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'.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

How do you differentiate between a simple musican and a bard?

One's a bard and the other is collateral damage.

 

[Shiroiken]

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

From what I've heard, that was Gary's plan though. He was going to assume that everyone started at 576 CY, with the first folio covering the Flanaess, then he was going to write more about the rest of the world later. Obviously that never came to be, sadly.

 

[Parmandur]

From what I've heard, that was Gary's plan though. He was going to assume that everyone started at 576 CY, with the first folio covering the Flanaess, then he was going to write more about the rest of the world later. Obviously that never came to be, sadly.

Well, per the Folio he planned a City of Greyhawk Book and a Castle Greyhawk Adventure Module...but he was there for 5 more years, and that didn't happen, unfortunately.

 

[pemerton]

I think that's probably a big part of the selling point for Greyhawk is that it isn't particularly well detailed.

The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer has a lot of detail - a bit too much for my taste.

 

[Autumnal]

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?

California

 

[Zardnaar]

NO! You don't want them to see the dead bards. Because then they don't come to you.

I find it helpful to just wander around, saying things like, "I wish someone would sing some heroic tales," or "I'm really bad at rhyming, if only someone could help me!"

If that doesn't work, there's always the go-to. "I really don't think I have the stamina to keep up with all the desires of that village of incredibly attractive and polyamorous people. What shall I do?"

Inefficient. Do what we did in 2E. Throw the bard down the corridor as a find traps dummy.

 

[Thakazum]

I wonder if they're going to also reference Vecna or keep on pretending he's a Forgotten Realms iconic character whose mom was an exiled necromancer. In Greyhawk, he was an Flan emperor that rose up from being an "untouchable" nobody.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm not saying the Suel people are demonic, but the Suel Imperium certainly was, so that is an ancient history element which would make the presence of Tieflings among Suel descended people normal enough. Tieflings are not themselves evil, they juat bear a historic memory of something in the past...perfect for the pseudo-Arlantian Suel. Also means, given the varieties of cultures with Suel people and influences across the continent, you can easily have a Tiefling of any Background or character concept.

If a Jew-esque ethnic origin was written this way like Suel, it would be overtly Antisemitic.

This same standard applies to every reallife ethnic group that serves as inspiration for D&D fantasy. Consider the upset that the Hadozee origin caused recently because of its vague reminiscence with American racist slavery.

Cultural origins tend to be sacred to a culture. To demonize or humiliate the origin of a culture is precisely the kind cultural insensitivity that WotC 2024 is trying to move away from.

The Suel "flavor" of the original Greyhawk is toxic. It is ethically wrong to parrot its tropes in 2024. Greyhawk needs to evolve for a new century today.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder if they're going to also reference Vecna or keep on pretending he's a Forgotten Realms iconic character whose mom was an exiled necromancer. In Greyhawk, he was an Flan emperor that rose up from being an "untouchable" nobody.

In the recent Vecna book, Vecna was a Flan Emperor from Oerth, what are you talking about...?

 

[Parmandur]

If a Jew-esque ethnic origin was written this way like Suel, it would be overtly Antisemitic.

This same standard applies to every reallife ethnic group that serves as inspiration for D&D fantasy. Consider the upset that the Hadozee origin caused recently because of its vague reminiscence with American racist slavery.

Cultural origins tend to be sacred to a culture. To demonize or humiliate the origin of a culture is precisely the kind cultural insensitivity that WotC 2024 is trying to move away from.

The Suel "flavor" of the original Greyhawk is toxic. It is ethically wrong to parrot its tropes in 2024. Greyhawk needs to evolve for a new century today.

I mean, WotC won't be doing that.