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

[Cadence]

Not antiquated, tiresome, and nonsensical dungeon crawling?

I haven't read Return to the Keep in ages. Looking at the reviews at Dragonsfoot (from almost 20 years ago) it sounds like the complaints about some of the changes were all things folks who usually don't like B2 would view as improvement. (Which still doesn't mean it was good). I wonder if my copy is still buried downstairs to check.

One of the things I like about the original B2 (having run it a lot over the decades) is how easy it is to really change up. One easy thing is to just play the different groups of monsters differently (will some happily ally with the players or help? do some just want to be left alone? will the medusa join with for revenge? etc ..). It doesn't even take much time for that kind of change.

With a little more, could give the traitor in the keep more active connections. Play up the force of chaos that brought all the monsters tribes there -- are some of them brought there by war leaders or religious leaders who drew them there because of the pull of the temple? Which want to be there since they love the forces of darkness? Are some of the tribes splitting over it? Does the font of chaos give some monsters and players dreams? etc...

One I did is where the party was all monster races with a mission to stop the evil priests. Really changes the interactions with the cave denizens.

Any of that is a lot to ask of someone who just hates the module, but it feels like it would be a thing WotC could do pretty easily if they wanted to take the skeleton and some of the meat and bones of it and do an update.

 

[Desdichado]

The 2024 default setting remains Forgotten Realms. Greyhawk is a variant setting in the DMs Guide. It is an example of how to homebrew other variant settings.

Right, of course. Typing fast and misspoke. But I think my point still works regardless.

 

[Minigiant]

Probably. And yet, those more recent books, especially the ones that have presentation and content that's overtly marketed for "the kids" the last few years, like Ravnica, Strixhaven, Radiant Citadel, etc. haven't sold as well (according to data I saw on Professor Dungeonmaster's YouTube channel anyway).

Is almost as if someone at WotC has enough sense to suggest that they not go full Kathleen Kennedy or Kevin Feige and alienate their legacy fans to chase an elusive sexy young fanbase that maybe generates buzz on X or TikTok, but who doesn't seem to spend all that much money.

Instead we're getting... a swan song adventure about Vecna that's about as classic as you can get, and Greyhawk is back as the default setting. Sure looks to me like WotC is deliberately marketing to older fans as well and signaling that this game isn't just Furries & Feelings for the kids. Forget about the last couple of years of books, guys, seriously.

D&D seems to go through this cycle periodically. They drift too far from the core audience, start hemorrhaging fans, and then return to classic tropes mingled with a bit of new stuff to reel them back in. Most recently with the launch of 5e a number of years ago, but it seems about time for the cycle to repeat. Especially after the last couple of years worth of relatively (relatively, mind. I'm not suggesting that these were all flops) poorly received products and PR gaffes.

Whoever thought that didn't read WOTC's own data.

The major of 5e's audience is under age 45 and now nothing about D&D's legacy settings.

The choice for Greyhawk is purely nostalgia bait and to reuse IP assets.

 

[Hussar]

There is a divide though. The two are different. They have different roles to play in the game. They may be trying to reach similar goals, but they have different paths to get there. A goalkeeper and a striker may both be trying to win, but they have incredibly different paths to accomplish that win.
Can you agree to that?

There is also a side conversation that needs to be had about consistency. World consistency helps create the tone and mood in a game. That is why the established settings often work for everyone, because it creates a consistent tone and mood. If you ask a player to make up their god, and the cleric states: "Hunla, Goddess of stars and moons; bringer of nature magic and good harvests." And then the paladin answers the same question with: "BooBerry, God of ghosts and anything My Little Pony." You might have a consistency problem for certain players at the table.

Not really IMO. The divide between DM and Player is largely artificial and it was something that was presented as this huge thing in earlier versions of D&D where players weren't even supposed to know the rules, let alone have any input in setting design. It's not 1981 anymore though. There is zero reason for this divide to be that big. If you have a player that comes back with nonsensical answers, do you really think the DM presenting options is going to work?

Wouldn't it be far better to teach players that they have just as much responsibility for the success of a game as DM's? That they should be engaged in designing the world just as much as the DM? I mean, I'm doing a fairly short side campaign for my regular group right now to give the DM a bit of a break. It's a single adventure, so, it's not like I'm doing much in the way of deep building here. One of the players is fairly new and wanted to know more about Tabaxi. My response was, "You tell me." And he did. Fantastic stuff.

That's what we need to be teaching players. That level of enthusiasm that gets beaten out of players by DM's constantly shutting down any attempt by players to have any authorial input into campaigns. We need to have less of a divide between players and DMs, not more.

 

[Desdichado]

Whoever thought that didn't read WOTC's own data.

The major of 5e's audience is under age 45 and now nothing about D&D's legacy settings.

It wouldn't be the first time a corporation like WotC exhibited behavior that's at odds with their statements about their sales. Either they care more about appealing to legacy gamers than they claim to, or the devs are too caught up in their own nostalgia to look past it, or their marketing strategy is incoherent. I wouldn't be surprised to find that any or even all three of those are true.

 

[CleverNickName]

A lot of people are talking about "nostalgia bait" like it's a bad thing. I'd greatly prefer it to "Magic: the Gathering bait," or "Marvel bait," or "MMORPG bait," or about a hundred other kinds of "bait" they could be using.

Nostalgia is a good thing.

 

[Desdichado]

Wouldn't it be far better to teach players that they have just as much responsibility for the success of a game as DM's? That they should be engaged in designing the world just as much as the DM?

The first sentence is pretty incontrovertible but the second doesn't follow from it. It's a somewhat spicy personal preference that many--possibly most--would disagree with. Not necessarily that they'd be hard against it, although many would, but that they simply wouldn't see the value in worldbuilding that way, wouldn't occur to them to do that, and wouldn't understand why you'd want to if you pointed it out to them. The players' responsibility to world build is usually the worldbuilding that pertains specifically to their character, not all kinds of details about his race, the place that the player completely made up that he's from, etc. In any group I've ever seen in real life, as opposed to hearing about anecdotally online, suggesting anything else would be considered a very spicy hot take.

Personally, I'd be pretty hard against it. As a GM, worldbuilding is one of the tasks that I enjoy most. Suggesting that the players have just as much responsibility for it is like suggesting that someone else has just as much responsibility to eat my dessert as I do. No, stay away from my raspberry cheesecake!

 

[Minigiant]

Wouldn't it be far better to teach players that they have just as much responsibility for the success of a game as DM's? That they should be engaged in designing the world just as much as the DM? I mean, I'm doing a fairly short side campaign for my regular group right now to give the DM a bit of a break. It's a single adventure, so, it's not like I'm doing much in the way of deep building here. One of the players is fairly new and wanted to know more about Tabaxi. My response was, "You tell me." And he did. Fantastic stuff.

That's what we need to be teaching players. That level of enthusiasm that gets beaten out of players by DM's constantly shutting down any attempt by players to have any authorial input into campaigns. We need to have less of a divide between players and DMs, not more.

Yeah. The whole "I'm going to allow this race or class to make my player happy but I'm not going to put effort into integration of it into the setting nor am I going to let the players do it" seems like a weird mentality and seems to strangely not uncommon.

It wouldn't be the first time a corporation like WotC exhibited behavior that's at odds with their statements about their sales. Either they care more about appealing to legacy gamers than they claim to, or the devs are too caught up in their own nostalgia to look past it, or their marketing strategy is incoherent. I wouldn't be surprised to find that any or even all three of those are true

The second one is at least true. The 5e designers love the old settings and their overall skills likely masks any inconsistencies they might have.

Crawford and Perkins are probably so good at DMing that they can DM a stinky old gym sock and their tables would miss system issues.

 

[Minigiant]

A lot of people are talking about "nostalgia bait" like it's a bad thing. I'd greatly prefer it to "Magic: the Gathering bait," or "Marvel bait," or "MMORPG bait," or about a hundred other kinds of "bait" they could be using.

Nostalgia is a good thing.

Nostalgia is good.

But I'd rather the best tools for the job be used over bait.

 

[CleverNickName]

I get that. I'm arguing that, as bait is a "tool" to catch fish, Greyhawk is a pretty good "tool" for catching D&D shoppers. Probably one of the best.