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'.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Really, we don't need any reason other than the demon-infested lands of Iuz (who himself is a cambion) and the devil-infested lands of the Great Kingdom to explain tieflings in Greyhawk. There of course might very well be other sources, but just those two alone are probably the source of most tieflings, especially since they've both been in the fiend summoning business for around a century (even if Iuz was imprisoned for a while, his underlings kept up his work).

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Really, we don't need any reason other than the demon-infested lands of Iuz (who himself is a cambion) and the devil-infested lands of the Great Kingdom to explain tieflings in Greyhawk. There of course might very well be other sources, but just those two alone are probably the source of most tieflings, especially since they've both been in the fiend summoning business for around a century (even if Iuz was imprisoned for a while, his underlings kept up his work).

The Horned Society cannot be glossed over as an origin of tiefling populations.

The Great Kingdom not only has long associations with certain families with devils, but the lost Trask kingdom left us Ur-Flan ruins, including the Causeway of Fiends and the Isle of Curse Souls predating the arrival of Oeridians.

 

[Parmandur]

Really, we don't need any reason other than the demon-infested lands of Iuz (who himself is a cambion) and the devil-infested lands of the Great Kingdom to explain tieflings in Greyhawk. There of course might very well be other sources, but just those two alone are probably the source of most tieflings, especially since they've both been in the fiend summoning business for around a century (even if Iuz was imprisoned for a while, his underlings kept up his work).

Need? No. But it can be convenient to provide a way, way back origin for a character that doesn't tie them to current geopolitics by necessity, and the Suel explanation allows a Tiefling Barbarian with the Sailor Baclground from Schnai, for example, to make sense. Or any other type of character from anybother corner of the map, basically.

 

[Parmandur]

The Horned Society cannot be glossed over as an origin of tiefling populations.

I'll go one further: Tiefling populations can explain the origin of the Horned Society. Make it a Tiefling Oligarchy, boom. Done.

 

[Zeromaru X]

I wouldn't call it important. It's just that Snarf hates bards! Like... more than anyone else hates bards.

Plot twist: Snarf is secretly a bard.

 

[Parmandur]

Plot twist: Snarf is secretly a bard.

 

[Zeromaru X]

The "current" Baklun nation's are very West/Central Asian coded: caliphate, sultans, Pasha, Emirates, Khans, etc. I would want to respect that, without making it too much of a sterotype...and making the Baklunish Empire Draconic with Dragonborn as part of the people gives a nice twist for my money.

I was checking the Greyhawk map, and if the former Baklunish lands were in/near/around the Dry Steppes... there is potential there. Dragonborn in 4e were desert dwellers, so there is a lot of material to use as inspiration.

 

[Saracenus]

Someone on Reddit made this a while back:

View attachment 383022

Just to be clear, the annotations were the work of someone on reddit. The map itself was the creation of Scott W using Profantasy's first Campaign Cartographer program. I believe it was done in the 90s because we used it for a lot of our websites during the Living Greyhawk years (2000-2008). I think I have the original CC file archived somewhere on my computer.

 

[Parmandur]

I was checking the Greyhawk map, and if the former Baklunish lands were in/near/around the Dry Steppes... there is potential there. Dragonborn in 4e were desert dwellers, so there is a lot of material to use as inspiration.

Yes, the Sea of Dust used to be the Suel Imperium, and the Dry Steppes used to be the Baklunish Empire...then they magic-nuked each other.

Pretty easy to take the 4E Tiefling/Dragonborn ancient War story and transplant it to the Suel/Baklun conflict. The Suel Imperium and Bael Turath don't have enough space between them conceptually to slip a piece of paper.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Yes, the Sea of Dust used to be the Suel Imperium, and the Dry Steppes used to be the Baklunish Empire...then they magic-nuked each other.

Pretty easy to take the 4E Tiefling/Dragonborn ancient War story and transplant it to the Suel/Baklun conflict. The Suel Imperium and Bael Turath don't have enough space between them conceptually to slip a piece of paper.

Yeah, I'm thinking having Bael Turath be the capital/main region of the Suel Empire, both name being interchangeable.

And similar idea for Arkhosia under the Baklun dynasty.

A little like Persia or China changed name constantly under each new dynasty.