D&D 5E Greyhawk: Why We Need Mo' Oerth by 2024

[TwoSix]

I'll say what I said the last time we discussed this topic a few years back. Make it a low frequency-but-intense magic setting, where the Circle of Eight are shadow tyrants and boogeymen to the common people, and play up the Witcher flavored elements, and you have a good candidate for a tonal reboot. Don't need to change lore details, just emphasis.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

So yeah anything that doesn't result in it catching on? That's a "complete" failure. A partial failure would be it becoming popular enough to merit more setting material being produced steadily, but it still not displacing the FR as the "default" setting - something it notably failed to do in 3E, despite WotC seeming to want it to.

This to me is setting partisan cheerleader stuff. That there can be only one winner and the rest get to be trolled as losers for trying, since they’re complete repeated failures.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This to me is setting partisan cheerleader stuff. That there can be only one winner and the rest get to be trolled as losers for trying, since they’re complete repeated failures.

I mean, I think you thinking that makes you a setting partisan, yes. And yes I think WotC's designers are setting partisans in favour of GH, because they keep trying to make it happen even though the audience clearly doesn't want it to. And why would they? The average D&D player is like 27 or something. They weren't even born when GH was a mainstream setting last.

Whereas I would happily see the FR and GH both take a long walk off a short pier. If they kept trying to make the FR happen and failing my attitude would be the same. But the FR seems to be popular and successful, so there's that.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I mean, I think you thinking that makes you a setting partisan, yes. And yes I think WotC's designers are setting partisans in favour of GH, because they keep trying to make it happen even though the audience clearly doesn't want it to. And why would they? The average D&D player is like 27 or something. They weren't even born when GH was a mainstream setting last.

Just to be clear .... WoTC's designers are partisans in favor of Greyhawk ... and yet they haven't made it a mainstream setting in 27 years.

With partisans like that, maybe Greyhawk needs enemies at Hasbro?

 

[Nikosandros]

Just to be clear .... WoTC's designers are partisans in favor of Greyhawk ... and yet they haven't made it a mainstream setting in 27 years.

With partisans like that, maybe Greyhawk needs enemies at Hasbro?

Maybe Mearls might have been something of a GH partisan, but he's now long gone from handling D&D (at least the table top side).

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I mean, I think you thinking that makes you a setting partisan, yes.

I however do not believe that there is a contest to win the setting championship and be The One. I believe the D&D hobby can support multiple settings, even multiple WotC-published settings. (Indeed it current is).

And my stance is that a setting not attaining eternal publishing is not a qualification of a “complete failure”, especially now as no one is even asking for that right now. Much less “dethrone” FR in a dumb face off. You’re pulling that out of nothing.

 

[Helldritch]

I, for one, would love to see a new Greyhawk set. I loved the From the Ashes box set and the whole line that derived from it. The mild attempts made after that were.... tasteless? But they can easily update Greyhawk with the new races and new political intrigues. Anything can be done and frankly, I do not want a reprint, Drive through RPG is there for that. I want new stuff, a new take on Greyhawk that will both shake things up but that will also acknowledge what came before. It is not hard to do.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Would love to see it but WotC has moved one.

Look at what they are doing to Dragonlance and what’s already happened to Faerun. What would they change and alter to Greyhawk so Newer players would buy it?

What are they doing to Dragonlance?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I however do not believe that there is a contest to win the setting championship and be The One. I believe the D&D hobby can support multiple settings, even multiple WotC-published settings. (Indeed it current is).

And my stance is that a setting not attaining eternal publishing is not a qualification of a “complete failure”, especially now as no one is even asking for that right now. Much less “dethrone” FR in a dumb face off. You’re pulling that out of nothing.

You seem to have made up something I didn't say, which rather supports my partisan point, I'd suggest.

What I said was that the attempts to make Greyhawk happen were, individually and collectively, a complete failure. That's not the same as the setting itself being a "complete failure". That's a very different claim and not one I would make. If your intention is to make a setting worth publishing official material for, in terms of popularity, and you fail at that, I believe it is absolutely fair to call that attempt a "complete failure". Don't make up stuff like "eternal publishing", it's not helpful. If they'd managed, in 3E, for example, to even make GH popular enough to be worth publishing a line of GH setting books for, even if it didn't make it to the end of 3E or into 4E, that wouldn't be a complete failure, or necessarily even a failure, just a limited success. But they didn't manage that.

As for "dethrone", if you don't think when they launched 3E, they were envisioning dethroning the FR and replacing it with a resurgent GH, well, I respectfully disagree. I feel like they even said something to that effect, but it was 20 years ago so who knows. However because they got absolutely zero traction, though, they just went with making GH the default lore for D&D in 3E.

 

[Mort]

I, for one, would love to see a well done Greyhawk 5e book.

As for, is it needed? Well, it is by me (and it seems many others) which works for me.

And as @Snarf Zagyg stated, despite being billed as the "other" vanilla generic setting, it isn't - and it certainly doesn't have to be.

It's a setting where the "good guys" are losing, where the big bads are winning and consolidating power and where the goal of the power players (for ex. the Circle of Eight) isn't for good to get on top but for a balance. It can definitely be done as different enough to merit it's own supplement!