Not sure. They have some Gary-fanatics buying their stuff, but I've never seen it in stores anywhere. I've never heard anything about it that made me stand up and raise an eyebrow.
Hmmm. Perhaps now is as good a time as any to spill the beans.
The reason I know that Gary was not writing Castle Zagyg and that it was definitely not the same Castle Greyhawk (albeit with a new name) that Gary and his players gamed in is that yours truly was supposed to be writing it two summers ago.
Yes, you heard me correctly. I was writing Castle Zagyg, the Upper Level. Here's the story. Gary had Rob Kuntz working on it with him but Gary basically just gave him a quick, sketchy outline (the grounds are x number of yards long and y number of yards wide, there's a moat and a castle, etc). Rob was disappointed because it was
all-new material based loosely on the original, but it was
definitely not the original or anything close to that, despite the marketing saying it was. Gary was having people ghost write for him, so he had little work to do himself. And Gary was also pocketing the vast majority of the pay, despite doing little more than giving an outline and signing his name to it.
Rob was just getting Pied Piper Publishing going, and couldn't do both. So, after reading Rooms #1-13 of RoUIII (which I had sent to him to preview), Rob was impressed and said he wanted me to ghost write it for him so that he could work on Pied Piper Publishing. No big deal. Gary was having all his material ghost written and Gary was getting paid tons more money for his name than Rob would have gotten for doing 90% of the actual work.
So I mapped out (and I mean extensively! I still have copies of the maps I sent Rob, along with Gary's notes) all the upper level ruins and the grounds surrounding it. Rob gave me total control. Anything I decided (although he clearly had authority to tell me to change things), that's what went in. I destroyed a section of wall and collapsed a tower, started writing in my own material. I was assigned to design the entire upper levels and create the encounters, etc. Basically, write it from scratch, my own creation, just following a general layout (there are 4 towers, put some orcs in one of them, do something with that apple tree because it plays a role later, etc). I was to have total creative license. Rob's exact words to me were: "You are god. This is your project now. Do anything you want with it."
Castle Zagyg, the Upper Levels, would have been entirely my creation, all new, and totally unrelated to Castle Greyhawk. I know that this opens me up to criticism for being part of the "conspiracy", but you know what?
Someone was going to ghost write it. I figured it might as well be me, because I was dead-set on making it feel like Greyhawk and giving the fans the best possible work I could create. Rob and I agree on gaming style, so at least the fans would have gotten something of the same spirit, if not the actual original Castle Greyhawk. I was even going to work in some encounters that Rob had told me about when we discussed some of the actual adventures he had in Castle Greyhawk. At least that would give it a bit of authenticity.
A short while later, Rob and Gary had a falling out because Gary was being an ass, and Rob quit the Castle Zagyg project altogether. I still have the call on the answering machine where Rob tells me to stop writing because we were pulling out.
Pete (Gideon Thorne) has fought with me about this at several forums, but I have the maps, the emails, the receipts of mailing, notes from Gary, and all sorts of other proof that this is true. Which is why I really lost respect for Gary, because of his lies and how he shit on Rob.
And this is why, two years later, the damned thing is still not finished. Gary was supposedly working on that release a good two years before I was assigned to it! Four years or more later, and nothing. I have no idea where the project went after we pulled out, only that it's been two years now and there's no even a projected release date. I suspect the project is as dead as Gary.
Which is why I suspect TLG is going to go belly up sometime in the near future. Their marketing effort was basically "Look, we gave
Gary writing for us!", and nothing else. Where do you go from there? They have no famous names writing stuff, and most of their customers were simply buying stuff because they were fooled into thinking Gary was writing it. Kinda hard for them to claim that now!
I had a very bad feeling a few years back, and I am known for having a very accurate, almost "psychic" intuition. I had a bad feeling that Gary was not going to live long enough to see Castle Zagyg completed, and I never bought the first release because of that. Gary was not taking care of his health. And with what his doctors were doing, well...you all know how little respect I have for the glorified drug companie whores most people refer to as "doctors".
When Rob called to say "stop developing the project", I knew it was sunk. I doubt anything else for it will ever come out.
The similarities are way too great.