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

[Neonchameleon]

1. The importance of Greyhawk in history, for the future, and for 2024.

Greyhawk is indeed a historic setting - but all that necessarily means is that in the words of Indiana Jones "It belongs in a museum" - alongside Blackmoor and Mystara.

What WotC wants from its non-Realms settings is that they do something very well that the existing ones don't - so Ravenloft, Theros, the Feywild, Spelljammer, and even Strixhaven are all very different from the de facto three core settings of the Realms, Eberron, and Exandria/Critical Role. I don't think the Nentir Vale is coming back as an independent setting because other than different ruins you could more or less just drop it somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Exandria; it even uses the same pantheon complete with the Dawn War.

Wait. What strengths? Why do people like Greyhawk? This requires a detour into ... the Forgotten Realms / Greyhawk feud.

This is the question...

2. Greyhawk is not the Forgotten Realms.
Why are the disputes on TTRPG forums so vicious? Because the stakes are so small.

So one thing to understand about Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms is that while they are often presented as two incredibly similar settings by some ... it is usually wisest not to say that to true fans of either setting.

And it's wisest not to confuse the fans of the local football derby (or pick any sports rivalry) - but they are two teams in the same town playing the same sport.

That is not Greyhawk. Greyhawk has mysteries; the lore is often incomplete. What are the fabled dungeons of Castle Greyhawk truly like? What is the real story behind the Rain of Colorless Fire and the Invoked Devastation? What is the past that gave us all those evocative names for artifacts in the 1e DMG?

What caused the Mourning in Eberron? What is [insert realm of questions here] in Exandria?

Anyway, Greyhawk was born from more of an amalgamation of Swords & Sorcery and vaguely political influences, with countries (and city states) with crazy forms of government in a state of tension.

If you want different forms of government in tension then have I got an Eberron for you?

Both are excellent settings, but despite some similarities, they are very different. The one thing that fans of both agree on, though, is that Dragonlance sucks.

The reason DL is getting a setting book tho is that it is very different from the existing settings. It's Good Vs Evil with Saturday Morning Cartoon levels of flamboyance and clear cut sides.

D. It needs to have a point of view.

Agreed.

i. The dying of the light. (Mad Max)

Isn't this just Dark Sun? Or the Nentir Vale? Or even the North of the Realms.

ii. Politics is a zero-sum game. (Game of Thrones)

Eberron covers this.

iii. There is real evil, and it's winning. (The real world ... what, too dark?)

Hi again Dark Sun. Or even early DragonLance.

iv. Gonzo isn't just a muppet.

And this is part of the problem. The Feywild is part of 5e cosmology. Eberron has magitech and warforged and Cthuloid monstrosities. Exandria has Chronurgists and Echo Knights. Dark Sun has Thri-Keen. Spelljammer just is Gonzo. And Greyhawk? Even core and highly popular races like Dragonborn and Tieflings are ultra-rare.

Greyhawk looks less gonzo than any modern setting. And "Gonzo ... because there's a crashed spaceship" is a really hard pitch in the year of an updated Spelljammer.

There you have it.

Exactly. There's no unique selling point presented. All we have is "Greyhawk is old"

WotC tried to make Greyhawk happen at the end of the 90s and again with 3.0, making it the default setting, using "Back to the dungeon" as a tagline, and with Living Greyhawk. It didn't happen twenty years ago; what has changed to make a revival now more likely to work?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Isn't this just Dark Sun? Or the Nentir Vale? Or even the North of the Realms.

I can list other settings that aren’t published!

Eberron covers this.

No, it doesn’t.

Hi again Dark Sun. Or even early DragonLance.

I can list other settings that aren’t published!

Greyhawk looks less gonzo than any modern setting. And "Gonzo ... because there's a crashed spaceship" is a really hard pitch in the year of an updated Spelljammer.

Ellipses …. Shouldn‘t be used to excise the meat of a comment in order to avoid the point. That wasn’t what I wrote.

How do you say that you know nothing about a setting without actually saying you know nothing about it?

Exactly. There's no unique selling point presented. All we have is "Greyhawk is old"

Well, there is a difference between saying a setting is old … and saying it is the oldest setting, one that also has the foundational lore that we still have in all of the core books … and we are coming on to the 50th anniversary.

But sure. This seems like an incredibly fair attempt to discuss the idea. Well taken!

 

[James Gasik]

The fact that the crashed spaceship was created not by magic, but an advanced technological civilization seems relevant here.

 

[Mort]

WotC tried to make Greyhawk happen at the end of the 90s and again with 3.0, making it the default setting, using "Back to the dungeon" as a tagline, and with Living Greyhawk. It didn't happen twenty years ago; what has changed to make a revival now more likely to work?

I wouldn't expect a full revival - but a supplement, absolutely.

WoTC has already done a a bit of one - Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and it was both solid an well received.

The last full on Greyhawk book (which was a WHILE back) Expeditions to the Ruins of Greyhawk was fun, big and ALSO well received (well reviewed and even won a Silver Ennie on this site).

So, it's not like their last 2 books have flopped. And people clamoring for Greyhawk are a pretty good crowd for WoTC 40-50+ and likely have disposable income to drop on a supplement or 2!

So possibly get interest and money from younger gamers - a plus. Definitely get interest and money from older gamers, also a plus. Seems like a decent gamble.

 

[Maxperson]

Not really. The Forgotten Realms lore sucks. It is incoherent, you could earn a history degree in the time required to learn it all and it totally breaks versimilitude. Sometimes less is more.

It doesn't suck and you don't need to learn it all. It's there for the DM to dip into(or not) when running the game to add some depth.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It doesn't suck and you don't need to learn it all. It's there for the DM to dip into(or not) when running the game to add some depth.

At a fundamental level, there is a difference between Greyhawk and FR as it related to lore and canon that is neither better, nor worse, but different. And, as a general rule, I think that the difference tends to appeal to different sets of people. I would further say that this difference is mostly an accident and a legacy of history- not something that was necessarily foreordained.

As I have written about before (and alluded to here), TSR (and Gygax) didn't understand that people would want pre-made adventures and settings. That's why they were happy to license that material to Judge's Guild at the beginning; the real money was in the rules (and, of course, TSR was originally set up to publish a lot of different rules for different games). So it was only somewhat belatedly that Gygax and TSR saw that people were clamoring to hand them money for adventures (modules) and a campaign setting. That's when Gygax used the (modified) version of his home setting as the first D&D official campaign setting- Greyhawk.

But there was still the core belief that DMs would just use the material and make it their own. Which is why the original Greyhawk (folio, campaign setting) is unlike more modern settings in a way that is surprising to, say, a modern FR reader- it is basically just a skeletal outline, full of ambiguities and hooks, waiting for a table to make it their own. Every Greyhawk is, essentially, different, because every table will come to different answers to the hooks provided within the setting; in addition, this was completely in keeping with the multiverse ethos at the time, which provided that there were an infinite number of Greyhawks that a person could travel to, each slightly different (in fact, this was the way that people could "port" their PCs from one campaign to the next).

The very first FR, as modelled in the Gray Box, was both different than GH, but also subtly the same in that it provided more questions than answers. To this day, that is why you see that there are people that will say, "I am an FR fan, but I like the Gray Box." In effect, they are pining for the FR version of that early GH ethos (I would add that the Gray Box also had rules for portal-ing your characters over ....). But this is where the paths in the woods diverged.

Because Gygax was ousted, Greyhawk never incorporated all that additional lore (or cruft). Sure, there were updates in the timeline, but because GH never added hundred of narrative books, and computer games, and ate up additional campaign settings, and had to keep retconning features to keep up with changes (the "spellsunderingplague") ... and because there was always some degree of flexibility regarding "canon" and "lore" because of the very nature of how it started ... it was always more open-ended.

FR, on the other hand, as I have stated ... well, the lore has lore that has lore. There are guides that go through, in detail, the levels of canon. The thing is- as a geek, I understand why that is appealing! There are many of us that love to do the deep dives into lore and canon- whether it is Star Trek, or Doctor Who, or Marvel/DC, or any one of a number of subjects that gets the blood pumping (or angered, as it seems increasingly the case). And, as you correctly note- FR, more than any other setting, has the mostest. Of all of it. Which is either a great thing, or a not great thing, depending on your approach.

There are people that totally love all that lore and canon and get into it! I think that's awesome. Others ... not so much. That's fine too.

 

[deganawida]

There are people that totally love all that lore and canon and get into it! I think that's awesome. Others ... not so much. That's fine too.

Speaking only for myself, I like lots of lore and canon and so forth in fiction, movies, and TV shows, but hate it in an RPG. That might be why I've never liked FR, and why I've often described my dislike of it as playing in someone's unpublished novel.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It doesn't suck and you don't need to learn it all. It's there for the DM to dip into(or not) when running the game to add some depth.

This. Viewed as a whole FR lore is a mess, but players don't get to see it as a whole. They only see a tiny part of it. Only the bit the players see needs to make sense.

 

[Mort]

This. Viewed as a whole FR lore is a mess, but players don't get to see it as a whole. They only see a tiny part of it. Only the bit the players see needs to make sense.

Yeah, in a given campaign 95-99% of the "lore" would be just rumors, background or simply non-existent. A DM has his pick and can mostly ignore the rest.

Plus, as detailed as it is, the Forgotten Realms is BIG - so plenty of room for the PCs to blaze their own path if that's what they choose to do.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled Greyhawk thread.

 

[Cruentus]

I'm running a campaign in Greyhawk after over a year running in FR. Its a breath of fresh air for us, where no one really knows as much about Greyhawk compared to FR (due to all the focus on FR, novels, etc.). Its also mostly a blank slate. I can run it straight from the original core box, which really just gives broad strokes of areas, relationships, and lore. Its almost like running a homebrew, except it comes with a huge hex map and pre determined country boundaries (for the areas covered by the maps). I've drilled down into the Furyondy/Iuz border, immediately post From the Ashes, and the party is travelling in that area. Again, I'm left with lots of room for switching up deities, enemies, etc., and none of my players are like "wait, wasn't that X who did that in 1459 DR?"

Granted, what I'm saying can apply to any campaign, but I have no interest in Eberron (steam punk/techno is a no go), or Exandria, or Dark Sun (players moan about non metal weapons), or Dragonlance (we did that 30 years ago). Greyhawk feels unexplored to us, and that's good enough.

Edit: I'm not sure that I want a 5e, current, sourcebook on Greyhawk. I'd prefer they just leave it and maybe focus on some new setting that they can push in whatever direction they want. Although, I guess it doesn't really matter in the end, as we're all free to use 5e, or whatever edition we prefer to run in, and use all the lore thats out there anyway.