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

[Chaosmancer]

...that was my point to begin with.

I must have missed your point then, because "we don't know what it will look like" seems to be a pretty solid defense against some of the things you are worried about.

You would be wrong on both thoughts here, so everything in your next paragraph is incorrect. Also kind of strange, because the writer/worldbuilder who was creating this hypothetical chapter would be writing and editing, and having other editors going over the chapter, probably multiple times before publishing, so of course it wouldn't be like a video--and I almost never watch gaming videos; I much prefer text.

Ah, another advantage I forgot. Since there are going to be multiple editors going over the chapter, having a single, solid concept with clearly defined edges is much easier. I've tried world-building with a team, it gets messy fast.

Well, you're correct in that I feel using an old setting would have a downside, and that downside would be it would make many new DMs compare their homebrew attempts to a published setting that has had up to 50 years of work going into it (Greyhawk is a lot more than just the village of Hommlet and it's surroundings, after all). There are going to be a lot of prospective DMs who spend one or more hours following the directions, only to be disillusioned when they think they're going to have to do that a hundred more times to get their own version of Greyhawk or the Realms or whatever other setting they like.

Whereas with a new setting--even if this setting is never used for adventures or anything and is purely for this chapter--that baggage won't exist.

This doesn't make sense to me. People who are going to compare their homebrew to official settings are going to do so anyways. I have never read a world-building chapter in the DMG focused on Greyhawk... but I compare my work to Eberron constantly. Or to settings from fantasy novels. Also, you think a new setting made by professional game designers and creatives won't STILL cause people to look at their own work and feel inadequate? It will, trust me.

And sure, there are going to be people intimidated by the scale of a setting that needs an encyclopedia. Trust me, I am painfully aware of that. But, if they already know about the Forgotten Realms, showing them Fosal the new setting TM isn't going to make them less intimidated by the Realms. After all, we are talking about a setting chapter focused on Greyhawk, and the Realms causing a problem, which is the same problem that will be had regardless of the setting in the chapter.

Now, this isn't to say that the chapter shouldn't include things like "every first draft sucks, it is okay" or "even the greatest settings started with a single page of notes, size comes with time, don't stress about it". Those are great things to include and I would relish their inclusion... but I don't understand why you think the chapter focusing on Greyhawk means it cannot do that, but if they made Bodal the new setting TM they can totally say those things. I think you are feeling more like this chapter is going to be "look at Greyhawk, the wonderful setting" and less "here is how to world-build using examples" and I don't get why you think that is the case.

Also, the bit you wrote, about the dragon-sun and the vampires from the moon? That would actually be a good sidebar in this chapter. Not to build a world around those ideas, but to say "It's OK to to toss out the lore from the MM in order to do cool things in your setting." Because there are too many people who think you have to stick exactly with what the books say and are crippling their ability to have truly unique worlds because of that.

Sure, but WoTC is also completely correct in the assumption that this example world-building chapter is going to be used whole-cloth by DMs and players. Remember, the DMG from 2014 had a chapter on making your own race, and used the Eladrin as a demonstration... and very very few people made new races, and a lot of people used the Eladrin was written with no changes.

So, since we know players will use this chapter whole cloth, it has to have room for the standard lore, because it would be rather silly of them to make a setting that they expect new people to use, that conflicts with the lore from the monster or player books.

Is it still a good sidebar? Of course it is. But the point wasn't about sidebars, it was about how the setting would be made.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Why do you keep talking about historical lore dumps when most worldbuilding has nothing to do with historical lore? It has to do with knowing where and how to place important points of interest and how to make them interesting.

My own upcoming setting has a lot of little points of interest to it--possibly too many, but it's mostly going to be a city campaign so those points of interests are things like "this district has a big middle/upper-class shopping area in it" and "this district is has a giant park in it and there's said to be crazy druids living in it." But I don't know the history. I know the names of the major noble families and their leaders, but the only noble families that are actually mapped out are the ones one of my players is related to and they did the family tree, not me. I know that in the distant past, there was a war and this city is built on the old city's remains, but that's about all. Anything I need, I'll make up during play or while writing an adventure, or my players will make up.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Is this true?

How tight do you think the correlations are among actual human beings, between cosmological and religious beliefs, and modes of behaviour and social organisation?

 

[TwoSix]

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.

That's exactly how I run it. The only other way I can think of it do it is to have your campaign planet be a super-Earth or have tons of extradimensional space to make all these super predators fit.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Random tables are unlikely to produce anything remotely coherent.

But the point is, it’s pointless. None of it needed for a game of D&D. Worldbuilding is a fun activity to do on your own, but your players are not interested in the lineage of King Krabunkle XI to the 27th generation, they just want to know were the monsters and treasure are at.

And everything the DM does in D&D has to be all about what the players care about? What about what the DM wants and finds fun? Heck, what about what the players might enjoy more because of the detail that went into the world they're experiencing through their PCs? Maybe worldbuilding is pointless to you, but other folks feel differently, and it's hard not to see your comments as denigrating to playstyles you don't share.

 

[CleverNickName]

And everything the DM does in D&D has to be all about what the players care about? What about what the DM wants and finds fun?

Ugh, for real. My players always forget that I'm supposed to be having fun too.

 

[Chaosmancer]

PLanets are big. I have no problem envisioning some of these people never meeting, especially when underground or on mountain tops. Adventurers come in contact with them. In no way do I find the fact there could be monster settlements or civilization that humans don't know about surprising.

Its when they make themselves known that the conflict occurs.

Ecological Niches and food webs are completely upended by any setting like this. Its already impossible that Apex Beast predators can exist in the same niche as a magical beast. It breaks all what we know about energy flow. In light of that I am completely OK with handwaving that there are many cultures in the Monster Manual that have no contact with the outside world.

D&D already breaks fundamental rules of ecosystems. I'm not going to sweat those things. I am going to sweat it in a dungeon though. I have to have a logic to energy and nutrient flow in a dungeon or it doesn't work for me. Maybe that logic is all undead, But dungeons are closed systems with no resources, so for Versimilitude sake I need an input and an output.

Right but... let's take mountains for a second.

Who lives on Mountains? Well, we have Humans, Goliaths, Aarakocra, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Derro, Bugbears, Dwarves, Duergar, Drow, various giants, various dragons, firenewts potentially, Harpies, Meazels, Kruthik, Ogres, Peryton, Manticore, Ettin, Yeti, Trolls, Hags, Balhannoth, and Ki-Rin.

And that is just Mountains, and a taste of the things in mountains that are sentient with a language, and not explicitly from another plane of existence.

Yes, the planet is big, but Mountains are a small percentage of that planet, and we have potentially 30 different sentient cultures on any given mountain. Even if you only take a THIRD of them for any particular mountain range... that is still so many.

And then do this again for the forests, and then again for the hills, and then again for the deserts.... it just adds up.

 

[Parmandur]

Right but... let's take mountains for a second.

Who lives on Mountains? Well, we have Humans, Goliaths, Aarakocra, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Derro, Bugbears, Dwarves, Duergar, Drow, various giants, various dragons, firenewts potentially, Harpies, Meazels, Kruthik, Ogres, Peryton, Manticore, Ettin, Yeti, Trolls, Hags, Balhannoth, and Ki-Rin.

And that is just Mountains, and a taste of the things in mountains that are sentient with a language, and not explicitly from another plane of existence.

Yes, the planet is big, but Mountains are a small percentage of that planet, and we have potentially 30 different sentient cultures on any given mountain. Even if you only take a THIRD of them for any particular mountain range... that is still so many.

And then do this again for the forests, and then again for the hills, and then again for the deserts.... it just adds up.

Yeah, and for Greyhawk the old hexes are each over 500 square miles: there can be a lot if stuff in that amount of space.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Oh yeah, I have no problem with either approach.

But for me, personally, in my world-building? I just physically cannot work from the bottom up. Now, I generally don't do much work in the middle, but I need to start with the gods and powers and the fundamental truths of the world, or I just cannot start making villages.

 

[TwoSix]

And everything the DM does in D&D has to be all about what the players care about? What about what the DM wants and finds fun? Heck, what about what the players might enjoy more because of the detail that went into the world they're experiencing through their PCs? Maybe worldbuilding is pointless to you, but other folks feel differently, and it's hard not to see your comments as denigrating to playstyles you don't share.

If you want to write a 400 page gazetteer for your setting, more power to you. If you feel like having that information readily available for you gives you the ability to make more consistent and coherent narration, then I would see it as certainly worthwhile.

But dumping that information on the players and expecting them to care, and also use that information to build characters that fit seamlessly into your game world, is probably not going to work out as well as you would hope.