Greyhawk Day #10: Allen Varney Talks Greyhawk

This is sort of an unusual Greyhawk Day. Allen Varney is one of my favorite RPG authors, but despite a long and productive career writing, he's perhaps best-known for his work on Paranoia XP. I did, however, scrounge up this old magazine article reprinted on his site, which talks about the 1998 relaunch of the Greyhawk campaign setting. Its interesting to see some of the opinions and thoughts about this great setting, which would largely officially get the boot (though surviving in parts, for now) a decade later. One quote jumped out at me in particular:

When Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR last year, Wizards president Peter Adkison noted "a lot of pent-up demand" for the return of Greyhawk. Having patched up TSR's sore relations with Gygax, Wizards re-launched the Greyhawk Adventures line in June 1998 -- and Johnson approached the task with all the ambition of the boldest player character.

"I want people to see Greyhawk as synonymous with AD&D," he says. "In Greyhawk, all the rules work. There aren't any restrictions. Chronomancy, shamanism.... If you want psionics, they happen. If you want specialty magic, there it is.

"This is the birthplace of adventure."

Anyhow, give it a read, its an interesting flashback, and yet another reason Allen Varney rocks.