Castle Greyhawk (adventure)

Template:Greyhawk source Castle Greyhawk is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, set in the game's World of Greyhawk campaign setting. The module bears the code WG7 and was published by TSR, Inc. in 1988 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules.

The product contains many references to contemporary popular culture, along with a bitingly satirical treatment of TSR's approach to earlier Greyhawk publications. The module's back cover states "The common theme of this dungeon is that no joke is so old, no pun is so bad, and no schtick is so obvious that it can’t be used to confuse and trip up PCs!"

Thus, although the adventure purportedly concerns Castle Greyhawk, most fans of the setting consider it to be a "joke" module. In 1990, TSR released a more definitive and serious treatment of the Castle itself in module WGR1 - Greyhawk Ruins. Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins, one of the late '90s Greyhawk publications meant to revamp the campaign world, explicitly states that Greyhawk Ruins is to be considered the definitive castle layout and not Castle Greyhawk.

Reception

Fan reception of Castle Greyhawk was mixed but generally negative. Many dedicated fans of the Greyhawk setting were bitterly disappointed by the long-awaited work. Some interpreted the publication as being a direct insult to Gary Gygax, who had recently left TSR in a dispute over ownership of the company, and by extension to early fans of the setting and D&D players in general. These issues continue to be discussed and debated on various fan sites and chat rooms.[1][2]

Game designer John D. Ratecliff wrote in an article published on the Wizards of the Coast website:

Despite being intended in fun, the unrelenting mayhem of Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror creates a sense of bedlam, and the parody element opened the door for the later WG7, Castle Greyhawk (1988) -- thought by some at the time to be a deliberate attempt by TSR to destroy Gygax’s reputation in the wake of his departure from the company. The truth, especially given the freelance talent involved, is more likely to be that someone thought it a good idea at the time. They were wrong. Castle Greyhawk’s assortment of villains -- Col. Sanders, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the cast of Star Trek, and others -- would be more in keeping with a bad episode of Scooby Doo than a dungeon crawl. Unfortunately, the Castle Greyhawk collection of unconnected parody adventures tainted the mystique of D&D’s original dungeon so badly that not even the astonishingly deadly killer dungeon presented slightly later in WGR1. Greyhawk Ruins (1990) could reclaim its lost prestige. [3]

Table of Contents

Chapter	Designer	page
What's Happening Now at Castle Greyhawk	by Chris Mortika	2
Level I: Against the Little Guys	by Steve Gilbert	12
Level 2: It's My Party and I'll Die if I Want to	by Rick Swan	21
Level 3: Too Many Cooks	by Guy McLimore, Greg Poehlein, and David Tepool	32
Level 4: There's No Place Like Up	by Paul Jaquays	44
Level 5: The Name of the Game	by John Terra	54
Level 6: The Temple of Really Bad Dead Things	by Greg Gorden	63
Level 7: Queen of the Honeybee Hive	by Grant Boucher and Kurt Wenz	73
Level 8 : Of Kings and Colonels	by John Nephew	83
Level 9: Vices 'N Virtues	by Scott Bennie	92
Level 10: Fluffy Goes Down the Drain	by Rick Reid	102
Level 11: Mordenkainen's Movie Madness	by Ray Winmnger	111
Level 12: Where the Random Monsters Roam	by Steve Perrin	119

Credits

Editing: Mike Breault with Jon Pickens
Cover Art: Keith Parkinson
Interior Art: Jim Holloway with Jeff Easley
Typography: Kim Janke
Cartography : Stephen Sullivan
Keylining: Stephanie Tabat and Dave S. LaForce

Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Random House, Inc., and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Ltd. Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by regional distributors. Distributed in the United Kingdom by TSR UK Ltd.

product number 9222XXX1401
ISBN 0-088038-530-8

Back cover reads

Deep beneath the keep of Castle Greyhawk, a really nasty device is creating all of these gross mutated and unpleasant monsters that are running wild throughout the Castle and the 12 level dungeon beneath the Castle. The call has gone out for heroic, fearless, and kind of foolish adventurers to out-hack, out-slash and sometimes even out-think hordes of dough mn, headless mice, manic bee queens, really bad did things, Burgermen, crazed chiefs, and movie moguls. If they survive these and much odder obstacles, the characters still have too fine a nasty monster creator and put it out of business.
Castle Greyhawk contains 13 detailed levels for adventuring and expiration. Each level is a separate adventure written by a different author and each has its own unique brand of insane and baffling weirdness. Some levels involve solving puzzles and some require good old hacking and slashing the adventures can be played separately are altogether as a grand quest to free Castle Greyhawk from the evil, rotten boards that are plaguing it. The common theme of this dungeon is that no joke is too old is too bad no snhtick is so obvious that it can't be used to confuse and trip up the PCs!
13 adventures for characters levels 0 to 25

Notable nonplayer characters

• Herzog Akitrom
• Asmodeus
• Drumorg
• Egg
• Poppinfarsh the Dough Golem
• Gingerbread Man
• Inflated Ego
• Miss Gulch
• Ye Secret Tom of Inestimable Knowledges
• Driderman
• The Inedible Bulk
• Da Ting
• Captain Kork
• Mees Taspark
• Bones
• Indiana Gnome
• Prof. Why
• Baba Yaga
• Elfin John
• Hack and Slash
• Captain Cheer Eo
• Marvin Grape
• Aunt Bee
• Tela Vision
• Bunny
• Graz'zt and Iggwilv
• Jak Briddon
• Penny & Fluffy
• Juiblex
• Mordenkainen
• Voyeux
• Xodast
• Zol Darklock

Magic items

• The Darkness That Holds All Shadows
• Random Monster Generator

See also

• Castle Greyhawk

Bibliography

• Breault, Mike, ed. Castle Greyhawk. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1988.

• Mobley, Blake, and Timothy B. Brown. Greyhawk Ruins. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1990.

• Moore, Roger E. Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins. Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, 1998.

External links

• World of Greyhawk Series at the Acaeum
• Castle Greyhawk at Pen-Paper.net
• Castle Greyhawk at the TSR Archive