"Gary's World" - Greyhawk

According to the Wikipedia article about the World of Greyhawk the world began "as a simple dungeon under a castle that Gary designed to entertain family and friends." Greyhawk is the world I most associate with AD&D, the game my friends and I played throughout high school in the 80's. Many of the non-campaign specific adventures of the era were by default set in Greyhawk. To me Greyhawk feels like "home." So when our group started to think about a setting for our brand new Essentials campaign, naturally, I pitched Greyhawk.

The campaign began as the heroes returned to Highport, a fortified trade city on the wooly bay. They had been aiding a merchant sailing ship, whose route had been under attack by pirates for some time. The ship they were paid to protect was robbed and sunk by pirates, but the heroes were pulled from the water and safely taken home. Their patron, a wealthy merchant with ties to Greyhawk's leading council - the Circle of Eight, explained that he had a friend - a powerful artificer, who needed a highly trained band of retainers for a sailing voyage to the city of Greyhawk. The catch was that the artificer in question had crafted an elementally driven sailing ship (a side wheeler steam ship essentially) that could reduce the sailing time to Greyhawk from two weeks to just five days. The prototype called the Lady Marian, needed protection against possible theft, while the passengers, nobles from along the Wild Coast, needed to be protected from each other. To keep his noble passengers entertained, the artificer devised a dicing tournament, with a massive blue diamond as the prize.

Along the way, a handfull of sidetreks taught the heroes that the Wild Coast was a politically volatile place. As they began to settle in to a regular watch and sleep cycle aboard ship, the nobles started turning up dead.

Once I had the players' attention and they were headed toward Greyhawk, I kept the tension high. There was a hidden assassin somewhere on the ship, a mishap lead to an explosion in the engine room, then tiny piles of colored dust started appearing whenever someone went missing.

Once the ship arrived in Greyhawk, several sessions later, I reviewed the character backgrounds and really started to play up their plothooks.