Sean Merwin

I almost feel like we need a separate episode where we look at the character sheet from 2014 and really go through it and do a. That's cool. I like that. Do an inventory. Yeah. And so that's pretty much it. That's the chapter. There is a little bit on like gender and they get rid of the term like bonds, flaws, ideals, and goals, but they put that in as final details.

So they ask questions like, what do you believe in? What are you trying to do? Who is important to you? So they get there. They just don't call it those things.

I don't think 2014 did any other than codifying those four traits. They didn't do really much either.

And what I would like to see then, you're absolutely right, what I would like to see then is in the Dungeon Master's Guide, have it say, listen, in your campaign, maybe bonds don't mean much. but ideals and goals are going to be highly important. So do that during character creation.

Maybe you're going to run a game where you want every character to have a bond and that bond will become important. So do bonds, but don't worry so much about ideals. Ideals will come out during play. So to keep it in front of the game master, but don't have it so the player makes it and it's never used. That would be nice if they did that.

So that's it. There's a little bit on level advancement, starting higher levels, trinkets, et cetera. But for the most part, that is the character creation section. And I am fairly pleased with it, despite the couple of melodramatic turns I took. I think it's okay.

Yep. I agree. And now let's get to our other main topic, which is the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, which we have been very carefully working our way through to talk about Greyhawk as a setting, what it means that Greyhawk was put into the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide as an example world, and just sort of sharing our love for Greyhawk as we go through that living Greyhawk as a tier.

And we've been doing the regions and we've gotten as far as the North Kingdom, and that's where we will start today. You're going to hear us talk more about certain themes that have come up in other regions. And so we will try not to dwell too much on them. We will mention them and say, go listen to the previous episodes.

Yeah, exactly what you said. The first thing is independent feudal monarchy. Okay, eye roll. With strong theocratic elements. Okay, eye roll. And in a setting where the gods are known to exist and manifest themselves in very tangible ways, I get it.

Having a kingdom that is subservient to an evil deity will be different than having a nation subservient to a good deity, which will be different than a chaotic deity, which will be different than all that. So I can understand that you can have some fun with that juxtaposition. but it doesn't always work itself out to be as fun during play as it sounds during writing it as a world.

And the most important thing to me to note is It is a realm that serves the god Hextor, who is sort of the Bane in the Forgotten Realms. Wait, is Bane in the Forgotten Realms? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I sometimes mix them up. So, you know, it's like tyranny and might over all who are weaker than you sort of thing. So you can play around with that a bit. And it's really part of... It's the...

juxtaposition of there are two main kingdoms that came out of the Greek kingdom. There was this North kingdom and then there was Alyssa and neither one of them are great. Neither one of them are perfect, but they're sort of at war with each, not physically at war, but tension between the two of them. Who is the real, um,

And we've said before that I love this Living Greyhound Gazetteer as a guidebook to someone who is going to be doing a living campaign. And they need that history to... to give them a little spice to the adventures and to the things they're working on. But just for an individual game master, there are going to be people that love it.

There are going to be a lot of people who were like me as a history major in college going, as I read in my head, I was literally doing it with this book. I'm like, and then, and then see why three 82, the, the, the, and like, my eyes are fluttering and I'm like, oh, I've got to get through this. I've got to get through this.

Yeah, for sure. The monarchy has its own problems. It was a part, of course, of the Great Kingdom, because who wasn't?

And so it has an interesting history of one of those areas that are on the edge of a very powerful empire. So they get lots of troops sent there as the guardians of the edge of the empire. And then as the empire begins to crumble, it's one of the first places to go. So that part, I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I could see that. And then because it was so involved in the Greyhawk Wars,

They lost 70,000 soldiers. So just a few years ago, they lost 70,000 soldiers. And so they are in dire circumstances. Economically, they are ruined. Banditry is rampant. And a new king has just come to power after his younger brother tried to assassinate their father. And there's a picture of the new king and the old king. Tejas is holding up.

And so at least that is interesting in a way that this is a quote unquote good kingdom. It's the leaders are at least trying to do right, but everything's falling apart. So there is more room for player characters to come in and make a difference.

those are all juicy bits that you just sort of hid in all of this googly gook about history bring those right out front and tell me that's the cool stuff to work around right right now now the characters can get involved they need to track down the the younger brother they need to figure out what malady what curse has been put on you know

the the the the patrol of the king and that now i'm telling a story now i'm now i'm ready now now i'm getting my juices flowing in terms of creativity and a story that the characters can take part in yeah