Is there any other setting that has a "required reading list" to understand them, in your opinion?
I don't think it's always reading, but I think a lot of settings in a lot of games require understanding of a specific bit of media to properly get what the vibe is and understand them, yeah. Superhero RPGs in general are a pretty good example. Unless you're basically familiar with superheroes, a bunch of RPGs will seem pretty weird to you (and yeah, there's entire sections of the populace, especially 50+ and upscale, who really aren't - my parents might know who Superman and Spiderman are, but they couldn't get the "vibe" of a superhero RPG from that), and you're going to have odd taste in which ones to play, and perhaps odd ideas about which ones are best. I am very skeptical that someone who hadn't seen a least a couple of seasons worth of Buffy could have much of a useful opinion on the quality of the Buffy RPG. I think people who are only familiar with a bit or even none (!!!) of the source material for Exalted can have some pretty bizarre takes on it (or very particular ones). GURPS has quite a number of setting books which do a piss-poor job of explaining the setting if you're not familiar with the material it is drawing from - but they do tend to have excellent bibliographies outlining exactly what that material is.
But maybe just sticking with D&D settings, and I think the only one that stands out apart from GH in terms of understanding the setting really requiring something extrinsic to it is Ravenloft. I pick this particularly because when I first met Ravenloft, I'd barely been exposed to "gothic horror", particularly Hammer Horror and so on, and the whole thing seemed hoity-toity and pretty bloody dumb, just a snooty old-person horror setting for old people. Then like, 5-8 years later, thanks to C4 and other British TV channels, I'd seen like half the Hammer Horror back catalogue, we'd covered gothic horror in school, I'd read a bit of it (including stuff not set by the school). I still found the whole gothic horror thing a wee bit funny, but now I understood the setting, and it not longer seemed hoity-toity and "for old people", but just quite particular about its influences and how it should be run and so on.
And let's be clear, if you're saying this is a failing on GH's part, I agree, completely. The fact that the tone is implied, and not explained, indeed hard to explain, is a real issue, which any revision of GH would have to address. Because we can't, realistically, expect everyone to have read the relevant short stories, novellas, novels and so on.
EDIT - I think part of this is a "fish can't tell they're breathing water" thing, because like, a bet a number of RPGs today which makes sense to most people are going to be kinda-incomprehensible 50-100 years from now, when some "Literary Archaeologist" or whatever digs them up and tries to play them with their fellows. Or if not incomprehensible they might play them in a really fascinatingly different way to how they were "intended". It's probably already happening. Hell, you could argue it kind of already happened with D&D.
But, I am being told that the problem is me. I'm being unreasonable in very honestly saying that I don't know the genre, and that I don't really have time to go out and start researching it.
No. You do have time. You're constantly re-reading stuff, and reading stuff like million-word web novels. You absolutely have time. You chose not to research it.
THAT'S FINE! It really is! You aren't a bad person or anything!
But can't you take some responsibility for your own choices? Own your choices? You don't give two shakes of a lamb's tail about Sword and Sorcery. That's completely fine! But it's your choice. If you were in jail, and not being allowed books or anything but this forum or something, I'd sympathize and maybe be willing to write the the thousands of words it would take to explain it properly (not that I am necessarily capable, but maybe).
I can honestly say I practice what I preach here, too, for once in my life. I genuinely
try to avoid discussions where I have completely no idea what I'm talking about, or read up (if it's cheap/easy to do so, which it is here) if I want to participate.
Fine. I don't need Greyhawk. And you aren't interested in selling it to me. That might be why the setting is still languishing.
I think there are a lot bigger reasons than that, not least that it largely comes across as ultra-generic because in part it's the origin point for so much stuff, but so little known in this era.
Giving out homework lists to participate doesn’t make it a nuanced discussion. It’s just gatekeeping.
Sounds exactly like the sort of thing certain kids said at school when they had really dumb opinions on Shakespeare plays because they hadn't actually bothered to read the play and were just going on stuff they assumed about it from pop culture.
Sorry mate, I know you find this to be "gatekeeping", but in reality, sometimes you have to understand something before you can really discuss it in any meaningful way. But you know, keep on keeping on.
