D&D General For the Love of Greyhawk: Why People Still Fight to Preserve Greyhawk

[Remathilis]

I would play with racial and alignment restrictions back.

Thought about running 5E GH doing that.

Fine. Your game, your rules. I've beaten this drum enough here and on DS that it should be clear I only care about what WotC will put in the book when/if it ever comes out.

What you do after that is between you and your players.

 

[Zardnaar]

Fine. Your game, your rules. I've beaten this drum enough here and on DS that it should be clear I only care about what WotC will put in the book when/if it ever comes out.

What you do after that is between you and your players.

I wouldn't put in in the book of I was releasing it.

I would do the Theros thing about the non AD&D races being world visiters and/or very rare.

New races like Drow and Tieflings at least make sense if they add them so that's fine.

I'm not after a 1983 frozen in time GH but one respectful to it would be nice.

 

[Remathilis]

I wouldn't put in in the book of I was releasing it.

I would do the Theros thing about the non AD&D races being world visiters and/or very rare.

New races like Drow and Tieflings at least make sense if they add them so that's fine.

I'm not after a 1983 frozen in time GH but one respectful to it would be nice.

Really then, the only race you have to account for in the PHB is dragonborn, and you can make them immigrants from another place "beyond the map". No nations or major settlements, but you find small clans living in isolated areas or mixed into metropolitan areas like the Free City.

Everything else from Volo and other supplements are optional anyway, so the DM can rule if they exist and are playable or not.

I just incorporated the 5e PHB into Greyhawk and nothing broke. Imagine that.

 

[Zardnaar]

Really then, the only race you have to account for in the PHB is dragonborn, and you can make them immigrants from another place "beyond the map". No nations or major settlements, but you find small clans living in isolated areas or mixed into metropolitan areas like the Free City.

Everything else from Volo and other supplements are optional anyway, so the DM can rule if they exist and are playable or not.

I just incorporated the 5e PHB into Greyhawk and nothing broke. Imagine that.

It's not if it's broken or not.

Dragonborn are terrible mechanically anyway replaced the with Dragonkin off Midgard.

 

[Helldritch]

Having read this thread, I am now convinced that, though there are ways to shape Greyhawk into a distinctive campaign setting for 5e, one that would bring something unique to the table, in doing so, the product would probably not get the support of Greyhawk fans. While some people here have tried to find a niche for Greyhawk, a hook, something that would immediately make it distinct from all the other settings and would make gaming groups want to play in there, others have resisted any effort to pigeonhole GH or to reshape it into something that younger players and DMs could like. That sounds pretty pointless, and it seems to me that there is simply no way to bring back the setting successfully.

I disagree. I have introduced a lot of young players (5 groups so far) and they loved it. It is a different take than the Mos Esley cantina than we see in the FR. Theros is also a lot humanocentric and works out quite well. See my post on the other thread about my humanocentrism in Greyhawk on how ro approach it. It works quite fine.

You say that it would not work, yet this is not what I have seen. When the setting is explained, young players get in it really fast. They are more open minded than what you give them credit for.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I disagree. I have introduced a lot of young players (5 groups so far) and they loved it. It is a different take than the Mos Esley cantina than we see in the FR. Theros is also a lot humanocentric and works out quite well. See my post on the other thread about my humanocentrism in Greyhawk on how ro approach it. It works quite fine.

You say that it would not work, yet this is not what I have seen. When the setting is explained, young players get in it really fast. They are more open minded than what you give them credit for.

I didn't make myself clear. I did not mean that it's impossible to play in Greyhawk. Every gaming group is different. I'm sure you could get players interested in almost any kind of material, if you're passionate about it and your enthusiasm is contagious.
What I'm saying is that no one in this thread has managed to describe what Greyhawk is - or could be - in a way that would make a new GH book distinctive and interesting to new GMs and players. Or rather, those who tried to do that didn't get the approval of the Greyhawk grognards. Which leads me to think that releasing a 5e version of the Greyhawk campaign setting is probably impossible.

 

[Eric V]

Great historical run through, Snarf Zagyg.

I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I loved the 1983 box with my heart, but the best thing to happen to Greyhawk was From the Ashes. It took the articles Gygax was writing in Dragon Magazine and made carried them out a couple years. That’s the Greyhawk grittiness I want a 5e Greyhawk to bathe in.

So true. Loved Carl Sargent's work.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It would require somebody who can better define the setting than how it has been largely described in 5e. The setting is on the brink of war. There's a lot of nations who are packed together and don't trust each other. The realms has several nations but you don't have the constant threat of conflict. Mystara's nations are packed right next to each other but you've got two giant empires in Thyatis and Alphatia locked in a cold war that isn't going hot anytime soon.

It's a low magic setting in the fact that almost all the magic is going to be low level. A fireball is not a spell most people see cast, a meteor swarm spell is talked about only in legends. High level characters number in the dozens, you don't find them in every single town like a good chunk of the realms.

The theme of Greyhawk is tension. Focus on that. War is looming. There's big bads just on the edge of civilization waiting to attack. Just ask the Duchy of Geoff. Drow are the unseen boogie men rather than a playable race. Ramp up the fear of the unknown. Play up the racial tensions that are a major factor in the setting. Sell Greyhawk on its theme. And get somebody that understands that to be the pitchman.

What I find amusing about this post, is that this is exactly how I would describe Eberron.

The War was paused, not ended. Political, religious and racial tensions are still high. A single spark could ignite everything.

Most of the magic in the setting is low-level. There is a chance you've seen battle magic, but the dead being returned to life is something spoken about, not something you would expect to happen. Powerful NPCs include a figure head child priestess, a Tree, and a court of spirits bound to their isle. No one can go and do anything about the majority of events in the setting.

There are differences. Eberron feels more connected, the organizations feel more powerful and organized, but everything you said here, can apply there.

Based on their characterization of me in the sister thread to this one, I don't think that OP is really interested in digging into the meat of what makes Greyhawk feel like Greyhawk. I am not certain why, but they seem to take our attempts at trying to get something concrete to work from in a discussion as painting them in a corner so that we can say "AHA, Greyhawk isn't with a campaign setting!".

I have legitimately tried to work with everyone here to try to nail down some themes for the setting to work from but I'm having a strangely hard time getting the big fans to engage on a level deeper than broad brush ideas.

I was just wondering about that.

Like, I'm 9 pages in the thread and the best we have is "more political and the PCs work for money, not the good of the world" along with some "grittier and less magic" being tossed around.

But, none of that sounds like something I can't do in another setting.

Since I've been deep diving Eberron, let me just reference it again. Q'Barra or the Demon Wastes are a great place for a gritty, desperate struggle against threats like disease, injury, and "low level" monsters on the frontiers. Poltical? Eberron is defined by the politics of the Houses, the Five Nations, the various religions and even mercenary bands which tend to have political ties.

And in a setting with Mega-corp proxies, working for profit and glory is more common than being a good person.


Not that I don't think Eberron is very very different from Greyhawk but... Greyhawk doesn't seem to lend itself to these sort of elements any more than any other setting. Sure, FR has the NPC problem if you run it "canonically" but you don't have to ever introduce those characters. So, it circles back to me. What about Greyhawk as a setting is the hook?

I could have a player come up to me and say "I want to play a game that focuses on the Psychic Oppression of the Riedran people and how it might be possible to fight an enemy that controls the minds of an Empire." or "I want to play a game that focuses on the Reconstruction of Neverwinter, after it was destroyed by yet another cataclysm, and how the forces of the Thayans are trying to infiltrate while the city is weakened"

But, I don't know anything about Greyhawk. They have an evil empire run by a half demon... that is interesting, but I don't know anything more about that land than that. Is he just sitting in his castle waiting for us?

There is a council of powerful wizards? Okay, get in line behind every setting ever.

What is actually a hook for the setting? What am I exploring? Why should I care about [insert name here]?

In addition to the long post I made yesterday, there's the old "Greyhawk in the Hawk" post from the Greytalk listserv days which might help focus the tone/elements-that-define-the-setting discussion a bit more concretely. I didn't post this earlier since it really positions GH and FR in direct opposition, and I don't think that's very productive, but I think that it is still useful as a quick prompt to try to build some more specificity into the discussion.

This was originally written by the Greytalk user Nitescreed and published to the listserv in 1996:

Allan.

A very interesting post, but I find myself... not quite seeing the difference in most of these.

Like, 1, 2 and 3 are just running a player focused campaign that cares about the Lore. I mean "Greyhawk has a history that informs the setting" is about as generic a statement as I think you can make.

4, 5 and 6 really kind of confuse me. There is a vast variety of evil in Greyhawk, but nowhere else? Villains have no backstory in other settings? That doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can ever tell. Again, I've been deep diving Eberron recently, but the Dreaming Dark, The Lords of Dust, The Daelkyr, Lady Illmarrow, The Daughters of Sora Kell? All of them have deep backstories tied into the history of the setting, and are threats that have arisen and been beaten back time and time again, shaping the history of the world.

7... Seven is the weirdest claim that I often see. Especially since (and I know this wasn't your post, but an old repost of someone else) but they talk about militant neutrality, and how they prevent good or evil from winning.... and then list all the times they stopped evil.

I never hear about the time Mordenkainen destroyed the church of Pelor. Or some other time when these "keep the balance" people attacked the forces of Good. And often, when I see the argument that "good" can't be allowed to win, it is because good becomes tyrannical and evil when it wins... which means it was never good.

Now, I will agree that FR is certainly a world where good is more prevalent than neutral or evil. The Good Guys are definetly winning in FR, but is "the fight between good and evil is more evenly matched" really have enough appeal to make a full setting stand up on?

And 8.. is a good point, but I think that doesn't really apply to the setting unless there are rules for customizing your own spells. Which would immediately be taken up by every setting because that is a thing everyone would want to do. Greyhawk just had the luck to be the first setting, so it got to name some of the iconic spells.


So, in all, I think that was a very good post, but I think my confusion is clear on why it leaves me scratching my head. None of that is really unique. Unless the history is so compelling to be able to stand on its own.

I didn't make myself clear. I did not mean that it's impossible to play in Greyhawk. Every gaming group is different. I'm sure you could get players interested in almost any kind of material, if you're passionate about it and your enthusiasm is contagious.

What I'm saying is that no one in this thread has managed to describe what Greyhawk is - or could be - in a way that would make a new GH book distinctive and interesting to new GMs and players. Or rather, those who tried to do that didn't get the approval of the Greyhawk grognards. Which leads me to think that releasing a 5e version of the Greyhawk campaign setting is probably impossible.

Honestly... I wonder if part of it is that people just assume that everyone knows the plot points of Greyhawk.

Like, people keep saying "The Scarlet Brotherhood" like they are a big deal, but I literally have no idea who that is. The history of Greyhawk is supposedly incredibly important to running it... but I have no idea what that history is.

I can name nearly a dozen cities and countries for FR, but for Greyhawk I only know that there is the Free City of Greyhawk... and I have no idea why it is called the Free City. Is it in the middle of that Evil Empire of Iuz? What makes the city of Greyhawk special enough that I'd want to go there?

 

[Helldritch]

Pleasing everyone is impossible. It has always been the case and it will always be that way. But a middle ground can be reached without too much troubles. I know I did it. You don't even need to cut or remove anything from the PHB to make Greyhawk usable, believable and acceptable to old gragnards like me.

The grittiness I do in Greyhawk is more fun than many young gamers are led to believe at first sight. After seeing a few games I was hosting in our local gameshop they got interested in the setting. I gracefully gave them my notes on "my" Greyhawk and they are now using it. A lot of my notes are about adaptation from earlier editions organisations such as the Bardic college and their locations. Various locations os monastic traditions and the 5ed subclasses you can find in them. What types of barbarians can you find with the Tiger Nomads, Wolf tribes etc... I even made the battle rager available to all races but restricted its origin in the gladiatorial pits of the Pomarj.

Greyhawk can be easily adapted to 5ed and doing it can be acceptable for most people. Old and young players alike have a lot to learn from one of the oldest setting in D&D.

 

[Voadam]

Oerth is connected to the multiverse (indeed, its GH's model of the planes that other settings must bend to conform with, not vice versa), it has plenty of other sentient races (some of which have animalistic features) and doesn't feature any cataclysms or RSEs that would have killed off any particular race, class, or monster.

Actually . . .

WG8 Fate of Istus was the 1e to 2e Realm Shaking Event that killed off Assassins, Illusionists, and Monks. It introduced a plot by the Goddess of Fate involving the Red Death plague and hero involvement to reshape the world to 2e and kill off 1e classes not supported as classes in 2e. Not quite the FR Time of Troubles, but at least it did not introduce Ao.

Later you had the Greyhawk Wars which did not get rid of any race, class, or monster but did shake the realms of Greyhawk significantly and remake the world into the Dark Fantasy version of Greyhawk that was From the Ashes until the later WotC era soft reboot to the earlier baseline with rebuilding the broken Circle of Eight in Return of the Eight and the recovered Crook of Rao artifact banishing Iuz's FTA demon hordes as seen in the setting books Greyhawk Players Guide and The Adventure Begins.

2e to 3e had Die Vecna Die which started in Greyhawk with Iuz then involved Vecna failing to reshape the multiverse from Sigil to make him an overgod and only reshaping things for Greyhawk to be the default 3e setting with Vecna going from WotC 2e era demigod to full on core pantheon god. 3e barely touched Greyhawk directly (especially compared to the Forgotten Realms) but it did give a 32 page Gazetteer I would assume is similar to the original folio (I did not get the 3e one) and a pretty in-depth 200 page Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

Snarf missed a lot of fun stuff in rage quitting after WG7 Castle Greyhawk.

(He did manage to avoid things like WG9 Gargoyle, WG10 Child's Play, and WG11 Puppets so there is a bright side)