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'.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, Aasimar might be a harder sell, but, then again, most people would just think they're a kind of pretty tiefling.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Aasimar are pretty easy in you consider them the equivalent of tieflings: any culture revolving around divine magic and/celestial beings would probably have some kind of Aasimar presence.

IIRC there's a few theocracies in Greyhawk, and that's before things like a birth blessed by a Coatl in Amidigo jungle or a Unicorn in Celene or a Kirin from the Dragon Empire!

 

[Zeromaru X]

See also this:

Those pinnacles look interesting, but I'm searching for a place in the map. I'd prefer an option that would more readily justify a small population in the Flanaess, one that your average farmer NPC™ might have at least heard of if not ever encountered directly (though, one can easily say that the dragonborn of the Dry Steppes came from the Pinnacles).

The Dry Steppes seem to be minimally described, even in the wiki. So, well, if life gives you lemons... I think I'm going to try to get into the Greyhawk wagon.

 

[Yaarel]

Tieflings do not come from the Astral Plane. They are descended from mortal’s who have bred with fiends or worked closely with fiendish magic. For example Iuz is a cambion a half fiend, so his children would be Tieflings.

The 2024 Players Handbook specifies that Tieflings originate from the Astral Plane (Infernal Planes).

Albeit having a Fiend ancestor can initiate a Tiefling line. But then Iuz himself might be a Tiefling. In the 2014 Monster Manual, the Cambion is a Fiend, but I am unsure this will be true in the 2024 Monster Manual, which might make it a Humanoid or even identical with Tiefling.

I view "worked closely with fiendish magic" as the same thing as gaining Fiend parentage. It is a magical transmission, rather than a biological one.

 

[pemerton]

Those pinnacles look interesting, but I'm searching for a place in the map.

I don't think the Pinnacles will be marked on any map. But they're on the map, in among those islands around the upper left edge, I would say.

I'd prefer an option that would more readily justify a small population in the Flanaess, one that your average farmer NPC™ might have at least heard of if not ever encountered directly (though, one can easily say that the dragonborn of the Dry Steppes came from the Pinnacles).

The Dry Steppes seem to be minimally described, even in the wiki. So, well, if life gives you lemons... I think I'm going to try to get into the Greyhawk wagon.

From my point of view, the Pinnacles and the Dry Steppes are probably equally legendary to a villager in Urnst.

But yes, I would see the Pinnacles as more of an origin point than (say) the site of an empire.

 

[Parmandur]

Those pinnacles look interesting, but I'm searching for a place in the map. I'd prefer an option that would more readily justify a small population in the Flanaess, one that your average farmer NPC™ might have at least heard of if not ever encountered directly (though, one can easily say that the dragonborn of the Dry Steppes came from the Pinnacles).

The Dry Steppes seem to be minimally described, even in the wiki. So, well, if life gives you lemons... I think I'm going to try to get into the Greyhawk wagon.

I think if you love the Nentir Vale (which I do, too, BTW, I was not dissing it earlier, juat pointing out it was a different beast), you will find Greyhawk allows for a lot of the same openess to DM creation and discovery in play.

 

[Parmandur]

From my point of view, the Pinnacles and the Dry Steppes are probably equally legendary to a villager in Urnst.

The Dry Steppes might be far distant, but that is why I like linking the Dragonborn to the Baklunish people and culture: because the Baklunish people are common as nearby as Greyhawk & Dyvers, right next door to Urnst practically speaking. So maybe Drsgonborn pastoral clans are more common in the far west, but it wouldn't be absurd for villagers in Irnst to have heard of Dragonborn, seen them or even know some.

 

[pemerton]

A straightforward D&D world requires a town/city (for urban hijinks), a forest (for Elves, and for Bugbears et al to raid from), hills and mountains (for Dwarves, and for Orcs et al to raid from), and an idea of mysterious lands on the other side of the forest, across the mountains, etc.

A swamp and seacoast helps too.

The Nentir Vale in the 4e DMG ticks these boxes. (Though the coast is of a lake rather than the sea.)

So does the mini-setting in the module B10 Night's Dark Terror. (Again, sans coast. I used this for my main 4e campaign.)

And so does the middle of the GH map - there are Dyvers, Greyhawk itself, and Hardby for towns; the Kron Hills and Lortmils; Celene for High Elves and the Gnarley Forest for Wood Elves; the Pomarj for Orcs; the Wild Coast and Woolly Bay; and still in the same general area the Abor-Alz and Bright Desert.

It hits all the traditional high notes for FRPGing.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The 2024 Players Handbook specifies that Tieflings originate from the Astral Plane (Infernal Planes).

The book says they either come from the Lower (Outer) Planes or from fiendish mingling in a Prime Plane. The Astral Transitive Plane isn't mentioned there.

Having Cambions and Tieflings be interchangeable and come from the Astral Plane is not the presented standard. There's nothing wrong with diverging from the standard, though.

 

[Hussar]

The 2024 Players Handbook specifies that Tieflings originate from the Astral Plane (Infernal Planes).

Albeit having a Fiend ancestor can initiate a Tiefling line. But then Iuz himself might be a Tiefling. In the 2014 Monster Manual, the Cambion is a Fiend, but I am unsure this will be true in the 2024 Monster Manual, which might make it a Humanoid or even identical with Tiefling.

I view "worked closely with fiendish magic" as the same thing as gaining Fiend parentage. It is a magical transmission, rather than a biological one.

Specific trumps general and there is zero reason to force the PHB into the setting. Certainly not a hill worth dying on. The PHB is meant to give an example, not as a carved in stone single canon that MUST BE ADHERED to in all settings.