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'.

 

[Zeromaru X]

I love OG Greyhawk ... great to see it back in the game! The Greyhawk hate in 4E was very disappointing.

Do you mean by fans or by WotC? Because, while there was no dedicated campaign book, 4e had a lot of Dragon and Dungeon articles, as well as some adventures and that, and the Greyhawk setting was acknowledged, both in lore and in the informative articles. Unlike what they do with the Nentir Vale in 5e, where they avoid even to mention the name of setting

 

[Demetrios1453]

Did they ever have dedicated products exploring those parts?

Basically no. The Sea of Dust and the Dry Steppes (both caused by the Twin Cataclysms) tends to block communication to the Flanaess from areas further west, so that's where all our detailed Greyhawk information ends. Central and Western Oerik were only very lightly detailed in a Dragon magazine article and some Chainmail supplements, but those two sources have lots of contradictions between them.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Nope! Most of the Flannaes never got dedicated products: in fact, there were no Setting products beyond the Folio & Box set until after Gary Gygax was gone for quote a while, so there is pretty tenuous connection for any dedicated product for the Setting.

They were beginning to produce regional products in the manner of the Forgotten Realms in the late TSR era. WGR3 Rary the Traitor overs the Bright Desert, WGR4 The Marklands covers Nyrond and Furyondy, and WGR5 Iuz the Evil covers the areas ruled by Iuz (which at that point included places like the Bandit Kingdoms, the Horned Society, and the Shield Lands). Ivid the Undying (which would have been WGR7) covers the Great Kingdom, but, although the text and art commissioned for it were completed, it was never published (and the product line discontinued), but was issued as a free download on the TSR (and later Wizards) website.

After that, in the WotC years, the only regional geographic supplement was 1999's The Scarlet Brotherhood, as far as I'm aware

 

[Parmandur]

They were beginning to produce regional products in the manner of the Forgotten Realms in the late TSR era. WGR3 Rary the Traitor overs the Bright Desert, WGR4 The Marklands covers Nyrond and Furyondy, and WGR5 Iuz the Evil covers the areas ruled by Iuz (which at that point included places like the Bandit Kingdoms, the Horned Society, and the Shield Lands). Ivid the Undying (which would have been WGR7) covers the Great Kingdom, but, although the text and art commissioned for it were completed, it was never published (and the product line discontinued), but was issued as a free download on the TSR (and later Wizards) website.

Right, but that is a pretty select handful of titles, covering a pretty thin slice of the Flannaes. My point was less that they didn't offer any detail yo the Flannaes, but rather that at no point did either TSR or WotC really comprehensively cover the Flannaes, let alone get really into the rest of the world.

 

[Hussar]

Right, but that is a pretty select handful of titles, covering a pretty thin slice of the Flannaes. My point was less that they didn't offer any detail yo the Flannaes, but rather that at no point did either TSR or WotC really comprehensively cover the Flannaes, let alone get really into the rest of the world.

Oh, absolutely. I think that's probably a big part of the selling point for Greyhawk is that it isn't particularly well detailed. There's a couple of paragraphs or so of pretty high altitude information about a region but very little specific.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh, absolutely. I think that's probably a big part of the selling point for Greyhawk is that it isn't particularly well detailed. There's a couple of paragraphs or so of pretty high altitude information about a region but very little specific.

Yes, exactly! I like the Forgotten Realms, but that is precisely what makes them different.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh, absolutely. I think that's probably a big part of the selling point for Greyhawk is that it isn't particularly well detailed. There's a couple of paragraphs or so of pretty high altitude information about a region but very little specific.

The idea of Forgotten Realms-level detail for Greyhawk during the 2E era was a huge turn-off for me.

I understand the financial logic behind them trying it -- insomuch as TSR had any financial logic during that period -- but if I wanted to supplements that would tell me about the official types of house shingles* and what silverware different groups used with their meals, I would have already been running the Forgotten Realms.

Having huge amounts of only lightly detailed areas on Oerth is a key selling point for me.

* Not an exaggeration re: the Realms

 

[Demetrios1453]

Right, but that is a pretty select handful of titles, covering a pretty thin slice of the Flannaes. My point was less that they didn't offer any detail yo the Flannaes, but rather that at no point did either TSR or WotC really comprehensively cover the Flannaes, let alone get really into the rest of the world.

Eh, it's actually a pretty sizeable chunk of the center of the setting covered (the areas covered by the Iuz and Great Kingdom books are huge), and obviously the plan was originally do more before that line was suddenly cancelled. Give it another 5 - 6 more like those, and you'd probably have the entire Flanaess covered in FR-like detail.

 

[Parmandur]

Eh, it's actually a pretty sizeable chunk of the center of the setting covered (the areas covered by the Iuz and Great Kingdom books are huge), and obviously the plan was originally do more before that line was suddenly cancelled. Give it another 5 - 6 more like those, and you'd probably have the entire Flanaess covered in FR-like detail.

Sure, but...that didn't happen. So my point was they never went beyond the Flannaes significantly, because they never exhausted the Flannaes itself.

 

[Arcanra]

The idea of Forgotten Realms-level detail for Greyhawk during the 2E era was a huge turn-off for me.

I understand the financial logic behind them trying it -- insomuch as TSR had any financial logic during that period -- but if I wanted to supplements that would tell me about the official types of house shingles* and what silverware different groups used with their meals, I would have already been running the Forgotten Realms.

Having huge amounts of only lightly detailed areas on Oerth is a key selling point for me.

* Not an exaggeration re: the Realms

Oh I definitely concur with this. Even though I run Pathfinder 1e these days, I do it using Greyhawk from the original 1980 Folio, which is a an excellent, lightly descriptive world allowing me to customize areas and allowing the world to grow with the players.