I get the feeling that someone high up at Wizards really liked Greyhawk. After all, one of the first things made after Wizards bought TSR were a bunch of Greyhawk books (Player's Guide to GH, GH: The Adventure Begins, The Scarlet Brotherhood, and a bunch of adventures). But clearly the numbers didn't bear things out, so in 3e GH got the sideways promotion to "core" status which meant it would only get bland core stuff (plus Living Greyhawk), while Forgotten Realms got all the glitz. Eventually, even that faded out - in 3.5e there's very little Greyhawk left, other than the default pantheon.
D&D 5E Sell me on the World of Greyhawk please
Greyhawk is my favorite setting, but it's important to note that there's several Greyhawks.
Gyagxian Greyhawk is pretty much the 1983 Boxed Set, plus the 1st Edition Adventures written by Gygax and a small handful of others. This is popular mostly with grognards who liked Gygax's work, and felt that the changes made after his departure were awful (and often spiteful). This notion is a static setting, with CY 576 as a starting point for every campaign, but the work of the DM and Players would quickly make it their own. There is no real notion of "canon," because only the information is that which is given in the Folio (and even that can be considered inaccurate in game due to the way it was written).
The Greyhawk Wars began advancing the story of the world, which gave the notion of canon for the setting. It advanced just like the Realms did, and new products were made to show the changes to the setting over time. This was mostly the 2E era, but the 3E Gazetteer did a good job of continuing this.
The Default Greyhawk of 3E was an abomination. It was the death of the setting, IMO, since the setting didn't mean anything anymore (or more accurately, it meant EVERYTHING). This should generally be disregarded as a real setting, just as the Known World was in BECMI (before it got turned into Mystara).
Living Greyhawk is technically non-canon, as it's the RPGA setting that allowed for non-employees to create content for the setting. The 3E Living Greyhawk Gazetteer was a pretty good product, however, and is much more detailed than the 3E Gazetteer. Additionally, there are hundreds of adventures made for it, but they can be tricky to get now that the organization is defunct.
Gyagxian Greyhawk is pretty much the 1983 Boxed Set, plus the 1st Edition Adventures written by Gygax and a small handful of others. This is popular mostly with grognards who liked Gygax's work, and felt that the changes made after his departure were awful (and often spiteful). This notion is a static setting, with CY 576 as a starting point for every campaign, but the work of the DM and Players would quickly make it their own. There is no real notion of "canon," because only the information is that which is given in the Folio (and even that can be considered inaccurate in game due to the way it was written).
The Greyhawk Wars began advancing the story of the world, which gave the notion of canon for the setting. It advanced just like the Realms did, and new products were made to show the changes to the setting over time. This was mostly the 2E era, but the 3E Gazetteer did a good job of continuing this.
The Default Greyhawk of 3E was an abomination. It was the death of the setting, IMO, since the setting didn't mean anything anymore (or more accurately, it meant EVERYTHING). This should generally be disregarded as a real setting, just as the Known World was in BECMI (before it got turned into Mystara).
Living Greyhawk is technically non-canon, as it's the RPGA setting that allowed for non-employees to create content for the setting. The 3E Living Greyhawk Gazetteer was a pretty good product, however, and is much more detailed than the 3E Gazetteer. Additionally, there are hundreds of adventures made for it, but they can be tricky to get now that the organization is defunct.
For me Greyhawk was my first and only campaign setting. I saw no need to spend a lot of money on other books. The Players Guide to Greyhawk was a nice little pocket book that teases you with enough flavour to wet your appetite. It started as a low to medium magic campaign with heavy LotR influences regarding the way the principal races interact with each other but these elements were heavily watered down later on. I love the ideas that came out of LG but I loathe the way each region had to become cookie cuttered so that each nation had it's own high powered wizard school, bard school, druid school, sorcerer school (wtf?) etc. I dislike the way the human cities became so cosmopolitan with 20% dwarves and 10% elves just to make it easy to support tournament development. However, you can edit these things to suit your own tastes with no difficulty.
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Henry
Autoexreginated
That "someone" was probably people like Peter Adkison, Lisa Stevens, and Ryan Dancey who were all old schoolers from back in the day, but I am willing to bet, given the timetable, that all of that Greyhawk stuff was already in the pipeline, and released because it was production ready, or nearly so, and they needed to get product flowing after the acquisition. Plus, attracting the old school fans was a desire for them back then (as now!) because they were planning to release a new game edition and needed as much goodwill and eyes on them as possible.
Greyhawk is one of those settings that is established and yet open enough for any group to make it their own.
Stacie GmrGrl
Adventurer
I wouldn't mind a large hardback campaign setting of this setting if only so there'd be a new, fresh take on it for 5th edition and I'd prefer it over Forgotten Realms because we've been force fed Realms stuff for the last two editions. I had no clue that the default setting of 3e was considered Greyhawk, which says something about the Lack of setting in the core setting for that edition.
Unleash your Google-Fu and I'm sure you will find a PDF of the book out there. I recommend having a look at it.
It's not going to give you everything but it's a great place to start.
Parmandur
Book-Friend
Queer Venger
Dungeon Master is my Daddy
To the OP, you'll enjoy this blog until the setting book comes out:
http://greyhawkery.blogspot.com
personally I'm a Realms fan, but Greyhawk FTW for nostalgia cred
http://greyhawkery.blogspot.com
personally I'm a Realms fan, but Greyhawk FTW for nostalgia cred
Henry
Autoexreginated
[MENTION=86279]Stacie GmrGrl[/MENTION]
This recently released over at dndclassics.com:
http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17392/World-of-Greyhawk-Fantasy-Game-Setting-1e?it=1
It was written for 1st edition, but it is super-flavorful, with tons of setting info, fairly light on mechanics, and given how similar 1e and 5e are in tone, should be fairly easy to get an idea how to convert most things such as cleric spells, etc that are listed mechanically. I used to own the physical box set of this back in the 80s, and still sometimes regret not having it anymore, but it dis go to a good home.
This recently released over at dndclassics.com:
http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17392/World-of-Greyhawk-Fantasy-Game-Setting-1e?it=1
It was written for 1st edition, but it is super-flavorful, with tons of setting info, fairly light on mechanics, and given how similar 1e and 5e are in tone, should be fairly easy to get an idea how to convert most things such as cleric spells, etc that are listed mechanically. I used to own the physical box set of this back in the 80s, and still sometimes regret not having it anymore, but it dis go to a good home.
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