D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.

[Desdichado]

That is extremely curious, because those particular influences are pretty large in Gygax's Greyhawk.

It makes sense to me - I know all about Appendix N but having a read a few of the books and stories, sometimes actually finding those inspirations in the actual setting is hard unless one looks at the Vancian magic system, or just the pure existence of a thief class or a barbarian class, etc.

I 100% agree, and always have. D&D has never resembled the very works of fantasy fiction that it claims to be inspired by except in extremely narrow and specific ways. The overall picture of D&D was that it was a weirdly unique game of dungeoncrawling, an activity for which there is no precedent in fantasy fiction* in a setting that had purity spiraled into esoteric High Medieval wargaming, with a handful of fantasy elements scattered abroad, but mostly specifically in the dungeons which, again, there is no precedent for anywhere in any of the literature.

*Some people claim the mines of Moria sequence is a prototype dungeon crawl. This is obviously not true. The dungeoncrawl is a bizarre location with strange traps, monsters, and acid trip f/x that characters go into on purpose in search of treasure. The mines of Moria sequence was a couple of chapters of travelog and character and setting development, capped with a brief chase/fight sequence, and the characters all (with the exception of Gimli) wanted to avoid the place. And don't even mention, "well there was that one Leiber story..." No. There is no precedent for dungeoncrawling in fantasy literature. It was purely an invention of D&D, because of D&D's specific wargaming roots. It wouldn't make any sense for it ever to exist otherwise.

 

[Mournblade94]

Since their introduction in 3e, Warforged are the go to example for entitled players ruining DM's carefully curated settings and a sign of everything wrong with D&D.

DIdn't you know that?

Its not wrong but I carefully Curate my games. Its not hard. The only races I have come around to are the Plane touched and Genasi, and Kzinti Race type. When I'm playing fantasy genre I don't like the Mos Eisley panoply.

 

[Parmandur]

That's what I thought, and why I was disappointed. I was expecting something far more Hyborian Age, and a lot less Hundred Years War!

The Great Kingdom seems more like a Moorcock/Howard Setting than UT does tge Holy Roman Empire.

Then, I think Gygax's pop Hollywood ideas about Medeival Europe were not well distinguishes in his mind from Sword & Sorcery literature.

 

[Desdichado]

Fantastic articles, glad I saved them.

They are, luckily, still available, albeit unillustrated.

Ray Winninger's "Dungeoncraft" Essays

 

[Parmandur]

That's clearly not true. OD&D and AD&D have no age listed, have nudity prominently displayed in the artwork, and are clearly marketed for adult wargamers. The D&D line, when it split off, originally (Holmes) has written prominently on the cover "The original ADULT fantasy roleplaying game for 3 or more players" (emphasis mine.)

B/X and BECMI started talking about 10 and up and 12 and up and that's when that corny commercial of some dad running it for a bunch of junior high kids came out too. But BECMI and B/X were relatively minor cadet lines; AD&D was the main product, and it clearly was not aimed at 12 year olds until at least second edition. And even then, it wasn't aimed at them, it was merely hoped that they would pick it up but then continue playing as adults.

WotC has been clear for decades now that the marketing for D&D is aimed at 12-24 year olds. D&D is, yes, a kids game. I'm fine with that, it just is what it is.

 

[Desdichado]

Then, I think Gygax's pop Hollywood ideas about Medeival Europe were not well distinguishes in his mind from Sword & Sorcery literature.

I think that that's an insightful observation. Gygax also made no distinction between honest-to-goodness sword & sorcery like Leiber and Howard and Revisionist deconstructionist anti-sword & sorcery by the likes of L. Sprague de Camp and Michael Moorcock. Even though they completely flipped the tropes upside down and deconstructed the genre, superficially they looked somewhat the same, so he didn't seem to have perceived any disconnect between them. If anything, he seems to have preferred the latter to the former, and especially raves about L. Sprague de Camp and his ilk. de Camp was notoriously a pedantic and arrogant "you didn't do this right" kind of guy who use all kinds of pop Hollywood or semi-academic approaches to his fantasy fiction in an attempt to virtue-signal his supposed intellectual superiority. (In case its not obvious, I'm not a fan of this approach at all.)

I suppose that's not necessarily unexpected. Lots of people still think Clint Eastwood's 70s revisionist anti-Westerns like High Plains Drifter or The Outlaw Josey Wales were regular westerns at the same time Gygax thought 60s-70s revisionist anti-sword & sorcery tales were regular sword & sorcery tales, but in both cases they were all about deconstructing and flipping the genre on its head. John Wayne got it and angrily rejected any collaboration with Eastwood because of it, but Gygax seems to have gone more into the 'let me adjust my bowtie and push up my glasses before starting my 'well, ackshually..." lecture about how wrong you are' side of the genre.

But if D&D were actually based on sword & sorcery, the way a lot of people believe that it is, it would have looked very different. For one thing, I doubt that there would be anything like the D&D vision of a dungeon at all.

 

[Desdichado]

WotC has been clear for decades now that the marketing for D&D is aimed at 12-24 year olds. D&D is, yes, a kids game. I'm fine with that, it just is what it is.

If that's really true, I wonder how well that works out for them. I.e. how much of sales is truly in that demographic. Without any actual data, I'd suggest that D&D clearly has a gen-x heavy player base with a big infusion of Millennials and older zoomers who joined relatively more recently. And I suspect that they're bleeding the older players rapidly to the OSR or to real life and probably not replacing them with "the kids" like they hoped. But again, we don't have any actual data, nor would I trust any vague statements from WotC on this either, if there are any.

But that may be a capsule impression based on who's online doing Youtube content or participating in places like this rather than people who just play and don't talk about it online.

Certainly if that's true that partially explains my own apathy towards WotC products.

 

[Parmandur]

If that's really true, I wonder how well that works out for them. I.e. how much of sales is truly in that demographic. Without any actual data, I'd suggest that D&D clearly has a gen-x heavy player base with a big infusion of Millennials and older zoomers who joined relatively more recently. And I suspect that they're bleeding the older players rapidly to the OSR or to real life and probably not replacing them with "the kids" like they hoped. But again, we don't have any actual data, nor would I trust any vague statements from WotC on this either, if there are any.

But that may be a capsule impression based on who's online doing Youtube content or participating in places like this rather than people who just play and don't talk about it online.

Certainly if that's true that partially explains my own apathy towards WotC products.

WotC provided actual demographic data on their players a few years back, not vague at all, and this is not the makeup of D&D players.on the customer of the pandemic, 40% of D&D players were Zoomers under 25, while 11% were over 40. After several years of big sales numbers and marketing aimed at kids, the Gen X share is going to ge way down. It's a kids game, marketed to middle school through college age.

Forty Percent of Dungeons & Dragons Players Are 25 or Younger

Dungeons & Dragons is experiencing a major youth movement right now, with 40% of players being 25 [...]

comicbook.com

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Great Kingdom seems more like a Moorcock/Howard Setting than UT does tge Holy Roman Empire.

Then, I think Gygax's pop Hollywood ideas about Medeival Europe were not well distinguishes in his mind from Sword & Sorcery literature.

It may be, as a European, the difference was always obvious to me.

 

[TiQuinn]

Some people claim the mines of Moria sequence is a prototype dungeon crawl. This is obviously not true. The dungeoncrawl is a bizarre location with strange traps, monsters, and acid trip f/x that characters go into on purpose in search of treasure. The mines of Moria sequence was a couple of chapters of travelog and character and setting development, capped with a brief chase/fight sequence, and the characters all (with the exception of Gimli) wanted to avoid the place. And don't even mention, "well there was that one Leiber story..." No. There is no precedent for dungeoncrawling in fantasy literature. It was purely an invention of D&D, because of D&D's specific wargaming roots. It wouldn't make any sense for it ever to exist otherwise.

You get more dungeon crawling out of Indiana Jones than you do Sword and Sorcery.