D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.

[TiQuinn]

I think a lot of the pearl clutching about "the Furrys are coming" is overblown because people can't let go that D&D isn't just Tolkien races anymore.

They’re gonna play Daggerheart.

 

[EthanSental]

This kind of reminds me of my old 2e Dragonlance days where I felt like certain races or even classes didn’t fit cause they weren’t in the novels. And as a DM back then, didn’t like the idea of a player wanting to try something that didn’t fit what I thought was canon. Now since we rarely play as much as we used to, worrying about that doesn’t come up cause all I want to do is game with friends and have fun for a couple hours when we get together.

Now, a war forged in Dragonlance or any other setting than Eberron, hmm, gotta think on how I’d do it but probably go with a spark of magic brought it (suit of armor, etc) to life. Again if it means a friend or myself having fun and hanging out, we go with it and have fun but every table and person can look it differently.

 

[KoolMoDaddy-O]

So far, the 5e PHB is adding five new species that weren't in 3e: tieflings, aasimar, goliaths, dragoborn, and promoting orcs. Aasimar and tieflings are planetouched and emulate their parent species (and fill in nicely in Iuz's lands as well). Goliaths were always reclusive mountain dwellers, and Good orcs fill the role previously filled by half-orcs. At best, we have to account for dragonborn and as people have said, its a big map outside the Flanaess. "Dragonborn migrated en masse after a major cataclysm in their homeland" is about all I need.

What cracks me up about the you-got-dragonborn-in-my-peanut-butter crowd is that Carl Sargent added half-dragons to Greyhawk all the way back in the June 1994 issue of Dragon Magazine:

“Oerth is a more cosmopolitan setting than many, its peoples long accustomed to magical displays and unusual beings in their midst. Individual power, both physical and magical, is respected and sought; the people of the Flanaess are on the whole practical, calculating, materialistic, and prone to looking out for their own interests first. This dark flavor has promoted a certain freedom from bias among its peoples, especially in the City of Greyhawk. One wag has commented that a stranger can be as strange as he wants, so long as he obeys the rules of the game.

“… Half-dragon offspring who survive to adulthood encounter few social stigmas in enlightened areas, which unfortunately are few in the postwar Flanaess. Most half-dragons will in time congregate in the City of Greyhawk, which has become a haven for them.”

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah it's not going to change with the new 6e GH, agreed. There would be a setting "cool" way to introduce more rare and "funky" races previously not seen in the setting. And, there would be the lame out version of, now we say they were always there, you know just because.

Find a cool way to let DB come around and others, make them rare or visitors from another unknown continent, etc... you could do a zillion cools ways better than, hey they were always there because we say so.

You can do that if you wish, and for each of the dozens of other races that have never been forbidden, but that’s rather beyond the scope of a single chapter focused on world building.

They won’t say “they have always been there”, they won’t say anything at all.

But you would be hard pushed to prove they hadn’t always been there. I’ve never met a Mexican, but I’m reliably informed they existed in the 1970s.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If a setting can be broken by one wierdo (the single character it takes for a player to play a species) hanging around unharrassed, then imo, that setting isn't resilient enough to be exposed to player characters.

 

[Scott Christian]

But, I am curious why. Why Greyhawk? I mean, sure, 50th anniversary, but is that all? What does Greyhawk have about it that makes it a good fit for the vast majority of current and potential future players who have never known GH?

I loved Greyhawk. To me, it was grittier and more grounded than some of the other more fantastical settings. But, your bolded question - I have no idea. It seems the opposite of what modern players expect or want. Maybe I am projecting.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Then I really don't see the difference, they were unknown or rare and now you find one or them. They might be from some lost island or some lost valley, but they aren't every day. You don't all of sudden have an entire Tabaxai country just made up in the middle or say DB where always involved deeply in Verbobonc politics or somethings. Instead you introduce them "organically", That is what we have done and it worked.

The difference is mainly that if you want to introduce three or four new ancestries, and each one has to come with an inciting event (a bunch of them just recently came over from another continent or plane and stuff like that), then you end up with a highly disrupted status quo. If you just say, "They have been here, no one paid a lot of attention to them, but if one or a dozen of them run around in Greyhawk city, it wouldn't be totally out of the ordinary", that's a lot less disruption. Of course, if you take my meaning as "yes, all those new ancestries should be everywhere, all over the place, with no explanation at all!", that's different, but I really never said that. As another poster pointed out, there just has to be room for one weirdo (the PC) who happens to either come over from a corner of the world that hasn't been that well-defined before or from a people who haven't been involved much in international politics recently (or if they were, very quietly).

 

[Minigiant]

I’ve literally never heard this complaint unless the players specifically didn’t like a setting because of some restriction or quirk of the setting, i.e. someone who doesn’t like the sci-fi aspects of Spelljammer or Shadow of the Demon Lord was too dark for them. I’ve never heard a player complain that without a connection to the lore, they couldn’t get into the game. If anything, I’ve heard people complain about lore dumps.

Not connecting to the lore. Connection to the setting.

Playing a class or race and it doesn't mean anything.

You make a Dragonborn monk and

1. You never meet any Dragonborn
2. You never meet any monks
3. You never fight other Dragonborn or Monks
4. You never find any Dragonborn Magic Items
5. You never find any monk magic items
6. There's no legends or major figures that are Dragonborn or Monks that you can aspire to be like or meet or learn about

etc etc

Do I expect WOTC to explain or teach new DMs how to introduce dragonborn to Greyhawk or how to make a dragon nation for Greyhawk?

No, I dont see that happening.

That's why it would be better IMHO to either
1) designing a new setting that displays all the PHB content as understood and major aspects of the setting by default
OR
2) Go through the full process of designing an old setting from scratch and explain each step so a new DM or old DM who never did it can learn

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have no idea

It’s a form of life support. Like the references to Greyhawk in current adventures. WotC can say “we still support the Greyhawk setting” without actually putting out a setting book which they know would not be popular with either the current generation or old time fans.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

{SNIP}....No, I dont see that happening.

That's why it would be better IMHO to either
1) designing a new setting that displays all the PHB content as understood and major aspects of the setting by default
OR
2) Go through the full process of designing an old setting from scratch and explain each step so a new DM or old DM who never did it can learn

I mean, is it possible that we can at least wait and see what WOTC actually does before stating that it won't work, and then asserting our opinions of what we already wanted them to do?

Look, if we already are assuming that WoTC can't do anything right before we see it, then why are we asking them to do other things that we want ... because, a priori, you know that they won't do it right?