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

[Paul Farquhar]

OK, you do realize that that the bolded bit is not the kind of worldbuilding I'm talking about, right?

It doesn’t matter what it is, what matters is if it looks like a significant amount of work potential DMs are going to nope out.

Even the most talented writers struggle to make lore dumps interesting. And if you are not going to bore your players with a lore dump you don’t need the lore.

 

[Parmandur]

It doesn’t matter what it is, what matters is if it looks like a significant amount of work potential DMs are going to nope out.

Even the most talented writers struggle to make lore dumps interesting. And if you are not going to bore your players with a lore dump you don’t need the lore.

Yeah, no way this presentation us anything other than focused on usability in play.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not to harp on it, but...that's much info as Greyhawk had at all for years. The chapter can easily provide a full Gygaxian treatment of the Setting...which does not require Realmsoan focus on detail.

Fair, I think that also depends on HOW you present the information. I remember the Gazetteer I had was basically just tightly packed columns of blurbs about different countries. I think if the goal is to explain things, they can't just have that plus a map, and so I'm expecting it will take more pages.

 

[Parmandur]

Fair, I think that also depends on HOW you present the information. I remember the Gazetteer I had was basically just tightly packed columns of blurbs about different countries. I think if the goal is to explain things, they can't just have that plus a map, and so I'm expecting it will take more pages.

A little less about military troop information, a little more Adventure hooks seems likely.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You're free to do what you want with your game, but I lol a little with the Mos Eisley comparison whenever it gets trotted out. If I crack open the Monster Manual, there are dozens of humanoid monsters, including monstrous humanoids. There are a dozen dragons and half a dozen giants. And that's not counting the various sentient fey, aberrations, and planar beings. There are more monsters in your typical dungeon than were ever in the Cantina scene and monster books are top selling because people desire even more. But people don't think about that because they are monsters that exist to be killed by PCs rather than unique peoples with cultures and ecologies. A D&D world using only the Monster Manual has hundreds of sentient species. If the only PC species you allow was human, you still have more variety than all the Star Wars films combined.

Yet I don't know too many DMs who highly curate the Monster Manual the same way they do player species.

Yep, that always kind of blows my mind. The Monster Manual makes "curated worldbuilding" so so difficult. And very few fantasy settings that don't have a bit of kitchen sink in them have half the monstrous folk that DnD has in a single book.

Honestly, it is part of why I tend to either have "families" (Giants and their kin are basically one thing) or one-off freaks, because otherwise it gets a little maddening to try and make it work as an ecology and political landscape.

 

[Belen]

Yep, that always kind of blows my mind. The Monster Manual makes "curated worldbuilding" so so difficult. And very few fantasy settings that don't have a bit of kitchen sink in them have half the monstrous folk that DnD has in a single book.

Honestly, it is part of why I tend to either have "families" (Giants and their kin are basically one thing) or one-off freaks, because otherwise it gets a little maddening to try and make it work as an ecology and political landscape.

Agreed!

 

[Chaosmancer]

No. its simply if you are running a classic D&D campaign world that is anthrocentric it is extremely unlikely monster races could function as an adventuring group that needs to interact with wider society.

A MOS EISLEY game is the assumption that all these sentient races are integrated. Maybe FR in 2020's is that, and Planescape certainly is, but Greyhawk I don't think ever had anything but an Anthrocentric world build. For me a Mos Eisley adventuring party would break the versimiltude.

Personally, I've always found human-centric worlds to either be deeply unrealistic or very very grim.

If you don't have trade agreements or functioning societies with the various sentient species, then you likely are in a state of total genocidal war, and in that state with multiple species. Generally with beings that are better than humans at [Blank]. I mean, just take goblins. In a serious "we want to murder everyone" fight, a squad of goblins can utterly annihilate a village of human farmers. It isn't even close.

And the usual solution is... "Magic is dying, the world is getting less and less interesting and powerful with every generation, you will never measure up to the past glory" which is depressing, and makes it seem like humans are just the grey leftovers of a more fascinating world.

This isn't to say your games are like that, or that you don't have fun with your games. But it is just a pattern I've noticed whenever a game world is built to be human-centric.

 

[CleverNickName]

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but this is what world-building looks like for me.

• Hmm. It looks like the party will travel to RandomTown in the next adventure.
• (checking the map) Okay, it looks like that'll take about two weeks by horse.
• (checks random encounter tables) Yep, these are still up to date. Oh wait, that guy's dead now. (crosses it off)
• Now think, CleverNick. What are they going to find when they get there?
• (Open my Places.doc file on Google Drive) Hmm, nothing about RandomTown yet. I'll say it's the town where RandomGuy lives, and where RandomSecretFaction operates.
• (types an email to my players) Hey guys, here's a reminder of our gaming session on Friday. You'll be heading to RandomTown, so here's three paragraphs of stuff your characters know about it.
• And here's a random rumor for each of you...I'll let you decide for yourselves which ones are true. (clicks send)
• (updates my Places.doc file on Google Drive with those three paragraphs and the list of rumors ) Wow, am I up to 85 pages already?

 

[Chaosmancer]

You have your tiny village of mostly humans and a few Tolkienesque species, and the party consists of a warforged, a plasmoid, two drow, and a gith. Whoops. That "build just as much as you need" didn't cover that.

So "build just as much as you need" is correct advice, but not the only correct advice. (And "do you want to limit the species the PCs can choose from, or can they pick anything they want?" is a worldbuilding question.)

I want to zoom in on this for a second. Now, I'm not an expert by any means, but actually... most of the people I know who do world-building actually wouldn't have a town of mostly humans and tolkienesque creatures. In fact, generally, the issue I've seen people run into is more "but there are not rules for symbiotic slime people and elves that are living trees" than it ever is more of the Tolkien-land.

This isn't to say it doesn't happen, but I do wonder if many of the new players I've seen and tried to help become DMs would even blink at that party comp, let alone need a section of the chapter to explain to them the options of allowing it or not.

Now, this hypothetical DMG could include advice on group worldbuilding activities, or on getting the players to build the lore and the world as they go along, PbtA/DungeonWorld-style, in which case "build just as much as you need" is perfect. But these rules would also have to emphasize that it's OK for players to create the lore--which has been a big bone of contention on another thread in which I'm engaged in pointless arguing re: backgrounds, with some people treating letting players make up stuff like this as totally anathema to them.

True, I do hope the chapter encourages DMs to allow their players to help with the creation of the world. There are many benefits to that approach.

Also, top-down worldbuilding--which doesn't have to be Tolkienesque in its depth--does have many benefits. It helps with consistency and the setting's tone, which is great.

Honestly, I NEED to do top-down worldbuilding, because I need to know what people believe in. A world where people believe that all sentient life was created when the Sun cast the Moon into the Sea in an attempt to drown them is going to act, react, and talk differently than a world where they believe that Kings can gain power and ascend to be Gods if they control enough land and people.

I'm not against anyone taking any approach, I just know my approach starts far more at the broad picture, before usually making up the small details at the table.

 

[Parmandur]

I want to zoom in on this for a second. Now, I'm not an expert by any means, but actually... most of the people I know who do world-building actually wouldn't have a town of mostly humans and tolkienesque creatures. In fact, generally, the issue I've seen people run into is more "but there are not rules for symbiotic slime people and elves that are living trees" than it ever is more of the Tolkien-land.

This isn't to say it doesn't happen, but I do wonder if many of the new players I've seen and tried to help become DMs would even blink at that party comp, let alone need a section of the chapter to explain to them the options of allowing it or not.



True, I do hope the chapter encourages DMs to allow their players to help with the creation of the world. There are many benefits to that approach.



Honestly, I NEED to do top-down worldbuilding, because I need to know what people believe in. A world where people believe that all sentient life was created when the Sun cast the Moon into the Sea in an attempt to drown them is going to act, react, and talk differently than a world where they believe that Kings can gain power and ascend to be Gods if they control enough land and people.

I'm not against anyone taking any approach, I just know my approach starts far more at the broad picture, before usually making up the small details at the table.

Neither top-down or bottom-up is wrong, just whatever works.

I think for "13 year old DMimg for the first time," the default lore in the Core books helps provide a ready-made "top down" set of assumptions already in the PHB and MM (and the magic items Chapter of the DMG), so a Campaign building chapter walking through a bottom-up approach would be helpful to provide a newbie with both angles at once.