Let’s Read the City of Greyhawk Boxed Set: When You Talk About Money, You’re Talking About Power

The text states:

The exact amount of financial dealings going on in Greyhawk is impossible to calculate, for it passes through many hands, leaving its mark in countless ways. Suffice to say that no place on the Flanaess sees as much value pass through its gates during the course of a year . . .”

Niles, pg. 4

This passage in the text is easy to overlook and it can seem innocuous – but to skim over it is to lose sight of what it means for the people of Greyhawk City. With money moves through the City of Greyhawk at a rate no other city can match. This means that the City is open to a level of opulence, extravagance, and corruption that can’t be found anywhere else on this scale.

This means that as Game Masters we have to begin rethinking what it’s like for our players to come into the city. Not only do we have a robust manufacturing quarter, but we also have the preeminent financial district in the Flanaess. So we have to begin asking ourselves questions about what sort of city are our players going to encounter.

1. Are they going to see a stock market?
2. Are they going to see banks and large corporate towers competing to showcase their wealth and power to the world through architectural marvels?
3. What is the average dress going to be like in town?
4. What sort of high end markets are they going to see and experience?

As we’ll see as we dive deeper into the text the books are going to give us some tantalizing hints at what’s available in the city but we are going to have some major decisions to make in the coming days if we’re going to run the city correctly. And the decisions we make are going to have far reaching impacts for the way that the city functions and how the rest of the Flanaess operates.

Works Cited

Niles, Douglas. Book 1: Greyhawk: Gem of the Flanaess A gazetteer of the Free City of Greyhawk and the Surrounding Area. TSR, inc. 1989. pg 4

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