From Hyperborea I Can See Oerth - Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk Being Run With The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers Of Hyperborea Rpg System

I'm never content to rest on my laurels, & last night I was zipping around the internet gathering up information about Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Once again I came across the review that Venger Satanis did for AS&SH on Rpg.net (I'm not a fan of rpg.net at all. That's a personal preference.),but I came across this bit,"Likewise, there are some really cool magic items and weapons, a few that have escaped from the science-fantasy milieu. We all know about Spheres of Annihilation… how about Spheres of Blackness or Girdles of Golden Serpents? Yes, there could be more than what's included, but this is a decent amount.



While the Hyperborea Gazetteer isn’t huge, this volume  may be the best part about AS&SH, where the uninitiated learns of the bloated and dying scarlet sun which never rises very far in the sky. It’s an icy realm surrounded by a Stygian abyss where Night Gaunts fly, Saturn is faintly visible, there’s a small moon associated with blood sacrifices, and curtains of red, green, and purple illumination in the sky signal the arrival of ultra-telluric beings"
I suddenly started to remember a project that the Beyond The Black Gate's writer did, he took the  1983 campaign Greyhawk box set & turned it into a down & dirty Conan style campaign. Now mind you this was way back 2010 
Now here's the thing, I didn't have access to Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea at the time. But now that I do this not only would work but it could be run as a sustained campaign setting using the materials & systems of AS&SH.

There are more then a few reasons why this would not only work but it could be used as a sustained game world over the long haul:

• Established world with an expansive setting by Gary Gygax and it takes the familiar & turns it on its ear. Everything old is now new again. The magic system of AS&SH fits the motif of Greyhawk & brings it back to its pulpy roots
• Many of the adventures that I've done commentaries about could easily be fitted into this style of sword & sorcery setting because they were already run in Greyhawk:"Of the ten adventures set in Greyhawk published by TSR before the folio edition, all but one had been written by Gygax. However, the new availability of information about Gygax's campaign world and TSR's desire to make it central to Dungeons & Dragons encouraged many new writers to set their adventures in Greyhawk. This, combined with the fact that Gygax was increasingly involved in other areas of the company, meant that of the seventeen Greyhawk adventures published in the two years after the folio edition, only four were written or co-written by Gygax:
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (Gary Gygax, 1980)
• A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity (David Cook, 1980)
• A2 Secret of the Slavers' Stockade ( Harold Johnson & Tom Moldvay, 1981)
• A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords (Allen Hammack, 1981 )
• A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (Lawrence Schick, 1981)
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (David C. Sutherland III & Gary Gygax, 1980)^[77]
• C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason, 1980)
• C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness (Allen Hammack, 1980)
• I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City (David Cook, 1981)
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill (Lenard Lakofka, 1981)
• U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1981)]
• U2 Danger at Dunwater (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1982)
• N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God (Douglas Niles, 1982)
• WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (Gary Gygax, 1982)
• S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (Gary Gygax, 1982) Originally published as Lost Caverns of Tsojconth in 1976
• U3 The Final Enemy (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1983)
• L2 The Assassin's Knot (Lenard Lakofka, 1983)

This means that suddenly Greyhawk's Temple of Elemental Evil could have a very sinister connection to the Ashen Worm of Hyperborea. The Rain of Colourless Fire might have a far more reaching cosmic effect then even previously thought.


PC classes, sword & sorcery substance, campaign setting material such as population distribution, settlement populations (village, town, city); also, fortifications and population communications are discussed in the Greyhawk box set. Everything you need to run this is in the AS&SH box set and the Eighty three Greyhawk box. Everything to run this is right out of the AS&SH player's hand book from classes to starting equipment.



In Greyhawk many of the lands on the map are discussed. It is important to note that there are many towns, villages, stretches of land, rivers, islands, and so forth on the map that are left blank for the individual referee to develop. But there's going to a ton of substitution from the Referee's Guide for monsters, races etc. but having said that this idea could easily be done in spades. 

 

So while I don't hold any claim on the idea of this style of Frankencampaign setting I think its one that I'm going to keep in my back pocket for the moment. This idea has merit and its something that I'm going to explore in the coming weeks. I think that this could work as a long term campaign!