Retrospective: Greyhawk Wars

I've never been much of a wargamer (take a drink). Despite that, I've always been interested in wargaming, particularly the hex-and-chit variety epitomized by Avalon Hill. Over the years, I've dabbled in wargames, such as my recent flirtation with the COIN series published by GMT, but I've never really committed to them in the way that many of my friends have done. I thus have a minor inferiority complex about this, feeling that my gaming "education" is somehow deficient because I haven't played wargames as often or as widely as my peers.

So, when TSR released a board wargame set in Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk setting in 1991, I took immediate notice of it. This was my chance to get in some much needed wargaming experience. Alas, things didn't quite go as planned on this score, but I'll get to that soon enough. For the moment, let's focus on the matter of the game's title. According to the box cover, one could be forgiven for thinking it's called Greyhawk Adventures: Wars. However, the text of the rulebook repeatedly calls it simply Greyhawk Wars, which is how I've always referred to it, though some online spaces (like BoardGameGeek) favors the longer, more ponderous title.

In addition to the possible confusion over the title, it's also worth noting that, despite being a wargame, Greyhawk Wars was released under the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition banner. This is in spite of the fact that it contains no roleplaying content whatsoever, not even the thin gruel provided by Dragons of Glory, another TSR strategic-level wargame set within a D&D campaign world. Of course, TSR had long been notorious about slapping the (A)D&D logo on just about everything, in an effort to build and expand its "brand." Compared to, say, wind-up toys or sunglasses, this particular bit of brand building was pretty innocuous and indeed could be justified in that it was intended to be the lead-in to a relaunch of the World of Greyhawk setting.

Though Gygax departed TSR for good by 1986, the company retained control of Greyhawk. Throughout the late 1980s, there were a handful of Greyhawk products released, most notably Greyhawk Adventures, but none of them, in my opinion, did a good job of carrying on the flavor and tone set by Gygax's original. If anything, they blandified the setting, reducing it to the worst kind of vanilla fantasy. Unsurprisingly, the setting's popularity – and, therefore, sales – declined, especially when compared to TSR's other two AD&D settings: Krynn and the Forgotten Realms. 

TSR probably recognized this fact, which is why, starting in the early '90s, the company attempted to better differentiate the World of Greyhawk in the hopes that it'd be more appealing to AD&D players. The first step in doing so was Greyhawk Wars. The wargame, designed by David "Zeb" Cook, concerns a massive war that engulfs the peoples and kingdoms of the Flanaess, one whose results upend the status quo presented in previous World of Greyhawk products. Whatever my personal feelings about the end result, it's hard not to admire the boldness of this approach. For years beforehand, Gary Gygax, in periodic Greyhawk updates published in Dragon, had been hinting at the possibility of such a large-scale "world war," but he never pulled the trigger on the idea, probably because he intended Oerth to be an open-ended "steady state" setting each Dungeon Master could customize according to his own desires.

Greyhawk Wars takes a very different approach. Instead of leaving the World of Greyhawk perpetually teetering on the edge of grand events, Cook opts to topple the whole structure, throwing long established peoples, places, and situations into chaos. At the end of the battles depicted in the wargame, a new order is established across the Flanaess, one where the forces of Good are battered, beaten, and on the defensive, while Evil, as represented by the Empire of Iuz, the Scarlet Brotherhood, and the successor states of the Great Kingdom is on the rise. The result is something that's definitely different from the original World of Greyhawk. Whether it's better is another matter.

As tabletop wargames go, Greyhawk Wars occupies a middle ground between being simple enough a newcomer can easily pick it up and so complex that only a hardened veteran of Third Reich could ever play it. The game rules are relatively short – only 8 pages – and straightforward. While there are lots of counters (representing military units), there are no hexes. Instead, the map of the Flanaess into movement "areas" of varying size, based to some extent on terrain. Also included in the game are a number of cards, some of which represent random events and treasures that can be used to augment the abilities of military units. Named NPCs (called "Heroes") play a role in the game, too, which lends it a slight roleplaying flair, though, for the most part, this is still very much a standard wargame. 

Greyhawk Wars is intended for 2 to 6 players, depending on the scenario, each with its own victory conditions. These conditions, though, are solely for gaming purposes and have no bearing on the canonical versions of these events, much in the way that a Confederate player in a wargame about the American Civil War can emerge victorious, contrary to history. The 32-page Adventurer's Book lays out the "true" conclusion of the Greyhawk Wars, the one I described above, with Evil ascendant and Good on the defensive. This is in contrast to the earlier Red Arrow, Black Shield module, which, while assuming a particular outcome for its world war, nevertheless considers the possibility of other outcomes and how they might affect ongoing campaigns. Greyhawk Wars allows for no such possibility and all subsequent Greyhawk products would follow the canonical version of history detailed in the Adventurer's Book.

As I alluded to at the start of this post, my own experiences with Greyhawk Wars weren't great. That's not a fault of the game, which is fine, if unexceptional. Rather, I had difficulty in finding others interested in taking the time to play any of its scenarios. Between setting up and playing, most took 3 hours or more – a short time compared to many wargames, I know – and that limited my pool of potential players. As a result, I don't think I ever played Greyhawk Wars more than a half-dozen times and rarely to conclusion. My perpetual quest for more wargaming knowledge and experience was thwarted once again.

All that said, I can't help but find Greyhawk Wars a fascinating window into the last decade of TSR's existence. The mere fact that the company published something approximating a classic hex-and-chit wargame set in Greyhawk is remarkable in its own right. That it was also the first part of a larger plan to reboot Gary Gygax's campaign setting into something they hoped would be more attractive to fantasy roleplayers in the 1990s is just as remarkable. I can't speak much about the success of the former, since, as I said, I didn't get the chance to play it much. As to the latter, that's the subject of next week's Retrospective post, so stay tuned.