Retrospective: World of Greyhawk

Longtime readers may object that I've already done a Retrospective post on The World of Greyhawk. Pedantic as ever, I must reply that, while it's true that I have indeed written a post about The World of Greyhawk, I have never written one about World of Greyhawk. If that last sentence makes any sense, congratulations, you are every bit the quibbler I am. Less fussy readers will probably require an explanation.

In 1980, TSR published The World of Greyhawk, a 32-page "fantasy world setting" by Gary Gygax for use with AD&D. Commonly referred to as the Greyhawk "folio," this is the version of the product that first introduced me to the Greyhawk setting and to which I devoted a previous Retrospective post. However, in 1983, TSR published a product called World of Greyhawk (without the definite article). This version of the setting came in a box and is greatly expanded in scope, consisting of a 48-page booklet and an 80-page one. I have never devoted a post to this version of the setting until now.

There are a couple of reasons why this is the case. The first and most obvious one is that I originally didn't see much point in doing so. Having already written about the folio version, I thought I'd said all I needed about the topic. The second is that, while I owned the boxed set, I didn't make much use of it in play. By the time of its release in 1983, I was making my earliest forays into the creation of my own setting, Emaindor, which I'd use almost exclusively for the remaining years of the 1980s. Consequently, my thoughts about the World of Greyhawk boxed set are almost entirely theoretical, rather than based on its use in play. All that said, as a good TSR fanboy, I did buy the boxed set and I spent a lot of time poring over its pages, so I do have some thoughts to share on it. 

The most obvious difference between the 1983 and 1980 editions is, of course, their relative sizes. The folio version was only 32 pages long – a quarter the length of the boxed set's two books combined. That's partly due to the fact that the boxed set includes a lot more information about the setting than did its predecessor (including a reprint of David Axler's magisterial 1982 Dragon article, "Weather in the World of Greyhawk"), but it's also due to changes in TSR's layouts and graphic design. The folio version's 32 pages are dense, with small fonts and narrow margins. By contrast, the boxed version has larger print and much larger margins. These changes are responsible for a great deal of the increase page count between the two editions.

What's interesting is that, despite appearing three years later, when TSR had significantly more resources to draw upon, the boxed set does not feature significantly more artwork than the folio version. Every fan of the 1983 version naturally remembers Jeff Easley's cover illustration, which is indeed striking (and features the knight bearing a banner on which can be seen the same escutcheon that appears on the cover of the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide). However, there's very little interior art in either of the two enclosed books aside from historiated initial letters (rendered by Darlene, I believe). There is some – all by Easley – and it's not bad for what it is, though it's all fairly generic in the way that all TSR artwork was starting to become during its Electrum Age.

None of this is intended as a serious criticism of the boxed set, which is quite an attractive product overall. Rather, I say all of this primarily to highlight how much TSR – and, by extension, Dungeons & Dragons – had changed over the course of just three years. The company that produced the folio in 1980 was still small and energetic, as well understaffed and amateurish. It could still, I think, be called a hobbyist enterprise. By contrast, TSR in 1983 was both bigger and more "professional," but its growth in these areas had domesticated it somewhat. The World of Greyhawk was always rather vanilla, but its 1983 presentation takes that to another level.

Nevertheless, there is much to praise in the boxed set. TSR wisely collected many of Gygax's best Greyhawk-related articles from the pages of Dragon and included them here. I was a big fan of the coverage of Greyhawk's deities, for example, so seeing them in one of the constituent books was a thrill. The same is true (though less thrillingly) of the Greyhawk regional encounter tables, which are precisely the kind of low-key naturalism that is a hallmark of Gygaxian D&D. Combined with everything else, from kingdom and population information to geography and social hierarchies, the result is a solid, if also stolid, "fantasy game setting" for use with AD&D. 

In that respect, the 1983 boxed set is still very much in line with the 1980 folio, even if it's now longer and with higher production values. Despite my personal preference for the original, born out of both philosophical and nostalgic reasons, I think well of the World of Greyhawk boxed set and think it'd make a fine model for other fantasy RPG settings to emulate. It provides just enough details to inspire without becoming intrusive, which is how it should be, in my opinion.