Thursday, August 13, 2020

Old Greyhawk Castle

"To the east of the busy walled city of Greyhawk the land is forsaken, overgrown with thorns and thistles. Oozing marsh creeps slowly down. The copses are huddles of weird, bloated trees. The wiry grass seems to grasp at the feet of any who dare to tread upon it. In the center of this unwholesome place, on a rock-boned prominence, hulks the ruin of the grim Greyhawk Castle..." [4]

This dungeon is the birthplace of D&D. It rightfully has taken on a near-mythical status. 

"Ruined Tower" is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. 


So how did Greyhawk Castle look like? 

We do not know exactly. Trying to figure out  how it looked like is detective and archaeology work, putting together little bits and pieces of evidence from disparate sources. All the detail of the adventures was made up on the spot, and little was written down. Other than what we know from stories and sketchy notes, the full experience of the castle is forever lost. Nevertheless, there is a lot we know, enough even to adventure in it. This is the "Old Greyhawk Castle", the first version.

Level Structure

“Greyhawk Castle,” for example, has over a dozen levels in succession downwards. [1] Before the rules for D&D were published 'Old Greyhawk Castle' was 13 levels deep. [3]

In the Gygax estate, There are 22 levels of the original castle manuscript. Combined with the expanded castle's 62 levels and more than a dozen alternate levels to switch in, there close to 100 levels, and 300 pages of keys. [34]

There were many connections between the levels, some spanning multiple levels, like the black well [12.8], or the famous circular entry stairs [7, 9, 10]. Keep in mind that downward (and upward) mobility is desirable, for players will not find a game enjoyable which confines them too much [1]. It was quite possible to journey downward to the bottom level by an insidious series of slanting passages which began on the second level but the likelihood of following such a route unknowingly didn' t become too great until the seventh or eighth level. [3]
The naming of the levels is contradictory in various sources like [15, 6, 7]. Vaults and Dungeons have been confirmed from photographs of the level maps for level one and three.
    An alternative order could be to have the Greater Caverns right after the Lesser Caverns, but corridors contradict the description of level 11, likewise the statement that there were no barracks or living quarters in the caves and cavern levels. In [3] only three levels of caves and caverns are mentioned, but later two sets, lesser and greater caves and caverns each. Gygax said that the larger monsters on the lower levels needed space and room to fly. That would fit for the Greater Caverns filled with huge, flying dragons.  

    If we consider the bottom level special, the upper levels would be 1-4, the mid levels 5-8, and the lower levels 9-12.  Playing through the dungeon down to level 13 took characters to lord level (around level 10).

    Side Levels

    Side levels expanded the dungeon around the central main level stack. In the original binders there are 22 total levels [34], which would indicate 9 side levels. The number expanded to more than a dozen [1] before the Old Castle was scrapped for the Extended castle. The orcs were all eradicated or turned into followers by the players. 
    • Level 3a: Huge Arena [3] of Evil [1] 
    • Mid Levels: Warrens a barracks with Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Gnolls continually warring. [3] The orcs were mainly from level Sub 5 or 6. [28, Troll level could be 8] The orcs in the dungeon were of two separate tribes, one was the Grinning Skull and the other was the Bloody Axe. [6] 
    • Museum [3] from another age [1]
    • Giant's Home [3] and Bowling Alley for 20' high giants [1] and Garden of Fungi [3] or series of caves filled with giant fungi [1] The map is in El Raja Key.
    • Underground Lake [1, 3]
    • Crypts [1]
    Extraplanar "Levels"

    Cursed scrolls or portals could take you to other worlds, to give a break from the same kind of play getting tedious. 
    • Barsoom (E. R. Burroughs Mars, Magic did not work, source of the white apes on level 11)
    • Lower Levels: EX1 Dungeonland (based on Alice in Wonderland)
    • Lower Levels: EX2 The Land Behind the Magic Mirror (based on Alice in Wonderland) 
    • Level 13: Teeth of Bakash-Naur 
    • Demonworld by Rob Kuntz

    Greyhawk Castle Environs
    Design

    The levels each filled a single sheet of graph paper with traps and secret doors indicated. They contained lots of empty rooms and labyrinthine corridors, dead ends and paper-thin walls. The lower levels then had caverns and caves that were hard to map. 
    Dungeon Stocking

    The minimal room keys fit on a single page and just listed monsters, treasures, and special traps, about 20 of them. There was no logical justification for the treasures and monsters, the construct of a near-omnipotent, whimsical archmage had to cover these flaws. Apart from "special" encounters, it was similar to what you would get using random monster and treasure tables from the OD&D rules, but Gary just made them up.

    Over time, Gary's design sensibilites evovlved to a layout with fewer empty rooms, less mappping exploration and more action:

    As I would place perhaps 15 or so active encounters on a level of many passageways and as many as 50 or so rooms, to keep things "interesting" I'd include various traps. [6]

    The number of encounter areas I have on a level depends on the overall setting, but 20 on a map with four lines per inch is about as spare as I'll go so as to avoid tedium in exploration. With careful planning one can work in a lot of encounters without the place seeming like a fun house. [6]

    I usually made one-line notes for my dungeon encounters, from around 20 to 25 of same for a typical level done on four-lines-to-the inch graph paper-a few more on five-, six, or seldom used 8-line graph paper, the other spaces were empty save for perhaps a few traps or transporter areas and the like. I did indeed create details for the PC party on the spot, adding whatever seemed appropriate [2]

    The random tables worked quite well, but they took too long. I found that it was easier and quicker for me to just bash ahead as usual and put in whatever I liked at the moment. [6]

    Monsters

    The level one monsters on the random moster roster for underground adventures match the monsters from the known "First Castle" level one exactly, but this is not a 1:1 mapping for all levels, as there are only 6 random monster charts to stock 13 dungeon levels. Furthermore, Gygax reports on hogs and wereboars in a labyrinth on level six. Giant Hogs appear only in OD&D chart 3, and that chart never can contribute to populating level 6. It is the same situation for White Apes that appear only on chart 4, and populate level 11. So while the charts allow you to approximate what monsters lurk on a level in the increasing depths of Greyhawk Castle, they do not directly represent the monsters lairing on each level. 

    The original monster list mainly consists of monsters from greek and medieval myth, fantasy litarature like Gnolls, Orcs, Ents, Nazgul, and Balrogs, plus a few oozes and slimes. Most of the "archetypical" monsters associated with D&D now, like the lich, beholder, owlbear, displacer beast did not yet exist, and were developed playing in the extended castle, and based on the plastic figurines. 

    Treasure & Traps

    One of his favorite tricks was to give out a magical sword that seemed to do great things like burst into flames or do extra damage to giant-types. That weapon, unknown to the wielder would have some sort of curse, like attracting arrows to the player or causing them to strike at a -3. Once we got to higher levels we could detect for those curses, but in the beginning it was rough. [30.2]

    Encounter Keys

    What we used was [...] DM notes to more easily wing the actual action. Traps and "trick" areas were detailed in regards to trigger and damage or result from activating a trick. [6]

    Monster encounters looked like this: 12 ORCS, 4 with crossbows, 7-12 gp each, POTION OF HEROISM in hole under water barrel. Will fight until death. [6]

    Depending on the party entering their area, the HPs would be set high, or rolled, or set low. Likewise, the orcs might have a spy hole, detect the approaching party, fire through loopholes in the door and wall, or else be sitting around and possibly surprised. [6]

    Special encounters might be more detailed, two or three lines of notes. [6]

    Greyhaw Castle Timeline

    The work began with a single dungeon level in the late autumn of 1972, with the first exploration party [...]. The very next day they adventured again [...]. As play was so incense I went to work immediately that night to create a second level, and to those two I added a new deeper level every few days. By the beginning of 1973 there was a map of the ruins of the upper works of the castle and eight levels beneath them. When summer came, the whole complex consisted of 13 levels of dungeons. Those served well for the dozen regulars and score of occasionals who were playing in the campaign, but as there was a constant influx of new players who would create characters and adventure for several sessions, then go forth to establish their own campaigns, the dungeons population of monstrous inhabitants was becoming depleted. I added a few side levels, but I couldn't keep up with work and play demands. [7]
    • Fist play session of D&D
    • There were many versions of the castle. This post is about the first one, to original one. Even that underwent many changes due to the multiple groups playing in it. Whatever maps and keys may be found eventually, they will just be one snapshot of a continually evolving dungeon. By the time of publication of OD&D in 1974, play had already shifted to the second castle.
    • Why the Original Greyhawk Castle was never published.
    • When level four was done, Gary started fleshing out the city. 
    • Later play shifted increasingly to city and then also wilderness. There, most content was improvised.
    There were several upper levels (out of about 35) where PCs had only partially explored, and a couple of lower "side" levels (out of some 12 or so) that had not been discovered. The same is true of two associated areas which were attained by magical transferrance from relatively out of the way places in the lower levels of the dungeons. #1217

    Was it good, and does that matter?

    I believe, the original campaign was a fantastic play experience, by any standard, due to the dynamic environment and Gary's skill in judging impartially and improvising exiting adventure content. [30.1] Also, back then everything was new and fresh. 

    Compared to the best large dungeons available today, it seems that Old Greyhawk Castle would not measure up if we published whatever notes exist, and we ignored the historical relevance. 

    The truth is, Castle Greyhawk was not a bunch of maps and keys. It was a collaborative story being told between the players and Gary. Maps and key can only provide us with a skeleton. The stories, the antics, the adventures and the inventiveness of Gary are the real heart of what castle Castle Greyhawk was. And no publication will ever be able to recreate that. 

    In art history, the original innovation rarely is as good technically as later works. Early renaissance paintings that invented perspective look awkward. Today any kid with a graphics tablet could do a more credible job of that. But they are the originals, and that is what makes them relevant and worth millions of dollars. 

    Greyhawk Castle, even if Gary would have objected to highfalutin' comparisons to art, must be seen in the same way -- it is a seminal effort, worth conserving as a historical work. 

    When Gary went to publish it as Castle Zagyg, he tried to create an adventure that stands on its own as a great dungeon to be played in, and that is entirely fine, but I think it misses the point: that there is real interest is in the original work, as it was. There are many great mega-dungeons to play in. There is only one origin of our hobby.  

    Greyhaw Castle Resources
    [References: see Greyhawk References]
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