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'.

 

[Yaarel]

The MCU religion? Gotta get my Thor on!

He's a Stan Lee creation, right?

The funny thing is, MCU Thor gets it more right. A powerful creature, who is kinda heroic, without the religious mumbojumbo. This is an ordinary "thunderstorm".

 

[Parmandur]

The funny thing is, MCU Thor gets it more right. A powerful creature, who is kinda heroic, without the religious mumbojumbo. This is a "thunderstorm".

The real Thor was a Trojan Wizard who tricked the Swedes into worshipping him and his family.

 

[Yaarel]

The real Thor was a Trojan Wizard who tricked the Swedes into worshipping him and his family.

I do enjoy Snorri takes on "history". Tho it was more like getting free dinners, than "worship".

Note, the æsir use the exact same kinds of magic that humans do, so this sounds plausible.

 

[Parmandur]

I do enjoy Snorri takes on "history". Tho it was more like getting free dinners, than "worship".

Note, the æsir use the exact same kinds of magic that humans do, so this sounds plausible.

I mean, that wasn't juat Snorri, that was the general standard Medieval Scandanavian and German historical narrative to fluff up the bloodlines of Germanoc kings whose ancestors claimed Descent fromt he Aesir, and mitigate their non-Romanitas ("sure our ancestors weren't Romans, but like the Romans they were Trojans!")

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I wanted to make a serious comment about real-world religions (and other references) in D&D.

I am going to start by saying that I am in no way defending or condoning their use or appropriation in games. I mean, the inclusion of the Indian Mythos in Deities & Demigods was certainly a choice!

(Brief aside- the pantheon included, inter alia, Vishnu, but didn't have Shiva! But that likely wasn't for sensitivity reasons, because Shiva was in Deities, Demigods and Heroes in OD&D. Weird curiosity.)

But ... as terrible as it was (and it was), the inclusion made me actively curious about mythology and religion. I was fascinated by the "non-western pantheons" and began reading real books to learn more. Imagine my shock when I learned that the gamified versions weren't completely accurate!

Sometimes I worry that in going too far to remove real-world references, we also remove the things that cause people to engage and want to learn more about the real world. I don't know the answer to that. I have my experience (Deities & Demigods sparked my interest in the real thing, and OA made me learn a lot about Japanese and Chinese history, for example) and some other anecdotes (one of my fellow players became an accomplished professor of medieval studies), but I do wonder.

 

[Voadam]

Their notes about God's, Demigods, and Heroes in the OD&D compilation made it pretty clear that real world deities are purely off-limits now. They won't touch them with a ten-foot pole.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. I don't see anything like such a note in the OD&D Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes PDF.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. I don't see anything like such a note in the OD&D Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes PDF.

The real Rule 0 of D&D-

If you stat it, it can die. And if it can die, you can get XP and take its stuff.

 

[Parmandur]

I wanted to make a serious comment about real-world religions (and other references) in D&D.

I am going to start by saying that I am in no way defending or condoning their use or appropriation in games. I mean, the inclusion of the Indian Mythos in Deities & Demigods was certainly a choice!

(Brief aside- the pantheon included, inter alia, Vishnu, but didn't have Shiva! But that likely wasn't for sensitivity reasons, because Shiva was in Deities, Demigods and Heroes in OD&D. Weird curiosity.)

But ... as terrible as it was (and it was), the inclusion made me actively curious about mythology and religion. I was fascinated by the "non-western pantheons" and began reading real books to learn more. Imagine my shock when I learned that the gamified versions weren't completely accurate!

Sometimes I worry that in going too far to remove real-world references, we also remove the things that cause people to engage and want to learn more about the real world. I don't know the answer to that. I have my experience (Deities & Demigods sparked my interest in the real thing, and OA made me learn a lot about Japanese and Chinese history, for example) and some other anecdotes (one of my fellow players became an accomplished professor of medieval studies), but I do wonder.

Yeah, it is complex...but a modern corporation trying to market to a broad global market in the 21st century is going to have different priorities than a small Midwestern company selling to Reagan era kids. Different worlds.

 

[Yaarel]

I mean, that wasn't juat Snorri, that was the general standard Medieval Scandanavian and German historical narrative to fluff up the bloodlines of Germanoc kings whose ancestors claimed Descent fromt he Aesir, and mitigate their non-Romanitas ("sure our ancestors weren't Romans, but like the Romans they were Trojans!")

Yeah, the Norse dynasties did claim descent from nature beings, including elves and giants. But that is because, in animism, people understood the features of nature to be able to (magically) manifest in the form of a human. Various prominent families claimed such ancestors. My own family includes traditions of descending from Freyr, among other nature beings, such as Alfr.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. I don't see anything like such a note in the OD&D Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes PDF.

The recent hardcover compilation "The Making of the Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977" reporters all the OD&D books...except for God's, Demi-Gods, and Heroes, which juat has this blurb:

WotC hasn't put out a product which mentioned real world gods in 2 years. Planescape cut all real world god references entirely from the Outer Planes.