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.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Does it give my urban thieves, reclusive Elven kingdom, Dwarven mountains, coastal pirates, and desert with ancient tombs all within the same region of the map?

Yes, the North/Savage Frontier comes ro mind, with Waterdeep/Neverwinter, Evereska and othe elven settlements, various Dwarven holds including Mithral Hall, Luskan, and the western edge of Anauroch. Plus you get an Arctic zone as a bonus!

 

[Parmandur]

Does it give my urban thieves, reclusive Elven kingdom, Dwarven mountains, coastal pirates, and desert with ancient tombs all within the same region of the map?

In fact, it does, just within the ambit of the Savage Frontier detailed in FR5 (which is in the running for one of the best RPG supplements of all time, which is why WotC still has trouvle getting away from the region in their official material), an area about half the size of the Flannaes, and is also known as the northern half of the Sword Coast.

 

[pemerton]

Thanks @Demetrios1453 and @Parmandur. For what it's worth, the GH map - with Woolly Bay as a "core" rather than an "edge" - is more appealing to me.

 

[Parmandur]

Thanks @Demetrios1453 and @Parmandur. For what it's worth, the GH map - with Woolly Bay as a "core" rather than an "edge" - is more appealing to me.

Perfectly valid, it's a great map. Vibes can play a big part there, and Faerûn also has the absolutely enormous Sea of Fallen Stars in the center thst gives that Mediterranean sort of vibe, and thst was where Greenwoods other home game is set.

 

[Parmandur]

As another example, this (much larger) map from the 2E box set has juat about every environment and fantasy trope you can imsgine:

 

[mamba]

Does it give my urban thieves, reclusive Elven kingdom, Dwarven mountains, coastal pirates, and desert with ancient tombs all within the same region of the map?

how big is the region allowed to be?

 

[Tonguez]

DMGuild means Greyhawk will have lots of support, its a great sandbox

 

[Werthead]

I think Greyhawk occupies an interesting niche where it has a large but not insanely large landmass, a fair amount of detail but not an incredible amount, and a reasonable amount of sourcebooks, boxed sets and adventures but not hundreds. There are a few Greyhawk novels and video games but not very many. That means you have a fairly detailed and solid base which you can then adapt and use as you like, and it's not an insurmountable task to get fully up to speed on the canon version setting for a low buy-in. Plus if the 5.5E DMG is suggesting they are ignoring the later canon or even just ignoring it and setting up earlier, getting up to speed with just that era is even less work.

Forgotten Realms is very, very large (even just Faerun by itself is massive, and Kara-Tur is even bigger), has 200+ sourcebooks, boxed sets, adventures and campaign setting material, over 50 video games and over 300 novels and anthologies, not to mention one feature film. The setting is ultra detailed, complex and getting "fully up to speed" with it requires a fairly large amount of work (although getting familiar enough with it to run a game and have fun is far less work, of course, and the post-timeskip setting can be easier to get to grips with). There are some pluses and minuses to both approaches. But I do think Greyhawk's status of being a minimalist (well, more minimalist than FR) campaign setting with just enough character, famous adventures and iconic characters to be interesting without too much to be overwhelming is a key part of its appeal, and always has been. I think that was one of the rationales to set the 3E Living Campaign there and not in FR, which had too many moving pieces for it to work outside of the Living City and Living Jungle campaigns in 2E, which were very geographically restricted.

 

[pemerton]

As another example, this (much larger) map from the 2E box set has juat about every environment and fantasy trope you can imsgine:

View attachment 386069

My understanding of FR is that the distances are big - is that right?

EDIT: I just read @Werthead's post, which I think confirms this.

 

[Parmandur]

My understanding of FR is that the distances are big - is that right?

EDIT: I just read @Werthead's post, which I think confirms this.

Very big, yup. For 3E, they shrank Faerûn down by a lot (like 20-30% in each Axis, adds up to a lot of miles) to make it more navigable, and the shrunken version is 9.5 million square miles, as opposed to the Flannes 6 million square miles: