Living Greyhawk
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Living Greyhawk ("LG")is an on-going living campaign using the for the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game (RPG) rules that is based on the World of Greyhawk. The campaign premiered at GenCon 2000. At GenCon Indy 2007 it was announced that the Living Greyhawk campaign would conclude at the Origins 2008 convention with play continuing until December 31, 2008. The campaign is run by the RPGA, which also administers and facilitates other Living campaigns (e.g., Living Force, Mark of Heroes). It is also the name for the living campaign itself and is sometimes used to refer to the living campaign's storyline.
Living Greyhawk uses a modified Dungeons & Dragons Ruleset (currently revision 3.5). In contrast to a traditional RPG gampaign, these rules are not set by a single DM, but rather by the campaign management (called "The Circle"). This management body also publish the adventure modules, which DMs are required to follow closely. This organization allows players to play in any session organized under the auspices of the campaign.
The various adventures themselves are loosely tied together and developed based on the successful, or unsuccessful, events from previous adventures. Towards this end, several adventures DM submits the results to the RPGA, which plans plots of future adventures depending on these results. This meta-interactivity is what inspired the "Living" title of the campaign.
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[edit] Adventures Types
The Living Greyhawk campaign produces five categories of role-playing adventures: Regional adventures, Metaregional adventures, Core adventures, Adapted adventures, and Core Special adventures.
- Regional adventures can only be played within the borders of the corresponding real world Region, though players can travel from other Regions to play them (at double the cost of Time Units). Production of Regional adventures is overseen by the regional Triad, with the approval and editorial oversight by the Circle member with responsibility for the relevant Metaregion.
- Regional introductory adventures are similar to regional adventures but can only be played by 1st-level characters (in some cases, only by completely new characters).
- Regional special adventures are similar to regional adventures but are generally made available only to selected events, occasionally just a single convention.
- Regional interactive adventures are somewhat similar to regional special adventures, but players often dress up as or physically act out their character in a similar style to a LARP.
- Metaregional adventures must be played within borders of the corresponding real world Metaregion and deal with events set within the portion of the World of Greyhawk corresponding to the Metaregion. Production of Metaregional adventures is overseen by the Circle member or Metaregional assistant with responsibility for the Metaregion.
- Core adventures can be played anywhere in the real world (even in areas that do not have a Living Greyhawk Region assigned to them) and deal with events in the Core regions of the World of Greyhawk (though they can also deal with events of wide-reaching consequence within regions). Production of Core adventures is overseen by a Circle member with special responsibility for the Core regions.
- Core special adventures generally take the form of a "dungeon crawl", where most of the adventure is taken up by battles with little or no roleplaying element. Some core special adventures are made available to only eight conventions worldwide, while others are run at a selection of big conventions but then reissued (possibly in a rewritten format) for home play.
- Adapted adventures are a sub category of Core adventures, except that these adventures have not been specifically written for Living-Greyhawk. Some adventures published by Wizards of the Coast or in Dungeon Magazine will be selected by the campaign administration and made available (adapted) for play in Living Greyhawk.
- Adaptable (no longer used) adventures were published by the RPGA until 2002. The story could be modified by the regional triads in order to include them into the story arc of the region.
[edit] Time units
In Living Greyhawk, each character starts out the new year with 52 time units (TUs), which while ostensibly equal to one week of game time are really just an arbitrary delimitation of how often a character can be played in a year. Most regional and meta-regional adventures cost a player one TU for in-region play and double that for out-of-region play. All Core adventures cost a minimum of 2 TUs. TUs can be spent for other out-of-adventure reasons, such as crafting an item or being a member of an order or a guild.
Once a character has spent 52 TUs, that character can no longer be played until the new calendar year.
With the announced wrapup of the campaign in 2008, the usage of TUs has been somewhat relaxed, in that the adventure itself would no longer cost any TUs. TUs would only be charged for out-of-adventure reasons to allow maximum playablity of characters before the campaign ends.
[edit] Campaign organization
Many of the different realms and territories from the World of Greyhawk setting have been mapped onto areas of the real world (chiefly in North America and Europe). Players resident in these real world Regions usually play characters based or originating in the corresponding realm in the World of Greyhawk. For example, a player living in the United Kingdom can role-play a character living in the Free State of Onnwal. Each region is overseen by a Triad of three RPGA volunteers, who produce and edit regional adventures set in their region, create and advance plot lines within the region and oversee and enforce the rules of the Living Greyhawk campaign within their region.
The Regions are in turn grouped into one of 5 Metaregions, each of which is over seen by a member of the Circle, a group of six senior volunteers that coordinates the Living Greyhawk Campaign for the RPGA.
As well as the realms incorporated into player Regions, several parts of the World of Greyhawk, including, for example, the Free City of Greyhawk itself, are not assigned to any region or metaregion. These realms are described as Core regions.
The table below shows the triads for each geographic region:
[edit] Notes
- ^ In October 2006, parts of Australia & New Zealand were spun off into the newly recreated Ratik region, which had been in hiatus since 2004 [1]
