In February of '81 a series of three articles entitled "Three Views of Greyhawk" were printed in Dragon #46 to review the still newly minted World of Greyhawk Folio. Two authors' comments were over-all positive but some of their criticisms ranged from fair to delusional:
"If, as the saying goes, a good thing is worth waiting for, then THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK, a fantasy world setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons™, should be one of the finest products to come from TSR™ in a long time. Often promised, but often delayed, THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK sometimes appeared destined to never see the light of publication."
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"Then just as Gary Gygax himself (in Dragon™ magazine #37) assured us that, barring any catastrophe, THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK was ready for official release, a catastrophe did indeed strike and once more, gamers were left staring at the empty shelves in their local hobby shops and scratching their heads in puzzlement. Soon the summer was fast disappearing, along with most of our expectations, but on a fateful day in early August, the cherished cry was finally raised. THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK had arrived!"
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"Ideas were exchanged, lands were created, but there was always something lacking— a universal constant which would be used and accepted by all AD&D players and DMs. Finally, after years of waiting, the universal, official constant has arrived. It is THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK."
-The Universal Constant (by Kenneth W. Burke)
"The two maps are easily the highlight of the product, and I know of some people who would have been willing to pay $10 for the maps alone."
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"Minor flaws can be found- the gazetteer mentions movement over roads and through tracks, yet no symbol is given to show us what they look like. I see no roads on the mapboard, only dotlike paths through certain mountain ranges which I assume to be either roads or, more than likely, tracks."
-The Universal Constant (by Kenneth W. Burke)
"Unfortunately, the one major drawback to the maps is that they seem to be of dubious accuracy in several places. For example, the town of Willip and the cities of Radigast and Leukish are all mentioned in the gazetteer as being ports on the Nyr Dyv. However, when looking at the maps, one sees that each of the three are located in complete land hexes with the shore of the lake reaching only into the adjacent hexes."
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"Reading through the entire 32 pages should give one a pretty good understanding of the world depicted on the map, but there are places where a little more information would have been useful. One rather surprising omission is the lack of virtually any reference to the various religions predominant in the land."
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"Two other provinces I find annoying are the Amedio Jungle and Hepmonaland, also a jungle province. The map says that both are inhabited by “savages”; the gazetteer describes one, the Amedio Jungle, as “inhabited by tribes of cannibal savages.” This talk of “savages” reminds me of the Tarzan movies that depicted black Africans as stupid “yasa, Bwana” types or animal-like monsters that would kill everyone they came across...(rambles on about this for a couple paragraphs)"
-The Universal Constant (by Kenneth W. Burke)
"Also needed, but not included, is a chapter on the famous personalities."
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"There are things about some of the provinces that annoy me— one, the Scarlet Brotherhood, is ruled by the Master of Autumn (a fourteenth- level monk, lawful good alignment mandatory). Despite his alignment, he leads an organization also composed of thieves and assassins, something lawful good types are not allowed to do."
-The Universal Constant (by Kenneth W. Burke)
"It is this same sense of the fantastic, however- the source of AD&D’s incredible popularity-that sadly enough seems to be lacking from THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK. There are no thrilling revelations in the gazetteer or maps, nor is anything astounding disclosed. The world presented is very complete, logical and interesting, but the burden is on the DM to transform THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK into The Fantastic WORLD OF GREYHAWK."
-The Wait Was Worth It (by Jeff Seiken)
"On a scale of one to ten, THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK deserves a rating of nine."
-The Universal Constant (by Kenneth W. Burke)
Ahem, thank you cultists of an unnamed evil deity. Anyhow, Vice President of Product Development at TSR Hobbies, Lawrence Schick had the last word in his rebuttal article, "GREY areas were made that way."
"I guess the full intent of WoG is not completely clear from the information presented in the Gazetteer. The idea was to provide a setting for a fantasy campaign, a coherent place where fantastic things could happen. As Mr. Seiken points out, the burden of creating the fantasy itself rests squarely on the shoulders of the Dungeon Master. Though The World of Greyhawk is based on Gary Gygax’s own campaign, it was made deliberately vague in many areas so that individual DMs could impress their own ideas and personalities upon it."
"For example, there are no specific trails and roads marked on the map. Who knows exactly where a DM may wish to place his or her trade routes?"
"There are certainly no religions given, as this is an area that almost all DMs handle differently and individually. (However, for those interested, the Deities of Greyhawk will appear somewhere, sometime in the next five years.)"
"To address a couple of minor, specific points from the reviews: Yes, monks have to be lawful, but they can be lawful good, lawful neutral, or lawful evil, like the monks who rule the Scarlet Brotherhood. It’s the discipline of lawfulness that makes a monk, not the ethical values of good or evil."
"As regards the savages, nowhere in the text of the Gazetteer is there any indication of anybody’s skin color. Nobody here ever gave it any thought, because it doesn’t matter. On the subject of cannibalism: Anthropology has as little to do with fantasy as any of the other sciences. We’re dealing with legends and archetypes."
"We did make some mistakes. The settlement symbols got left out of the book on part of the first run. (This is typical of the bad luck that surrounded the production of this product.) In an error in the direction of esthetics over accuracy, some of the port and river settlement symbols got displaced a bit. Rule of thumb: If it’s within a hex of the shore, it’s a port. The same goes for river towns. By the way, the dotted lines through the mountains indicate passes."
"The World of Greyhawk had a long and painful gestation period, but it turned into a child we’re all proud of. Yes, there will be more Greyhawk-linked products in the future. When? Oh, no, you don’t."
Ah yes Mr. Schick, what about those future Greyhawk products? Let's see what was on Gygax's to-do list back before the Greyhawk setting was published...
