D&D 5E Mike Mearls on Settings

[Kobold Avenger]

Greyhawk is grittier - less forgiving and far more morally ambiguous.

Only when compared to the standard fantasy worlds campaign settings, as it could be argued that Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Planescape have more of either grittiness or moral ambiguity. But in terms of the standard fantasy settings that may be true.

Greyhawk did not 'fail' - it was deliberately dropped for the kitchen sink world of FR for commercial reasons.

It failed in terms of trying to establish itself as the default setting of 3e. The iconic characters like Tordek, Hennet, Mialee, Krusk and so on were intended to be people from Oerth not Toril, and the 3e PHB itself used Greyhawk deities like Wee Jas, Kord and Saint Cuthbert. But despite being the official default setting of 3e, it was barely developed in 3e beyond the Living Greyhawk stuff and whatever the short-lived revision of the miniature game Chainmail added to Oerth.

Of course grittier rules make settings more distinct if applied to them..! 5th Edition especially is pretty easy to survive and prosper in due to HP rules, magical healing and recovery proliferation and the all-too-easy CR balance.

And a lot of this comes down to the edition played in and the playstyle of the group rather than the campaign setting itself.

Now maybe all six of us are blowing smoke, or maybe the 120 years plus tabletop rpg experience round the table is able to see how different Greyhawk is to FR without the majority of them being 'hardcore fans' of the gameworld.

I am sure Mearls and crew will do the rather obvious differences between the two gameworlds justice. Those who haven't come across it before due to the saturation of FR through the system since 3rd Ed. will be able to make up their minds themselves.

I for one would predict they will have no problem differentiating them.

The problem in differentiating them is that they all are worlds with many of the standard fantasy tropes that focus in places that are vaguely late-medieval/early-Renaissance Western European (yes I know FR has Calimshan and GH has the Baklunish, for the often ignored Middle Eastern parts). The differences between FR and GH are smaller compared to the differences between Forgotten Realms and Eberron, or the differences between Greyhawk and Ravenloft. And that's what makes them harder to differentiate to non-hardcore fans.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm starting to see where you could use Eberron for steampunk, but it wouldn't be according to the original themes. Not that that's wrong. It's just not the same thing as "obviously and consciously" evoking it. It didn't.

I don't think Eberron is obviously steampunk, either, but it's the most obvious choice if you wanted to shift an existing D&D setting into having more overt steampunk themes. The presence of an urban, industrial mindset in the mainstream culture of Khorvaire, as opposed to a agrarian, medieval one, makes it so. I mean, it wouldn't be hard to fast forward Eberron into the 1030s and have people running around with Sivis-designed magical cell phones to do Eberron in a modern urban fantasy tone.

 

[Gradine]

I'm going to have to disagree here. Besides being featured in Dragon for years, the Realms hit the ground running in release in 1987. I used to see people reading Darkwalker on Moonshae and The Crystal Shard all over the place. Soon after there were computer games that were popular. By the time the 2e era ended, there were hundreds of Realms products. It was way more ubiquitous than any other campaign world long before the 3e relaunch.

This. I started playing D&D right around the time 2e started, and Forgotten Realms was the setting I remember the most, both in the tabletop RPG and other media as well. The Icewind Dale trilogy was my first introduction to D&D as novels. I also grew up on the SSI, Westwood and eventually Black Isle computer games (Pools of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Baldur's Gate). On the other hand my understanding of Greyhawk was basically nil. That is, until 3rd edition, anyway.

That said, I do concur that Greyhawk tends to run grittier, though to a large extent, the experience with any game works is largely reflective of how the DM you played with ran it.

This I think owes mostly to the nature of the inspirational source material between the two settings. FR was clearly meant to portray heroic fantasy; Greyhawk was inspired by pulp fantasy of a decidedly grittier and morally ambiguous nature. Fans tended to gravitate towards the settings that matched their own personal fantasy aesthetics and ran them as is. But I don't think those are hard-coded into any particular setting; you can easily run heroic fantasy in Greyhawk and sword & sorcery glory-seekers in FR. One can take a look at Eberron, which was inspired in equal measures by darker noir stories and lighter pulpy action-adventures. So it's not like a tone is something you could consider a hard and fast rule of a setting.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

This. I started playing D&D right around the time 2e started, and Forgotten Realms was the setting I remember the most, both in the tabletop RPG and other media as well. The Icewind Dale trilogy was my first introduction to D&D as novels. I also grew up on the SSI, Westwood and eventually Black Isle computer games (Pools of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Baldur's Gate). On the other hand my understanding of Greyhawk was basically nil. That is, until 3rd edition, anyway.

Early 2e basically where I started too. I was taken in by the proliferation of different campaign worlds in 2e, but even back then I found FR to be too standard even if it was the most ubiquitous campaign setting. I remember the 2e core books trying to really campaign setting neutral, which was why Greyhawk probably didn't get much exposure back then. It sort of got pushed out by Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance which had the novels going for them.

This I think owes mostly to the nature of the inspirational source material between the two settings. FR was clearly meant to portray heroic fantasy; Greyhawk was inspired by pulp fantasy of a decidedly grittier and morally ambiguous nature. Fans tended to gravitate towards the settings that matched their own personal fantasy aesthetics and ran them as is. But I don't think those are hard-coded into any particular setting; you can easily run heroic fantasy in Greyhawk and sword & sorcery glory-seekers in FR. One can take a look at Eberron, which was inspired in equal measures by darker noir stories and lighter pulpy action-adventures. So it's not like a tone is something you could consider a hard and fast rule of a setting.

There were Greyhawk novels but I've only read one Gord the Rogue novel and 2 novels written by Rose Estes, the latter which no one really likes at all. Yes, those FR and DL novels are clearly of the far more epic fantasy variety than that one Gord novel I read. Though in my opinion the grittiness in tone between those novels clearly has to do with the changes at TSR over the periods they were written in.

But it was clearly the other campaign settings that were quite different from FR, GH and DL which kept my interest. The general differences between those settings against the standard fantasy settings are far more pronounced than the difference between those 3 settings. And personally I think 5e needs go farther outside those 3 settings than they need to go to just another one of them.

 

[Mercule]

I mean, it wouldn't be hard to fast forward Eberron into the 1030s and have people running around with Sivis-designed magical cell phones to do Eberron in a modern urban fantasy tone.

I would play that -- once. Then I'd probably stab the DM.

Your game designers were too busy asking if they could do something that they never stopped to thing whether they should do it.

Sadly, that's pretty much how I feel about a Greyhawk reboot. At least one that did anything other than just put the 1983 box content into a 2017-quality hardcover with updated graphics, etc. Please don't put in a whole bunch of special rules. The organizations (or lack thereof) and an adventure or two should handle differentiating it from the Realms.

 

[TwoSix]

I would play that -- once. Then I'd probably stab the DM.

Your game designers were too busy asking if they could do something that they never stopped to thing whether they should do it.

Sadly, that's pretty much how I feel about a Greyhawk reboot. At least one that did anything other than just put the 1983 box content into a 2017-quality hardcover with updated graphics, etc. Please don't put in a whole bunch of special rules. The organizations (or lack thereof) and an adventure or two should handle differentiating it from the Realms.

You have surprisingly aggressive aesthetic preferences.

 

[Mercule]

You have surprisingly aggressive aesthetic preferences.

I am aware of my flaws and have learned to accept them.

 

[TwoSix]

I am aware of my flaws and have learned to accept them.

Well, your DM is certainly in no condition to complain.

 

[Mercule]

Well, your DM is certainly in no condition to complain.

You know, now that I think of it, no one else has volunteered to DM since we decided to stop playing RtToEE, back in the early 2000s.

Here I thought I just did a good job.

 

[TwoSix]

You know, now that I think of it, no one else has volunteered to DM since we decided to stop playing RtToEE, back in the early 2000s.

Here I thought I just did a good job.

"Just let him run the damn game, Morty! When I asked him if my character should take a dragonmark feat before or after he joined the Harpers....you didn't see his eyes, man. You didn't see his eyes."