Living Greyhawk


Living Greyhawk was a massively shared Dungeons & Dragons living campaign administered by RPGA that ran from 2000 to 2008. The campaign setting and storyline were based on Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk setting, and used the Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition rules. During the lifespan of the campaign, more than a thousand adventures were published, and these were played by tens of thousands of players around the world.

Chronology of the campaign

During the 1990s, a shared RPGA roleplaying campaign called Living City that used the Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition rules had been relatively successful. With the introduction of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2000, RPGA conceived of a new and improved campaign called Living Greyhawk that would be more far-reaching in scope and played on a larger, continental scale. Instead of one city and its environs, this campaign would cover 30 in-game regions of Oerth, each linked to a real-world area, as well as "core" in-game regions that were not assigned to any specific real-world area.
The first introductory adventures of the campaign premiered at Gen Con in August 2000, and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, which contained background material, was published in November 2000. Volunteers were recruited to handle regional storylines, and regional play began in 2001.
At the end of 2001, campaign administrators changed the treasure rewards from a certificate-based system to an equal-access system in which a special item could be purchased at the end of the adventure by any player and recorded on an adventure record. This, and a rule change that immediately prohibited crafters of magic items from selling items to other players, caused some protest from players. However, in 2002, RPGA dropped its membership fee, and the number of players who had dropped out of the campaign was more than made up for by new RPGA members, and interest in Living Greyhawk increased substantially.
In 2003, the campaign was converted to the revised Dungeon and Dragon v3.5 rules.
In 2005, the campaign saw the first of several direct tie-ins to new rule expansion books published by Wizards of the Coast, with the launch of a new story arc set in the Bright Lands desert that coincided with the publication of Sandstorm.
In 2007 at Gen Con Indy, concurrent with the announcement that the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons would be published the following year, RPGA announced that the Living Greyhawk campaign would not be converted to 4th edition, but would instead be brought to a close.
The final adventures of the Living Greyhawk campaign premiered at the Origins convention in June 2008, and play ended on December 31, 2008.

Design of the campaign

RPGA already knew from their experience with Living City that an adventure in a shared campaign had to be run the same way by every DM, to be equitable for all players. This created problems with some of the rules, which could be adjudicated several different ways according to circumstance. There was also the problem of certain character classes and items that could unbalance the campaign by providing one character with too much power.
To try to avoid these problems, Living Greyhawk used Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, but modified by a set of "house rules" set out in the Living Greyhawk Campaign Sourcebook. Some of these house rules included:
  • Limits on starting character classes and races All new characters were required to start at 1st level. Originally only races and character classes found in the Players Handbook were allowed. This was later modified to include some new character classes such as favoured soul and hexblade. Occasionally access to new races was granted under particular circumstances. For example, if a player chose to play the first adventure of the "Bright Sands" story arc, centaur could be chosen as a race. In another instance, a special card issued by RPGA allowed the player holding the card to create a kobold character.
  • Limits on levels gained. Although D&D 3.0/3.5 was designed for characters up to 20th level, LG required characters to retire from the campaign when they reached 18th level.
  • No evil Characters could not have an evil alignment, nor could they worship an evil deity. If a character committed an evil act, such as attacking another player character, the DM was required to report this to the local Triad. If the Triad decided this act indicated a change of character alignment to evil, then the character would be permanently removed from the campaign. For this reason, any character infected by lycanthropy was given a chance to remove the curse, but if unsuccessful, was removed from the campaign.
  • One play opportunity only. Players were only allowed to play each adventure once. If a person had already run the adventure as a DM before playing it, then he or she was barred from playing the adventure afterward.
  • Certain things banned from LG. To try to maintain some balance between the characters and adventure encounters, and also some fairness in the powers and abilities of the characters, some character classes, prestige classes, magic items, weapons and spells were banned from play. Additionally only new items, spells and powers found in books published by Wizards of the Coast were allowed in the campaign.
  • The use of Time Units to regulate number of adventures played per year See Time Units below.
  • Campaign documentation. In addition to the standard character sheet used in Dungeons & Dragons, every player was required to keep complete campaign documentation for each character. Living Greyhawk was sometimes derisively called "Living Accounting", since the list of documents could include
  • *an Adventure Record for each adventure played by the character, which tracked accumulated gold pieces, experience points and Time Units spent, as well as access to magic items and spells, and any favours or curses gained during the adventure;
  • *a Master Item Logsheet, which described when each special or magical item had been bought or created by the character.
  • *a Magic Item Creation sheet, which logged magic items created by the character
  • *any campaign documentation or certificates earned during adventures
  • Character Death If a character died and the player was unable or unwilling to pay for resurrection during or immediately following the adventure, the character was removed from the campaign. A dead character could not be resurrected or otherwise brought back to the campaign at a later date.
The various adventures themselves were loosely tied together and storylines were developed based on general successes or failures from previous adventures. To enable the Circle to monitor this, at the conclusion of some adventures, the DM was required to submit the results to the Circle, which then planned future plotlines based on these results. This interactivity was what inspired the word "Living" in the title of this type of shared campaign.

Regionality of campaign

The LG campaign differed from previous shared-world campaigns in one important respect: thirty of the regions from World of Greyhawk were linked to real-world areas; volunteers from these real-world locations then assumed responsibility for the storyline and administration of that particular region. In return, the real-world location was the only place where one could play adventures belonging to that region. Any adventures set outside these thirty regions were "core" adventures that could be played by anyone anywhere. See Regions of LG below.

Metaregions

To present story arcs with larger themes than the local concerns presented in regional adventures, the Circle gathered the thirty regions into five larger metaregions.
This provided a level of storyline that fell between the strictly local interests of regional adventures and the continent-wide story arcs of "core" adventures.

Administration

The campaign was overseen by the Circle, a group of six RPGA staff. Five of the members had individual oversight for one of the five metaregions; the sixth Circle member had responsibility for Core adventures. The responsibilities of the Circle included approval of all adventures that rewarded treasure, coordination of overall campaign and metaregional story arcs, approving story ideas for Core and metaregional adventures and editing same, producing campaign documentation and rules, ruling on reports of cheaters and unsportsmanlike conduct, and appointing and maintaining a Triad for each region.
Due to the workload, some metaregions also added a metaregional coordinator volunteer to assist with metaregional storylines and adventures.
Each region was overseen by its Triad, who reported to their respective Circle member. The Triad was responsible for finding writers for regional adventures, approving story ideas, editing adventures and submitting finished adventures to the Circle for approval, writing special missions for individual players, answering questions from players, arbitrating disputes regarding play, auditing players' documents, and maintaining a regional website.

Adventures Types

Given the "regionality" of the campaign, the Living Greyhawk campaign produced five categories of role-playing adventures:
  • Regional adventures
  • Metaregional adventures
  • Core adventures
  • Adapted adventures
  • Adaptable adventures.

    Regional

These were produced by the regional Triad and approved by the corresponding Circle member. The adventures could only be played within the borders of the corresponding real world Region, although players from other Regions could, while visiting the Region, play them at double the cost of Time Units.
  • Regional introductory adventures were similar to regional adventures but were designed to be played by 1st-level characters only. No treasure could be gained from these adventures, and Circle approval was not required.
  • Special missions were one-time adventures written by the Triad for a specific character to resolve a character plotline that could not be resolved through a regular adventure e.g. getting married, fulfilling the requirements for a prestige class, etc. No treasure could be gained through these, and Circle approval was not required.
  • Regional interactive adventures were one-time adventures written for play at a single convention. These were often used to reveal important developments in the regional storyline, or to develop regional flavour e.g. a cultural festival with characteristics unique to the region. Players often dressed up as or physically role-played their character in a style similar to a LARP.