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'.

 

[Yaarel]

North-west Oerik got "updated" in the Chainmail miniatures game...

Yup.

Here from my thread, is a gestalt of West Oerik, that overlays both the Dragon Annual map and the Chainmail map.

 

[Parmandur]

Anyone noticed James Wyatt kept comparing Greyhawk's 30 pages to a 320 page setting book, could he be referring to Forgotten Realms Player's Guide? Could the FRPG be 320 pages?

My brain connection was to Rising from the Last War, which was 320 pages and both Wyatt and Perkins worked on.

However, it frankly would not surprise me if both Forgotten Realms books next year end up being 320 pages, each. Lord knows they have the raw material to justify the page count.

Whether that is the case or not, it is true that Greyhawk was a perfect choice for this DMG exercise, wince 30 pages are more than adequate to fulfill the original Gygaxian vision, whereas 640 pages might be almost enough to give a good Greenwoodian vision a shot.

 

[Hussar]

Likewise, the alternative name for "Nippon" should still emphasize Japanese cultural flavor.

Umm, no. That's just an extremely bad idea. Rolling all Asian cultures under the umbrella of one country's culture is a VERY bad idea. See, they can get away with the Norse stuff because, well, they're not pretending that all of Europe can be boiled down to a single culture. So, we have Faux Scandinavia, Faux Britain, Faux France, and so on. And that works.

I like the idea of an Asian themed land. But, wow, let's not emphasize a single culture.

 

[Yaarel]

Umm, no. That's just an extremely bad idea. Rolling all Asian cultures under the umbrella of one country's culture is a VERY bad idea. See, they can get away with the Norse stuff because, well, they're not pretending that all of Europe can be boiled down to a single culture. So, we have Faux Scandinavia, Faux Britain, Faux France, and so on. And that works.

I like the idea of an Asian themed land. But, wow, let's not emphasize a single culture.

You misunderstand what I said.

"Nippon" is a Japanesque setting. However, "Celestial Imperium" is a Chinaesque setting. And so on.

The Oerth map has locations to plug in absolutely every reallife culture. So for every setting that draws inspiration from reallife folkbelief, there is at least one location on the map where such makes sense. Gygax intentionally did this, and reallife corresponding locations are part of the Greyhawk setting conceit.

 

[Parmandur]

GREYHAWK SETTING

Aasimar and Tiefling: arrive from the Astral Plane, and have moreorless always been around infrequently.

Dragonborn: are magically engineered Humanoids, created from Dragons while in their eggs. Possibly, they have an ancient civilization elsewhere on Oerth, such as Dragons Island in the Celestial Sea, reported to be ruled by a Dragon prince.

Goliaths: can populate the mountains west from Yeomanry (at the intersection of Crystalmist, Hellfurnaces, and Sulhaut mountain ranges), while Giants populate nearby in the Jotens mountains, north from Yeomanry.

Not that I expect WptC to lampshade this at all, but my personal approach would be to tie each of these modern Species to one of the four major cultural groups in the Flannaes:

• Goliaths I would tie to the Flan themselves: ancient, tied to the land and Druidic traditions all over the map. Not all Giants are in the Crystalmists, so not all Goliaths need to be.
• Tieflings I would tie to the Suel people, indeed I would have Bael Turath be one of the ruins in the Sea of Dust and adopt the 4E story about the Tiefling origins as part of the explanation for the fall of the Suel Imperium. So Tieflings throughout the whole world make sense.
• Dragonborn, likewise, I would link to the ancient Baklunish Empire. Indeed, I would be inclined to make the religous difference of the modern Baklunish lands implied in the texts be a Bahumet-centered "Crystal Dragon Jesus" sort of deal, with the ancient Empire being highly linked to good Dragons and Great Wyrms opposed to the Diabolical influences in the Suel lands. So, Dragonborn elements in the West, and throughout the Flannaes, would follow the spread of the Baklunish people as a whole. Dragonborn Barbarian, from the North? Sure, why not.
• Finally, the Aasamir I would link with the Oerdians, and their religous traditions.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

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...

I know that 4e fans can be rather defensive (and with good reason), but I don't think that Perkins and Wyatt are trying to insult the Nentir Vale here. They just mean that it's the first time that they went this far in including a whole setting.

The N'Vale was purposefully vague in ways that Greyhawk, while also left open to interpretation, is not vague. It's as simple as that.

 

[Parmandur]

I know that 4e fans can be rather defensive (and with good reason), but I don't think that Perkins and Wyatt are trying to insult the Nentir Vale here. They just mean that it's the first time that they went this far in including a whole setting.

The N'Vale was purposefully vague in ways that Greyhawk, while also left open to interpretation, is not vague. It's as simple as that.

I mean, they are literally the people who did the Nentir Vale in the DMG for 4E. I think any comparison shows that their statement is entirely fair: the Nentir Vale as presented was not a "complete" Setting, whereas this Greyhawk Gazateer could have been sold as a floppy book easily enough.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Umm, no. That's just an extremely bad idea. Rolling all Asian cultures under the umbrella of one country's culture is a VERY bad idea. See, they can get away with the Norse stuff because, well, they're not pretending that all of Europe can be boiled down to a single culture. So, we have Faux Scandinavia, Faux Britain, Faux France, and so on. And that works.

I like the idea of an Asian themed land. But, wow, let's not emphasize a single culture.

But but but but...where will I put my very innovative country of samurai, ninja and geisha fighting lung dragons overs the great stone wall separating them from the fur-wearing barbaric nomad riders coming from the steppes to flee the troops of the Kingdom of 1000 Pagodas coming from the southern marshland?

 

[Yaarel]

Not that I expect WptC to lampshade this at all, but my personal approach would be to tie each of these modern Species to one of the four major cultural groups in the Flannaes:

• Goliaths I would tie to the Flan themselves: ancient, tied to the land and Druidic traditions all over the map. Not all Giants are in the Crystalmists, so not all Goliaths need to be.
• Tieflings I would tie to the Suel people, indeed I would have Bael Turath be one of the ruins in the Sea of Dust and adopt the 4E story about the Tiefling origins as part of the explanation for the fall of the Suel Imperium. So Tieflings throughout the whole world make sense.
• Dragonborn, likewise, I would link to the ancient Baklunish Empire. Indeed, I would be inclined to make the religous difference of the modern Baklunish lands implied in the texts be a Bahumet-centered "Crystal Dragon Jesus" sort of deal, with the ancient Empire being highly linked to good Dragons and Great Wyrms opposed to the Diabolical influences in the Suel lands. So, Dragonborn elements in the West, and throughout the Flannaes, would follow the spread of the Baklunish people as a whole. Dragonborn Barbarian, from the North? Sure, why not.
• Finally, the Aasamir I would link with the Oerdians, and their religous traditions.

Works for me.

Re Dragonborn, I suspect old school Greyhawkers prefer "human" species and are adverse to "monstrous" species. Thus there is more objection to the Dragonborn species. So it is easier to place the origins of the Dragonborn outside of Flanaess, where fewer areas of Flanaess have come in contact with them. Meanwhile, the "Dragons Island" seems already perfect for the draconic empire.

The old school also objects to Tiefling. However in the Greyhawk setting it is difficult to object to them when Iuz is right there in the middle of everything.

I think of the Oeridians as mainly "Mediterranean". So "angelic" Aasimar kinda does make sense for the folk beliefs of that region. Likewise some Aasimar would have Greekesque Olympian flavor. And so on.

For me, Baklunish=Siberia and strongly Shamanic.

I object to Suel being demonic, when it explicitly relates to "Germanic" speaking ethnicities, including Norway and England. It is important for WotC to avoid demonizing any reallife culture, even by implication.

 

[MGibster]

A "musician" is a background. A "Bard" is spellcaster class.

Sure. But if some dude with a lute starts explaining the finer points of musical scales, how do I know he's just got a musican background and isn't a bard? @Snarf Zagyg's methodology is to simply kill them all and let Nerull sort them out.