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'.

 

[Cergorach]

You dump your bard corpses? I thought they were supposed to be nailed up to discourage the others.

You better drench them in holy water first, or next thing you know, they're playing death metal all night long...

 

[pemerton]

Let's be honest here, goliaths are not hard to parachute into a setting. Hrm, honking big dudes that live in mountains. When you already have entire giant kingdoms, the idea of goliaths becomes a pretty easy sell.

Love for this. (I've got no interest in yak-folk, sorry.)

In my Rolemaster game set in GH, we had an Ogre PC ("Thiazzi"). He was from the Griff Mountains. In a 5e version of that game, the character would be a Goliath.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

But it's an incomplete campaign setting. As in the setting itself wasn't complete only a region of it was presented.

The Vale and the City of Fallcrest itself started in the DMG, indeed. The other landmarks and regions on the vale come from the adventures (Trolls Fen, Harkenwold, Stonewall, Intermittent, Thunderhead etc) or scrounged from the fluff piece of various Paragon Paths or even Powers. Then they were few supplements: Hammerfast (Necropole of the dwarf living amongst their family ghosts with a orc presence offered as a truce after a war), Vol Rurkoth (a ruined cursed city made for delving Ala Darkest Dungeon or Anor Londo from DS) and the Threat to the Nentir Vale (a monster manual fleshing out the factions of the Vale).

Now, the rest of the world was fleshed out by various Dragon articles and player options ( Nerath, Karkothi Thronehold, Callidoun, Serpents rift, Arkosia and Bael Turath etc), ending with the board game that now serves a as general world map.

This is also when the Echo planes of the Feywild (Shinalestra, Cendriane, the Feydark, the fomorian kingdom, the Brokenstones werebeast land) and the Shadowfell (Gloomwrought, Palace of Memories, the Shadowdark, the Raven Queen etc) were expanded.

 

[Parmandur]

They need a place to come from. Dwarves have the dwarf cities. Elves the elven kingdom, etc. Cultures doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Greyhawk doesn't have any defined Dwarf cities to speak of in the 1980 treatment WotC is using: they are implicitly assumed to come from the Hills and Mountains, probably. Same with Gnomes and Halflings. The PHB Species can all fit in fine withoitnexplicit justification.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Greyhawk doesn't have anybdefined Dwarf cities to speak of in the 1980 treatment WotC is using: they are implicitly assumed to come from the Hills and Moubtains, probably.

I prefer the notion that if there once was dwarf lands, it's now far in the past and they are now integral part of any kingdom's culture.

Like, a Dwarf from the Hold of the Sea-Princes will have more have more similarities with an human living there than with a Dwarf from Pomarj.

 

[TiQuinn]

They need a place to come from. Dwarves have the dwarf cities. Elves the elven kingdom, etc. Cultures doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Goliaths would likely come from the Crystalmists, The Hellfurnaces, and the Barrier Peaks. Much of that area was previously unexplored. Dragonborn could have a similar origin, maybe having founded their society in the Amedio Jungle. There are enough “blank” spaces in the Greyhawk map to explain where these races originate from.

 

[TiQuinn]

Let's be honest here, goliaths are not hard to parachute into a setting. Hrm, honking big dudes that live in mountains. When you already have entire giant kingdoms, the idea of goliaths becomes a pretty easy sell.

Now, considering we have Yakfolk in Greyhawk, parachuted in whole cloth long, long after the setting was established, I'm thinking Dragonborn are, again, not a hugely difficult sell. There's tons of scaly folk in Greyhawk and LOTS of empty spaces.
But, even though Greyhawk was always the setting where you were supposed to have everything D&D in, long before Eberron took up that mantle, people will STILL endlessly kvetch about how these strange species cannot possibly fit in the setting.

I totally forget about the Yakmen. That’d be a perfect enemy to them too.

 

[Parmandur]

I prefer the notion that if there once was dwarf lands, it's now far in the past and they are now integral part of any kingdom's culture.

Like, a Dwarf from the Hold of the Sea-Princes will have more have more similarities with an human living there than with a Dwarf from Pomarj.

Well, it is that the game assumes that there are plenty of Dwarf Clan holds...in the Hills and Mountains, unmapped. Each Hex is hundreds of square miles, the assumption is that they are out there waiting fir thw DM to detail (same as most Human settlements), with some vague suggestions in describing some geographical areas.

Easy enough to let the new PHB Species in on thwt basis: no need for an elaborate explanation or the establishment of Goliathheim, Home of the Goliaths, or Draconia, Land pf the Drafonborn.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Goliaths would likely come from the Crystalmists, The Hellfurnaces, and the Barrier Peaks. Much of that area was previously unexplored. Dragonborn could have a similar origin, maybe having founded their society in the Amedio Jungle. There are enough “blank” spaces in the Greyhawk map to explain where these races originate from.

I think its pretty clear that the dragonborns are the descendants of specimens from the First World grown in lab by the previous owner of the crash starship in the Barrier Peak. They emerged from their vats a century ago and created a strange culture based around the worship of Bahamut (spoiler: the name of the crashed star freighter they came from), the great metalic dragon. That's why you can still find weird techs in the barrows of their shamans.

 

[aco175]

Like most D&D questions, it only matters when it matters talking about where goliaths and dragonborn come from. The typical "Far away homeland, but over time they spread like other races and while rare, can be found in most places." seems to work. As long as it is far away from your campaign area, it does not matter. The typical elves, dwarves, and humans tend to have lost kingdoms over time and ruins to explore and mixed lore on how those people came to live in this spot.

When it matters, the DM can find a place or make a lost kingdom of dragonborn that fell into ruin. It would be nice to have something more 'official' to go on.