Do you want Greyhawk updated to 5e?

lowkey13 · Feb 26, 2019

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André Soares · Feb 26, 2019

I'm not that familiar with Greyhawk, and was under the impression it was fairly similar to FR in genre and mechanics, being more of a "standart" fantasy setting. Am I woring in that? what an adaptation would have to include? What makes 5e as it is now unfit to play a Greyhawk campaign? Would DM's Guild be enough or a full hardcover book be necessary?

Ilbranteloth · Feb 26, 2019

lowkey13 said:
So I was reading the ~~Sinister Secret of~~ Ghosts of Saltmarsh thread, and I saw that many people were complaining because, yet again, WoTC were mining the glorious history of Greyhawk ... and were probably just going to toss it into a generic Forgotten Realms location. (Note- this is not confirmed, but this is the internet, and what else would we do with our time if we couldn't complain about things that haven't happened yet?).

But that got me to thinking about my preference- namely, I don't want WoTC to "update" Greyhawk. For me, Greyhawk is forever the hints dropped in Dragon Magazine and various modules, and codified in the boxed set in 1983. I have been running a variant of the 1983 GH Boxed set in various incarnations since 1983, up to and including now with 5e.

I understand that it was updated with the whole 3e "Living Greyhawk" and the Gazetteer, and I have no ill will toward those who like or enjoy it, but that's just not me.

So allow me to expand on why I think WoTC shouldn't revisit Greyhawk, other than to nod to it occasionally.

In my mind, Greyhawk is the ur-DIY setting, especially for the swords & sorcery (as opposed to High Fantasy) crowd. What made the setting great at the time is that it didn't provide answers- it provided hooks. Every place described had hints of adventures for the DM to fill in. It was impossible to read more than a paragraph or two about the places without immediately thinking of some way that this place could be the setting for an adventure. Constant wisps of elder civilizations, great magics, vast riches, and unique and hidden lands waiting to be discovered by PCs (and filled in by the DM).

And that's before getting into fact that we only know of but a small part of Oerth.

Now, I genuinely like the work that WoTC has done to date. But I don't need them to update Greyhawk. I don't need an explanation for Tieflings (let me guess- Iuz) and Dragonborn. I don't want new explanations or a change in timeline. I don't want my mysteries filled.

There isn't really any need to update Greyhawk; the countries and forests and mountain ranges are what they are.

And for that reason, I guess I don't understand why some people are complaining when they use Greyhawk "stuff" (like the older modules) in 5e. Just take what you need- and leave out the rest of the fluff, right?

But I recognize that my opinion might not be a common one, especially in light of the comments I saw. So I'm putting up this poll, and asking for comments.

What do the rest of you think? Should WoTC update Greyhawk for 5e? And if so, why?

Well, aside from the Living Greyhawk, there was the whole Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes box sets and series of modules, while still under TSR, up through the unreleased (although previewed Ivid the Undying).

Did you ever purchase those, or did you stick with the early material only.

My Realms campaign is most heavily influenced by the original campaign set and materials by Ed Greenwood, but I have drawn a lot from later sources, even if I haven’t used them entirely as is. I use very little of the 4e/5e material, with just hints of some of the APs from time to time.

TwoSix · Feb 26, 2019

I don't want WotC to update ANY setting, with the possible exception of Forgotten Realms. (FR has been through multiple major transformations throughout the last 2 editions, and honestly I'm not sure exactly what's true about it anymore. For a normal setting, that isn't a big deal, but FR has been strongly defined by both its volume of detailed lore and the relatively fixed nature of the setting. It's the setting for people who really care about canon and detailed lore, and that should be respected.)

The other settings don't have advancing timelines and are really more a collection of tropes and setting elements with a map. The old material works fine for them. I love the Eberron guide, but even that is probably overkill for most other settings.

lowkey13 · Feb 26, 2019

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Ilbranteloth · Feb 26, 2019

TwoSix said:
I don't want WotC to update ANY setting, with the possible exception of Forgotten Realms. (FR has been through multiple major transformations throughout the last 2 editions, and honestly I'm not sure exactly what's true about it anymore. For a normal setting, that isn't a big deal, but FR has been strongly defined by both its volume of detailed lore and the relatively fixed nature of the setting. It's the setting for people who really care about canon and detailed lore, and that should be respected.)

The other settings don't have advancing timelines and are really more a collection of tropes and setting elements with a map. The old material works fine for them. I love the Eberron guide, but even that is probably overkill for most other settings.

But that’s not entirely true. Greyhawk went through a major timeline upgrade in the Wars/From the Ashes era, and Dragonlance has covered multiple eras too, although not always by TSR/WoTC.

But updating to 5e/expanding the knowledge of the setting doesn’t have to be via timeline. Lord of the Rings has been detailed multiple times by multiple companies, and they don’t typically advance any timeline.

I think the key is not so much whether they publish for 5e, but how. Republishing established lore with new (or reworked) adventures is quite different than creating new world-changing APs. A large part of even Realms lore hasn’t been altered from
1e.

Greyhawk could continue to be presented in anthologies like Yawning Portal and, as it may now be, Saltmarsh. The only think really missing is a republishing of the general setting as was done in CoS or even SKT and SCAG. There was some new Realms material, but most wasn’t, other than to set things back to largely how they were.

Ilbranteloth · Feb 26, 2019

lowkey13 said:
I had the Greyhawk Adventures hardcover (1988). That's it for GH stuff, but I only use the 1983 folio, and the earlier Dragon Magazine articles to inform the world.

So you’ve already skipped/ignored a lot of other published material anyway. So what difference does it make if they publish/republish now? New gamers aren’t likely to search out those resources now.

lowkey13 · Feb 26, 2019

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TwoSix · Feb 26, 2019

Ilbranteloth said:
But that’s not entirely true. Greyhawk went through a major timeline upgrade in the Wars/From the Ashes era, and Dragonlance has covered multiple eras too, although not always by TSR/WoTC.

Sure. My point is only that having a reference of up-to-date, canonically true lore isn't as important to those settings as it is to FR. Being the setting for lore nerds is a major part of the point of existence of FR.