The Ravens Nest

Troll Lord Games & Castle Zagyg

I’m just gonna leave this big, beautiful picture right there because y’all need to see it. Yeah, this is for one of my favorite fantasy games, might have heard me talking about it, Castles & Crusades.

If you aren’t aware of who Gary Gygax was, then I’m gonna assume you’re not much of a gamer but the guy was one half of the team that invented a little game you might have heard of called Dungeons & Dragons. He was also part of a group called The Castle & Crusade Society before D&D was ever created and both he and Dave Arneson were heavily involved in wargaming, where you collected, painted and built armies and then set them to warring on table-top dioramas of battlefields. Later, he and Arneson would go on to incorporate sword and sorcery tropes into medieval wargaming and together, created Dungeons & Dragons.

Later on in life, Gygax would start working with Troll Lord Games and along with his sons, E. Gary Gygax Jr. (whom we wish a speedy recovery back to health as he’s suffered a pretty significant health event lately. Get Well Soon And May The Gods Restore You, Gary) and Luke Gygax who still occasionally still works with them to this day. Gary created Castle Zagyg which is essentially the Greyhawk Setting for Castles & Crusades and, he never got to finish it as he passed away before he could. His widow decided to pull the project so, whatever was out there, it was no more for about the past fifteen years. I managed to get my hands on some PDFs but had absolutely no clue where they came from. Probably out of one of those big ass bundles I bought but I can’t be certain and I dare not speculate. Just know I’m fairly certain I got it legit, okay? Anyway, I was chatting with Jason Vey on Twitter when he showed off his Castle Zagyg material and he told me about it briefly. Needless to say, I’m a jealous man. To be able to say that you hold the last bit of work that the creator of a world-famous game worked on…that’s an honor.

Not two days ago, the boys at Troll Lord Games gave me some news that made my heart sing with joy. The Yggsburgh setting is back, baby! Apparently, it’s in pre-order state right now. None of the cover art will change. The book will be reprinted as it was and the only thing changing on the cover is Troll Lord Games’ logo. Don’t you know, when I saw that, I had to jump on it so today, I bought the groceries, I paid the bills, I did the budgeting and I pulled that trigger and there’s an added bonus, peeps! You get PDFs of this material expeditiously! Like right now! Right now, right now!

Get Your Copy of Castle Zagyg Yggsburgh Setting Here! Today! Vamanos! Andale! Now!

There’s a reason I’m getting urgent with this today and y’all need to hear it. See, if this sells and sells well, then that opens up the door for more Castle Zagyg to come! That means even the Boxed Set could even see a fresh print run (and you know I’mma get that!) and there’s other news. The Troll Lords even have notes. Notes! Left-over notes!

I know, I hear you, “Well whoop-tee-shit, Wulfgar! The fuck will that do?”

Here’s where it gets even more interesting. The Castle itself was never finished. Yggsburgh was. The Castle needed to undergo a painstaking conversion so as to remove any trademarked material that Wizards of The Coast now owns. In essence, Gary wanted to bring Castle Greyhawk and the Greyhawk Setting to C&C so that you and I being latecomers to the party wouldn’t miss out on what was an excellent setting. The wonderful people at TLG, should this sell as well as hoped will be completing the Castle with much more to come in the future but that all hinges on whether or not this thing sells and I think it should. If you’re a fan of AD&D First Edition (That’s the version Eddie Munson played and ran in the last season of Stranger Things) or you’re just curious about what D&D’s settings were like before Wizards of The Coast started turning them into proms, socialist “utopias” and Dunkirk style sieges, well, this is your chance. The best part is you don’t have to wait for your book to come in before you start reading it. Those PDFs are immediately downloadable and ready for you to look at and possibly implement at your table. So let’s get over there and keep the Gygax Legacy Alive!

That’s it from me. Gotta get to bed so I can get up early for work tomorrow.

Long Live The Gygax Legacy!

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