I was always under the impression that a given CR meant that a monster of that CR was an adequate challenge for a party of that level...? I'm more than a little rusty on my 3rd Edition knowledge though.
I'm aware that you can use multiple monsters to increase the CR, but, in my experiences, that works at a more shallow range of levels than the 4E system. To use an extreme absurd example, no amount of CR 1 creatures can even remotely hope to challenge even a single level 1 PC. (Yes, I know this is true of 4E too, but it's been a while since I've played 3E, so I'm fuzzy on the CRs of specific creatures at this point.) It might not always be a whole party against one creature, but -in my experiences- 4E tends to be friendlier to the concept of having a lot of elements involved in a combat.
I don't want to derail the thread, but I feel strongly enough about this issue to want to briefly address it. (Besides, it's somewhat relevant to a point I make below.)
I'm also under the impression that 3.x assumed you'd
typically (not exclusively) fight one monster at a time. However, in my years of playing 3e (and then Pathfinder), I have only very rarely ever played this way. You're correct that having lots of lower CR creatures isn't much of a challenge. But I also don't buy the idea that each encounter should be tailored to the PCs' power level - monsters shouldn't only exist to fight PCs. Plenty of encounters should be easily dealt with (especially as they advance in level - powerful characters
should have an easier time with combat), and some should be
really hard - i.e., a number of monsters at or just below the CR of the party's level. Sometimes the PCs need to rely on good tactics. Sometimes the best tactic is to run away.
CR was a great innovation, but it should be taken as
at best a loose guideline, not a rule, of encounter design.
If I was doing Greyhawk first thing I'd do is cut the number of nations by about two thirds. There's way too much repetition, the place is far too balkanized.
Nyrond and Furyondy even sound similar, pick one. One type of barbarian will do, frost, ice and snow is two too many. One Arab nation, not three. Don't need both Rel Astra and Greyhawk, so the former has to go. Get rid of all the little crap around Keoland. Sea Barons or Sea Princes, pick one. Etc.
Keep the good stuff only, such as the Free City of Greyhawk, Iuz, Great Kingdom, Scarlet Brotherhood, Theocracy of the Pale, one of the good guy nations, etc.
I vehemently, but respectfully, disagree. I can appreciate why people may want things this way, and that's fine. But the many nations is precisely one of the things I love about GH. Others have explained why so many nations adds something, so I won't go into that here.
Despite the crashed spaceship, quasi-gods with six-shooters, portals to Alice in Wonderland, the usual D&D zoo of about five thousand different monsters and eighty different varieties of evil humanoid, Greyhawk does feel a bit more historical compared to Forgotten Realms.
It's hilarious when you put it that way, but it's true.
Relevance to the modern gamer I will take to mean, "Is Greyhawk a good fit for 3e or 4e D&D?" 3e by default is a high magic world, magic items can be bought and sold. 4e says nothing about the world, it only describes the PCs' interactions with it. PCs can buy magic in 4e but this is not necessarily true of the rest of the world. I think the PCs can have plenty of magic without it not being Greyhawk, because the PCs' adventures in Greyhawk have always been more magical than the general setting.
If the PCs had as little magic as the rest of the world that would be at odds with the published texts, particularly the adventures. Nonetheless this could be easily achieved in 4e by making magic item bonuses inherent (a 'hero bonus' or somesuch) and restricting the PCs to martial classes only. One could also stay on Heroic tier. It's trickier to do this in 3e, but possible. One could go the E6 route.
As I recall reading, the PCs in Gygax's campaign had
lots of magic items. In part, this was because he wanted to test things out before publishing them. But you're right, it would not lessen the feel of Greyhawk. There's a difference between the PCs having lots of access to magic and the campaign having lots of magic everywhere. The PCs, after all, are supposed to be extraordinary, moreso in Greyhawk than in the Forgotten Realms. (I don't take this as a dig at the Realms, it's just a different style.)
In any case, I don't think low magic among the PCs would be terribly incompatible with 3e. You only need those high levels of magic (with the ability to buy and sell magic items like other commodities) if you want to strictly follow the CR guidelines. I've never felt beholden to CR (see my comments on this at the beginning of this post). If my PCs don't follow the same power levels assumed by the core rules, I'll make my own judgment about what challenges would be appropriate for them. After all, I had played AD&D for years without CRs, and it worked just fine.
One the one hand, I think almost any ruleset could work with Greyhawk, largely because Greyhawk accommodates many play styles (dungeoncrawls, city-based games, war-based campaigns, etc - I think it was grodog who made this point quite well). Whatever your favoured ruleset does well, there's probably room for that in Greyhawk. Personally, I like using Castles & Crusades if I'm just using the old folio and/or boxed set, and Pathfinder if I'm using the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.
