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Most of the Mothership adventure reviews I’ve written have focused on the wealth of trifold and other pamphlet modules, but there have also been many zine-style adventures published for the game. Here’s three of them.

THE EARTH ABOVE

James Hanna’s The Earth Above is set on the fast-rotating planet or moon (it’s unclear) of Cor-9. The Helios corporation has lost contact with their mine for unrefined starship fuel and the PCs are sent in to figure out what’s happening and/or get the mine back online. It be as simple as delivering a new communications array!

… but you’ll probably be unsurprised to discover that hostile alien monsters are the real problem.

In this case, the hostile aliens are the Pest. These are clearly heavily inspired by the Alien xenomorphs, but there’s a dash of the psychic bugs from Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers movie in there, too, and some unique twists to their multi-stage life cycle. One of these twists is that the Pest can adapt to a wide variety of food sources, but then become hyper-focused on their chosen source. In this case, they’ve hyper-focused on starship fuel, including the unrefined ore, and infested the mines.

Round that out with a great isometric map of the mines and you’ve got a solid ‘crawl.

But Hanna doesn’t stop there.

Some of the miners survived the initial attack, but are now being held prisoner in the Hab City mining camp by the android miner workers, who have suffered a malfunction due to their core directive to “protect all intelligent life forms.” The directive was meant to apply to humans, but once the androids realized that the Pest were intelligent life forms, they needed to not only protect the humans from the Pest, but the Pest from the humans. And they decided locking everyone up was the best way to do that.

This adds a completely different threat vector to The Earth Above, while also introducing a rich social component to the adventure with a diverse cast of strongly motivated NPCs (human and android alike). And Hanna’s still not done! There’s also a rogue mercenary team loose on the planet who have been dispatched by Xenos Unlimited to secure biological samples of the Pest!

These additional layers add an exponential complexity and depth to the scenario. It’s a good example of how you can take two fairly simple, straightforward adventure ideas, add them together, and get something much greater than the sum of its parts.

The only thing holding The Earth Above back is a patina of strange holes and continuity errors. It’s a difficult to nail this down, but it’s stuff like:

• The mercenary team is both close to the action and 9,000 miles away “on the other side of the planet.”
• The PCs need to deal with threat of the malfunctioning androids… so how many are there, exactly? What security measures have the androids put in place?
• How many survivors are there?
• The adventure assumes the PCs are stranded here without fuel (which ultimately motivates them to journey down into the mine), but it’s unclear why. (The Pest are shown to have drained other ships of their fuel, so perhaps one could imagine adding an attack on the PCs’ ship at some point?)

This stuff is pervasive. Even why the adventure is called The Earth Above is unclear. And the net effect, in actual play, is to throw a bunch of grit in the gears. Unless you take the time to address them in your prep, these countless little snares are going to keep catching you out at the table.

But with a little extra polish, I think The Earth Above can be a really great addition to your Mothership campaign.

GRADE: B-

THE VIEW AT THE END OF TIME

At the end of the universe, an intelligent species evolves, expands, and discovers the cruel trick played it on by fate: They have been born in an era of unimaginable scarcity, as the last stars burn out and the fabric of space-time itself is stretched thin. They look back with envy at the civilizations which were free to plunder galaxies of abundance they hatch a plan: They create a machine capable of ripping a portal through time, but they lack the energy to activate it. What they can do is send a message back in time and hope that some younger race will discover it, decipher it, and open the portal. Then they will be free to journey back and claim what should have been theirs.

Is humanity foolish enough to open a temporal Pandora’s Box?

Of course we are.

And now the PCs have been hired to step through the portal and gaze upon the end of time.

To be honest, you can just inject this one straight into my veins. Everything about The View at the End of Time is aimed straight at my heart, and Elliot Norwood does a very good job of delivering on an incredibly challenging concepts.

As the PCs step through the portal, they find themselves in the preserved ruins of an alien civilization, gazing out on the death of all things in the lurid red glow of a dying sun. Exploring those ruins, they’ll have a chance to begin unraveling the secrets of the Morrow — the name given to these future species by human xenoarchaeologists. As the aliens begin waking up from the long sleep in which they awaited their “saviors,” the PCs will find themselves caught up in the strife

If they’re lucky, they’ll realize in time that their only chance at survival — and perhaps humanity’s only chance — is to flee back through the portal and shut it down from the far side before aliens can use it as a temporal beachhead.

The View at the End of Time is beautiful and horrifying and wondrous all at the same time. I’m very much looking forward to sharing its haunting vision with my players.

GRADE: B

BRACKISH

On the strength of Norgad’s Dead Weight, which I very much enjoyed and have previously reviewed, I immediately grabbed a copy of Brackish, written by Norgad and C. Bell. I recommend you immediately do the same, because I love everything about this adventure.

The basic scenario hook is pretty typical for a Mothership adventure: A corporation has lost contact with a research outpost. They’ve hired the PCs to figure out what happened.

Where Brackish shines, however, is in concept, execution, and detail.

First, they provide a player map of the facility. This seems like a small thing, but it’s literally the first thing at least ninety percent of my Mothership tables ask for when they’re sent on a mission like this: Obviously the corporation would have a map of their facility. Obviously that would be useful. Can we have it please? Brackish anticipating this need and providing what I need is just one example of how Norgad and Bell are intensely focused on the experience of actually running and playing this adventure at the table.

For the GM, the map is supported by an excellent key. The rooms are detailed and evocative, and their descriptions well-organized and easy to use. The layout cleverly uses box outs to provide rich detail while keeping the core presentation free of clutter, and the whole thing is supported by a cleverly compressed version of the map on every spread so that you always know exactly where you are. (So clever that it was only on the second reading that I realized what it was. So bear a wary eye, but once you spot it, it’s invaluable.)

Second, they elevate the generic trope: The corporation doesn’t just want a generic “investigation.” They want the PCs to account for the whereabouts of all station personnel, and the adventure immediately gives the PCs a staff manifest including names, jobs, and descriptions:

But the corporation doesn’t just want a verbal report: They want evidence. So they provide the PCs with a cryptographic camera that they can use to record secure visual and audio evidence, and to track this the players are given a worksheet:

The concept is that the PCs will track the recordings they make, keep brief notes on what the recordings contain, and draw a sketch of what they’ve filmed.

I’ve never seen this concept before, but it brilliantly pushes the players to creatively engage with the game world in a novel way while simultaneously using notetaking to force an attention to detail, sucking them into the scenario and immersing them into the environment.

They wrap up this whole aspect of the adventure with a detailed breakdown for the GM of every NPC — their current whereabouts (dead or alive), what happened to them, and the specific evidence the PCs can use to discover (and document) their fate. In other words, a comprehensive revelation list. I’ve seen so many published adventures screw this up, effectively forcing the GM to solve the mystery for themselves before they can run it for the players, but Brackish again gives you exactly what you need.

But there’s still more!

Third, Brackish makes the environment dramatically dynamic: A malfunctioning pump is causing roughly half the facility to flood, then drain, and then flood again in a forty-minute cycle. The idea is to track this in real time, using the environment to put pressure on the players and create a sense of urgency.

This element would be a little smoother if the key provided some clear insight into flooded vs. non-flooded rom conditions, but even without that, it gets the job done.

Finally, we have the monster of the week. “A bloated corpse, skin taut and silver-smooth like a pregnant mirror.” A strange, alien artifact transforms those around it into guardians with two key features: It can pass into, through, and out of reflective surfaces. And its touch gives flesh the texture of wet clay, allowing the creature to wipe away the features of its victims. The result — gliding unnaturally and relentlessly through the murky waters — is a truly terrifying nemesis that will haunt your players’ nightmares.

After one round in the tentacles’ grip, the features of the face are left crooked. After two, spun like a whirlpool. After three rounds, the face is polished away completely. The eyeballs are still in there somewhere, sunken beneath the surface.

Then, on top of all this, Brackish rounds things out by providing a custom soundtrack (that you can also use as a countdown clock for the flooding) and a bevy of print-and-play handouts for our players.

Very few published adventures reflect what my complex adventure prep actually looks like. Brackish does. Not because I’ve done something exactly like it — I haven’t! — but because Bell and Norgad have layered multiple scenario and scene structures together to create the desired situation and effect. It’s a technique that not only lets you prep and run complex scenarios with confidence, but delivers truly unique experiences — experiences like Brackish! — for the players.

GRADE: A

Review Originally Published in Games Unplugged (July 2000)
Republished at RPGNet – May 22nd, 2001

Heavy Gear is headed for the stars.

Activision’s Heavy Gear II computer game focuses upon the trial by fire of the 1^st Black Talons, the inaugural squadron of a new Terranovan fighting force designed to take the fight against the Terran aggressors back to Caprice. The Black Talon Field Guide, designed as a companion to this game, serves as a massive campaign resource for setting your own Heavy Gear games within the auspices of the expanding Black Talon program, or the wider struggle against Earth as a whole. The book is more than capable of standing on its own, but will be strengthened for some campaigns with the use of Tactical Space Support (detailing specialized rules for space combat) and Life on Caprice (the core sourcebook describing the planet of primary operations for the Black Talon program).

The only serious weakness of this book is a slight confusion over the time period when the material is set – the book is primarily presented as taking place after the events of the Heavy Gear II computer game, but some sections of the book instead seem to slip back to a time period just before the first Black Talon mission was launched. This is combined with numerous instances of copyediting errors and typos, which continue to make their debilitating presence felt in Dream Pod 9 products.

But these minor flaws are far outweighed by the sheer wealth of material which is present here. Some sections of the text will be familiar to veteran Heavy Gear players (but this is to be expected since the book is designed for new players brought to Heavy Gear by the computer game), but even they will be able to wade hip-deep in this one. When you can turn the page of a roleplaying supplement and say, “My god, there’s more?!” you know you’ve got a winner. This one’s a winner.

Grade: A

Writers: Marc-Alexandre Vezina
Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Price: $20.95
Page Count: 128
ISBN: 1-896776-63-9

This review is shorter than my typical reviews because it was written as a non-featured review for Games Unplugged magazine and I was writing for a very specific word count. One of the interesting things about GU reviews is that they would publish short recap versions of the review in subsequent issues, providing a much larger wealth of information in each issue. These recaps were written by the original review authors. Here’s the one I wrote for this review:

Recap: Heavy Gear is headed for the stars. The Black Talon Field Guide, serving as a companion to Activision’s Heavy Gear II computer game, serves as a massive campaign resource for setting your own Heavy Gear campaign within the auspices of the expanding Black Talon program. A sheer wealth of material makes this a highly desirable book for neophytes and veteran players alike.

I found that the recaps were an art in themselves: How to capture the key points in a VERY limited space, while still being a comprehensible to new readers.

Revisiting these older reviews really makes me want to run all the Heavy Gear campaigns I never got a chance to when I was younger.

Long ago I wrote a guide to grades here at the Alexandrian, but at the time I was mostly focused on reviewing narrative works (books, films, etc.). I use the same scale and same basic principles when providing review grades for RPG books, but people are sometimes confused about why I might give an adventure I liked a grade of B- or the like. So I wanted to update the grading guide to discuss how I grade RPGs, supplements, and adventures.

Broadly speaking, here’s how I think of the letter grades:

A – Excellent
B – Good
C – Average/Mediocre
D – Poor
F – Worthless

To get a little more specific, let’s first talk about how I use grades for roleplaying games:

A — This game is brilliant. I think it’s destined to become a classic. I’m excited to play it and I think you should play it ASAP. Even if it’s not the genre or type of game you might usually play, you might still want to check it out.

B — This game is very well designed. I recommend it.

C — This game is okay. If it’s in a genre you particularly like and if the mechanics sound like the sort of thing you usually enjoy playing, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. But there are a lot of problems that will likely detract from the playing experience. Expect to use a lot of house rules here.

D — This game is seriously flawed. I wouldn’t refuse to play it, but there’s not enough here for me to recommend it on any level. Approach with extreme caution.

F — Complete and utter waste of time. Unless someone is paying you to play this game, don’t bother.

And for supplements:

A — This supplement is essential. Assuming you have interest in the topic covered by the supplement, it’s a no-brainer to use it in your game.

B — This is a very good supplement. I recommend it, and you’ll likely find it enhancing your game in a lot of ways.

C — The supplement is functional. It’s giving you the rules or setting information you need for whatever the topic of the supplement is. But there’s also probably a bunch of stuff you’ll want to ignore, tweak, or need to expand to make it usable.

D — This supplement is seriously flawed. I think you’ll end up ignoring most of it, but there a few gems hiding in here that might be worth prying out.

F — Complete and utter waste of time. Whatever the supplement is talking about, you’d be better off designing from scratch.

And for adventures:

A — This adventure is a classic. It makes me want to drop everything else and start running it for my players ASAP. Everyone should play this one.

B — This adventure is very good. I’d be willing to run this adventure without making any changes (although, in practice, I probably will).

C — This adventure was okay. It would be fun to run, but there are significant issues that I would feel compelled to fix before trying to run it.

D — This adventure is seriously flawed. It’s not a complete waste of time and if the concept sounds intriguing it may still be worth checking out. But there’s not enough here for me to recommend it, and you’re probably going to have put in a lot of work to make it playable. Approach with extreme caution.

F — Complete and utter waste of time. Probably not even worth strip-mining.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Pluses and minuses generally modify or color the grades described above. An A- would be an excellent adventure, for example, but have a few flaws you might want to address before running it. A B+ adventure, on the other hand, would be a really good adventure with a really awesome elements (characters, scenes, situations, concepts, etc.) scattered about.

An A+, it should be noted, is reserved for a game or adventure that immediately finds its way onto my personal Top 50. This isn’t an exact science, since I don’t actually keep a precise Top 50 list, but if I’m giving it an A+ it’s because it compares favorably with Ten Candles, Technoir, Alice is Missing, Blades in the Dark, Suppressed Transmissions, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Banewarrens, Eternal Lies, Dracula Dossier, and City of Lies.

The basic theory of this grading system is Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of everything is crap. I figure if something falls into that 90% range, then it’s not worth wasting the time determining exactly how crappy it is — all of that stuff is just graded F. The other grades deal entirely with the 10% of stuff that’s in any way worth taking our time to consider.

I love using headlines as a GM.

In my campaign status document, these are short descriptions – usually only one or two sentences long – of current events, like:

• Solarians are preparing a pilgrimage to the Ternary.
• The Alshaahin megacorp announces new funding initiative for a colony in the Jadis system.
• The Hephaestus deuterium mining station at Ariel I was forced to shut down operations for five days due to equipment failure. Fuel prices have spiked in response.
• Crackdown on O2 debtors; hundreds thrown into Doptown.

These are not, generally speaking, events that the PCs are directly interacting with. (Although that can always change.) They’re background events: Just like there’s stuff that happens in the real world that you don’t personally witness, so, too, is there stuff happening in the game world that the PCs aren’t present for.

(Although once you’ve established your headlines, it can be fun to start weaving in references to stuff the PCs are responsible for.)

You can deliver “headlines” in a bunch of different ways: The PCs might literally check the newspapers. A news story might be playing on the TV in the dive bar where they find Tony the Rat drowning his sorrows. Or you might opportunistically weave them into any conversation with an NPC. They’re versatile tools that also create a dynamic sense of depth and motion in the game world.

When I’m running a dedicated campaign, managing the headlines is pretty straightforward: I keep a list. When the PCs hear a headline, I cross it off the list. Then I periodically update the list with new entries.

And that’s it.

But when I’m running an open table, things get a lot more difficult.

The difference, of course, is that when I use a headline at a dedicated table, it means that all of the players have heard it. At an open table, on the other hand, only the players in the current session hear it. There might be dozens of other players participating in the campaign who didn’t: Imagine living in a world where only five people heard about the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. Not only would that be weird, but you’d also have difficulty figuring out the next few years of current events in the United States.

The obvious solution would be to simply share all the headlines with all the players: If your campaign has a Discord server, for example, you might make a point of posting all the new headlines after each session.

I’ve found, however, that this isn’t terribly effective. It tends to require extra effort for me (because prepping a couple sentences I can riff on during a session is different than sharing a coherent written narrative) and, because it’s not a lived experience, it tends to blunt the impact on the players. Plus, part of the fun of an open table campaign is the PCs having disparate experiences, so you need to balance that against common knowledge.

The bottom line is that I limit community news postings to major events (like Pearl Harbor). But for everything else I need a different solution.

HEADLINE PROCEDURE

HEADLINES TABLE: Create a short list of active headlines and organize them into a random table. I recommend keeping the number of headlines relatively small and using a d6 table. (I’m using a d5 table for my Mothership campaign because the system uses d10s.)

SESSSION HEADLINE: Roll once per session on the Headlines Table. Find some way of weaving this headline into the current session.

USING HEADLINES: In addition to the session headline, you can also use additional headlines (rolling or choosing as appropriate). This might be additional procedural generation (in my Mothership campaign I make a Life Events check for each PC and a Headline is one possible result), but can also be opportunistic (e.g., the PCs go looking for rumors or are eavesdropping on NPCs who start chatting about current events). Either way, when you use a headline in a session, tick the headline. (Each headline should only be ticked once per session, no matter how many times you actually use or reference the headline.)

CYCLING HEADLINES: After each session, check each headline by rolling 1d10. If the roll is ≤ the story’s ticks, the story is dropped from the Headline Table. Replace it with a new headline.

If a headline was ticked in the previous session but not eliminated, advance the news story, adding additional details, reactions, fallout, and the like.

Note: Just like in the real world, some stories stick around in the headlines for days or weeks. More importantly, this iteration means most stories get repeated multiple times, exposing them to more players, but the updates also keep the headlines fresh for players seeing them again.

EXAMPLE OF PLAY

Let’s say that I launch a new campaign using the same headlines I used as an example above, but now arranged as a random table:

1. Solarians are preparing a pilgrimage to the Ternary.
2. The Alshaahin megacorp announces new funding initiative for a colony in the Jadis system.
3. The Hephaestus deuterium mining station at Ariel I was forced to shut down operations for five days due to equipment failure. Fuel prices have spiked in response.
4. Crackdown on O2 debtors; hundreds thrown into Doptown.

During the first session I roll 1d4 and get 4, so as the PCs are shopping on Prospero’s Dream at the beginning of the session, I mention that they see Tempest mercenaries raiding a residential block, checking oxygen IDs, and arresting debtors. I also tick the headline:

4. Crackdown on O2 debtors; hundreds thrown into Doptown. ✔

At the end of the session, I check the headline by rolling 1d10 and get a 5, so the headline remains on the table and is instead advanced. In addition, the group accidentally unleashed a bioweapon at the Nanopore Genlabs facility on Katerineta, and I decide that’s a big enough event it would make headlines. So I update the headlines table:

1. Solarians are preparing a pilgrimage to the Ternary.
2. The Alshaahin megacorp announces new funding initiative for a colony in the Jadis system.
3. The Hephaestus deuterium mining station at Ariel I was forced to shut down operations for five days due to equipment failure. Fuel prices have spiked in response.
4. Crackdown on O2 debtors; hundreds thrown into Doptown. ✔
   • Ukka, the Head Gardener of the Solarians, is attempting to recruit Public Defenders to help the arrested O2 debtors.
5. The Nanopore Genlabs facility in Zoyechka on Katerineta has been placed under quarantine by the planetary government.

Fast forward a few more sessions and my headlines might look like this:

1. Solarians are preparing a pilgrimage to the Ternary. ✔✔
   • Solar astrological survey will be departing soon.
   • Ukka hopes that the pioneer pilgrims will depart in 6815.
2. The Alshaahin megacorp announces new funding initiative for a colony in the Jadis system.
3. Novikov protests illegal sleeve trade on Prospero’s Dream. ✔
   • Yandee, leader of the Golyanova Bratva, denies permission for an Investigator General to enter Prospero’s Dream.
4. Crackdown on O2 debtors; hundreds thrown into Doptown. ✔✔✔✔
   • Ukka, the Head Gardener of the Solarians, is attempting to recruit Public Defenders to help the arrested O2 debtors.
   • Brunhildh, Chief Adjudicator of the Court, expresses regret public defender advocates have recently died in trial by combat. “This is what happens when the inexperienced attempt to defend the guilty. Justice will prevail.”
   • Hunglungs air Gaussian anonymized footage. Wearing Rorschach masks they demand all O2 debt in the Choke be forgiven.
5. The Nanopore Genlabs facility in Zoyechka on Katerineta has been placed under quarantine by the planetary government. ✔
   • Nanopore employees released from quarantine, but facility remains locked down.

The Hunglungs threats are a major event, so when those get triggered I’ll also send out a community-wide headline via our Discord server.

You can see how using the procedural generation has caused some stories to get hit more often (becoming surprising backbones of the campaign world), while others keep getting passed over. (I guess Alshaahin still keeping a cap on their expansion plans.)

DESIGN NOTES

This system creates a somewhat amorphous cloud of current events, and that’s by design.

As noted above, using a “standard” system of news events keyed to specific dates didn’t work at the open table because of skipped time and “missing” players.

With game time synced to real-world time and the implementation of downtime actions, I did have the option of continuing to link specific headlines to specific dates, simply delivering the headlines they’d “missed” to PCs at the beginning of each session. This, too, proved unsatisfying. With overlapping player and character timelines, it created a weird need to synchronize PC downtime in a way that slowed play and created a lot of weird headaches. Also, since some players often take long breaks between sessions in an open table, it also created novel bookkeeping issues (how long do I keep older headlines in my active notes?) and would often result in unexpected current event “deluges” that ended up just being unsatisfying exposition dumps without any sense of a lived experience.

In short, a lot of showing rather than telling, in a way that was painful to use and disappointing in its effect.

There are exceptions, of course. Major events so transformative that it’s important to nail down exactly when they happened. These are, of course, precisely the headlines that get shared with the whole community. (In practice, I’ve found this is often flipped around. Rather than identifying something as a major event and, therefore, setting the date, it’s rather realizing that I really want or need to know what specific date something happened that make me realize that it’s a major event and handle it accordingly.)

I’m only about a dozen sessions into using this new system for headlines. (That’s why I’m still referring to it as untested.) But I’ve been very pleased with the results so far.

Review Originally Published May 22nd, 2001

Every so often I read an RPG supplement and I just can’t figure out what was going through the head of the editor who green-lighted it. This is one of those books.

The D&D Gazetteer is, essentially, a 32 page excerpt from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer which was released several weeks prior to the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.. And I mean that literally: Every last scrap of information to be found in the D&D Gazetteer is to be found in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Every last bit. Honest. Scout’s honor. (Would I lie to you?)

So the question which ran through my mind as I sat down to review this product was simple: Why would you release two products with the exact same information in them?

To get an answer I went to Ryan Dancey (a VP at WotC who was previously in charge of the D&D product line), and his answer was simple: There is a segment of the D&D market which doesn’t want fully developed campaign worlds: They want a gazetteer-style product which just briefly covers the highlight of a campaign world – something which gives them a common gaming environment, but also lets them fill in the details.

Okay, I can buy that. Sort of. It still leaves questions in my mind as to why the confusingly similar names were used for the two products (especially since the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer isn’t, strictly speaking, a gazetteer), not to mention the release schedule which seemed to scream “we’re trying to rip people off who aren’t following our upcoming release schedule like a hawk” (since the unwary consumer would most likely pick up the D&D Gazetteer without realizing that the much more complete Living Greyhawk Gazetteer was coming).

But I can buy it. So, if you’re one of those people who prefer a less-developed campaign world, this is the book you want – not the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

So what is this, anyway?

Well, as most of you probably already know, Greyhawk is – arguably – the original D&D campaign setting; designed and developed by Gary Gygax himself and originally released in a product with a very similar format to the D&D Gazetteer itself. During the last years of TSR, however, Greyhawk – which had been steadily losing ground to the extremely popular Forgotten Realms setting – was canceled. When WotC bought out TSR, however, one of the first things they did was announce the return of “the original campaign” and, with the release of Third Edition, Greyhawk was made the de facto standard of the D&D game once more.

The D&D Gazetteer is a 32 page pamphlet which, basically, serves as a broad introduction to Greyhawk – a campaign world with nearly three decades of development behind it: The history of the world is covered in broad strokes; the significant stats of the major kingdoms are given and they are briefly described (an average of three paragraphs or so is devoted to each); major geographical forms are detailed; and major power groups are given a similarly distilled treatment. A full-color map of the world is also included. All of this is done extremely well.

In other words, the D&D Gazetteer does exactly what it’s supposed to do. I just don’t have that much confidence that a large segment of the market really has a desire for what it’s doing. I, personally, would be happier with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer – but your mileage may vary.

One thing I have considered doing with the Gazetteer, however, is using it as a player resource. My read-through of the material here didn’t turn up any deep, dark secrets of the world which I wouldn’t be comfortable with my players knowing – and the low price point would make it comparatively easy for me to pick a copy up for all my players (or for them to pick one up for themselves). As a result, the D&D Gazetteer could, essentially, serve as  “player’s guide” to Greyhawk – although you might want to preview the material yourself before okaying it for your own campaign.

Writers: Gary Hollan, Erik Mona, Sean Reynolds, Frederick Weining, Skip Williams, Ed Stark
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: $9.95
Page Count: 32
ISBN: 0-7869-1742-3
Product Code: TSR11742

I remain confused about the decision to publish both a D&D Gazetteer and D&D Living Greyhawk Gazetteer just a few weeks apart. It actually kind of echoes my confusion with Wizards’ release schedule at the tail end of 2025, when they released two different starter sets a few weeks apart, followed by two different campaign settings in back-to-back months.

I remember even in response to this review there were people saying stuff like, “Wait… this ISN’T the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer?” and, “There’s two of them?!”

I also found the decision to make Greyhawk the “official” setting of D&D 3rd Edition, but then only releasing a single setting supplement (or, I guess two setting supplements) to be a weird one. The official explanation, if I recall correctly, alternated between “this way the DM can feel like it’s a setting they can do anything they want with” and “we’re leaving it for organized play to use,” which were basically diametrically opposed. Ultimately, I’m guessing there was just some weird internal politicking going on as a result of Dancey’s decision to ruthlessly (albeit necessarily) slash the number of D&D settings that were being published, and these weird product decisions were the result.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.