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'.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Is there any idea for why they changed the name of the Scarlet Brotherhood to Scarlet Order? I fail to see any relation to something unpleasant, but I'm not an expert about Greyhawk.

 

[billd91]

Is there any idea for why they changed the name of the Scarlet Brotherhood to Scarlet Order? I fail to see any relation to something unpleasant, but I'm not an expert about Greyhawk.

Gender neutralized name.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I am under the impression that all of these are "Greyhawk City" now.

What do you mean by that?

 

[Zeromaru X]

Gender neutralized name.

I see. A modernization of the setting. Interesting they modernize that, but prefer to not add new species to the setting in an official manner...

 

[TwiceBorn2]

I see. A modernization of the setting. Interesting they modernize that, but prefer to not add new species to the setting in an official manner...

Why should they? Everything in D&D can be incorporated into Greyhawk as the DM sees fit, as has been the case ever since the setting was first published. Aside from a few noteworthy exceptions, references to non-human races were very limited in the original sources (1980 folio and 1983 boxed set, and even as recently as the more expansive Living Greyhawk Gazetteer from 2000).

It's D&D... do what you want with the stuff you have at your disposal, and with your own imagination. The only limits are those you place on yourself. Why wait for a formal declaration from WotC to bring in "new species to the setting in an official manner"? Much of the broader World of Greyhawk is vast and unexplored... stick who you need wherever it makes sense for them to be from your perspective.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Why wait for a formal declaration from WotC to bring in "new species to the setting in an official manner"?

For the same reason many people were awaiting for them to add the setting to the DM's Guild. There is a certain sense of legitimization when something is officially recognized.

 

[TwiceBorn2]

For the same reason many people were awaiting for them to add the setting to the DM's Guild. There is a certain sense of legitimization when something is officially recognized.

I guess... <shrug>

As far as I'm concerned, that kind of official recognition only kind-of-matters if you're going to try and sell Greyhawk content you've created on the DM's Guild. And even then... I've seen loads of products on the Guild that either overlook, interpret in their own way, contradict, or completely disregard the canon of the settings they purport to be writing about (cue the "what counts as canon anyway?" debate). That's true even of WotC themselves.

 

[pemerton]

I’d much rather have an excited player playing a race I personally don’t care for than force my “vision” onto the players.

Agreed, and I think this generalises.

One of the PCs in my Torchbearer 2e game - which is set in Greyhawk - is a member of an Explosives cult. I wouldn't have had an Explosives cult in my game, or used that particular idea as my way to build up my own vision of the Temple of Elemental Evil, if left to my own devices. But the player was excited about the idea, and so I ran with it. And the ToEE it has produced - Explosives (Fire/Air), Smithing (Fire/Earth), Potions & Vapours (Fire/Water), Water & Sky (Air/Water) and Herbalism (Earth/Water) - is actually kind of interesting, and fits with Gygax's original idea of Void (Air/Earth) as one of the cults (or Kults, when it comes to the Void Kult).

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not much to be done about that except try to talk to the DM about why or try to find a compromise, but not every DM is a good fit every player. That’s why I like giving options on the campaign overall - if I can sell players on the idea and some of restrictions if I think they’re needed, then there’s less friction. And if they want to play a different campaign, that’s fine, too. It’s not like I’m going to give an option that I really hate as a DM.

Seems like this is unreasonably reasonable for some.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Again, because they have been doing since 2014 (this time is just less open about it). I just should stick to my own table again, and remain in the Forgotten Realms or a more open minded setting.

This reads like a lot of Much Ado About Nothing.
You can play any setting any which way at your table. How poster A and poster B prefer their Greyhawk settings says nothing about how you will play it with your play group. Just like your preferences won't affect their table.

If anything, a thread like this, about settings, should be how one can borrow or/and be inspired by other people's ideas, not how you must force your preference of limitations, open or somewhere-in-between on others.