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.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Respectfully disagree. I'd hardly call the Circle of Eight minor myself and they changed their races and classes in a chapter meant to summarise, not rewrite, 50 years of D&D lore. Sure I'm willing to admit Duke Owen of Geoff and his imaginatively named new female counterpart Owena are "minor" though.

Stuart/Stuwena on the bizarro universe

Oh, thanks for reminding me about the terrible gender-swapped names in the Ravenloft setting too.

(lol Viktra....)

 

[Mecheon]

Oh, thanks for reminding me about the terrible gender-swapped names in the Ravenloft setting too.

(lol Viktra....)

A lot of original Ravenloft was bad though. No matter how much you polish a turd, its still gonna be just poop, and its better to throw it out and grab a gem instead. Just saying, when folks talk about the good part of Ravenloft, they bring up Strahd, not "The blatent Frakenstein expy" or "okay this cat vampire is kind of racist" or "Tyranical despot gets to hang around with the supernatural horror creatures because ???" or "Hey, know this one 80s horror movie? We're just replicating it wholesale"

Let's not pretend original Ravenloft could just be reprinted in this day and age without being torn to shreds for how dated it is, and how massive changes were required.

 

[Hussar]

Although it would also give a small planetary radius!

To be fair, I did specify the Darlene map, which, in my mind anyway, is Greyhawk in its entirety. I really don't care all that much for any material that relates to anything that's not on the Darlene map. Granted, that's only my own head canon.

I just find these massively huge settings so daunting to create for. I mean, the entire Phandelver/Shattered Obelisk campaign - a level 1-13 campaign, so, pretty meaty - could fit in a bit more than three hexes on the Darlene map. Might be six hexes total. IOW, I just don't need these honking huge settings.

Never minding that if you actually did shrink the Darlene map to 1 hex equals 6 miles, all the demographic information in the boxed set would actually make sense. As it stands, Greyhawk is less populated than Siberia.

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, I did specify the Darlene map, which, in my mind anyway, is Greyhawk in its entirety. I really don't care all that much for any material that relates to anything that's not on the Darlene map.

I'm just thinking of the fact that it has both tropical and arctic (or near-arctic) regions.

I just find these massively huge settings so daunting to create for. I mean, the entire Phandelver/Shattered Obelisk campaign - a level 1-13 campaign, so, pretty meaty - could fit in a bit more than three hexes on the Darlene map. Might be six hexes total. IOW, I just don't need these honking huge settings.

Agree there. My whole 4e campaign took place (in its mortal, non-Underdark parts) on the map in the gatefold of B10 Night's Dark Terror.

In my current Torchbearer 2e game, I tend to gloss over the distances, which are quite large.

 

[Parmandur]

To be fair, I did specify the Darlene map, which, in my mind anyway, is Greyhawk in its entirety. I really don't care all that much for any material that relates to anything that's not on the Darlene map. Granted, that's only my own head canon.

I just find these massively huge settings so daunting to create for. I mean, the entire Phandelver/Shattered Obelisk campaign - a level 1-13 campaign, so, pretty meaty - could fit in a bit more than three hexes on the Darlene map. Might be six hexes total. IOW, I just don't need these honking huge settings.

Never minding that if you actually did shrink the Darlene map to 1 hex equals 6 miles, all the demographic information in the boxed set would actually make sense. As it stands, Greyhawk is less populated than Siberia.

It's about the size of Europe, is all. Some campaigns can use more room.

The DMG has a zoomed in map of the few hexes around the Free City of Greyhawk specifically to provide that more zoomed in experience.

 

[mamba]

It's about the size of Europe, is all. Some campaigns can use more room.

Europe is about 10% larger than the US, and a large part of that is in Russia, otherwise it would be about 3/4 of the US

It is about half of Africa though

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Well, to be fair, Gygax did not assume that the "physics" of an atmosphere in a fantasy world is the same as it is in reality.

This is fact. He also describes the wind going east to west, not west to east.

And Gygax wrote Oerth’s planet tilt is 30°, not 23° plug that into climate modeling and a whole lot of chaos to seasons.

But we’ve long entered the realm of make believe with Oerth not being heliocentric, but the sun orbiting it!

 

[Voadam]

I never really paid much attention to actual distances on the map, just relative positions. The only time I really need an answer is when a PC asks "How long does it take to get from here to there and what do we have to cross to get there?"

Similar for populations and such. It wasn't until decades after my Greyhawk campaign that I ever heard about the howling wastelands of Greyhawk's emptiness or really considered the population numbers. There are numbers in the books but when I was running the campaign I just went with Greyhawk has a lot, Safeton is a small city, etc. and not really worry about it when running the game.

When I ran a Freeport campaign though I was shocked to read that the international mercantile sea trade hub city state has only 10,000 inhabitants. That number seemed really surprisingly small to my modern eyes (I went to a college with 40,000 students) and made me question how big and influential their fleet actually is.

In my homebrew mashup setting I have a mostly notional map that uses parts of Greyhawk, Golarion, Ptolus, Eberron and others and distances and populations are generally vague and not pinned down.

 

[Parmandur]

I never really paid much attention to actual distances on the map, just relative positions. The only time I really need an answer is when a PC asks "How long does it take to get from here to there and what do we have to cross to get there?"

Similar for populations and such. It wasn't until decades after my Greyhawk campaign that I ever heard about the howling wastelands of Greyhawk's emptiness or really considered the population numbers. There are numbers in the books but when I was running the campaign I just went with Greyhawk has a lot, Safeton is a small city, etc. and not really worry about it when running the game.

When I ran a Freeport campaign though I was shocked to read that the international mercantile sea trade hub city state has only 10,000 inhabitants. That number seemed really surprisingly small to my modern eyes (I went to a college with 40,000 students) and made me question how big and influential their fleet actually is.

In my homebrew mashup setting I have a mostly notional map that uses parts of Greyhawk, Golarion, Ptolus, Eberron and others and distances and populations are generally vague and not pinned down.

It's not like any party is going to conduct a detailed census.

 

[Hussar]

I'm just thinking of the fact that it has both tropical and arctic (or near-arctic) regions.

Agree there. My whole 4e campaign took place (in its mortal, non-Underdark parts) on the map in the gatefold of B10 Night's Dark Terror.

In my current Torchbearer 2e game, I tend to gloss over the distances, which are quite large.

So does Japan. So does Argentina.