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'.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

According to what James Wyatt said in one of the Dragon articles with the "behind the scenes" info, they originally wanted to use Hextor as the god of war (they had reservations over using FR gods due to many reasons). However, given that Hextor makes little sense without Heironeus, and they replaced Heironeus with Bahamut as the god of paladins, they discarded Hextor as

Dawn War Bane I would say is still more like Hextor than FR Bane.

 

[billd91]

Hardly.

It's not that my heart is naturally filled with hate. Rather, I cultivate it in my heart, like a rose. Carefully tending to the flames and fires of antipathy, such that even the blackest cockles of that vestigial organ are naught more than a vessel to allow the darkest impulses of my being full flight, unmediated by the guardrails of empathy, sympathy, or any pathies that might be confused with compassion.

It's not that I necessarily abhor the companionship of my fellow person, it's more that when I encounter someone, I always think to myself, "Self, maybe I should buy them a toaster for their bathtub." And that feeling is unmitigated when it comes to the perfidy of bards.

Saying I hate bards does a true disservice to the deep well of loathing I have cultivated toward those miscreants.

My hatred of Bards is the fuel that warms the cold, dark cockles of my heart as the sun grows ever dimmer during each Winter. I hate Bards like a young child loves Christmas morning; with unreserved enthusiasm.

Some might say I drink too much, but I only drink to separate my knowledge of the existence of Bards from my consciousness.

The obvious implication of this post (and the other Snarf tomes) is that Snarf is a bard whose primary performance is Lecture.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The obvious implication of this post (and the other Snarf tomes) is that Snarf is a bard whose primary performance is Lecture.

 

[Zardnaar]

View attachment 383571

I do.

 

[darjr]

View attachment 383571

I do.

I remember a podcast where in they ran a grappling combat. I’m not sure I could find it now.

 

[Zardnaar]

I remember a podcast where in they ran a grappling combat. I’m not sure I could find it now.

I remember the 2E version that was bad enough.

 

[Azzy]

I remember the 2E version that was bad enough.

Yeah, 2e's unarmed combat rules were just dumb. It's another example of tacking on a bespoke subsystem instead of using an existing framework.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, 2e's unarmed combat rules were just dumb. It's another example of tacking on a bespoke subsystem instead of using an existing framework.

Recurring theme. Crap grappling rules.

 

[pemerton]

It's no surprise that grappling causes a problem in D&D melee combat rules. The core purpose of a grappling attack is to impose a condition (prone, immobilised, whatever) that corresponds, in the fiction, to being grabbed. Whereas the essence of D&D's melee combat rules it that they have no mechanical consequence but hp ablation, and that they correspond to nothing in particular within the fiction (until hp are reduced to zero, which corresponds to dying in the fiction).

 

[Voadam]

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1e DMG grappling rules or 1e UA grappling rules?