The Prompt

Day 7 – What’s the weather like today? Is there a particular climate or weather that’s prominent in the region of the campaign? Does it vary? What is it like and how bad does it get?

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

Summon Weather

While the first appearance of the Greyhawk Weather charts was in Dragon #68, my first exposure was the Greyhawk Glossography. The charts provide a high-level overview of weather in Greyhawk and includes a thumbnail map listing latitudes of the Flanaess (the central region where most of the campaign occurs) which corresponds to a North American climate. The weather generation tables allow you to create regional weather based on latitude, shifting the results appropriately as the regions get colder or warmer.

It also documents the phases of Oerth’s moons: Luna (similar to Earth’s moon) rotates the planet every 30 days. Celene’s orbit is much slower, taking 90 days to complete an orbit. The periods of the two moons lead to super full-moons, when both objects are full, as well as darkest nights, where both are new. Knowing the lunar cycles helps you describe night time scenes as the players inevitably post watches for their long rests.

While it’s fun to roll dice and look up results, it takes a lot of time to create a month’s work of weather. The Scroll of Weather Forecasting does the work for me. It has a bunch of options, including daily temperatures, sunrise and sunset, moon phases, precipitation types, and more. You can set the month, terrain, and latitude, and it will give the results in metric or imperial.

I generate my weather one to three months at a time, and store the results in a Google Sheet. Then I use that self-same sheet to document happenings in the campaign (e.g. rumors, notable events, when specific chapters happened in-game, etc.).

Greyhawk weather often plays a significant role in my game as it helps add flavor to what’s happening … as well as challenges. In a previous campaign, a blizzard led to a 3 or 4 session arc as the players fought through the snow to find refuge, then had to trek back to their hometown. Once there, a murder unfolded during the storm, leading them to slug from location to location investigating and trying to deal with the threat. Afterwards, the city dealt with the consequences of the freak storm, which destroyed many of its simpler wooden structures.

The Rains in Greyhawk Fall Mostly on the Plain

My Greyhawk ’76 campaign takes in Wealsun CY 576, which equates to low summer. It takes place on the Plain of Greyhawk and the surrounding hills and marshes, and lies at 35N° latitude. Temperates range from lows in the 60s (Fahrenheit) to highs in the mid-80s. Weather is typically pleasant, broken up by periodic rain (including a few intense thunderstorms).

The campaign spreadsheet includes several columns:

• Date
• Day
• High Temperature
• Low Temperature
• Precipitation (duration)
• Wind (from, speed)
• Phase of Luna
• Phase of Celene
• Campaign Chapter(s)
• Campaign Notes

This provides a heady way of keeping track of what happened when in the campaign, but just as importantly, it helps me look (and plan) ahead. I use the campaign notes column for quick recaps of the adventures, as well as future notes about what will happen.

Low Summer, High Drama

For the last month of the campaign the players have been trying to catch up with the Burrow Boys, a band of murderous halflings operating on the Plain of Greyhawk. Thanks to a secret note they intercepted, they know exactly where and where the gang members will be.

• Where: Swamp’s Fork, a criminal meet-up / flea market that appears periodically in the depths of the Mistmarsh.
• When: Wealsun 25

Nearly half of the campaign has been focused on them making it to Mistmarsh on time. While most of the weather they encountered didn’t hamper them, they did get caught up in a massive thunderstorm that formed the backdrop for a battle with an elder froghemoth named Glub-Glub.

As Wealsun draws to a close, they’ll head into the festival week of Richest, which includes the Midsummer Festival and the notable celestial event of Luna and Celene at their full moon phases. After that, they head into Reaping and the formal start of high summer. The weather will trend much warmer, which will bring with it more severe rain and wind storms.

It’s the perfect set up for a high summer show down with the Burrow Boys, which nicely complements the fantasy western tropes that we’ve been leaning into with the campaign.

Resources

• The Scroll of Weather Forecasting
• Visions of Greyhawk: “Climate in Greyhawk” by Paul Looby

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The 19th edition of Nuketown’s annual sci-fi and fantasy summer reading list features 14 books (12 novels, 2 non-fiction books), 1 novella, and 2 graphic novels.

• Print is for books in paper or e-book format.
• Audio is for the novels I’ll listen to in audiobook format, rather than read the traditional way.
• Island is for books that I intend to read during my family’s annual summer vacation at Lake Champlain.
• Pulled Forward are books I wanted to read in 2025, but didn’t get to.
• ✓ is for the books I finished reading.

Horror

Veil by Jonathan Janz – Amazon – Print, Island – People are vanishing from reality, dragged off by unseen monsters. A high school teacher investigates the disappearance after his family is abducted. I picked this one up on a whim at Sorcery and Scripts, a new fantasy-themed book store located in Bethlehem, Pa. It’s a cool store offering a good selection of speculative fiction books, and assortment of board games and RPGs, and in-store book clubs and game nights.

The King in Yellow: Annotated Edition by Robert W. Chambers, annotated by Kenneth Hite – Amazon – Print – A collection of short stories written by Chambers, which went on to inspire all manner of weirdness in the Cthulhu Mythos. First published in 1895 (yes, 1895), the book is very much a product of its time, with the racial and ethnic biases you’d expect. What makes the book a real treasure is Ken Hite’s annotations, which provide much-needed historical context for Chamber’s work.

Absolution (Southern Reach, Book 4) by Jeff VanderMeer – Amazon – Print – A prequel to the Southern Reach series, this book returns readers to mysterious Area X. The region is a desolate, haunted, and all together strange coastal area of an unnamed country (though in my brain, it’s always been some stretch of the North Carolina coast in the U.S.). I picked this up while on vacation in Hawaii back in January 2026 as I was looking for something with a LOST-ish vibe and discovered VanderMeer had released this book. I got a quarter of the way into it before setting it aside for this year’s summer reading list.

Erebus-13 (Red Space, Book 3) by David Wellington – Amazon – Print – An ancient horror infected an alien solar system. In the previous two books, the protagonists investigated that system and its lone habitable planet and discovered the cosmic threat. Now that threat is headed to Earth, and the survivors need to stop it.

Nautical

The Cruel Sea by Nicolas Monsarrat – Amazon – Print – I’m a big fan of nautical fiction, particularly the Master & Commander series by Patrick O’Brian. After I read The Horror as part of last summer’s reading list, a friend recommended I read this book. It takes place during the Battle of the North Atlantic during World War II, which is not an era I typically read about. That said, the combination of naval battles, WWII, and the unforgiving Atlantic have me intrigued.

Science Fiction

Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, Book 4) – Amazon – Print – This novel is the latest book in Tchaikovsky’s in Children of Time universe, where humanity discovers a series of uplifted species like spiders, crows, and squids after an intelligence virus is unleashed on the galaxy.

Destiny’s Way (Doomed Earth, Book 2) by Jack Campbell – Amazon – Audio, Pulled Forward – I read the first part of Jack Campbell’s Doomed Earth duology last year, in which a woman is thrown backwards through time by the destruction of Terra, and then works to prevent the tragedy.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman – Amazon – Audio – A sci-fi / fantasy mashup about a guy who gets sucked into a real-world dungeon crawl to entertain alien audiences. It feels like the whole geeky world is reading this series, so I figured it was time I picked it up.

God Emperor of Dune (Dune, Book 4) by Frank Herbert – Amazon – Print – Ok, let’s be clear: things are about to get really, really weird on Arrakis. Leto II, son of Paul Atreides, rules the empire created by his father. Obsessed with guiding humanity down the Golden Path to survival and growth, he merged with sandworm spawn to transform himself into a human/sandworm hybrid. In this form, he plans to rule for thousands of years in order to guide humanity to the destiny he’s foreseen. Oh, and Duncan Idaho is back … and dies. A lot. I read this book back in high school, and haven’t returned to it since. The release of the recent Dune movies (and my son reading the books for the first time) inspired me to go back to the books.

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler – Amazon – Print, Pulled Forward – A near-future novel about first-contact with intelligent octopi on Earth. You had me at “intelligent octopi”.

The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, Book 7) – Amazon – Print, Island – I didn’t expect to see another Old Man’s War novel. It takes place in Scalzi’s long-lived sci-fi universe, where an uneasy peace between humans and an alien alliance has existed for a decade. Now a new alien faction is gearing up for an internal war, and that peace is threatened.

The Faith of Beasts (The Captive’s War, Book 2) by James S. A. Corey – Amazon – Print – The Carryx are an alien horde who have conquered and enslaved countless civilizations … and in Book 1 a human world is conquered. The survivors are integrated into their war machine, and have to figure out how to resist their alien oppressors. Book 1 was brutal; in Book 2, the survivors appear to be cooperating with their alien overlords … but there are secret plans to undermine the undefeatable empire.

Non-Fiction

The Lazy DM’s Forge of Foes by Teos Abadiá, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, Mike Shea – Amazon – Audio – A book of advice on how to “build, customize, and run monsters”. I enjoyed Mike Shea’s Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and decided to pick up the audio book version.

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon – Amazon – Print, Island – I grew up reading Clive Cussler’s tales of real and fictional shipwrecks (see Raise the Titanic). This is a non-fiction account of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that went down on Lake Superior during a bad November storm in 1975.

Novellas

Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, Book 4) by Martha Wells – Amazon – Print, Island – I fell off the Murderbot wagon during last year’s reading list, but I’m climbing back on this year. This time around, everyone’s favorite antisocial killing machine is looking to take down the nefarious GrayCris corporation.

Graphic Novels

Hellboy in Love – Amazon – Island – A romantic Hellboy collection? Sure … why not? This pulls together stories featuring the romance of Hellboy and archaeologist Anastasia Bransfield as they deal with various mystical threats around the world.

Hellboy Universe: The Secret Histories Volume 2 – Amazon – Island – This hefty tome contains three Hellboy stories: Rise of the Black Flame,The House of Lost Horizons, British Paranormal Society: Time Out of Mind, and Hellboy: The Silver Lantern Club. I’ve read The Rise previously, but I don’t own a copy of it; the rest of the stories are new to me. At $40, this is the most expensive book on my 2026 list, but it looks to be worth it.

Previous Sci-fi and Fantasy Summer Reading Lists

• 2025: 16 books, 1 novella, and 2 graphic novels.
• 2024: 19 books, 3 novellas, 5 graphic novels
• 2023: 13 books, 2 novellas, 1 graphic novels
• 2022: 17 books, 5 novellas, 5 graphic novels
• 2021: 14 books, 2 novellas, 8 graphic novels
• 2020: 10 books, 1 novella, 5 graphic novels
• 2019: 19 books, 5 graphic novels
• 2018: 15 books, 7 graphic novels
• 2017: 17 books, 1 novella, 8 graphic novels
• 2016: 16 books, 1 novella, 8 graphic novels
• 2015: 15 books, 9 graphic novels
• 2014: 13 books, 5 graphic novels
• 2013: 11 books, 5 graphic novels
• 2012: 11 books, 1 graphic novels
• 2011: 11 books, 0 graphic novels
• 2010: 7 books, 0 graphic novels
• 2009: 9 books, 0 graphic novels
• 2008: 8 books, 8 graphic novels
• …
• 1993: 26 books

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The Prompt

Day 6 – Where shall we start? Where did the campaign begin and/or where should a traveler to the region start their journey through it?

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

High Ery

The man in the strange cloak — he calls it a “poncho” which must mean “armless robe” or some such in his home world — nods to you as he continues his tales of the Plain of Greyhawk. “Not anyone properly introduced you to High Ery”, Alain the Wanderer says. “Small town not far from the Cairn Hills. Lots of people passing through, going from the mines up at Diamond Lake down to Greyhawk City, then back again.”

“Not a lot going on in this town that ain’t connected to the mining trade, though you do get the occasional pie-eyed adventurers looking to find and loot some ancient tomb. ‘Course, I know and you’re learn’n … not many unplundered tombs up in them hills.” Alain shrugs “But live ‘n learn. Or live ‘n die.”

“High Ery itself, well it’s got a shop or two. The town ain’t much to look at, but the inn will keep your head dry and the tavern won’t kill you with their food. So stay a while. Not to long, I’m sure. You’ve got the look of someone with a taste for adventure … and that big city, that Gem of the Flanaess … I’m sure it’s calling your name.”

Locations in High Ery

In the Greyhawk ’76 campaign, the players returned to High Ery after their somewhat disastrous adventure to an old abandoned mine in search of a family treasure. They rested, re-supplied, and loudly proclaimed their plan to kill the Burrow Boys.

The DMG 2024 is light on details regarding High Ery, saying only:

Ery Villages. The villages of High Ery and Erybend are populated largely by farmers who send most of their produce for sale in Greyhawk. The two villages are both dominated by two prominent families, the Fairheights and the Witherwinns. The families have a complicated history including abundant instances of feuding and intermarriage, as well as a catalog of lesser slights and favors

I fleshed out High Ery a bit for the campaign, figuring it might become a launching off point for subsequent adventurers.

Alderson’s Outfitters: General store for miners, farmers, caravan guards, and the occasional adventurers stupid enough to head into the Cairn Hills. Owned Samuel Alderson.

Blacksmith: A barebones blacksmith focused on crafting essential mining and farming implements.

Cradling Branch, The: A small church dedicated to Beory, goddess of Oeryth, nature, rain, and the weather

Darkcoat Internments: An undertaker business. Run by Simon Darkcoat, whose father Steven Darkcoat owns the main business in Erybend.

Lonely Star, The The local outpost of Celestian, god of Stars, Space, and Wanderers.

Militia: Led by Captain Jared Hammerens, the militia deals with the occasional monster threat down from the Cairn Hills.

Ruby Lantern, The: A higher-end inn and tavern catering to merchants and others whose business takes them to the mines, farms, and other businesses surrounding High Ery.

Stone Hand, Church of the: Home to a handful of clerics who worship Dumathoin, dwarven god of mining and underground exploration.

Tired Shovel, The: An inn and tavern owned by Edgar Albright and catering to working class people like farmers and miners.

Wheelwright: Crafts and repairs wagon wheels for miners and caravaners.

Featured Image Meta

A close in view of High Ery and the surrounding locations and terrain. Taken from the regional Plain of Greyhawk map in the 2024 edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

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Day 5 – Can you tell us about the campaign’s history? In the real world and within the universe.

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

A long time ago … in Pennsylvania

I’m lucky … and I know it. My gaming group began in 1996, playing Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition.

Thirty years later, we’re still playing.

The roster’s changed as people joined and left. We’ve seen marriages, divorces, kids born, kids learning D&D, kids going off to college, and kids venturing into the real world on their own (likely with a set of dice … or two). We’ve gamed in the real world; we’ve gone to GenCon and held our own mini-cons (the RPG-centric Nuke(m)Cons and the board game-centric LanceCons). The pandemic saw us go online, where we’ve mostly stayed as people moved to other states and even other countries.

For most of that time, we’ve called ourselves the Blackrazor Guild, named for the signature adventuring guild from the early-to-mid years of our group’s history. We’ve run a ton of campaigns in Greyhawk; I’m hesitant to try and list them all because I’m sure I’ll miss a few. Some notable ones that stand out are:

• The Blackrazor Guild Campaign: The original campaign, which kicked off in the Great Kingdom, led to the burning of a significant portion of the city of Innspa, some exceptionally large bounties, and the PCs deciding to head to Free City of Obsidian Bay on the Pomarj peninsula. Obsidian Bay was our city, and it grew with the campaign, which saw campaign-shifting wars, the awakening of ancient Suel archmages, doppelgänger betrayals, and profitable (and occasionally deadly) forays to the mega dungeons of the Obsidian Maze, Maure Castle, and the Castle Greyhawk ruins.
• Pirates of the Vohoun: Our D&D 3rd edition playtest campaign set on the islands in the southern reaches of the Flanaess.
• The Dark City Campaign: Our first urban fantasy campaign, Dark City, was set in Obsidian Bay. We started over with 1st level characters, and never ventured out into the Pomarj seeking adventure. Instead, all the action took place in the city. It remains one of my favorite campaigns.
• The Redshirts Campaign: The Blackrazor Guild had a tradition of recruiting newbie adventurers, who served as horse caretakers, torchbearers, and cannon fodder. They were called redshirts (hat tip to Star Trek) and if they survived an adventure, they got a name. The Redshirts Campaign saw us take on the role of the redshirts, earning our names and — eventually — taking on a resurgent Temple of Elemental Evil.
• The Dwarven Campaign: In this campaign, we all played dwarves seeking to reclaim an ancient stronghold (based on the Forge of Fury module) … and then deal with threats to the re-established community.
• The Liberation of Geoff Campaign: Taking place in the Grand Duchy of Geoff in the western reaches of the Flanaess, this campaign saw the Blackrazors taking the fight to the country’s giant invaders. It was loosely based on the TSR campaign book of the same name, released as a sequel to Against the Giants.
• The Blackrazor Baronies: The follow up to the Geoff campaign saw the Blackrazors granted the title of Barons in Geoff. This entitled them to lands of their own to govern … and to defend. In this campaign, we took on the role of henchmen of our older characters, dealing with various threats to the realm and the Baronies.
• Heart of Darkness: A Greyhawk campaign set decades after the original campaign, and featuring the occasional Blackrazor alumni as a guest NPC. It was a truly epic campaign that let us explore the northeastern reaches of the Flanaess.
• Obsidian Frontier: A flashback campaign taking place shortly after the founding of Obsidian Bay and taking place decades before the original Blackrazor Guild campaign. It focused on adventures in the even wilder Pomarj, with lots of wilderness treks and threats.
• Elemental Apocalypse: A campaign set in an alternative version of Oerth, where the Temple of Elemental Evil rose … and Greyhawk fell. Inspired by movies like Red Dawn, it saw the PCs fighting the good fight against omnipresent elemental evil. It also served to answer the question: what if the Keep in Keep of the Borderlands was the real dungeon the players should be tackling.

Thirty years is a long time to spend in one campaign setting, but every time I think it’s going to get old, we find some new thing to bring us back to Greyhawk.

Meanwhile … on Oeryth

“Well of course it was the Baklunish who attacked the Suel first,” Alain the Wanderer says, then takes a thoughtful draw on his hand-rolled cigarette. The steady rain pattering against the group’s communal dining tent reinforces the fact you’re not going anywhere soon. So why not listen to a Knight of Murlynd ramble on about a history you barely know?

“Two thousand years ago, the Suel Imperium was a paranoid, debauched realm whose rulers were utterly in thrall of their archmages. And those archmages sought to break the very rules of the universe, going even further than the ur-Flan millennium earlier. Combined with their racist, xenophobic natures, it was only a matter of time before the Suel struck the Baklunish, no doubt confident that their superior magics would devastate their enemies before they could unleash their own magical retribution.”

Alain smiles. “I know. I’ve seen those worlds. Some are better than this one. Most are worse. But never you mind those other worlds; this is the one you’re live’n in. And in this one, the Baklunish unleashed their Rain of Colorless Fire, erasing the Suel Imperium in one catastrophic cataclysm. The Suel struck back, though their own Invoked Devastation wasn’t as effective.”

“Badly wounded, but not fatally so, the Baklunish civilization recovered. Expanded. Changed the flow of history. Oh, you don’t see it much around here — though if you ever make it to the big city, you’ll definitely be seeing their touch in the tuliped roofed buildings and the city dragon that serves as its protector.”

“Dragons — and other beasts — as protectors of civilized lands,” is very much a Baklunish tradition, one forged in the aftermath of the Invoked Devastation as the survivors sought any advantage save themselves from the magically mutated horrors that the Suel spawned.”

“But I know, you like it here on the Plain, so don’t worry about that larger world. It’ll take care of itself,” he says, then smiles knowingly, “at least until it don’t.”

The Inadvertent Greyhawk Fork

I like that Wizards of the Coast used Greyhawk as their example setting for the Dungeon Masters Guide … I just wish they’d done a better job of honoring Greyhawk’s history. Or, failing that, embraced the changes that I strongly suspect were due to poor research and editing rather than a conscious decision to break from canon.

And let’s be clear: Greyhawk fans take canon very, very seriously. There’s a reason why the fan forums are called Canonfire. Millions of words have been spilled teasing out the finer points of Greyhawk history, and not always in the most cordial of terms.

So what are the errors? The single biggest one is who shot first during the Twin Cataclysms. On the Prime Material Plane, in the true timeline, the Suel struck first, and then their Imperium was destroyed by the Baklunish counterstrike. A handful of Suel survived, escaping to the east, where they eventually founded the Scarlet Brotherhood (a faction of evil, racist monks who played a major role in the Blackrazor Guild campaign).

There are many, many more, as detailed in Age of Great Sorrow’s “Entirely Unsolicited Grognard Opinions on the World of Greyhawk in the 2024 D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide” which does an excellent job of pointing out the inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and straight-up mistakes. Now some may view this as being overly specific, or perhaps sour grapes, and say something like, “Let the setting evolve! Let a new generation try their hand at Greyhawk”.

To which I’ll say, Fine, but can’t we do it … better? Greyhawkers love their canon because they can. Unlike the Forgotten Realms, which has been detailed down to the last blade of grass, official content for Greyhawk is limited. There have been long decades with no official content coming out for the setting. That led to grumbling about the lack of support, but it also led to awesome continuity and setting conversations on places like Canonfiire and the old Greytalk listserv.

A Golden (Missed) Opportunity

Given the history of the setting, there was a golden opportunity to use this Greyhawk as a model for making published materials your own. Imagine a gazetteer that got everything right, but then had sidebars or subsections that ask “what if?”

• What if … the Baklunish shot first? What impact does that have on the world?
• What if … the city-loving Greyhawk (aka “steel”) dragons didn’t exist? What if their subtle defense and support of their cities was replaced by the brazen influence of metallic dragons (a la the Forgotten Realms?)
• What if … you chose to ignore the inherent subtlety and “greyness” of Greyhawk in favor of stark black-and-white storylines?
• What if … Otto — well known human mage and member of the Circle of Eight — was actually a dwarf?

These are all changes introduced to the setting that may (ok, do) antagonize the Greyhawk base, but could provide excellent fodder for “make the world your own” exercises. After all, despite our love of canon, that is what Greyhawkers tend to do.

There is no city of Obsidian Bay in the World of Greyhawk boxed set, nor is there a black dragon named Woryx that once hoarded the sword Blackrazor in its lair on the Wild Coast. There’s no time-traveling wizard named Valeran, no sub-civilization of “High Orcs”, and Turrosh Mak (the despot who rules the Pomarj) was not killed by a band of high-level adventurers in a strike on his citadel in Stonehiem. These are all forks that we introduced into our campaign, some of which cause massive ripples through the continuity of the setting.

But that’s what dungeon masters and players do: we make the setting our own. So why not lean into that in the DMG, the very book meant to teach dungeon masters how to be dungeon masters?

Resources

• DMs Guild: Classic Guide to Greyhawk – by Stuart Kerrigan, Paul Looby, Paul Jurdeczka – A fan-based publication meant to recenter the DMG’s gazetteer on canon.
• Anna B. Meyer: Fantasy Cartography – A tremendous repository of realistic-looking Greyhawk maps, broken down by region and era. Includes a ton of map information gleaned from official sources (e.g. lost ruins, towns, etc.)

Featured Image Meta

Ken Frank, AD&D 2e Greyhawk Adventures module WGA3: Flames of the Falcon, TSR, 1990

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Is there a Map? Give us a visual! Show us a map of your setting! Don’t have one? WHY NOT?!?

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

Sourcing the Map

The 2024 edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (Amazon) comes with a number of full-color maps for the World of Greyhawk, including a regional map of the Flanaess (the main setting for the campaign world), a local map of the Plain of Greyhawk, and an isometric map of the Free City itself.

As a diehard Greyhawker, I’ve got a ton of other maps as well, and at the campaign’s start, I was looking forward to breaking out my City of Greyhawk boxed set maps for the city proper.

Alas, as noted earlier, we never made it to the city. Instead, all the action is taking place on the Plain of Greyhawk, the Cairn Hills, and the Mistmarsh.

Have Map, Will Customize

To support the campaign’s more regional focus, I snagged a copy of the Plain of Greyhawk map from D&D Beyond. I then imported it into Inkarnate and began tweaking.

I’ve got a GM-only view, which includes the various secret hideouts of the Burrow Boys, lairs of monsters, and other threats, as well as a player-centric view. I exported the latter to Roll20 to use as an in-game reference.

Roll20’s configured to the correct miles-per-hex scale, which helps when the players ask, “So how far is it to Blackwall Keep?”

My version of the map is a cartography mishmash, pulling in towns, villages, and landmarks that have appeared in various Greyhawk source books, magazine articles, and WotC web posts over the years (as well as a few looted from Oerth Journal, the Greyhawk fanzine).

Featured Image Meta

An overland map of the Plain of Greyhawk, augmented by Inkarnate. Credit: Wizards of the Coast.

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But where’s that? My Greyhawk ’76 campaign takes place on the world of Oeryth. It’s an Alternative Material Plane version of Oerth, the default world in the classic Greyhawk setting. But the World of Greyhawk is a big place, and we’re adventuring in just a small part of it.

The prompt:

Day 3-Where the heck are we? What is the campaign’s location, and where is that location in relation to other important places.

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

You meet a man in a bar…

As you pull up a stool at The Tired Shovel‘s old-and-worn oak bar, you don’t expect the man sitting next to you to talk. With his odd hooded grey and green cloak covering his chest and back, the odd wide-brimmed hat on his head, and the oversized metal walking staff leaning against the bar next to him, everything about him says “ranger”.

Then there’s that multi-pointed star pinned over his left breast, which gleams in the weak light of the tavern. You’ve heard about his kind. Knights of Murlynd. Self-styled keepers of the peace. Wielders of strange technological weapons called “guns”, capable of dropping a man at 120 feet.

No, he doesn’t seem a man for talking, but then he throws back the hood, and gives you a thin smile. “Welcome to High Ery, stranger.” He sips his beer, looking you over, then nods. “Another traveler from a far-off world, seeking the wonders of the Gem of the Flanaess.”

He pauses to scowl at the halfling you didn’t realize was behind you, and you suddenly feel a touch you didn’t know was there leave the purse at your belt. The halfling quickly fades back into the room, wary of the “gunslinger”.

“Rich, but not all too wise, eh?” he says. “You seem the sort that could use a bit of education on our bit of the world. Well, get a beer and get comfortable.”

“Name’s Alain. Alain the Wanderer. And I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”

The Plain of Greyhawk

“You’re walking the Plain of Greyhawk, just south of the Free City of Greyhawk. It’s filled with small farms and ranches, with the occasional country manor house for a Greyhawk noble. Lots of common folk and occasional dastardly lordlings up to no good.

The biggest threat to peace on the Plain is the Burrow Boys. They’re a vicious gang of murderous halflings tired of living in the shadow of bigger folk. They steal, rob, extort, kidnap, and murder, tryin’ to scare respect into folks and get rich doing it.”

Mistmarsh

“East of here’s the Mistmarsh, a vast marsh rumored to hold the ruins of an ancient city, definitely crawling with lizardmen. A couple of keeps funded by the City watch its borders – there’s Blackwall at the northern edge and Marsh Keep to the south. Both might hire sellswords to deal with things try’n to crawl out of the marsh.”

“Deep in the marsh there’s Swamp’s Fork, a meetup for rogues and the like. It’s a ‘if you have to ask where it is, you shouldn’t be going’ sort of place, so be mindful if you’re asking questions ’bout it.”

“On the southeastern edge of the marsh is Greymere, a dwarven stronghold home to a few hundred souls. Good for trade’n. Good for talk’n. Good for drink’n. Mind the hangover, though,” Alain says, with a slight rueful smile, which then sours.

“But be mindful of the Aetharn. Most dwarves are good, solid folk whose word is their bond. The Aetharn? They’re thieves who want profits at any cost. They might offer a good deal, but if it’s too good of a deal, you might find a dagger in your back the next day.”

“The marsh itself? I wouldn’t go without a guide,” Alain says, a small bit of wood appearing from nowhere, which he uses to pick his teeth. “And as guides go, I’m damn good. Reasonable rates too.”

Cairn Hills

“Want to go north? Sure. Over to the northeast, you’ve got the Cairn Hills. They’ve got a couple of mining towns up there, and shafts dug everywhere, so mind where you step. Ton of old tombs up that way too. I’ve heard tell of the Star Cairns, which ain’t no big secret since lots of folks heard of ’em. Not too many folks have found those old Suel cairns, though, and those that do return maimed, dying, or dead.”

Nyr Dyv

“Straight north is Nyr Dyv, the bottomless lake that fills the central Flanaess (that’s what the “civilized” region of Oeryth is called by “civilized” folk). Lots of ships on that lake. Lots of lake monsters too, so I wouldn’t venture too far from shore. And if you go, I’m afraid I’m out. Small boats and big waves aren’t a combination I much like.”

Dyvers

“To the west is Dyvers, a free city and rival to Greyhawk. They’ve got their own guilds, their own thieves, and a feel’n that the world owes ’em something. Best watch your purse strings and backs if you go there. Certainly better than you’re watching ’em here.”

Greyhawk: The Gem of the Flaness

“And then there is Greyhawk.”

“The Free City.”

“The Gem of the Flanaess.”

It is a huge city, packed with humanity and a smatter’n of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and the like. Less so orcs and their half-kin, given hostilities with the clans living on the Wild Coast, the Pomarj, and other, more lawless places. ‘Course “lawless” is relative. Greyhawk is crawl’n with thieves, and if you think Dyvers is bad — and you should — then Greyhawk might not be the place for you.

“Then again … maybe it is.”

“See, Greyhawk is where you go when you want someth’n. Need someth’n. Or want to lose someth’n. Like some weird magic artifact. Or yellow-slashed slavers who’ve been hunting you since Highport.” Alain smirks. “Yeah, I saw them. Might want to do something about them before you get caught and sold down on the Pomarj.”

“The law in the city is the Lord Major and its ruling council, and you can’t spit without hitting a noble from some country or another. And like I was say’n, the Thieves Guild’s everywhere, sometimes warr’n with the Beggers Guild, sometimes runn’n ’em like puppets. Depends who’s telling the story, but what you need to know is thieves are everywhere – the sewers, the taverns, the libraries, hell, even the council.”

“What about the Circle of Eight?” Alain draws heavily on the cigarette you didn’t see him roll and light. “Want to meet them? Might want to reconsider that. Eight powerful mages. Eight notorious manipulators. Headed up by Mordenkainen, dedicated to helping maintain balance in the world. They’re not about good and evil, black and white. They’re all about the grey, and they’re more likely to use you in their schemes than help you with some fool quest.”

“One thing[s for sure, they ain’t show’n up to help you if you get in over your heads. Unlike some other Realms, wizards in Greyhawk got better things to do than meddle in the affairs of minor adventurelings.” Alain sips his beer. “No offense.”

“‘Course, maybe you’re not headed to the city. Maybe you’re headed to the ruins of Castle Greyhawk. Oh yes, I see that glimmer of greed in your eye. Castle Greyhawk. Bastian of the mad archmage Zagyg. Home to a dozen or more underground levels of death traps, horrible monsters, and unimaginable treasure. And maybe a trapped demigod or two; you never know what the Zagyg might be keeping down there. Not that he’s around these parts much since becom’n a god. Yep, the God of Humor, Eccentricity, Occult Lore, and Unpredictability.

“And you want to go to his basement.” Alain sighs and puts out his smoke on his boot heel. His silver boot spur spins lazily as he does so. “Well, I can get you there. What happens after that is up to you.” The gunslinger-priest downs the last of his beer.

“So about that guide fee you were gonna pay me…”

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A black and white map of the Greyhawk region of the World of Greyhawk.

The post The Plain of Greyhawk appeared first on Nuketown.

The prompt:

Day 2 – About your Tour Guide
Introduce us to a character who can serve as our guide through your campaign and its setting.

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

Meet your Tour Guide

Say hello to Alain the Wanderer. Guide. Cleric. Ranger. Gunslinger.

Yep, gunslinger.

When the campaign took its fantasy-western tact after the death of Tiberius, I knew I wanted to introduce gunslingers.

There was a problem, though: traditionally (and arcanely), gunpowder does not work in Greyhawk, and firearms do not exist.

The solution? Murlynd, hero-god of magical technology. Followers of Murlynd can use firearms thanks to the magical aura given to them by their deity. It’s a fun quirk of Greyhawk. Given the increased prominence of guns in D&D 2024, it made sense to try them out in this limited way.

Alain is a non-player character whom the party teamed up with at Blackwall Keep on the edge of the Mistmarsh. They needed a guide who could take them to Swamp’s Fork, a criminal meet-up deep in the Mistmarsh. There, they expected to find a faction of the Burrow Boys and use them to get to the gang’s leader.

Since Alain’s the players’ guide, it makes sense for him to be your guide as well.

Alain’s Campaign Notes

From my campaign notes for Alain:

A Ranger-Knight of the Murlynd. Alain is an expert tracker and a tremendous shot with the blessed guns of Muryland. He’s one of the hero-god’s most faithful followers. He’s calm and collected, always choosing his words carefully and taking in a scene completely before speaking.

He wears an odd cloak that covers his entire upper body, rather than just hanging down his back. It seems to blend with his surroundings if he pauses for more than a few moments. He’s habitually rolling cigarettes using papers and tobacco he keeps secreted away in one of his many pouches.

Most striking is the “fire rod” he carries on his back. Although it appears as a strangely crafted staff, in combat he uses it to generate thunderclaps that strike down his enemies from afar. He has a second, smaller wand that he carries on his hip and uses to similar effect.

Alain and his fellow Knights of Murlynd operate on the Plain of Greyhawk. There, they seek to help the small folk and maintain order in the region. The Knights are comprised of:

• Alain the Wanderer, Ranger-Knight
• Jacob the Wise, Paladin-Knight
• Thomas the Quick, Thief-Knight
• Theodore the Strong, Warrior-Knight

The Knights are inspired by all those great westerns I watched while prepping for the campaign’s new direction. As you can guess from his name, there’s a healthy dose of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series thrown in.

Playing Alain is fun. His firearms specialty works well, and his smattering of spells let him help the party without stealing the spotlight. As a patrolling Knight, Alain knows the Plain of Greyhawk very well. While the PCs are largely natives to the region, Alain’s knowledge lets me drop clues or reminders when they’re needed.

About Murlynd

Adding the Knights of Murlynd reinforces the old school feel of the campaign. Murlynd originated in Gary Gygax’s original campaign. The Great Library of Greyhawk has the details:

Murlynd began as a player character created by Gary Gygax‘s closest friend Don Kaye in 1972 for the second-ever session of the game that would become D&D. Kaye continued to play Murlynd in Gygax’s nascent Greyhawk campaign, developing him as a crossover between “swords & sorcery” D&D and the Old West. After Kaye’s unexpected death in 1975, Gygax subsequently created a tribute to his friend by highlighting Murlynd as one of the unique characters of the world of Greyhawk. In later editions of D&D, Murlynd was elevated to deityhood, becoming the Oeridian deity of Magical Technology.

I’ve known about Murlynd for decades but didn’t realize the sad backstory that went with it. I love that this piece of D&D history has been carried forward by fandom, and that – in some small way – my campaign can help folks learn about (and remember Don Kaye).

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A screenshot of Alain’s character sheet.

The post Meet Alain the Wanderer appeared first on Nuketown.

Let’s kick things off with the Day 1 prompt:

Day 1 – Campaign Introduction and Overview
What is your campaign called, what system does it use, and what is it all about?

Visit Nuketown’s RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts page for the rest of our challenge posts.

Introducing Greyhawk ’76

My current weekly game is Greyhawk ’76. It started as a playtest campaign to kick the tires on the 2024 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Was it truly backwards compatible, or was it more of a “5.5 edition”? Did we want to upgrade from 2014, or keep going with what we had? This campaign existed to answer those questions, providing a “brief” break from my then-current campaign, Elemental Apocalypse.

It’s a break that’s lasted a year, but don’t worry, folks … we’ll get back to the alternate timeline where the Temple of Elemental Evil rose … and Greyhawk fell.

The campaign is in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting, in the Common Year 576. While our 20+ year old Blackrazor Guild campaign takes place in the 590s, we chose ’76 because that was the year for Greyhawk material in the new Dungeon Master’s Guide. The DMG 2024 writers took certain liberties with the source material (the Baklunish did not shoot first during the Twin Cataclysms), so I decided to call this world “Oeryth” instead of the traditional “Oerth.”

As a game master, I leaned into the ’76 theme, relying on classic black and white line art from the early days of RPGs to capture the feel of the setting. I put together a writing playlist comprised entirely of rock songs from the 1970s and prepared to finally run a campaign set in the Free City of Greyhawk.

Thieves! Guild intrigue! Wondrous magic! Weird things in the sewers! Our group had been to Greyhawk before, staying there for several notable months that ended with the public execution of their leader (in his defense, he was under the influence of several evil magic items at the time) and the banishment of their guild from the city.

This was a chance to go back and start over. We decided the characters were all from the Plain of Greyhawk, which borders the Free City. The campaign opened mid-adventure – the PCs were hired to retrieve a lost family treasure from an abandoned mine in the Cairn Hills. Members of two grudge-filled families showed up to complicate things, as did agents of the Burrow Boys, a gang of murderous halflings who terrorize the good people of the Plain.

And that’s where the campaign took a very different path. One of the PCs, a fighter named Tiberius, died while fighting the Burrow Boy agents. The PCs ultimately triumphed (though the person who hired them died as well) and returned to the town of High Ery to mourn their dead friend.

They were greeted by Yorn, the replacement character for Tiberius. But he wasn’t just any replacement character. He was Tiberius’ father. Known informally in the campaign as “Big Angry Barbarian Daddy”, Yorn swore to kill every last Burrow Boy.

Just like that, the campaign shifted from medieval urban fantasy to a fantasy-western hybrid. Wanting to be true to the tropes my players were leaning into, I started watching westerns, including the entire Dollars trilogy. Ever since then, the PCs have been waging war against the Burrow Boys.

They’ve been taking out lesser factions as they make their way to their nemesis: Fineon Burrows, the ruthless, murderous patriarch of the Burrow Boys.

It’s been a hell of a ride ever since.

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Adventurers planning their next move. Credit: David C. Sutherland III, Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set.

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I’ll be writing about Greyhawk ’76, my current weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign set in the World of Greyhawk and using the D&D 5.5 rules.

Here’s the full list of prompts:

• Day 1 – Campaign introduction and overview
• Day 2 – About your tour guide
• Day 3 – Where the heck are we?
• Day 4 – Is there a map?
• Day 5 – Can you tell us about the campaign’s history?
• Day 6 – Where shall we start?
• Day 7 – What’s the weather like today?
• Day 8 – Tell us about the local peoples and their cultures.
• Day 9 – Who’s in charge here?
• Day 10 – What’s the first thing we should do?
• Day 11 – Where would we go to find ‘adventure’?
• Day 12 – What do people do for entertainment around here?
• Day 13 – Where can we get a drink and a bite to eat?
• Day 14 – What to order to ‘Eat like a local’.
• Day 15 – What are some things in the setting that are best avoided?
• Day 16 – Are there any direct threats?
• Day 17 – Can you tell us about any famous battles or wars?
• Day 18 – Forgot to ask; How do we get around?
• Day 19 – Any ‘Must See’ sites?
• Day 20 – Are there any mysteries as yet unsolved?
• Day 21 – What are the major organizations of the campaign? How do they deal with visitors?
• Day 22 – Tell us about notable Flora and Fauna!
• Day 23 – What are the major exports of the region?
• Day 24 – What are the major imports to the area?
• Day 25 – Where can I do some shopping?
• Day 26 – Are there any dramatic events from the campaign you can share?
• Day 27 – Do you have any amusing anecdotes from the campaign?
• Day 28 – Is there anything else we should know before we head home?

The post RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026 Prompts appeared first on Nuketown.

The podcast, which David Moore and I launched back during the pandemic, is dedicated to all manner of geeky things, with a particular focus on role-playing games. We tend to venture beyond the Dungeons & Dragons mainstream, playing games like Cyberpunk RED, Scum & Villainy, and Fallout 2d20.

Shadowdark: Defend the Light!

This season, we’re doing a lot with Shadowdark, the lightweight, 5e-derived fantasy RPG where light is a critical resource. I’m running it for Gamer Working Group, and David’s run a bunch of sessions for friends and family. Recent Shadowdark episodes include:

• S5E1 d8 Shadowdark House Rules
• S5E3 d8 Shadowdark Hacks (aka d8 MORE Shadowdark House Rules)
• S5E6 d6 Shadowdark Oozes, Cubes, & Puddings
• S5E7 DarkSpace Interview: Sci-Fi for Shadowdark

We also ran a three-part Shadowdark actual play based on the Raiders of the Lost Temple adventure:

• S5E4 Raiders of the Lost Temple, Part 1/3 (Shadowdark actual play)
• S5E5 Raiders of the Lost Temple, Part 2/3 (Shadowdark actual play)
• S5E9 Raiders of the Lost Temple, Part 3/3 (Shadowdark actual play)

Finally, we put together a list of helpful Shadowdark websites:

• Shadowdark RPG Tools & Resources

Fallout: More Radioactive Goodness

Having run a radioactive-themed website for 30 years, its no surprise that I’m playing Fallout 2d20. Over at the Lair, we’ve got an episode dedicated to things we love about Fallout 2d20:

• d10 Reasons Fallout 2d20 is Great (S5E10)

We’ve got an actual play based on my Crawl Out through the Fallout, which I originally ran at MEPACon Fall 2025.

• S5E8 Crawl Out Through the Fallout, Part 1
• S5E11 Crawl Out Through the Fallout, Part 2
• Crawl Out Through the Fallout, Part 3 (coming soon)

Campaigns & Coffee

Campaigns & Coffee is our cozy Saturday morning, short form (20-30 minute) show where we talk about our campaigns, new games we’re playing, or topics we find interesting. We kicked off Season 5 by getting cozy – talking about what cozy means to us, and then running down our big list of cozy video games.

• Defining Cozy
• Cozy Video Games

Random Geekery

And then we’ve got all the other geeky things we do!

How Tos

• Scratch off Fog of War Maps
• Torch Rings for Shadowdark

Geek Archeology

• Dungeon of Dread – Endless Quest Book Review
• Timex Sinclair 1000 Computer – Geek Archeology

Looking Ahead

What’s next for the podcast? Actual play wise, we’re finishing up the Crawl Out Through the Fallout one-shot, After that, its either a return to our Fallout 2d20 campaign (run by David) or Arc 3 of our Cyberpunk RED campaign (run by me).

Topic-wise, we’ll be doing more with Shadowdark – we’re looking at talking about even more rules hacks, our favorite adventures for the game, and maybe journey deeper into DarkSpace once the kickstarter ships. We’ve got some cyberpunk conversations queued up and a few more unboxings (as David and I finally get to play with the toys we got for Christmas…)

Wnat to keep up with the show? Visit our website at LairOfSecrets.com, subscribe to the show on YouTube or follow us on Bluesky and Mastodon.

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Stalactites at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Credit: Pexels.

The post Return to the Lair of Secrets with Season 5 appeared first on Nuketown.