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

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'd be happy with a short setting document that had very basic setting details - deities and domains, and maybe some backgrounds, a discussion of races and subclasses, a brief timeline - and then opening Greyhawk up on DMs Guild with an express statement that people can write stuff for any time period they like.

I would prefer a full campaign setting book, but that would be sufficient.

Honestly, we have now passed the six year mark of 5e (yes, the PHB was released more than six years ago). We are almost five years out on the DM's Guild.

Geryhawk continues to be mined for its IP-
Ghosts of Saltmarsh (set in GH)
Tasha (GH)
Mordenkainen (GH)
Tales from the Yawning Portal (4/7 adventures in Greyhawk)

....and yet, we still cannot officially get 3PP for Greyhawk on the DM's Guild. That's frustrating.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That's...actually a great idea. Goodman Games would do it right, to be sure.

Wow, I just read 11 pages of this discussion. Personally, I think I would be happiest with Goodman Games giving it the "1e reincarnated" treatment. Publish the folio and boxed set ('83) in their original forms, a 5e update, and some historical essays and artwork in a large hard cover.

This. From the Ashes, Living Greyhawk, and so on all spring to mind. Heck, Greyhawk was the default setting for 3e. I think part of it is that there's this perpetual seeking of the Platonic Ideal of Greyhawk, as Gygax intended it. And that attitude has unfortunately stifled the development of the setting.

I've been saying it for years: Greyhawk fans are their own worst enemies.

Here's one of the primary central problems with Greyhawk. The vocal fans complain that the setting isn't supported, but when stuff gets published, they don't like it. They don't want setting development, but if something gets published which has nothing new, there's always the group that'll complain that they already have all that stuff. It's bad business for WotC and it's self-defeating for the fanbase.

 

[TwoSix]

....and yet, we still cannot officially get 3PP for Greyhawk on the DM's Guild. That's frustrating.

More than anything specifically about Greyhawk, I understand this frustration. WotC has several old IPs that are beloved by a few but well below being commercially viable for a mainstream release. Why not leverage that in the DMsGuild? I can see why they're holding back Dark Sun and Dragonlance, but are they really going to do anything with Birthright? Greyhawk? Mystara?

 

[Remathilis]

I totally agree that when you aren't aware of much of Greyhawk's history, it is a hard setting to nail down what it's theme actually is.

I think when you imagine each campaign setting, it's always a good idea to reference a different, more popular fantasy property (whether or not it is released after or before) as a reference point. Dragonlance is an epic fantasy tale of a major war (or series of wars), much like Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time. Forgotten Realms is a cosmopolitan fantasy world with some clearly differentiated forces of good and evil (MMO World of Warcraft, or Ivalice Final Fantasy). Dark Sun is a post apocalyptic fantasy wasteland, where city-states compete for resources across a desert (John Carter of Mars).

Greyhawk most reminds me of two properties, at least in style: Moorcock's novels, and Conan the Barbarian. I'm going to use Conan as the reference as I have a better memory of that property and can better explain the similarities.

Conan of Cimmeria is an odd hero... in that he's barely a hero. He travels from adventure to adventure, fighting monsters and evil wizards, but his motivations are less than noble. Usually, he is fighting simply for survival, to take control of a kingdom, or just treasure. He behaves much like the PCs that Gygax and his original players made, who weren't particularly good-aligned, and instead were delving in dungeons for treasure, not to save a princess.
Our hero is the hero not because he's good, but because his enemies are worse. Much like Greyhawk, this is a world that requires an uncompromising and hard hero who is willing to stand up to the slavers of the Sea Princes, or the Hordes of Iuz.
The world of Hyperborea also matches Greyhawk in that it is a world in decline. Atlantis has fallen under the sea, and this is a new age with less of the previous splendor.
The common peasant will see little if any magic in their life, and treats it as a sign of demons. A smart move, since most practitioners of magic are indeed evil.

Of course, Conan is far more of a Bronze Age story than Greyhawk, which is more European medieval inspired. But tonally, I find Conan matches extremely well.

That's my explanation at least, I'm curious if people feel if I'm completely off my rocks.

That is actually what draws me to Greyhawk, the idea that the setting isn't Black/White, but Light Grey/Dark Grey.

I tend to paint the difference in GH/FR as pessimism vs optimism. GH is a world that is cynical, mercenary, and a little selfish. FR is a setting that has strong idealists (for both good and evil) fighting for a better new day. Elminster fights for a better world, Mordenkainen lets Oerth sit in perpetual conflict. Neither one is bad, but I think the biggest thematic thing to me is GH has a "you're on your own" feel vs. FR "Fighting for a new day" feel.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

More than anything specifically about Greyhawk, I understand this frustration. WotC has several old IPs that are beloved by a few but well below being commercially viable for a mainstream release. Why not leverage that in the DMsGuild? I can see why they're holding back Dark Sun and Dragonlance, but are they really going to do anything with Birthright? Greyhawk? Mystara?

Mystara/Known World? I mean, yeah. It's criminal that they don't open the Guild for that, given that it currently looks like a snowball's chance in heck that they will release something for it.

I get that there is value in standardization. But it doesn't seem like publishing multiple campaign settings has hurt 5e; I can't imagine that letting people publish Mystara material on DM's Guild to an audience of ... um, hundreds (I KID!) would affect the D&D Juggernaut adversely.

 

[Mark Sabalauskas]

Gygax isn't a Stafford or a Barker, deeply interested in worldbuilding. It may be productive to think of Greyhawk as being different mostly because of unexamined assumptions Gygax is making--recreating the chainmail miniature wargaming experience as setting, simply because it was his default mental model--lots of war, happening mostly between humans ('cause that's the miniatures you'd mostly have) with fantasy elements thrown in as spice.

Could these elements come together into an interesting differentiated new product? Sure, a designer with taste could build something new that leans into exciting elements like "a hard world, on the edge of war, with a distinctly different feel in terms the frequency and nature of magic and non-human fantasy elements" I think this would be cool to play in such a world. But that'd be a choice that this designer would be making, and one can imagine a different designer emphasizing different elements just like a comic writers reboot series in different way.

It was really clear, even back in the 70s and 80s, that Greyhawk was built with much less attention than the Imperium, Glorantha, Tekumel, the City States, Paranoia, almost anything of note. This was true of all of TSRs games in the era--people remember Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, Gamma World and Greyhawk not because of not because they were rich settings--they were pretty much shallow excuses for fun combat encounters. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't give TSR a ton of differentiation to build from out of the box, other than things DnD happened to grow away from as the hobby evolved.

I suspect that TSR's best move would be to ignore Greyhawk until an there is a new edition--save a "world of human kingdoms in conflict with limited magic and fantasy as spice" for a time when that would be a strength (because only the core books would exist). It makes the least sense to release it when people will go "but what about my investment in all these expansion books?"

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Ooh ooh let me try!

Greyhawk is adventurers exploring ancient ruins for treasure against the backdrop of impending continental war and political strife.

It’s a nice attempt, but this sounds an awful lot like standard Dungeons & Dragons, right? Is there anything more? Anything unique?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Again, what's the hook?

It supports both D&D and fantasy wargaming and can easily segue from the first to the second.

 

[CleverNickName]

So what is to be done with Greyhawk? I think there are two simple, easy-to-understand, wrong solutions to the problem:
1. Ignore the haters and publish whatever you want; they are just going to whine and die off anyway.
2. Don't bother with Greyhawk; it's not worth it.

The reason neither of these is really suitable is because ignoring the people that are truly passionate about a product is probably not a good way to succeed (after all, even old people can evangelize) while ignoring the ur-setting of D&D in 5e (motto- "We will bring all ur nostalgia to u while also cultivating the twitch peoples") seems like a poor choice.

The answer, as always, is this- find someone who loves "Old Greyhawk" (WOG) and is also a good designer. And let them make a great product. There is a lot of innate hostility towards new Greyhawk products because, to be honest, there is a long history of them sucking (from the perspective of the Old Guard), with an added dash of the most ill-conceived, worst-ever product (WG7) in the TSR era rubbishing Greyhawk.

But, speaking for myself, I would love to see an "updated Greyhawk" that accentuates the differences in the setting (as compared to other settings) and really emphasizes the swords & sorcery, adventurers for money (not heroic quests) aspects of Greyhawk.

I don't think the "innate hostility" toward Greyhawk is as extreme or widespread as you said in the earlier part of your post; it seems to be confined to message boards and internet forums. Some folks complain so loudly and so frequently online, they must think that WotC is bound to hear them eventually. But here in the real world, in my circle of gamer-friends and colleagues, people seem to like it. The folks that I hang with care less about Realms and Eberron products than the old Greyhawk stuff.

Poor business choice or not: I would purchase an updated 5E Greyhawk campaign setting for my bookshelf. And then I would purchase it again for our Roll20 account, since that's the way we are playing mostly. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who would do so.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The reason neither of these is really suitable is because ignoring the people that are truly passionate about a product is probably not a good way to succeed (after all, even old people can evangelize) while ignoring the ur-setting of D&D in 5e (motto- "We will bring all ur nostalgia to u while also cultivating the twitch peoples") seems like a poor choice.

The answer, as always, is this- find someone who loves "Old Greyhawk" (WOG) and is also a good designer. And let them make a great product. There is a lot of innate hostility towards new Greyhawk products because, to be honest, there is a long history of them sucking (from the perspective of the Old Guard), with an added dash of the most ill-conceived, worst-ever product (WG7) in the TSR era rubbishing Greyhawk.

That's practically my thesis statement.

But a little more succinct.

Maybe ... just add some title headings that are both obscure references as well as being opaque and oblique references to the material within, and you're all set!