogspot.com/search/label/Greyhawk (and Dan's blog is a wonderful resource for all things Blackmoor-related as well!) 
• Zach "Zenopus Archives" Howard's blog at https://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-land-of-great-kingdom-and-environs.html and https://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/megarrys-copy-of-great-kingdom-map.html 
• The Secrets of Blackmoor documentary at https://www.secretsofblackmoor.com/  
  

2. You can read the full text of Gary Gygax's letter in Alarums & Excursions #15 (15 October 1976) at Jason Zavoda's blog "Gygax's Letter in Alarums and Excursions #15" and Jason had transcribed additional Gygax letters at https://jasonzavoda-hallofthemountainking.blogspot.com/search?q=alarums&max-results=20&by-date=true.

 

3. Arnold Hendrick's full 1974 review of OD&D from The Courier Volume 6 #6 (1974) appears below:

 

Gary's rebuttal to the review appears in The Strategic Review #3 (Fall 1975).

For some additional discussion and commentary, see ENWorld at https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-typewritten-d-d-review-from-1974-by-arnold-hendrick.661641/ and Paul's Blog of Holding at https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=5769.

 

4. "The Gnome Cache" is Gary's incomplete novella published serially (as "Garrison Ernst") in The Dragon #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, and #7 from June 1976 through June 1977:

5. The rules for the "Siege of Bodenburg" were first published by Henry H. Bodenstedt in Strategy & Tactics Volume 1 #6 (July 1967) and were subsequently freely distributed from his Adelphia, New Jersey games and hobby store to help sell the Elastolin Miniatures that he imported. 

The rules used to be freely downloadable at http://www.thortrains.net/armymen/bodebok1.html but that site is now gone, and is not available via the Internet Archive, so I've uploaded the rules to my site at [TBD].

For some additional information about Bodenburg's relationship to Castle Greyhawk, see Zenopus Archives at https://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/03/visualizing-castle-greyhawk.html and for some historical context about the Siege of Bodenburg game, seehttps://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/2650436. 

I'll try to find the pictures of me playing "Siege of Bodenburg" from my GaryCon photo albums, and add here too.

 

Online Stores for Rob Kuntz Books

We discussed several of the gaming books that Rob authored and designed over the years, and many are still in-print and available:

• Rob's most-recent works are spread out across a few different publishing imprints, but are all accessible from:
• Gargax's Glorious Gewgaws, Pryce's Price, and free newsletter at  https://www.threelinestudio.com/
• LR1 Beyond the Living Room (from Castle Greyhawk) at https://www.legendsofroleplaying.com/
• El Raja Key Archive, Dave Arneson's True Genius, The Game That Changed Everything, Merlynd the Magician, K1 The Sunken City, and poster maps at https://www.tlbgames.com/ 
• LGCC-1 The Original Bottle City (from Castle Greyhawk), RJK-1 Cairn of the Skeleton King, and RJK-2 Tower of Blood are available from us at Black Blade Publishing, both via mail order or direct from our booths at GaryCon and North Texas RPG Con each year. 
  
  We also stock all of Rob's in-print titles from Paul at GaryCon and North Texas RPG Con.
  

Additional References

Rob's most-current biography is on his TLS site at https://www.threelinestudio.com/bio/.

"A Partial, Annotated Bibliography of the Works of Robert J. Kuntz" appears on Canonfire! at  http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=125 (and is mirrored on my Greyhawk site, but I think my copy is not as current as the Canonfire! one).  Both are likely in need of updating, and also provide some good insight into the contents of Rob's El Raja Key Archive.

Canonfire! also hosts "Rob Kuntz's The Three Artifacts of the Demon Senders," which was first published in Wargaming #2 in 1977. 

 

 

Enjoy! :D

Allan.