Quote from: Age of Fable;274569ii) Anyone can (and probably will) be covertly aligned with the Forge. Remember to expose them at every opportunity.

That sounds like something an undercover Forgite would say to throw suspicion off himself.   :hmm:

Welcome, Piestrio, to the only site available where you can actually talk about RPGs.

I'm not as up in arms as most other folks about the Gygax Games - Castle Zagyg situation, for two reasons:

1. I don't think Troll Lord Games was doing a very good job, and that while he was alive gary cut them too much slack because he liked them personally and felt loyalty towards them. IMO they're barely competent as publishers, and that's despite pretty drastic improvement in recent years -- a lot of their early stuff, up to and including the Yggsburgh book and Hall of Many Panes set were utterly ineptly produced and edited, nowhere near professional-quality. Plus, we know they were sitting on a bunch of Gary's unpublished manuscripts (mostly Lejendary Adventure stuff but also, for instance, 19 more Yggsburgh expansion books) that they always claimed were on the docket but never seemed to get around to actually publishing, despite publishing large quantities of other material -- there could be legitimate production-related reasons for this, but it came to feel increasingly like they were stringing Gary along, promising to publish all his material in order to keep him from shopping it around to other publishers, but not that interested in actually publishing it themselves.

2. I think Gary's publishing plan for Castle Zagyg was unrealistic and was never going to be completed (people tend to focus on the delays from 2005-8, and cite Gary's failing health as the reason, but that ignores the prior 25 year history of delays from when publication of Greyhawk Castle was originally announced by Gary in The Dragon in 1980). Between the scale of the project (even the scaled-back version was set to have 20+ levels), Gary's late-career preference for copious detail (detailed boxed text, exhaustive listings of stuff like foodstuffs and supplies), and the fact that none of this material had been written -- in actual play in the 70s Gary had his maps and very minimal notes (he and co-DM Rob Kuntz maintained most of the detail in their heads), and even those maps weren't being used in this version -- Gary insisted they all be redrawn -- meant that the project of the Castle Zagyg dungeons was going to involve about 1,000 pages of module-text written from scratch. This was going to take years to write, and the result would almost certainly be so overwhelming as to be effectively unplayable (arguably even the Upper Works set alone is borderline). Yeah, if such a thing had actually been completed and published it probably would've been awesome, but it was, plain and simply, never going to happen (the fact that Gary wasn't able to make it happen in 28 years, and that even the Upper Works -- which barely scratch the surface -- were only finalized and completed after his passing (i.e. when he was no longer able to keep tinkering and stalling) proves this).

My impression (from others who've met her) is that Gail Gygax was always the more level-headed and business-minded member of the Gygax partnership, and that her "job" was to keep him grounded and realistic as much as possible. Therefore, I think it's likely she saw both of the above points not too differently than I do, and decided that if Gary's unpublished material was to ever see actual release (and thus generate royalties) that something needed to be done both about the publishing relationship and the scope of the project. Exit Troll Lord Games (we'll talk a big game but sit on your stuff for years and push out our own) enter Mongoose's Flaming Cobra imprint (give us a completed manuscript and we'll print and distribute it, guaranteed). Exit Jeff Talanian (who, God bless him, was likely to follow Gary's wishes exactly and devote the next 10 years trying to do the dungeons exactly as Gary would've wanted (i.e. with the level of detail of the Upper Works), enter (my speculation) a much scaled-back project, likely presenting redrawn versions of Gary's maps and a couple-three pages of text -- a brief overview of the level and the key locations, but no room-by-room module-style (boxed text, copious detail) descriptions, probably done stat-free (and thus compatible with all rpgs -- OD&D, AD&D, C&C, Hackmaster, d20, 4E, LA, etc.) designed as both a toolbox for DMs to use to "build their own Greyhawk Castle" and a nod to the historian and collector set (who are, much as Gary didn't like it, a big part of his fanbase) but not something to pull off the shelf and play, like Gary wanted.

If the Castle is published in such a manner I know a lot of fans who liked the treatment it was receiving in the Upper Works set will be very disappointed -- they want 40pp of text per level, instead they're getting 4 -- and will claim such a set is a betrayal of what Gary wanted (which is true -- Rob Kuntz proposing such a treatment in place of the planned series of boxed sets was one of the main causes of his departure from the project), but I'll be happy, because that's what I wanted all along

Quote from: T. Foster;274592enter (my speculation) a much scaled-back project, likely presenting

I believe this is where your post slides from educated guess to good old wishful thinking. Not that I'd object to that model of presenting Castle Zagyg, but given the way most game publishers (and especially Mongoose) operate today, it doesn't seem at all likely.

Yeah, in the cold "morning after" light you're almost certainly right, and GG/Mongoose are more likely to go for a "treadmill" approach -- instead of the originally-planned 5 boxed sets becoming 1 big book, they could just as easily (and more attractively from a continuing-stream-of-royalties perspective) go the opposite direction, and release each level as a separate product -- include the actual level-text (~40pp) plus an appendix with stats for 3 or 4 different game systems (1E-compatible, LA, d20/Pathfinder, 4E-compatible) and you can bloat the page-count up to 64+ pp per level, which, alas, in Mongoose-world is enough to make it a $30 hardback...

I've just been pushing for the "minimalist" treatment for so long that it's hard to get out of the mindspace of thinking that it's the self-evidently obvious way forward

Quote from: T. Foster;274668I've just been pushing for the "minimalist" treatment for so long that it's hard to get out of the mindspace of thinking that it's the self-evidently obvious way forward

I might've settled for a minimalist approach if Gygax had done it back in, say, 1982. But after waiting this long for it, I want a lot of detail - but only if it's stuff EGG had actually been working on before he passed. Don't get me wrong; if they were to publish notes or an outline of what EGG intended, I'd buy it. But 30 years is a long damned time to wait for just 4 pages, even if it is 4 pages per level.

Quote from: T. Foster;2745921. I don't think Troll Lord Games was doing a very good job...

2. I think Gary's publishing plan for Castle Zagyg was unrealistic and was never going to be completed...

This.

I could have told anyone who would listen two years ago that this thing would never be completed, given the massive scope and the principals involved. Even if Zagyg was handled by the best  publishers in the business, and Gygax was writing at the pace of his peak productivity, it was an unfeasiable project.

This hobby is the focus of so much wishful thinking that I think a kind of mass-delusion comes over fans when a project like Zagyg is announced.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;274673I might've settled for a minimalist approach if Gygax had done it back in, say, 1982. But after waiting this long for it, I want a lot of detail - but only if it's stuff EGG had actually been working on before he passed. Don't get me wrong; if they were to publish notes or an outline of what EGG intended, I'd buy it. But 30 years is a long damned time to wait for just 4 pages, even if it is 4 pages per level.

The problem with this is, I'm fairly certain that the actual text (even the 4-page-per-level version, much less the 40-page-per-level version) simply doesn't exist at the present time. Back in the 70s, Gary and Rob had a big pile of maps, some handwritten notes (a page or two per level) detailing mostly the generic/unimportant encounters, and kept the details of the important/interesting areas in their heads (or so I gather). After Rob Kuntz left the project in 2006 and Gary was looking for collaborators (because he knew his health situation made it unlikely he'd be able to do the whole thing himself) he apparently drew up a "Castle Zagyg Bible" which, I'm guessing, consists of the redrawn maps (compacting the "best elements" of the 40+ level original into ~20 levels, with more sensible design and interconnections (so that, for instance, inter-level stairways and chutes actually line up, which apparently wasn't often the case in the hastily-drawn originals) and a couple sentences describing each level -- its number, its name, its key special feature or features, and what monsters are typically found there.

For example, "Level 6: The Labyrinth -- the southern maze area is inhabited primarily by minotaurs and wereboars, the teleporters and one-way doors make exploration particularly perilous; the 6 secret rooms off the large northern chambers each contain something different: room 1: potions, room 2: scrolls, room 3: magic weapons and armor, room 4: gems and jewelry, rooms 5 and 6: a mated pair of adult black dragons -- initially held in stasis, they are freed if anyone opens the door to their room, and once freed will roam the level thereafter. Because each of these chambers is identical, characters who've become lost in the maze may not realize they are returning to different chambers each time" (note: that was written by me just now, but the details match an actual level description gleaned from a couple of Gary's Dragon articles -- in Dragon Annual #2 (1999) and one of the "Up on a Soapbox" columns (c. 2002)).

Beyond that there are probably bits and pieces of fully realized encounters that Gary wrote up over the years as inspiration struck (the room of level 3 with Obmi the dwarf and his "repulsion ray machine" seems to have been one of Gary's favorites, and is a likely candidate to have received a full module-style write-up somewhere along the line), and of course he and Jeff Talanian had presumably been doing at least some preliminary work prior to his passing (although part of me also fears/suspects that they'd been devoting their attention entirely to the Upper Works and, except for some conversations and brainstorming, hadn't even really begun to work on the rest of the dungeons).

Anyway, I strongly suspect that any sort of comprehensive (and comprehensible) treatment of the dungeons, even at only 4 pages per level, is going to necessarily involve considerable interpretation and fleshing-out of Gary's notes and intentions by other authors because there simply isn't enough archival Gary-authored text to go around. The question is whether we want the minimalist treatment (which might be as much as 50% Gary) or the maximalist treatment (which is unlikely to be more than about 10% Gary). Of course the answer is "the maximalist treatment that's 100% Gary," but we can't have that, so we have to choose something else (or rather, Gygax Games will make the choice for us).

Quote from: Piestrio;274519...
So, I think I'm done with Castle Zygag....

I would still recommend picking up the CZ: Upper Works box set.  It really is quite excellent, and well worth playing by itself.  One could run a campaign for a full year with the box set alone.

I share the general disappointment that we will not see the lower levels, but CZ:UW is still a superb product IMO.

Welcome aboard, Piestro.

RPGPundit

Quote from: T. Foster;274681The problem with this is,

I agree with your entire assessment, which is much like my own suspicions - EGG simply didn't have much written down, and was one of those DMs who liked to "wing it." This is borne out by various things he's written over the years, as well as reports from people who've gamed with him. Oh, he seems to have had notes, but even he said they were sketchy and interpretable only by himself. All that said, if he hand-picked someone to help him bring Castle Greyhawk/CZ to life, which is how Talainian ended up on the project, I'm inclined to think that Gygax considered that the project was in good hands.

Gygax seemed well aware of his mortality, even openly discussing on EN World (and I'm guessing elsewhere, like Dragonsfoot) his abdominal aneurysm, and frankly relating how it would be the cause of his demise. I got the impression he was writing down as much about the castle as a whole as he could, to avoid the precise situation you mention - a lot of detail on the UW, not much on anything else. I wonder how much of this "bible" of material was completed by the time of his death? We may never really know, with the flux the project seems to be in now.

I think he was like most of us, he kept ideas in his head for ages and probably had loads of ill-organized notebooks and so on that will defy publication without someone intimately connected to piece together. OTOH, I don't really think he considered D&D, and his work in particular, to be a special historical artifact that should be preserved under glass in extremis. This is evidenced by his willingness to recognize his own shortcomings as a writer and almost always work together with someone else, throwing out stuff or editing it to suit the collaboration at the time. While there are certainly big differences between say, Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun and Castle Zagyg, it's to Gygax's credit that people are still dissecting his work and analyzing his unique stye. Does that happen for any other game designer, living or dead?