D&D 5E Greyhawk: Pitching the Reboot

[Quickleaf]

Maybe so, maybe not. Greyhawk fandom is forever stranded in the middle of the road and run over from both directions. I have no skin in this anymore. I have been GH's biggest champion and battlefield general for years. I am quite left with the feeling that Napoleon must have had when asked by his Marshall Ney at the Battle of Waterloo to provide the latter with more troops: "More Troops? What do you want me to do? Make them?"

Thanks very much for sharing your perspectives, Mr. Kuntz, from the frontlines as it were. I've been following the thread with interest. It is a rare privilege to hear from you having been there since the beginnings of our hobby.

I'm curious, upthread @transmission89 mentioned other publishers/people with a strong connection to Greyhawk, and I was curious have you and Luke Gygax ever collaborated or contemplated such?

 

[MichaelSomething]

I would like to remind people that Ghosts of Saltmarsh exists. It's a 5E book that uses Greyhawk stuff. I assume everyone in this thread who loves Greyhawk already purchased their own copy of it???

 

[teitan]

I think the issue is we have different ideas of what is a "low magic" setting. You can have powerful magic users and magic in a low magic setting, IMO.

Now, as for how or why? There are lots of reasons/methods.

I agree with you. I don't think GH is so much low magic as high lethal or dangerous. People think there are all these high powered wizards in GH but there aren't. The Circle of 8 stand out and some historical personalities like Vecna & Acererak but considering thousands of years of history the high level characters all look to have been PCs in Gygax's game and/or key villains as is fitting. The Circle of 8 never even seemed to really interfere in adventures at all until the 2e period unlike Elminister in the Forgotten Realms and the other fan service appearances through modules of that time frame. It's certainly a darker setting. Lots of grey areas to explore.

Low magic to me is LOTR. It really doesn't have a lot of magic, it has a lot of myth and mythical creatures interacting with the world. Some equate low magic with Dark Fantasy but Elric of Melnibone is definitely dark fantasy but high magic, it just comes with a cost. Jack Vance, same way.

GH is definitely in the Dark Fantasy, always has been dark fantasy with its Lieber/Vance/Moorcock influences, and high fantasy arena. So is the Witcher.

 

[Hussar]

Frankly, the whole "Low Magic" thing smacks of grognards looking down their collective noses. "Oh, that FR is alright for the kiddies, it's high magic after all, for those of us with taste, though, it's just gauche". It ignores the fact that Greyhawk most certainly isn't a low magic setting at all. Good grief. You have commoners with magic swords in Hommlet. Actually, looking at any GH example of a town or village, there are multiple magic items in the town, as well as multiple casters, frequently of fairly significant level. Magic was by no means rare or unheard of in the setting.

But, because FR is "high magic", then Greyhawk MUST BE low magic. After all, some folks want Greyhawk to be different and are desperate to throw up any difference they can grasp, even though it completely contradicts the setting itself.

I'm sorry, but, it's laughable that in a setting where you have countries governed by actual GODS, that it's a low magic setting? Where there are artifacts all over the place? Heck, where any given treasure trove had about a 1 in 10 chance of multiple magic items? I mean, how much magic do you need to make something high magic?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Emphasize the PCs are the heroes of this game?
There are no high level characters who can step in when things get bad.
But would that be enough to encourage interest?

I don’t see how that is different from any of the existing settings. As far as I know, none of the adventures released for 5e make provision for a high level NPC to save the party if they screw up.

 

[nevin]

I like the comparison to GOT
But greyhawk was not a low magic setting. It was just that the magic was concentrated in certain cities.
Remember back then level 10 was High.
Despite the ever present desire on the internet for low magic games every setting that has been successful was not low magic. Low magic has always had a much smaller playrbase and appeal.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Thanks very much for sharing your perspectives, Mr. Kuntz, from the frontlines as it were. I've been following the thread with interest. It is a rare privilege to hear from you having been there since the beginnings of our hobby.

I'm curious, upthread @transmission89 mentioned other publishers/people with a strong connection to Greyhawk, and I was curious have you and Luke Gygax ever collaborated or contemplated such?

Hi Quickleaf. Thanks for the nod.

I have spoken with Luke Gygax many times and we have talked about possible future cooperation given a successful conclusion of what has been an ongoing mess re the Gygax Estate. To summarize, there are three principals involved in that outcome: Gail Gygax, Tom DeSanto and myself (because of my 40% ip stake in Castle Greyhawk and because I am the last man standing who can describe the castle and other campaign materials in whole beyond that). Luke has, as of now, no IP stake in the Gygax Estate and is pursuing the second will suit. Like I said, it's a mess. I am only interested in the neutral center view of relating what I saw, experienced, understood and contributed to re Gary's Literary Legacy. IME others in this equation are not as concerned about that center view for various reasons known only to them. In my view I see this as an ongoing two-front disintegration of Gary's literary legacy, published and unpublished. I am dead set against that happening in both cases.

 

[Oofta]

I would have a small (very small) quibble with that.

I think that the "default" 5e is, to a certain extent ... um ... nobody cares what the peasants, or good people, or autonomous collective, are up to. It's kind of background noise- you care about the extent of magic in terms of how it affect the PCs (can they buy magic items, can they get healed or resurrected, etc.).

But most (not all) people just ignore the more general questions of whether druids help the farmers with animal husbandry, or clerics are healing the infirm, and so on.

The one major difference is if there is a campaign (such as Eberron) where the idea of "peasants" (commoners) interacting with magic is presented front and center- then it becomes very, very relevant to the game.

To put it more simply- default 5e is "no one cares too much about people other than the PCs and magic," and not-default 5e is "woah, there's a world other than the PCs, wonder how that works, exactly."

The core books don't talk about it much one way or another because it should be campaign specific. So in my home campaign, low level magic is very much a thing. For other campaigns, not so much.

In other words I don't think it's a "5E default", it's left up to individual campaigns and DMs.

 

[billd91]

Frankly, the whole "Low Magic" thing smacks of grognards looking down their collective noses. "Oh, that FR is alright for the kiddies, it's high magic after all, for those of us with taste, though, it's just gauche". It ignores the fact that Greyhawk most certainly isn't a low magic setting at all. Good grief. You have commoners with magic swords in Hommlet. Actually, looking at any GH example of a town or village, there are multiple magic items in the town, as well as multiple casters, frequently of fairly significant level. Magic was by no means rare or unheard of in the setting.

Maybe, but you also don't have some of the fairly outlandish and unsubtle magical stuff that the Volo's guides attributed to places like Waterdeep. So there is a difference between the two, nowhere near enough to call Greyhawk low magic, but perhaps shading more moderate, subtle, and enigmatic. Greyhawk makes magic mysterious and eccentric and uses it as macguffins, FR makes it ubiquitous, Eberron integrates it as mundane.

 

[Helldritch]

I like the comparison to GOT
But greyhawk was not a low magic setting. It was just that the magic was concentrated in certain cities.
Remember back then level 10 was High.
Despite the ever present desire on the internet for low magic games every setting that has been successful was not low magic. Low magic has always had a much smaller playrbase and appeal.

Again, it depends entirerly on what you consider low magic. Is Greyhawk low magic? The answer is both yes and no. Magic is not as pervasive in Greyhawk as in other settings like FR or Eberron. In FR, the availability of high level casters is staggering, bordering on the almost ridiculous. In Eberron, magic is so common that even the normal people can have access to it.

In Greyhawk, magic is as powerful as in any of these two settings (or any other for that matter) but the actual number of high level practitioners is way lower than in the FR and thw availability of magic is way lower than in Eberron.

Reasons are many and rooted in the AD&D system where at name level, you were awarded a field, castle, temple, guild or simply a tower with a retinue of henchmen and followers. Most of the time, it was there that these characters were stopping as managing a field was "the" achievement where a character could a actually build an army and play mass battles if it was a thing in his/her group....

Also, at these levels, most characters had found enough gold to live a long and luxurious life. So RP wise, it was logical to stop right there. When such a life a luxury is upon you, why leave it and risk it? So truly high level adventuring was pretty rare (again RP wise) and the lethality of monsters at these levels was way higher than what it is today.

Back then, there was what I called the 9th-12th syndrome where characters were too strong for the weaker monsters, but not enough for the high level threats that high level monsters represented. It was easy for a DM to over estimate the capacity of the players and to TPK a group. As for my self, I estimate that about 1 in 8 groups would survive that junction. At least this is what I remember from my groups and those in my area.

Now, with "balanced" encounters; it is "easier" to reach those high levels and a Greyhawk resurrected would have to take this into account. Would it need a special rule to achieve the feel of the AD&D edition? I do believe so. But the aspect of that or these special rule(s) is open for debate.