Editing Greyhawk (section)

===''The World of Greyhawk'' folio edition (1980)===
[[File:Greyhawk Supplement 1975.jpg|right|thumb|''[[Greyhawk (supplement)|Supplement I: Greyhawk]]'', written by [[Gary Gygax]] and [[Robert J. Kuntz|Rob Kuntz]], was an expansion of the ''Dungeon & Dragons'' rules that contained no material about the Greyhawk campaign world other than two brief references.]]<!-- Fair use image: used to illustrate the book itself in compliance with Wikipedia fair use policy -->

In 1975, Gygax and Kuntz published a booklet called ''[[Greyhawk (supplement)|Supplement I: Greyhawk]]'', an expansion of the rules for ''Dungeons & Dragons'' based on their play experiences in the Greyhawk campaign.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Ewalt |first=David M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=avfKUreGN60C |title=Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who |date=2013-08-20 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4516-4052-6 |language=en}}</ref> Although it detailed new spells and character classes that had been developed in the dungeons of Greyhawk, it did not contain any details of their Greyhawk campaign world. The only two references to Greyhawk were an illustration of a large stone head in a dungeon corridor titled ''The Great Stone Face, Enigma of Greyhawk'' and mention of a fountain on the second level of the dungeons that continuously issued an endless number of snakes.<ref>{{Cite book | last1 = Gygax | first1 = Gary | author-link = Gary Gygax | last2 = Kuntz | first2 = Rob | author2-link = Robert J. Kuntz | title = Dungeons and Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk | place = Lake Geneva WI | publisher = TSR | page = 30 & 63 | year = 1975}}</ref>

The 2004 publication ''[[30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons]]'' suggested that details of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign were published in this booklet,<ref name=30years>{{cite book | title = 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons | publisher = Wizards of the Coast | year = 2004 | location = Renton WA | page = 55 | isbn = 0-7869-3498-0}}</ref> but Gygax had no plans in 1975 to publish details of the Greyhawk world, since he believed that new players of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' would rather create their own worlds than use someone else's.<ref>Gygax: "When I initially began creating adventure material I assumed that the GMs utilizing the work would prefer substance without window dressing, the latter being properly the realm of the GM so as to suit the campaign world and player group". {{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part XII, Page 40) | publisher = EN World | date = 2007-03-28 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/171753-gary-gygax-q-part-xii-40.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121004180853/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/171753-gary-gygax-q-part-xii-40.html | archive-date = 2012-10-04 | url-status = dead}}</ref> In addition, he did not want to publish all the material he had created for his players; he thought he would be unlikely to recoup a fair investment for the thousands of hours he had spent on it. Since his secrets would be revealed to his players, he would be forced to recreate a new world for them afterward.<ref>Gygax: "As I was running a game with a large number of players involved, I really didn't want to supply them with the whole world on a platter". {{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part IV, Page 11) | publisher = EN World | date = 2003-11-05 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/57832-gary-gygax-q-part-iv-11.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110615024329/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/57832-gary-gygax-q-part-iv-11.html | archive-date = 2011-06-15 | url-status = dead}}</ref>

With the release of the ''AD&D Players Handbook'' in 1978, many players were intrigued by the connection of Greyhawk characters to magical spells such as ''Tenser's floating disc'', ''Bigby's crushing hand'', and ''Mordenkainen's faithful hound''. The ''AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide'', released the following year, also made references to the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk. Players' curiosity was further piqued by the ten ''Dungeons & Dragons'' modules set in Greyhawk that were published between 1976 and 1979. Several of Gygax's regular columns in ''Dragon'' magazine also mentioned details of his home campaign and characters that inhabited his world. Gygax was surprised when he found out that players wanted to use Greyhawk as their campaign world.<ref>Gygax: "When I was asked by TSR to do my ''World of Greyhawk'' as a commercial product I was taken aback. I had assumed most DMs would far prefer to use their own world settings". {{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part IV, Page 11) | publisher = EN World | date = 2003-11-05 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/57832-gary-gygax-q-part-iv-11.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110615024329/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/57832-gary-gygax-q-part-iv-11.html | archive-date = 2011-06-15 | url-status = dead}}</ref>

====Development of geography====
Rather than using his own version of the Great Kingdom map, which included local areas based on real-world maps, Gygax decided to create an entirely new and greatly expanded version of [[Oerth]].<ref name="Dragon #143"/> Needing many more original names for all of the geographical and political places on his map for the new and expanded areas, Gygax sometimes resorted to wordplay. He had previously used Perrenland on the Great Kingdom map, named after [[Jeff Perren]], who co-wrote the rules for ''Chainmail'' with Gygax, but for the new Greyhawk map he added many more such names of friends and acquaintances. For instance, Urnst was a homophone of Ernst (his son Ernie) and Sunndi was a near-homophone of Cindy, another of Gygax's children.<ref name="Revised Greyhawk Index"/>

Gygax gave only the most basic descriptions of each state; he expected that DMs would customize the setting in order to make it an integral part of their own individual campaigns.<ref name="Dragon #143" /> His map included arctic wastes, desert, temperate forests, tropical jungles, mountainous cordillera, seas and oceans, rivers, archipelagos and volcanoes.

====Development of history and politics====
Gygax set out to create a fractious place where chaos and evil were in the ascendant and courageous champions would be needed. In order to explain how his world had arrived at this state, he wrote an outline of a thousand years of history. As a [[military history]] buff, he was very familiar with the concept of waves of cultural invasions, such the [[Pict]]s of [[Great Britain]] being invaded by the [[Celt]]s, who were in turn invaded by the [[Ancient Rome|Romans]]. In creating a similar pattern of history for his world, Gygax decided that a thousand years before his campaign began, the northeast corner of the continent had been occupied by a peaceful but primitive people called the Flannae, whose name was the root for the name of that part of Oerik, the ''[[Flanaess]]''. At that time, far to the west of the Flanaess, two peoples were at war, the Bakluni and the Suloise. The war reached its climax when both sides used powerful magic to obliterate each other, in an event called the Twin Cataclysms. Refugees of these disasters were forced out of their lands, and the Suloise invaded the Flanaess, forcing the Flannae to flee to the outer edges of the continent. Several centuries later, a new invader appeared, the Oeridians, and they in turn forced the Suloise southward. One tribe of the Oeridians, the Aerdi, began to set up an empire. Several centuries later, the Aerdi's Great Kingdom ruled most of the Flanaess. The Aerdi overkings marked the beginning of what they believed would be perpetual peace with Year 1 of a new calendar, the [[Common Year (Greyhawk)|Common Year (CY) Reckoning]]. However, several centuries later, the Empire became decadent, with their rulers losing their sanity, turning to evil, and enslaving their people. When the overking Ivid V came to the throne, the oppressed peoples rebelled.<ref name=lgg2000 />

It was at this point, in the year 576 CY, that Gygax set the world of Greyhawk. As Gygax wrote in his ''World of Greyhawk'' folio: "The current state of affairs in the Flanaess is confused indeed. Humankind is fragmented into isolationist realms, indifferent nations, evil lands, and states striving for good".<ref name=wog1980 /> Gygax did not issue monthly or yearly updates to the state of affairs as presented in the folio since he saw 576 CY as a common starting point for every home campaign; because each would be moving forward at its own pace, there would be no practical way to issue updates that would be relevant to every Dungeon Master.<ref>Gygax: "In regards to the timeline for the WoG setting, I had no immediate plan for advancing it as the world was meant to be used by all DMs so desirous, each making it conform to his own campaign needs". {{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part XIII, Page 9) | publisher = EN World | date = 2007-04-25 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/193204-gary-gygax-q-part-xiii-9.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121005021114/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/193204-gary-gygax-q-part-xiii-9.html | archive-date = 2012-10-05 | url-status = dead}}</ref>

Gygax was also aware that different players would be using his world for different reasons. When he was the Dungeon Master of his home campaign, he found that his players were more interested in dungeon-delving than politics, but when he switched roles and became a player, often going one-on-one with Rob Kuntz as Dungeon Master, Gygax immersed his own characters in politics and large-scale battles.<ref>Gygax: "In general the player groups in my campaign were not much interested in politics and warfare. When I played my PCs, I was always meddling in politics and had a large army, so some warfare was played out with Rob as the DM". {{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part V, Page 5) | publisher = EN World | date = 2004-01-26 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/71486-gary-gygax-q-part-v-5.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121005021145/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/71486-gary-gygax-q-part-v-5.html | archive-date = 2012-10-05 | url-status = dead}}</ref> Knowing that there would be some players looking for a town in which to base their campaign, and others interested in politics or warfare,<ref>Gygax: "Greyhawk was set up to enable both political play and large-scale warfare..."{{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part V, Page 5) | publisher = EN World | date = 2004-01-26 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/71486-gary-gygax-q-part-v-5.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121005021145/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/71486-gary-gygax-q-part-v-5.html | archive-date = 2012-10-05 | url-status = dead}}</ref> Gygax tried to include as much detail as possible about each region, including a short description of the region and its people, the title of its ruler, the racial makeup of its people, its resources and major cities, and its allies and enemies.

For the same reason that he had created a variety of geographical, political and racial settings, he also strove to create a world with some good, some evil, and some undecided areas. He felt that some players would be happiest playing in a mainly good country and fighting the evil that arose to threaten it; others might want to be a part of an evil country; and still others might take a neutral stance and simply try to collect gold and treasure from both sides.<ref>Gygax: "The relatively low level of NPCs, and the balance between alignments was done on purpose so as facilitate the use of the world setting by all DMs. With a basically neutral environment, the direction of the individual campaign was squarely in the hands of the DM running it... That was done because to my way of thinking dominance by one alignment group tends to restrict the potential for adventuring". {{cite web | title = Gary Gygax: Q & A (Part IV, Page 11) | publisher = EN World | date = 2003-11-05 | url = http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/57832-gary-gygax-q-part-iv-11.html | access-date = 2009-03-15 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110615024329/http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/57832-gary-gygax-q-part-iv-11.html | archive-date = 2011-06-15 | url-status = dead}}</ref>

====Publication====
{{See also|World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting}}
TSR originally intended to publish ''The World of Greyhawk'' (TSR 9025)<ref name=wog1980 /> early in 1979, but it was not released until August 1980.<ref name = dragon46 >"Often promised, but often delayed, ''WORLD OF GREYHAWK'' sometimes appeared destined to never see the light of publication... Soon the summer was fast disappearing, along with most of our expectations, but on a fateful day in early August, the cherished cry was finally raised. THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK had arrived!"{{cite journal | last = Seiken | first = Jeff | title = The Dragon's Augury: The Wait Was Worth It | journal = Dragon | volume = V | issue = 8 | pages = 48–49 | publisher = TSR | location = Lake Geneva WI | date=February 1981}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> ''The World of Greyhawk'' consisted of a 32-page folio (the first edition is often called the ''World of Greyhawk folio'' to distinguish it from later editions) and a 34" x 44" (86&nbsp;cm x 112&nbsp;cm) two-piece color map of the Flanaess. Reviewers were generally impressed, but some remarked on the lack of a pantheon of Greyhawk-specific deities, as well as the lack of any mention of the infamous dungeons of Castle Greyhawk.<ref name=dragon46 />

Game designer [[Jim Bambra]] found the original set "disappointing", because "there is only so much information you can cram into a 32-page booklet, particularly when covering such a large area".<ref name="Dragon #143"/>