D&D (2024) WotC Invites You To Explore the World of Greyhawk

This week a new D&D Dungeon Master's Guide preview video was released. This one features the sample setting chapter in the book, which showcases the World of Greyhawk.

One of the earliest campaign settings, and created by D&D co-founder Gary Gygax, Greyhawk dates back to the early 1970s in Gygax's home games, receiving a short official setting book in 1980. Gyeyhawk was selected as the example setting because it is able to hit all the key notes of D&D while being concise and short. The setting has been largely absent from D&D--aside from a few shorter adventures--since 2008. Some key points from the video--

• Greyhawk deliberately leaves a lot for the DM to fill in, with a 30-page chapter.
• Greyhawk created many of the tropes of D&D, and feels very 'straight down the fairway' D&D.
• This is the world where many iconic D&D magic items, NPCs, etc. came from--Mordenkainen, Bigby, Tasha, Otiluke and so on.
• The DMG starts with the City of Greyhawk and its surroundings in some detail, and gets more vague as you get farther away.
• The city is an example of a 'campaign hub'.
• The sample adventures in Chapter 4 of the DMG are set there or nearby.
• The map is an updated version, mainly faithful to the original with some tweaks.
• The map has some added locations key to D&D's history--such as White Plume Mountain, the Tomb of Horrors, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Ghost Tower of Inverness.
• There's a map of the city, descriptions of places characters might visit--magic item shop, library, 3 taverns, temples, etc.
• The setting takes 'a few liberties while remaining faithful to the spirit of the setting'--it has been contemporized to make it resonate in all D&D campaigns with a balance of NPCs who showcase the diversity of D&D worlds.
• The backgrounds in the Player's Handbook map to locations in the city.
• Most areas in the setting have a name and brief description.
• They focus on three 'iconic' D&D/Greyhawk conflicts such as the Elemental Evil, a classic faceless adversary; Iuz the evil cambion demigod; and dragons.
• There's a list of gods, rulers, and 'big bads'.

 

[Imaro]

People who literally know better continuing to say this is the first time a campaign setting was included in a DMG. Both James Wyatt and Chris Perkins are credited in the 4E DMG. Le sigh.

"We've never included a campaign hub before. Here's one with maps."

Again, the 4E DMG would like a word.

Was the Nentir Vale a complete setting? I remember it being a piece of a setting without anything beyond the vale being described, no world map, no framework for how the Nentir Vale fit into whatever the wider world of the campaign setting was called...

 

[Vael]

Where would Sasserine fall on Greyhawk? I'm about to run Savage Tide adapted to 5e, and I didn't find it on the map.

 

[Rossiland]

Where would Sasserine fall on Greyhawk? I'm about to run Savage Tide adapted to 5e, and I didn't find it on the map.

Here:

 

[Parmandur]

Where would Sasserine fall on Greyhawk? I'm about to run Savage Tide adapted to 5e, and I didn't find it on the map.

On the north coast of the Jungle nesr that bay, close to due South of Saltmarsh across the sea:

 

[Rossiland]

Where would Sasserine fall on Greyhawk? I'm about to run Savage Tide adapted to 5e, and I didn't find it on the map.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Sold!

To build on that (sorry if the idea is unwanted) I made a nice Phandelver-》Prince of the Apocalypse campaign once, using the magic forge of the mine as the place the elemental weapons key to PotA were created, and the drow mage at the end of LMoP be the apprentice of the mad drow mage who forged then. You can even use the level 1-3 sandbox events in PotA original village to flesh out the Phandelver's sandbox.

 

[Parmandur]

Was the Nentir Vale a complete setting? I remember it being a piece of a setting without anything beyond the vale being described, no world map, no framework for how the Nentir Vale fit into whatever the wider world of the campaign setting was called...

The DMG chapter for the Setting covered the town of Fallcrest in 9 pages, and the Nentir Vale broadly in 3 pages. the Nentir Vale is about 18,984 square miles, as opposed to the 6.5 million square mils of the Flannaes. So a 3 page deep dive into one "nation" worth of info compared to 30 pages describing the whole continent of Greyhawk.

I think it is fair for Perkins & Wyatt, who it must be remembered worked on the 4E DMG and the Nentir Vale, to characterize this GH folio worth of information as a deeper dive than any DMG has done before.

 

[Parmandur]

To build on that (sorry if the idea is unwanted) I made a nice Phandelver-》Prince of the Apocalypse campaign once, using the magic forge of the mine as the place the elemental weapons key to PotA were created, and the drow mage at the end of LMoP be the apprentice of the mad drow mage who forged then. You can even use the level 1-3 sandbox events in PotA original village to flesh out the Phandelver's sandbox.

Those are...really good ideas.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Those are...really good ideas.

thank you.

I think LMoP+PotA+ a bunch of adventures and delves from TftYP, GoS, Staircase could be a superb Greyhawk sandbox experience with an overarching plot that can happen over a long time period.

 

[Parmandur]

thank you.

I think LMoP+PotA+ a bunch of adventures and delves from TftYP, GoS, Staircase could be a superb Greyhawk sandbox experience with an overarching plot that can happen over a long time period.

Quests from the Infinite Staircase has a few bits that can fit in there, too, and a lot of the modules from Candlekeep Mysteries, Keys from the Golden Vault and even Radiant Citadel can work in there, somewhere or other, too.