Dungeons & Dragons May Not Come Back to Greyhawk After 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide

Wizards of the Coast does not appear to have future plans for the Greyhawk setting past the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. Speaking at a press event earlier this month, Dungeons & Dragons game architect Chris Perkins explained that the inclusion of Greyhawk campaign setting material in the upcoming rulebook was meant to stand on its own. "Basically, we're saying 'Hey DMs, we're giving you Greyhawk as a foundation on which you can build your own setting stuff,'" Perkins said when asked about future Greyhawk setting material. "Whether we get back to Greyhawk or not in some capacity I cannot say, but that's our intention for now. This is the sandbox, it's Greyhawk. Go off and run Greyhawk or Greyhawk-like campaigns with this if you wish. We may not come to this version of Greyhawk for a while because we DMs to own it and play with it. This is not a campaign setting where I think we need to go in and start defining large sections of the world and adding more weight of content that DMs have to sit through in order to feel like they're running a proper Greyhawk campaign."

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide includes a campaign setting gazetteer focused on the Greyhawk setting, one of D&D's earliest campaign settings. The use of Greyhawk is intended to be an example for DMs on how to build a full-fledged campaign setting, with an overview of major conflicts and places to explore within the world. New maps of both Oerth and the city of Greyhawk are also included in the rulebook.

However, while it seems like Wizards isn't committing to future Greyhawk campaign setting material, Perkins admitted that the fans still have a say in the matter. "We're not so immutable with our plans that if the fans rose up and said 'Give us something Greyhawk,' that we would say 'No, never,'" Perkins said. "That won't happen."

Perkins also teased the appearance of more campaign settings in the future. "We absolutely will be exploring new D&D worlds and that door is always open," Perkins said.

 

[Stuart Kerrigan]

If you aren't looking for a story, what kind of backdrop are you looking for then?

From where I stand, the story, the locations, the ideas present in the setting is the backdrop. Without the story, I don't even know what is left of a setting.

Arguably the beauty of Greyhawk is if all you want is a Diablo-style go to dungeon, go back to town and buy stuff, repeat, then you can do that easily with the City of Greyhawk and Castle Greyhawk. It's not my cup of tea either though, I like epic lore and backdrop. Greyhawk also has that in spades.

 

[pemerton]

If you aren't looking for a story, what kind of backdrop are you looking for then?

Maps with proper names are very handy for coordinating the fiction. And they fit well with trope-y places on the map, so that we (ie the group playing the game) can put stuff down in places that make sense and we'll remember - eg mountains for Dwarves to come from, forests for Elves to live in, hills or hidden vales for wizards to have their towers, etc.

And then some fairly loose backstory is good too, both to give some proper names (eg the Suel Empire) and to allow the tropes we want to be sourced (eg ancient liches, which are a standard REH-ish sort of thing, can be ancient Sueloise wizards).

The sort of detail in the St Kargoth story tends to be something I can make up for myself if I need to, normally in response to the actual dynamics of play. Eg when in my Torchbearer game I wanted to use an undead creature in a crypt, I looked through the rulebook and found Barrow-wights. These could be Elves, and that fitted the situation I was working with (which involved a PC Elven Dreamwalker and an enemy NPC Elven Dreamwalker). I decided that the Barrow-wight was Celedhring, an Elf who had fallen in some fashion and had stolen a post from the Dreamhouse in Elf-home (Elven Dreamhouses, as the heart of the Elf-home, are a thing in the rules).

More details about Celedhring, and his possible relationship to the Elven PC's mother and hence to the Elven PC, have come out in play. I don't really need a setting to give me that.

Whereas having a map that we could start play on - including knowing that Elfhome is in the Fellreev forest - is pretty handy. Likewise having the Bandit Kingdoms nearby - that makes it easy for me to put bandits into play in the game, who make for good generic opposition - and the Troll Fens, which gave me somewhere to put Nulb and the Moathouse.

When the PCs go to places, I pull out the map and we can all see where they're going. And between the names and the basic descriptions in the setting material, we know - at the trope-y level - what is likely to be going on there.

 

[pemerton]

Arguably the beauty of Greyhawk is if all you want is a Diablo-style go to dungeon, go back to town and buy stuff, repeat, then you can do that easily with the City of Greyhawk and Castle Greyhawk.

I've never done that sort of RPGing.

It's not as if the two options in FRPGing are Diablo or book-of-lore story-time.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Maps with proper names are very handy for coordinating the fiction. And they fit well with trope-y places on the map, so that we (ie the group playing the game) can put stuff down in places that make sense and we'll remember - eg mountains for Dwarves to come from, forests for Elves to live in, hills or hidden vales for wizards to have their towers, etc.

And then some fairly loose backstory is good too, both to give some proper names (eg the Suel Empire) and to allow the tropes we want to be sourced (eg ancient liches, which are a standard REH-ish sort of thing, can be ancient Sueloise wizards).

Thank you for the explanation.

I'm someone who prefers to homebrew and takes settings apart for useful inspiration, so I'm the opposite: I don't have a lot of need for maps and names, I'm looking for hooks and lore ideas and grand setpieces.

That's why I find the vagueness people speak of the setting with frustrating; I'm seeing allusions to what I'm looking for, but the content is often very hard to coax out.

 

[mamba]

The second reason is that everything I know about FR makes it seem silly in comparison.

you are not getting any pushback from me on that

 

[Hussar]

Arguably the beauty of Greyhawk is if all you want is a Diablo-style go to dungeon, go back to town and buy stuff, repeat, then you can do that easily with the City of Greyhawk and Castle Greyhawk. It's not my cup of tea either though, I like epic lore and backdrop. Greyhawk also has that in spades.

I think I’m starting to see where I’m missing the point.

I’ve never looked at settings in terms story. Or, if a setting is tied to story, like Dragonlance, then for me, when that story is done, so is that setting.

I would only ever run war of the lance campaigns in Dragonlance. I have zero interest in the rest of the setting. Same as Middle Earth or Star Wars. Those settings serve those stories

To be honest that’s why I totally ignore Living Greyhawk and the later stories. The whole Greyhawk Wars thing I have zero interest in. That’s not what I look for in Greyhawk.

For me Greyhawk is about telling your stories. It’s a simple (ish) skeleton on which I can hang my own stories. I neither need nor want some game designer telling me what stories to tell.

Give me adventures? Sure. I can build on that and that’s doing a lot of the grunt work. But I’m not really interested in dozens of pages of setting lore that my players will never give a crap about and only serve as gatekeeper fodder for setting superfans.

There’s a reason I only started using Forgotten Realms in 5e. Lots and lots of adventures.

 

[Parmandur]

The second reason is that everything I know about FR makes it seem silly in comparison.

About equally silly, but different silliness is accentuated. Greenwood takes names more seriously than Gygax did, Greenwood incorporated more serious themes from his sources such as the passing if the Elves into the West (though WotC killed that in 3E), etc.

It actually makes a very interesting comparison study, particularly the original 1E Forgotten Realms material that hewed closer to Greenwoods original campaigns.

 

[mamba]

Well, it doesn't really worry me whether people are interested in GH or not: all I can do is explain why it is still my go-to for FRPGing after 40 years.

you do not need a justification, but @Vaalingrade was looking for things that are interesting about it, which granted varies by person

 

[pemerton]

you do not need a justification, but @Vaalingrade was looking for things that are interesting about it, which granted varies by person

Well, the number one interesting thing in my view is the maps!

 

[mamba]

Well, the number one interesting thing in my view is the maps!

as I said, varies by person

That feels like a rather low bar, FR, DL (pre and post Cataclysm even ) Midgard, and plenty of other settings have maps too, not sure I would have a strong preference for any of them… maybe pre-Cataclysm DL as it gets the least use / is the least familiar