Living Greyhawk - Chronology of The Campaign

Chronology of The Campaign

During the 1990s, a shared RPGA roleplaying campaign called Living City that used the Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition rules had been relatively successful. With the introduction of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2000, RPGA conceived of a new and improved campaign called Living Greyhawk that would be much more far-reaching in scope, and played on a much larger continental stage. Instead of one city and its environs, this campaign would cover 30 in-game regions, each linked to a real-world area, as well as "core" in-game regions that were not assigned to any specific real-world area.

The first introductory adventures of the campaign premiered at Gen Con in August 2000, and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, which contained much background material, was published in November 2000. Volunteers were recruited to handle regional storylines, and regional play began in 2001.

At the end of 2001, campaign administrators changed the treasure rewards from a certificate-based system (a special item discovered during the adventure was given to one of the players as a certificate or "cert") to an equal-access system in which a special item could be purchased at the end of the adventure by any player. This, and a rule change that forthwith forbade crafters of magic items from selling items to other players, caused some protest from players. However, in 2002, RPGA dropped its membership fee, and the number of players who had dropped out of the campaign was more than made up for by new RPGA members, and interest in Living Greyhawk increased substantially.

In 2003, the campaign was converted to the revised Dungeon and Dragon v3.5 rules.

In 2005, the campaign saw the first of several direct tie-ins to new rule expansion books published by Wizards of the Coast, with the launch of a new story arc set in the Bright Lands desert that coincided with the publication of Sandstorm.

In 2007 at Gen Con Indy, concurrent with the announcement that the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons would be published the following year, RPGA announced that the Living Greyhawk campaign would not be converted to 4th edition, but would instead be brought to a close.

The final adventures of the Living Greyhawk campaign premiered at the Origins convention in June 2008, and play ended on December 31, 2008.