A few months ago, back in March 2019, a team of longtime Greyhawk fans got a wild plan together and held a seminar at GaryConXI, called “Celebrating Greyhawk: A Fandom Renaissance“.

Luke Gygax, the organizer of GaryCon was interested in our topic, and had the entire thing videoed. After the producers and video-editors had the time to put some production value into the raw footage from a couple of cameras and such, they shared it with us! And now, we’re finally able to share it with you, other fans of Greyhawk!
It feels like a pretty big deal to us here at GreyhawkOnline, because our key focus, as we mention numerous times in the video, is “Creating and Sharing for the World of Greyhawk”. There’s a lot of things that have disappeared from the Greyhawk community over the years, from sites going down, from loss of data and crashes, and even from simply being things like campaigns or conventions that not everyone could be present for.
So, now, through the “miracle of the internet”, we can share the seminar we participated in with all of our viewers and readers who didn’t get to be there. There’s also the our GaryConXI Page with lots of updates in it, including downloads, exclusive content, PDF of the seminar handout, and art! Be sure to visit that page, and get all of the things, to make it almost like you were there with us in the room!

Once again, we’d like to thank Luke for helping us in “Creating and Sharing for the World of Greyhawk”!

Topics and times are listed below the video. (Times are approximate)

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Allan Grohe wrote up a summary of the seminar, which we’ll include here, so that you can zip right to topics of interest to you!

The seminar brought together six long-time Greyhawk fans, each discussing different aspects of fan engagement with the Greyhawk setting.

(Times are approximate)

  • Kristoph Nolen kicked off the seminar, with greetings and introducing Allan Grohe as the co-host.
  • Mike Bridges (starting at 5:00 to 10:20) spoke to his writings, art, and cartography as seen via his Greyhawkery blog, his creative work on Ull, his W.o.G. comic (showcased weekly-ish on Facebook by Bryan), and Castle Greyhawk comic (written by Scott Casper with Mike’s artwork), and his recent work with Anna Meyer on their Legends & Lore show on the Greyhawk channel (live on Twitch, reruns on YouTube)
  • Allan Grohe (starting at 11:00 to 23:55) shared some of [his] favorite Greyhawk researchers and their “deep dives” into the setting’s lore, in particular the work of bloggers like Timrod’s T1 Moathouse-DMG Sample Dungeon-B2 analysis, Scott “scottsz” Szczypiorski for his Cold Text Files work on WG4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, and Scott Casper and Mike Bridges’ Castle Greyhawk web comic, among other topics.  You can also download [his] “Greyhawk Fandom – The Deep Cuts” presentation in PDF format.
  • Anna Meyer (starting at 24:40 to 49:20) spoke about her long-term love for and engagement with the cartography of the Greyhawk setting, including the Flanaess Geographical Society and her Patreon—Anna is the only panelist who’s full-time day-job focuses on games-related work; Anna also spoke about Creative Commons licensing
  • Carlos Lising (starting at 50:20 to 1:06:22) discussed how to publish and share your Greyhawk home content, with an emphasis on the challenges around self-publishing for Greyhawk based lessons learned via his casl Entertainment publishing company and Patreon
  • Bryan Blumklotz (starting at 1:07:06 to 1:26:45) spoke about the dynamics of building, growing, maintaining, and managing fan communities, how to help encourage Greyhawk fans to tap into the wealth of resources that are available today; Bryan co-administers the Canonfire!  Facebook group, and also creates fabulous Greyhawk Heraldry (which we didn’t discuss much during the seminar, but which is featured throughout Anna’s maps as well as OJ28 and its handouts!)
  • Kristoph Nolen (starting at 1:27:45 to 1:45) wrapped up our presentations with his vision for GreyhawkOnline‘s role in the Greyhawk fan community, including the Greyhawk Wiki, fan space on GHO (both current and legacy fan sites), and the Oerth Journal, among other topics
  • Q&A conclude the session, starting at 1:45.