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

[Paul Farquhar]

It will be interesting if they consider the history of Greyhawk and use it as an example of how you can take a baseline, human-centric, lowish magic (with pockets of high magic) setting, and then find ways to adapt that to 5e rules where almost all modern groups will be magic-using non-humans.

Player character exceptionalism was a baseline assumption of early D&D, and hence Greyhawk. The general population makeup was never expected to resemble an adventuring party.

 

[Maxperson]

Player character exceptionalism was a baseline assumption of early D&D, and hence Greyhawk. The general population makeup was never expected to resemble an adventuring party.

That is true.

 

[Pauln6]

Player character exceptionalism was a baseline assumption of early D&D, and hence Greyhawk. The general population makeup was never expected to resemble an adventuring party.

Yes very true! And of course in 1e half the group was human or you were missing key classes.

 

[Hussar]

Yes very true! And of course in 1e half the group was human or you were missing key classes.

According to what we know about what people play, that’s still largely true. Maybe not half, but a good solid third of pcs are human.

Things haven’t changed that much.

 

[teitan]

Greyhawk offers a lot. Beyond the 50th anniversary it is also a setting where immense depth can be explored and exploited in 24-32 pages. It’s easy to make your own as a DM. It’s darker with more comparison to The Witcher than to Tolkien without being overwhelming and it has those shades of grey, that while the evil is EVIL, the not so evil is not so bad. It’s far from vanilla fantasy as we see it now.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, it's funny. I'm currently doing a short campaign using The Infernal Machine. It's a super deep dive into D&D history - one of the parts is going to the Tomb of Horrors while it's being built and the other part is set in the Temple of Moloch (of the AD&D PHB cover fame). Great stuff and super deep dive into Greyhawk.

Now, according to canon, the Tomb of Horrors is set in the Vast Swamp. Fair enough. Not a whole lot written about this area. But, what interests me is Sunndi to the north. A fairly beefy sized nation that has always had a very high percentage of non-humans and is known as a refuge for non-humans. Other than that, there's virtually no information about Sunndi that I could find. Couple of paragraphs and that's about it.

For those looking for where dragonborn could come from, that's a pretty easy candidate.

 

[Parmandur]

Heh, it's funny. I'm currently doing a short campaign using The Infernal Machine. It's a super deep dive into D&D history - one of the parts is going to the Tomb of Horrors while it's being built and the other part is set in the Temple of Moloch (of the AD&D PHB cover fame). Great stuff and super deep dive into Greyhawk.

Now, according to canon, the Tomb of Horrors is set in the Vast Swamp. Fair enough. Not a whole lot written about this area. But, what interests me is Sunndi to the north. A fairly beefy sized nation that has always had a very high percentage of non-humans and is known as a refuge for non-humans. Other than that, there's virtually no information about Sunndi that I could find. Couple of paragraphs and that's about it.

For those looking for where dragonborn could come from, that's a pretty easy candidate.

Yup, or there could be Dragonborn among the Paynim, or seafarers from the East, or merchants from the far West...any number if explanations.

 

[Parmandur]

Heh, it's funny. I'm currently doing a short campaign using The Infernal Machine. It's a super deep dive into D&D history - one of the parts is going to the Tomb of Horrors while it's being built and the other part is set in the Temple of Moloch (of the AD&D PHB cover fame). Great stuff and super deep dive into Greyhawk.

Now, according to canon, the Tomb of Horrors is set in the Vast Swamp. Fair enough. Not a whole lot written about this area. But, what interests me is Sunndi to the north. A fairly beefy sized nation that has always had a very high percentage of non-humans and is known as a refuge for non-humans. Other than that, there's virtually no information about Sunndi that I could find. Couple of paragraphs and that's about it.

For those looking for where dragonborn could come from, that's a pretty easy candidate.

Oh, another point in favor of the Vast Swamp:

In the 5E Eberron treatment, Drwgonborn are commonly from the jungle region of Q'barra, and the text actually says they have been there all along but went unnoticed because most people nearby juat thought the Dragonborn were Lizardfolk. So, Mammilian-centrism can be employeed as a reason that Dragonborn went unremarkable upon by the scholar who compiled the in-universe text of the Greyhawk Gazateer.

 

[Hussar]

The other thing to remember is Greyhawk is EMPTY. As in Sahara Desert empty. The aforementioned Sunndi is about twice the size of the UK with a listed population of 150 000 or so.

That’s a LOT of empty space.

 

[Azzy]

Now, according to canon, the Tomb of Horrors is set in the Vast Swamp. Fair enough. Not a whole lot written about this area. But, what interests me is Sunndi to the north. A fairly beefy sized nation that has always had a very high percentage of non-humans and is known as a refuge for non-humans. Other than that, there's virtually no information about Sunndi that I could find. Couple of paragraphs and that's about it.

Heh, I set a campaign in Sunndi many years ago. I'd suggest looking for the content created for the Living Greyhawk campaign.

For those looking for where dragonborn could come from, that's a pretty easy candidate.

Yeah, that's pretty much low-hanging fruit. There's just so many places you could pop them because, like you said, Greyhawk is pretty open and empty—just waiting for an enterprising DM to fill in the blanks.