The First
Living Campaign*
A Historical Look at the Beginning of RPG Campaign Play in
Lake Geneva.
©2013, Robert J. Kuntz. All Rights Reserved.
All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective
owners and are used for historical purposes only and as provided for by the Fair Use copyright clause.
*A shorter
version of this essay was originally posted at Lord of the Green Dragons
Blogspot several years ago.
Part
1: The Merger of Two Campaign
Environs: Castle Greyhawk and Castle El Raja Key, 1972-1973
I have read
with great interest several articles around the Internet describing the start
of Living Campaigns. The idea is that these begin with a certain rules edition
proceeding OD&D. I am now casting my two pennies into the mix.
First the
term "Living" strikes me as a misnomer, really, but for clarity sake
I'll use it here, as the strict idea of “campaign play” might be less
understandable within its extended range of meanings.
When Gary
Gygax created the single map for City of Greyhawk and the first Castle Greyhawk
(13 levels), we had the start of the first campaign
in Lake Geneva, 1972. As was noted in his introduction to my adventure, Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure, he played in a castle/area that I had
designed, (Castle El Raja Key; but
I had designed no supporting town or city as he had). That was about
a month into him starting Greyhawk. So El Raja Key is the second campaign
created in Lake Geneva (early 1973). Both of us were then using the Outdoor Survival board game map for
outdoor adventures, as there was no other campaign map for noting any of our
imagined adventure locales.
Gary started
in the "mists" when rolling his first PC, Yrag. And what I mean by
“mists” is that I started him near the precincts of Castle El Raja Key in a small, unnamed village. There was no background for his
character and he merely used the village as a starting and stopping point to
resupply from. As Gary was more
concerned about adventuring, and as I concurred with that notion, many details
were foreshortened or dropped altogether.
I was fairly
lenient in provisioning Yrag: I
provided him with a war horse, a good amount of gold (200 was always my number,
then and now) with which to buy hirelings if he wished, and included standard
armor, weapon and miscellaneous picks, like dungeon equipment. I wasn’t being lax, but just taking
into account that Gary had been doing so much DMing and writing and deservedly
needed a break from the tediousness of it all, and thus the tediousness of
having to acquire these extras by way of extensive adventuring. In all he walked into my clime with a
sizable plus compared to what Robilar, for instance, had started with in Castle
Greyhawk.
Within a day
I allowed him to roll up his second PC, Mordenkainen, this to pair with Yrag,
and because he was for the most part adventuring solo (but do read hereafter).
Gary was very
much interested in building his own army based around what he would soon name
the Circle of Eight. Later on this now legendary
edifice--built about its members and their forces, and then collectively known
as the Golden Horde--was to be located
on the original outdoor environs map. Because of his overriding desire to build
an army, there came into being his rash of NPCs. This nucleus ensured that he would have the muscle and
leadership needed for continuing to build and control his imagined future
forces.
Some of this historical
matter is noted in Gary’s Up on a Soapbox stories, many of which either
detailed his dungeon adventures or those occurring about the outdoor environs
where Castle El Raja Key was located. This was a good run of 30 or more
stories in The Dragon magazine, in fact. Note an extract from one hereafter (bold
emphasis mine):
...#11.
Roleplaying for the Dungeon Master: Virtue brings more than its own reward.
Back in those
early halcyon days of D&D, all of my time was not spent developing the Greyhawk
campaign environment and then serving as Dungeon Master for the
ever-growing throng of players. Indeed, after only a few weeks time there were
plenty of others working to create campaign settings like that I was doing. So
I was offered many opportunities to play, and I did so in about a dozen
different settings with as many different DMs. Thus came into being my first
PC, Yrag. Now it so happened that the most eager of these other fledgling DMs
was Rob Kuntz. Because he took to the new game like the proverbial duck to water,
playing in his campaign was a lot of fun, and I did that wherever I could,
side by side with many of the regulars from my own campaign. It was in one such adventure that Rob
introduced a new cursed magic item, the ring of contrariness. Likely because I
was a very intense player myself, Rob made sure that Yrag ended up with the
item. The doughty fighter being a risk taker, Yrag immediately put the ring on
his ringer. At that point, I was taken aside, and the properties of the ring
were explained to me. Laughing silently to myself, I returned to the group.
... someone asked. “What does the ring do?”
To that Yrag replied, “None of your business!” As the adventure was just
beginning, another player said the matter could be set aside until later, as
his character said. “Let’s go” and moved away. The other PCs followed. Yrag sat
down. “Come on,” someone urged him. “No, I am staying here.” Being a close-knit
band, the others then came back, saying they too would stay. “In that case, I
am leaving,” muttered Yrag, as he stalked off. ... After about 10 minutes of this it
became apparent to the other players that I was roleplaying, that Yrag was
under some malign magical influence that made him uncooperative. Of course I
played it to the hilt. For example: “You can’t take the ring off, can you?” Terik
tried, to which Yrag responded, “Yes I can, but that’s what you want, so I
won’t.” Then, “Yrag, pummel yourself!” suggested Murlynd. “No, I won’t
do that, but I’ll smite you!” roared the fighter now in a growing rage. ...
Finally, they came up with a means of defeating the contrariness curse ...
Murlynd (Don
Kaye) and Terik (Terry Kuntz) had started as PCs in Greyhawk and easily moved
between that area and my own. Also note that Gary refers to that shared area as
an "environment," which is indeed a better descriptive, as there was
no defined area, just a relative image in our minds due to the position that
each castle and environment maintained on the Outdoor Survival map in relation to the City of Greyhawk.
And so here
we note that, indeed, this is the start of the first true "Living
Campaign," which was to go on to merge as one with me becoming the co-DM
of Greyhawk and thereby transferring my creations, such as levels, gods, magic
items and sundry ideas into this combined campaign structure. After that time
there was only one campaign, really, as Gary and I had never thought otherwise
about such divisions, and the process seemed a natural outgrowth of play.
However, when we realized that this could ultimately mean an over abundance of
sharing across many campaigns then starting (Ernie Gygax's, Terry Kuntz's, Don
Kaye's, et al), then EGG and I instated a firm rule that PCs adventuring in our
campaign would thereafter have to obtain permission to do so in others, and this
was not usually forthcoming, especially if the DMs were known to be of the lax
sort who gave away too much treasure.
Part 2: The Living
Campaign Continues, 1973-1976
When I became
co-DM (late 1973) I initially only ran outdoor adventures for a very short time
period before taking on the full DM mantle (and for a short time still DMed El Raja Key for those players, Gary and
others, who wanted to adventure therein).
There were
two immediate reasons for this: 1)
The 1st Castle Greyhawk was closed for adventuring purposes, except
when I felt I could twist Gary’s arm to let Robilar take a solo adventure
within it. As that rarely occurred
I finally looked at the levels that had for almost a year challenged me, thus
ruining any future chance of adventuring therein again; 2) Gary was hurriedly
designing the 2nd Castle Greyhawk at this juncture, so this lead to
another complication in that the PCs, most of which had grown in level and had
begun adventuring on the outdoor environs, were stranded to that choice alone
until he’d finished the design.
During that design period we cannibalized parts of Castle El Raja Key into the newly forming 2nd Castle
(this in turn shut out veteran players from choosing to adventure in El Raja Key and it, too, was officially
closed). This shuttling of levels
included a split-level special, The
Machine Level, that I had just finished designing. On the cusp, so to speak, it
immediately went into the new castle after Gary “play-tested” it with
Mordenkainen & Crew.
I still took Gary
on occasional adventures around this time (and he did so for me as well, and
all of which we always fudged into being as “play-tests”); and I had created
another dungeon located on our original outdoor environs for he and others to
try out. Entitled, The Dungeons of Krazor
the Mad (1974; 4 maps fanfold, 4s/inch), this was a high level affair with
some technology in it that Mordenkainen & Crew barely escaped from on one
such adventure. I had wanted to
break with the 8.5” x 11” graph paper standard we had used for most of our
dungeon designs, this by creating levels from 4-fanfold (4s or 5s/inch). Due to my many other duties and
projects I was never able to continue on with the ‘Krazor’ dungeon concept that
would have fully expanded on this idea.
But this particle led (in late 1975) to the creation of the Orcky Level, yet another design to break
with established norms and this time by combining two fanfold maps (8s/inch)
side by side. Although many
players adventured in it, it was Mordenkainen & Crew who came out of this
sprawling complex with the fabled Iron
Bands of N’Closure.
In between
DMing outdoor adventures for the regular players, and sporadic ones for Gary, I
was designing additional Castle Greyhawk levels (as core levels or as
split-level specials); and in order to meet the demand of non-castle adventures
while Gary was busy completing the new castle dungeons, I charged in and
started creating additional outdoor dungeons/scenarios, city
dungeons/scenarios, planar adventures, and city-environ dungeons/scenarios, all
being of a level that could challenge our current veteran players (i.e., in the
latter case, for example, Temple of the
Latter Day Elder Ones).
What I mean
by */scenarios: The campaign had to expand in scope at
this point, so this is where the local histories, city intrigues, rumored
outdoor areas, planar incidents and all manner of story strings started to
generate into coalescing parts or wholes. For instance, I created an outdoor
inhabitants list for nearby castles that previously had always been randomly
generated and started to imagine their purposes in relation to the whole area.
About this time I created Demonworld
(nine full color hex maps, 3 x 3), which was to later result in the 1st Demonworld Adventure (players: Ernie Gygax and Mark Ratner). During
this time Gary and I sat down together and designed three additional maps for
the City of Greyhawk. This expanded it to a total of four, with the original
then being known as “Old City”.
I started to
add meat to the shell of the city:
The sewers had a link to the Temple
of the Latter Day Elder One; Fu’s Front took shape; Terik established a
hiring service and began investigating costs for river ships with some latter
intentions in that area expanding into future play; rumors of weird
supernatural happenings led to a campaign string that later resulted in the 2nd Demonworld Adventure,
etc. There was now a rising
preciseness to the city where there had been only bits and pieces of that
beforehand (i.e., as in Odd Alley and Strange Way). My massive expansion of city, planar and outdoor elements
would continue; and about the time Gary and I released the supplemental rules
for Dungeons & Dragons (Greyhawk, Supplement 1, 1975), the Greyhawk Sewers (4 combined maps,
8s/inch), The Stalk, Dark Druids and
many other adventuring vehicles and resources for all of the three
aforementioned climes had been created or conceptualized in full.
At the same
time I started designing matter for what would become World of Kalibruhn, this in addition to continuing design on its
[now] adjunct area, Lost City of the
Elders (created in early 1973; and which in 1974 Ernie Gygax, as Tenser,
followed in his father’s footsteps to be the second player to investigate
it). This included hooks to the
LCotE and other dimensional jumping off points that I had created on the
outdoor and elsewhere, the latter as later hinted at in Gary’s article for Wargamer’s Digest (June 1975).
I even
imagined a mage deriving from my forming world, one Xaene, and he was placed as
a “Sorcerer” on the outdoor inhabitants list. I concluded that he had appeared through use of strange,
dimensional magic. That led to his story line as conceived for many published
and unpublished future works. As an aside, the “dimensional magic” aspect of
Xaene’s story led me to write, in 1979, a 20 page treatise on the subject of Ancient & Dimensional Magic, with a
precursor of this occurring in my reconceptualization of the OD&D magic
system from my unpublished work, the Kalibruhn
Supplement (1976).
Gary and I
now had a cross-section of players, some of which were at odds level-wise with
the second castle design; and thus many veteran players started new PCs. This
did not stop them from requesting other adventures with their old PCs. Gary and I were not restrictive like
that. If they wanted to search out
an interesting “other area” that we had spread rumors about, etc., then we were
always game for that. This is
partly what led to the idea of a “stable of PCs.”
The following
“routine” pretty much became the norm for our veteran players: they’d run their new PCs in the castle
but would use their older PCs on outdoor, planar, or similarly leveled
adventures that I had sculpted.
For instance, my brother’s PC, Terik, adventured with James Ward’s
Bombadil in the Bottle City;
Terik & Bombadil also found
their way into the Temple of the Latter
Day Elder Ones and were transported to Fomalhaut
(my Lovecraftian concoction); Bombadil also interfaced with a planar-jumping
tech-genius Cosmodious (again connected to the Lovecraftian theme I was
building); and Don Arndt’s PC, a neutral cleric, even stumbled upon Robilar’s
castle on the outdoor environs, much to his chagrin…
With Gary
writing full-time and as he, Don Kaye and a newly arrived Brian Blume became
more invested time-wise with the company, I continued concentrating on running
and designing all aspects of the campaign. Gary made some appearances as he was hooked, of course, and
that is when we’d still co-DM, but this didn’t change things much. Because of that I foresaw not needing
my remaining Castle El Raja Key
levels and “loaned” them to Michael Mornard, as he was now in Minnesota going
to college there and he wanted to start his own campaign. I later reacquired
these from him around the time of me leaving TSR in 1977.
Things were
happening so fast back then that it seemed like a whirlwind of memories in
motion. But the following is
certain. With Gary being so busy guiding the fledgling company, and with me
being so busy designing and play-testing, creating Greyhawk material, and on a
design path with Kalibruhn as then inspired by Tolkien, Gary was not aware of
the sheer weight of material I was creating.
The idea of a
shared campaign was also becoming, in my conception, a shared world, similar to
what had been envisioned for the Castle
& Crusade Society in 1970.
This never happened in whole, but the idea stuck with me all throughout
the design process for Kalibruhn; and to this day I have a map listing
dimensions as “worlds” and with one of them being Greyhawk. If you
wanted to get to it from Kalibruhn you sailed from sight of land, entered
roiling mists, and eventually emerged out of the mist and near the shores of
this new “dimension.”
I believe the
idea would still work rather well today!
Part 3: The End of the Shared Campaign as
One Goes Public, 1977-1985
In 1977 I
left my position at TSR Hobbies for personal, philosophical and creative
reasons and though I drifted in and out of that circle now and again, my
association with the Original Campaign as a shared device for gaming
ended. Gary continued to encourage
me to work for the company and to even rejoin it (1980), but my previous
reasons for leaving the company were not assuaged by this, so I stayed to my
course.
This of
course left me with a very large amount of campaign material for our shared
environs that I was forced to shelve, and with great misgivings, as I had
poured uncounted days, hours and years of my time and effort into that
material. Making lemonade out of
lemons, I returned to designing World of
Kalibruhn™ as well as board games.
World of Greyhawk™ went public with the release of the folio
version in 1980. There was now a
demand for more material, but unfortunately, unlike my ideas for it then, TSR
continued on the adventure path model rather than forwarding primary resource
material for it and thereby promoting the very idea of what WoG was: an uncontained, skeletal sandbox for
individualized creation. Though I
am sure some of the end-use gamers used it for primary creative purposes, the
majority just plopped down adventures on the prescribed hexes and as these were
allotted to them. Not one resource
in book form (until much later) was
to be produced for it; and this begs a question as to why, but that will remain
to be examined in my future essays.
Gary finally
convinced me to contribute some material (Dragon
magazine articles for Greyhawk), but as he now controlled all IP, I was not
forthcoming in putting out too many of my best ideas, then. He wanted to promote the world through
the history in motion framework, which I wasn’t averse to doing, but I
ultimately found that route turgid and dry. So I started inserting minute intrigues useable in campaign
play, such as the advent of Xaene and the Demonic Knights of Doom
sequences. At that time I was
working up the Great Kingdom angle (through Maze of Xaene, Parts 1 & 2) and
had much more material in store for the articles. Carl Sargent (From the
Ashes) would later pick up on this material as well as many of my other
Great Kingdom particles and amalgamate them into a greater whole in his work, Ivid the Undying.
Due to my
building interest in board game design and illustration (I had maintained A’s
in all my HS art classes), I was associating more often with Tom Wham, David
Trampier and David Sutherland in those days. I was also writing more fiction and experimenting with the
novel form. At one point Gary
questioned me on why I remained aloof and suggested that I just write more
material through him for Greyhawk and it would surely be published.
So, with some
more prodding, I produced Mordenkainen’s
Fantastic Adventure, this just before heading off to college at the
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.
My first iteration of World of
Kalibruhn™ was finished by then.
The campaign had at its height 11 full time players, a good part of them
from among those veterans who could no longer adventure in Greyhawk as I was no
longer its DM; and Gary, being so busy with corporate matters then, really only
DMed at conventions. Soon after
entering college I received word that Tom Wham and I had won the Charles Roberts Award for our board
game, Kings & Things (West End
Games).
Right around
that time Gary took over the company.
We had previously been in constant communication. Gary wanted to solidly promote
the Greyhawk line, and had said to me several times that, “The only reason it
doesn’t do well is for lack of marketing.” He offered me a future position as TSR’s WoG Brand Manager,
which I accepted with caveats i.e., that we take it away from the adventure
paths only approach, and with two immediate offerings: The Wild Coast regional setting; and a
large book detailing WoG clerics/priests, that would have included my embedded
thrust to remake the entire AD&D™
spell system from the ground up, just as I had envisioned many years earlier
for the OD&D spells; and this by way of a wide range of specific spells and
divine powers per religion. But
before we could finalize any plans he was in court over the alleged illegal
transfer of TSR stock by the Blumes, and he actually lost the suit. Lorraine Williams took control of the
company and dismissed Gary. That ended any future vitality and primary
direction for the World of Greyhawk™
line of products. Soon afterwards I formed Creations
Unlimited to begin producing World of
Kalibruhn™ material.
Part 4: The WoG End Game, 1997-1998
To say that
there was anyone more disappointed than myself about all that had transpired
since the evolution of our shared campaign to its present state, then, would
have been untrue. I was
Greyhawks’s biggest fan, it’s most active player in the day, it’s co-DM and
compiler of game material for it, its champion in print, and its general in a battle
it neither sought nor deserved.
But the more I continued concentrating on something I deemed as
unsalvageable (TSR owned the Greyhawk trademark and associated copyrights), the
more I saw all those earliest years filled with comradeship and unfettered game
fun and creation slipping into the pit of corporate control and politics. It was, in a word, dismaying. But in 1997 I was willing to give
Greyhawk one last pledge.
When Wizards
of the Coast took over a nearly bankrupt TSR, there appeared a glimmer of hope
that Gary and I might be able to revitalize an interest for WoG’s return. I proposed to him that I draft a World of Greyhawk™ market plan [appended hereafter in full] and submit
it to Peter Adkinson and Lisa Stevens. Gary agreed to this and upon finish I
sent it to him for approval. All
he said was: “A good first pass.” So it was e-mailed to both of the
aforementioned WotC executives and I cced Gary. The result? We never heard back from them about this.
Not directly.
Indirectly he and I got the message, as Roger Moore and Anne Brown were,
instead, slated as authors to release two Greyhawk products in 1998 (The Adventure Begins; Return of the Eight).
‘Damning with
faint praise’ has become Greyhawk’s motto for the corporate hierarchies that
have controlled its future and published past. I have likened it to a royal prisoner in the Tower of London
who is brought forth on special occasions and paraded before the peers (for
their feigned respect) and the people (for their uninformed cheers, or worse,
confused silence). In other words they use it, but not in any sincere way
that it was intended to be used.
This was a
final blow for Gary, as he had been rapidly losing interest in anything
Greyhawk related before then; and indeed, part of my reasons to see Greyhawk
revitalized was to resurrect that interest in him as well as in me.
***
“World of Greyhawk Market Plan [8/1/97]
“Foundations:
What is the long term goal of investing in the return of TSR's first
FRPG world? How can TSR continue
to make WoG not just a published line, yet an eye-catcher, a sought after
commodity, a line that TSR not only aggressively pursues but is likewise
pursued by its consumers? World of
Greyhawk's initial market foundation will be the basis for it to further the market
share and growth it needs to once again be a profitable AD&D FRP
world. A lack of this--especially
considering its present incarnation--would not only be a disservice to the
perception of it as an already established and preeminent world by a select
body of mature gamers, but this would be degenerative, causing problems such as
mediocre products and a reduced market desirability for these. So I'm sure we can agree on the fact
that from the onset WoG needs a solid plan in addition to a timely, well
reasoned publishing schedule for it to achieve the most desirous long term
results for TSR and its product line consumers.
“Promoting the Product Line: TSR's earliest products, such as modules and game-aids from
the WoG setting, had ample promotional backing. A well thought out and executed promotional campaign is
necessary with a WoG market push, especially with the FTA/Original WoG
fractionalization. However, there
can be no dedicated promotional campaign of WoG without a decisive viewpoint of
what setting, original or other, will be marketed. Here I make a push for the
original setting. Unlike FTA the
original WoG campaign has a solid foundation of creators and material and a
good following waiting to expand with the product.
Listed below are specific examples of what would be
needed for a successful, ongoing promotional campaign.
A) Dragon Magazine coverage of initiatives,
including photos, interviews, individual and team-related articles, a column
devoted to sourcing the products, reviews, etc.
B) Increased consumer awareness through
convention seminars, games, and special events. There is a ready source of avid Greyhawk gamers networked throughout the U.S.
and overseas to help with this initiative. As with the RPGA, this harkens back to "grass
roots" support from DMs, play-testers, reviewers, etc.
C) A solid advertising campaign reinforced
by up-front product reviews.
D)
An educated, up-with-the-times PR campaign
E)
Other than game-related initiatives, as novels, short fiction, author special
appearances, book-signings, etc.
F) A TSR internet site devoted to the
campaign setting. This site would
include, among other things, electronic versions of Dragon articles related to WoG initiatives, etc., breaking
news and updates, event and convention postings, FAQs on Greyhawk past and
present, links to corresponding WoG sites, links to management, authors and/or
design teams, links to chat rooms and forums, a TSR online catalog link with
secured transactions, product samples/teasers, links to other TSR
Brand/Corporate sites, a TSR questionnaire/product poll, WoG release schedules, TSR/WoG
submission guidelines, periodic contests, etc.
“This, in conjunction with above-average product, name
authors, and strong product release schedules, would make WoG a serious product
line for TSR. Product line
credibility would rise and in turn attract a greater number of designers and
consumers. Many former WoG
designers have expressed a need for this type of effort by TSR in order for
them to seriously support a returned WoG product line. Likewise, WoG's mature consumer
audience, which would be a targeted base of support as WoG was pushed, would be
either a negative or positive catalyst with this, depending on how well the
market foundation was laid and thereafter extended and supported.
“The Product Line:
There is much product extant to be considered. Greyhawks' authors have a wealth of original material that
would fit comfortably into 2nd edition formats. Product must be creative in the sense that what is offered
is new, exciting, different, and long lasting. I will cover each in turn.
“New: As
opposed to old rehashes of stale ideas.
Good examples include WoG Spell Book, WoG Monstrous Compendium, WoG
Gods, etc. Stale/Rehashed examples
include un-thematic one-off adventures, compilations of articles, any product
lacking energy and direction (i.e., fillers, such as the "Joke Castle
Greyhawk").
“Exciting:
This incorporates some of what is "new" and what is
"different". This
product must have ageless appeal to players and DMs alike. A good example of this would be
WoG Priest and Mage Classes, which can be constantly re-used and amended by the
consumer; an indispensable product.
“Different:
In three senses. In what
TSR has done, not done, and overdone with much of its RPG line. An example could include modules,
which it has done and overdone to the point of saturation. There are
exceptions, especially when the product is exciting and perhaps contains new
concepts, such as "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks", which is a good
example of "different".
Within the RPG industry "different" also denotes a unique
achievement; and oftentimes these product types are overlooked or underplayed
by R & D departments with entrenched ideas. Within business there are certain fathomable limits which
must be maintained in order to garner the most possible sales yield from each
new product. Thus what has been
done can be over-justified from the sales end. A “proper mixture of "what's different and
exciting" and "what works and yields the most profit" must be
achieved, for a singular-minded industry approach does not wholly allow for
designers' creations to mature, does not take into account future market
shifts, nor does it establish a mutable mind-set at the corporate level of what
to do outside of this pre-established boundary. TSR must push the
"Products For Your Imagination" trademark to its limits, and thus its
own RPG lines to theirs. There is
no threshold in fantasy. Thus
there should be none in TSR's FRP game lines, WoG included.
“Long Lasting:
In the sense that years from now the product will still find more than
average use by the consumer. A
good example of this would include "Castle Greyhawk" (the original),
which is massive in concept and will not age as fast as other products. Also, any product, such as this, that
can be appended to. In the chosen
example, the castle can have extra "level-sets" added to it. A mutable, as opposed to a closed,
product.
“SUMMARY
“World of Greyhawk, its designers, their products and
TSR's/WoG consumer base must all be taken seriously in order for this project
to succeed. TSR's overall aim should be to market high quality products that portray
newness, produce excitement, would be different (perhaps even "cutting
edge"), and would maintain a longevity not only in the minds of its
consumers, but on their game shelves as well. The past, "serve them another of that, uh, no, that
one!" will not do. Sure, you
can fill a game shelf by this philosophy, but sooner than later that same game shelf,
if this adopted marketing strategy persists, will be filled by other than TSR
products.
“World of Greyhawk has the ability to be totally revamped
and remarketed. It has an
abundance of material on hand in all categories, game-related and fiction. It has many interested, mature designers,
and it has a following. Its future
has already been secured by not only its past products, but by the fact that it
wouldn't die. That recognition by
itself will continue to produce the most determined souls to make it not only
the first published TSR FRP world, but the best.”
…
Robert J. Kuntz
4173 E. 24th St.
Tucson, AZ
85711
