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

[Maxperson]

But if they do as you suggest, in what way are they reinforcing the brand and pushing present and future products featuring those options?

It takes a lot of time and effort to create your own. Most people use the stock versions or slightly altered stock versions anyway. At least if you properly teach them, they get something useful out of it.

 

[Minigiant]

How is this different from...

Planar Categories:
1) The material and its echoes
2) The transitive planes
3) The inner planes
4) The outer planes
5) the positive and negative planes
6) inventing your own planes

Cosmologies
1) The Great Wheel
2) The World Tree
3) The World Axis
4) The Orrery
5) The Winding Road
6) Mount Olympus
7) Solar Barge
8) One World
9) Otherword
10) The Omniverse
11) Myriad Planes

...with explanations on all of those, including the inventing your own planes and cosmologies?

The latter seems better than your examples and teacher better in my opinion.

They don't offer explanations of planes outside the Great Wheels.

Where is Jotenhiem, Muspelhiem, or Nefielhiem?
Where is Xibalba?
Where is the Dinoworld where times is time in the Prehistoric?
Where is the Spiritlands talking spirit animals?
Where is the Plane of Light?
Where is the Caverns, an endless cave plane with no suns?

 

[Chaosmancer]

WotC sure can use the 3e lore. They just need to reprint that lore in the 5e books rather than expect that DMs will own a 20-year-old book from two editions previous.

What made you think that I was saying they can't use that lore? I mean, all those examples I wrote were literally just examples that I made up on the fly. You didn't think I owned Races of Stone, read the lore, dismissed it, and was trying to make people use my lore instead, did you?

No, but you and others keep acting like the inclusion of Goliaths into Greyhawk is uniquely difficult, something that wouldn't need to even be addressed if they just made a new setting. Yet, what you want is the exact same thing you want for the humans, elves, dwarves, halflings gnomes... so I'm confused. Where is the unique problem? Why are Tieflings, Goliaths, Orcs, and Aasimar problems that are arising in the 5e version of Greyhawk if they are literally just needing identical treatment to everything else?

Sure it can be done without mentioning those species. But since Greyhawk didn't contain those species when it was released, and people in this thread have expressed a need to know where they come from[1], it makes sense to kill two birds with one stone and use this as an opportunity to show where they're from.

[1] And the fact that people were wanting something official to tell them where those species are from rather puts a damper on the idea that every DM is going to be able to instantly know where those species are from.

I never said they would instantly know. But if they made a new, never-before-seen setting... they'd also have to do this, but just with everything instead of with the newer stuff. So again, this doesn't seem like an "issue" with them deciding to do this chapter featuring Greyhawk. It is more of a convenience to use them, instead of a need.

Well, to start with, actions can be taught. Writing and painting are actions (as are any other creative field out there), but you can teach people how to write and paint--how to emulate styles, how to get certain effects, how to refine until you get the finished product you want.

Secondly, while "worldbuilding" may be a verb, it's also a handy term because "body of writings, illustrations, maps, and other forms of media that contain information about a fictional setting you have created or are in the process of creating" is a very wordy noun.

Thirdly, you are literally complaining about a part of speech. Would you like to address the actual topic at hand, or do you want to continue trying (and failing) to distract me by kvetching about meaningless details?

Yes, actions can be taught. I would never tell someone that in the act of painting they should show, not tell. That is a nonsensical thing to tell them. Or have you forgotten what this section of the discussion was about? Yes, talking about all the maps and pictures and writing is part of worldbuilding... but again, I wouldn't tell a map maker "you should make sure you show, not tell, with your mapmaking" because again... how could you "Tell" with a map in the first place?

Which brings me back to what I was talking about. The ACT of worldbuilding is an ACT, not a type of media. It is the action of creating types of media, including informative text, illustrations, and maps. It is not the existence of those things, because that is called a world or a setting. And the act of world-building that we are discussing is firmly in the TELLING part of show don't tell, because the SHOWING part can only be done in novels, TV shows, actual play, places where the showing makes sense as a thing to do.

I could be wrong. Maybe WotC will really lean into the dark 'n' gritty aspects of the setting, make all the NPCs morally gray, have a whole Wild West territory, include a Random Space Mutation table, and have really crazy dungeons. I just have no reason to believe that until I see it.

Why would they lean into the dark n gritty aspects instead of the zany n silly aspects? Why would all the NPCs be morally grey instead of black and white? Have we ever considered Kas, Vecna, Fraz-Urblu, Graz'zt or Iuz all of whom are Evil with capital E's to be morally grey villains? Those all came from Greyhawk.

Like fine, don't believe it til you see it, but I find it bizarre how many people have such strange views of Greyhawk. The Tomb of Horrors and Acerak were not a morally grey group. The portal to Wonderland was not Grim n Gritty. And honestly, I think it would be interesting with how serious the Forgotten Realms takes itself, to have a setting that was just... allowed to be a bit silly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You obviously don't need to go into great detail about the government or law of an area unless the actual adventure is about those things, but it is a good idea to thing of something like "the town is ruled by a mayor who tries to be fair to everyone" or "the city is ruled by a Court of Lords who are often influenced by wealthy lobbyists." You don't even need to name the mayor or lords until you need them. You could even make this into a table, to make it easier to generate on the fly.

Isn't that... exactly what they said?

My advice to a new GM would be to identify/invent a couple of prominent local officials, and to make a few decisions about them, having some regard to what sorts of themes or adventures they might connect to: they're a wealthy land-owner whose power is owed to that fact (much of mediaeval Europe); they're an elected official whose power is due to their ability to command popular support (classical Athens); they are an urban oligarch whose tremendous wealth grants them tremendous informal power, which then demands that they be granted some official position of authority (a Roman Senator or early modern Italian oligarch); etc.

If that seems like too much work, and too much worrying about political sociology, then my follow-up advice would be to do less work, not more! Grab a title from Gygax's handy list in his DMG (or whatever contemporary version of that is available) and just stick it onto an important NPC.

 

[Maxperson]

They don't offer explanations of planes outside the Great Wheels.

Where is Jotenhiem, Muspelhiem, or Nefielhiem?

It tells you. The prime is Midgard. Niflheim is the underword. The rest are in Asgard. You get to Asgard from Midgard via the Bifrost bridge.

By the by, that is not the great wheel in any sense. Those planes are set up like..............................Asgard! The mythological version, not the outer plane version from the great wheel.

Where is Xibalba?

Down by the boardwalk. What's your point? That they didn't list every possible variation of planes that can exist?

Where is the Dinoworld where times is time in the Prehistoric?

In the DM's head and it comes out in the section on "Inventing your own planes."

Where is the Spiritlands talking spirit animals?

Page 12 under Animism. Combine that with inventing your own planes and you're good to go!

Where is the Plane of Light?

Wherever the DM puts it. This is not rocket science. New DMs are perfectly capable of using what 5e teaches and coming up with this stuff.

Where is the Caverns, an endless cave plane with no suns?

Page 62.

"Pandemonium is a plane of madness, a great mass of rock riddled with tunnels carved by howling winds. It is cold, noisy, and dark, with no natural light."

 

[Minigiant]

It tells you. The prime is Midgard. Niflheim is the underword. The rest are in Asgard. You get to Asgard from Midgard via the Bifrost bridge.

So the DMG doesn't have Jotenhiem.

Down by the boardwalk. What's your point? That they didn't list every possible variation of planes that can exist?

They don't have to list EVERY plane.

Just SOME alternatives!
Or ONE. I can be okay with one. Go through the process of creating Jotunheim. A plane where everything is big. A place of giants. A plane you can travel to get big treasure that only cost a magic bean to travel to. Perhaps traveled to out of selfish greed, a rich craving for knowledge, or a desperate need for gold in the kingdom's coffers. A place of danger where giants kitted out with magic items defend their treasures from dragons, demons, devils, and fey and raid the same for more.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Where is Jotenhiem, Muspelhiem, or Nefielhiem?

The first two are part of Ysgard, with Jotenheim being a realm within the first layer and Muspelheim being the plane's second layer. Niflheim is the second layer of the Gray Wastes (of Hades).

 

[Hussar]

The point was that they weren't in the 2014 PHB. They were in the 2014 DMG.

So the 2024 DMG can refer to species in another chapter of the 2024 DMG.

But Tabaxi and others will likely not be in the DMG. So your point is a bit off.

 

[Hussar]

How about either.

How about determining world info that you will commonly and uncommonly need and teaching people to make the version that works for them best.

Because the DMG isn’t a thousand pages long?

Bottom up allows dms to get to playing faster. That’s the goal here isn’t it? Telling DMs to spend dozens of hours doing top down is a bad idea.

 

[Remathilis]

They don't offer explanations of planes outside the Great Wheels.?

Why should they? D&D is a Multiverse of different worlds under a shared planar setup.

Where is Jotenhiem, Muspelhiem, or Nefielhiem??

Ysgard

Where is Xibalba??

Sounds like the Gray Wastes

Where is the Dinoworld where times is time in the Prehistoric??

The Hollow World of Mystara

Where is the Spiritlands talking spirit animals??

The Beastlands

Where is the Plane of Light??

The positive energy plane

Where is the Caverns, an endless cave plane with no suns?

Pandemonium.

Maybe you should try reading the planes sometime.