Greyhawk Adventures

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Greyhawk Adventures (ISBN 0-88038-649-5) is an accessory for the Dungeons & Dragons World of Greyhawk campaign setting, written by James M. Ward and published by TSR, Inc. in September 1988. The 128-page book was the thirteenth and final hardback manual published for the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, although a note on its cover claims the book is also compatible with the 2nd Edition AD&D system. Greyhawk Adventures contains information about deities, non-player characters, monsters, geography, spells, and magic items of the setting, rules for playing zero-level characters, and a few short adventures.

Greyhawk Adventures is unusual among AD&D hardcover manuals, in that the author solicited input from the gaming community about what subjects to include in the book before publishing it (Ward 1988a). Ward later credited the 511 letters he received as the major impetus for including the rules for zero-level characters and adventures, both topics that had not been previously included in hardcover AD&D manuals (Ward 1988b).

As suggested by the note on the cover, the contents of Greyhawk Adventures represent a transitional state between the 1st and 2nd edition AD&D rules (Bambra 1989). For example, the NPCs in the "Hall of Heroes" include monks, a 1st edition character class not included in the 2nd edition rules. On the other hand, the "Monsters of Greyhawk" chapter uses the 2nd edition's 2d10-based system for monster morale, rather than the 1st edition's d100-based morale system.

Unlike many of the AD&D manuals, Greyhawk Adventures was not reissued for the 2nd or 3rd editions of D&D, although much of its content was incorporated into other supplements. All but two of the monsters introduced in Greyhawk Adventures, for example, reappeared in the Greyhawk Adventures Monstrous Compendium appendix (ISBN 0-88038-836-6).

Greyhawk Adventures takes its name and logo from a a series of novels written by Gary Gygax and Rose Estes, published by TSR in the 1980s. The logo was later used on several 2nd Edition AD&D products, such as City of Skulls and The Marklands.