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'.

 

[Parmandur]

While I agree, we have also to take into consideration that this map is so old that many people consider it true. A great majority of the people who are going to explore beyond the Flanaess are going to use that map (or the one in Chainmail) as their template.

Not going to lie, I don't think very any groups are going to Advenrure too far beyond the Flannaes. And anyone playing om that scale is juat as likely to make up their own Western Oerik.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I do consider Oerth "canon". The Dragon Annual map of planet Oerth itself is a confirmation of the French comic, Black Moon Chronicles (Chroniques de la Lune Noire). Then the Living Greyhawk Gazette, which is 3e canonical Greyhawk, confirms the Dragon Annual map.

The Dragon Annual article explicitly states that the narrator (supposedly Heward) can't even state the map or names are correct.

I think the bigger issue is that Skip Williams (who made the article) and Francois Marcela Froideval produced versions that Gygax didn't recognize as what he did; he commented about the same here in 2005 that he had sketched out to the East, South, North, and West, but in 2005 (well after Chainmail and the French Comic), "So as far as things now stand, there is no remainder of the WoG beyond the original two maps i did."

Again, it's not worth going into, but especially as they have rolled back the 2e and 3e changes to the Flanaess, I don't think we should be looking at the rest of the Oerth that was previously alluded to as canon.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

While I agree, we have also to take into consideration that this map is so old that many people consider it true. A great majority of the people who are going to explore beyond the Flanaess are going to use that map (or the one in Chainmail) as their template.

Well, that's why I try and make sure to note that it isn't canon, but people are allowed to do whatever they want!

 

[Yaarel]

Not going to lie, I don't think very any groups are going to Advenrure too far beyond the Flannaes. And anyone playing om that scale is juat as likely to make up their own Western Oerik.

The prominent Greyhawk fan sites refer to the Dragon Annual map of Oerth. I expect it to retain currency among 2024 fans of Greyhawk.

 

[Yaarel]

I think the bigger issue is that Skip Williams (who made the article) and Francois Marcela Froideval produced versions that Gygax didn't recognize as what he did; he commented about the same here in 2005 that he had sketched out to the East, South, North, and West, but in 2005 (well after Chainmail and the French Comic), "So as far as things now stand, there is no remainder of the WoG beyond the original two maps i did."

Noted. And I approve when the 2024 anniversary of D&D calls attention to what Gygax and Arneson themselves did in their campaigns.

 

[Voadam]

Then the Living Greyhawk Gazette, which is 3e canonical Greyhawk, confirms the Dragon Annual map.

The map in LGG confirms the outlines of the prior annual map going west and its mountain ranges, but it does not address the political or geographic designations (dragon island name, ocean of storms name, etc.).

I also can't quite make out the southeast of the Flanaess and Hepmonoland there in the LGG map to see if it matches up with the annual's map and the maps in the 2e Scarlet Brotherhood sourcebook. In the annual map Hepmonoland seems directly east of Nippon Dominion peninsula while the outline of the edge of the island continent thing is further south in the annual map.

In the LGG map above it looks like the big island thing is north of the southern tip of the area that corresponds to the Nippon Dominion on the annual map.

Or the island thing does not show up on the eastern end of the LGG map at all but is the eastern end of the big island thing on the southwestern side of the map, and the island thing across the pearl sea is the southern end of Hepmonoland and it is really hard to make out the central part of Hepmonoland at all. The southern end does look like it could correspond to the Hambu channel, but the Hepmonoland interior, including its mountains should then clearly appear as land in the LGG map and not water with possible islands.

 

[Yaarel]

@Voadam

Yeah, some of the Oerth map in the Living Greyhawk Gazette is difficult to read for what seems like heavy-ink printing reasons.

The 2024 DMs Guide map confirms the northern region of Hepmonaland, and renames the "Scarlet Brotherhood" peninsula by the land name Shar.

The Solnor/Titanicum Ocean is larger, and Antaria (Australia) and Fireland (Iceland) are in different locations but preserve the same shapes.

The "big island thing" near Nippon seems to be part of the solid brown patterning of the deep waters, which has bubbling of a lighter shade of brown, may for a leathery decorative effect, but again with what seems like heavy-ink printing reasons.

On the land areas, the mountains come with heavy dark shading which is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the deep waters, which causes confusion in the Gigantea region as well as the Shar region. Hepmona land is difficult to read, it seems some of the jungle/rainforest areas are also getting the dark brown shading as well, which is difficult to distinguish from the deep waters.


The discrepancies are no problem if thinking of these as "medieval maps" where proportional distortions and conjecture are typical. Whichever is the "official" map that a setting refers to is therefore "more accurate" than the other versions of the map. I tend to refer to the Dragon Annual map as the "accurate" one. But it is justifiable to refer to Gazette map as the "accurate" one.

 

[TiQuinn]

The Dragon Annual article explicitly states that the narrator (supposedly Heward) can't even state the map or names are correct.

I think the bigger issue is that Skip Williams (who made the article) and Francois Marcela Froideval produced versions that Gygax didn't recognize as what he did; he commented about the same here in 2005 that he had sketched out to the East, South, North, and West, but in 2005 (well after Chainmail and the French Comic), "So as far as things now stand, there is no remainder of the WoG beyond the original two maps i did."

Again, it's not worth going into, but especially as they have rolled back the 2e and 3e changes to the Flanaess, I don't think we should be looking at the rest of the Oerth that was previously alluded to as canon.

Therein is the problem with canon with regards to Greyhawk. Gygax’s publication of Greyhawk at all seemed to be half-hearted given he assumed most DMs would simply create their own worlds, severely misjudging the demand for published settings. Even after he realized people wanted and would pay for these settings, his offerings in this area seemed under duress. But then at a point, he no longer owned it, so what really was “canon” at that point, if the original creator no longer owned it, and seemed uneasy at providing concrete details about it while he did own it?

 

[pemerton]

Therein is the problem with canon with regards to Greyhawk. Gygax’s publication of Greyhawk at all seemed to be half-hearted given he assumed most DMs would simply create their own worlds, severely misjudging the demand for published settings. Even after he realized people wanted and would pay for these settings, his offerings in this area seemed under duress. But then at a point, he no longer owned it, so what really was “canon” at that point, if the original creator no longer owned it, and seemed uneasy at providing concrete details about it while he did own it?

It depends what is meant by "canon", I guess.

But as far as the core products are concerned - the Folio, Boxed Set, From the Ashes, The Adventure Begins, the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer - they all cover the same area, present the same geography, the same history, similar politics (allowing for the fact that the Greyhawk Wars play a role in this respect), etc.

You can take any of those products and get a map with geographic features, town names, evil empires in the past (Suel, Baklun) from which ancient enemies, ruins etc can be derived, current evil empires (the Great Kindgom, Iuz, the Pomarj), etc.

They provide core setting elements for standard FRPGing: places for PCs to come from, places for antagonists to come from, places for adventures to take place, for wizards' towers or evil temples to be located, etc. Where did the lich come from? Ancient Suel. Where can we go and hide and find help? Among the tribes of the Bright Desert, or the hardy folk of the Gnarley Forest, or the Elves of the Welkwood, or whatever else fits the current location and trajectory of a group of PCs.

It's all pretty standard stuff - but those maps and the commentary will give you the places, names, and historical context that you need to make a game go.

The maps of the other parts of Oerth are completely different in this respect. You can't just lay them down on the table, grab names and places, and make your game go. They don't serve the basic purpose that the core GH products do. That's why I don't regard them as having much significance.

 

[TiQuinn]

It depends what is meant by "canon", I guess.

Right, there’s a whole fandom of Greyhawk that digs deep into whatever source they can to try and suss out what was a Gygax idea present in his game versus something concocted for publication by others. I don’t give the map of Oerth much credence because well, it’s horrible, IMO.