D&D (2024) Greyhawk 2024: comparing Oerth and Earth

[fuindordm]

I agree with both of the main speakers for the last few pages, more or less:

* I think it is entirely possible to invent a culture that is original, or that remixes multiple Earth cultures to the point where referencing back to the inspirations is impossible. In this case we can make them as virtuous or vile as we please without worrying about offense. It is not because Game Culture X has sailing raiders called Bobbins that Scandinavian players should take them as a reference to Earth vikings. I believe one needs a few more hints than that to realistically claim that you know one ingredient of the pastiche.

* I also think that such a game is really difficult to run in practice. Players need hooks in order to support their role-playing. They don't need to be explicit (Earthdawn trolls are like mountain Vikings with airships, Earthdawn humans are like Atlanteans), they can also be implicit (The halflings of Eberron are a nomadic culture native to the grasslands, with few permanent settlements, who tame and ride dinosaurs). When we want to give our players a fantasy culture, especially one that the PCs might belong to, we need real-world cultures to make them playable by the majority.

 

[Parmandur]

I agree with both of the main speakers for the last few pages, more or less:

* I think it is entirely possible to invent a culture that is original, or that remixes multiple Earth cultures to the point where referencing back to the inspirations is impossible. In this case we can make them as virtuous or vile as we please without worrying about offense. It is not because Game Culture X has sailing raiders called Bobbins that Scandinavian players should take them as a reference to Earth vikings. I believe one needs a few more hints than that to realistically claim that you know one ingredient of the pastiche.

* I also think that such a game is really difficult to run in practice. Players need hooks in order to support their role-playing. They don't need to be explicit (Earthdawn trolls are like mountain Vikings with airships, Earthdawn humans are like Atlanteans), they can also be implicit (The halflings of Eberron are a nomadic culture native to the grasslands, with few permanent settlements, who tame and ride dinosaurs). When we want to give our players a fantasy culture, especially one that the PCs might belong to, we need real-world cultures to make them playable by the majority.

There isna balance to be found.

 

[Voadam]

2024 Greyhawk chose to continue the technical terms from reallife Islam. The update from an earlier "caliphate" to an other "sultanate", conveys a cultural sensitivity that invites reallife Muslim players to enjoy the Greyhawk setting.

Because of these reallife references to the Islamic religion, including Sharia law relating to Islamic governments, the details are of a highly sensitive nature. Note, to use the watchword "Allahu-Akbar" (Al-Ackbar) to refer to a polytheistic religion, or even an idolatrous object, would be astonishingly offensive.

Western Flanaess explores fantasy Islam.

That is quite a jump of inferences to get to monotheistic Islam in Greyhawk.

The title Sultanate does not override the actual text setting up the setting as polytheistic with an actual pantheon of gods.

Religiously and cosmologically all of 2024 Greyhawk is presented as D&D polytheism, there is no monotheism presented. The big 5e change is taking out the explicit ethnicity associations for multiple pantheons and just presenting a list of the polytheistic Greyhawk gods as if they were part of a single polytheistic pantheon.

Baklunish Xan Yae worship is as monotheistic Islamic as worship of Boccob the Uncaring is monotheistic Christian.

Some of the gods present opportunities for closer references to Islam and Christianity, such as say St. Cuthbert and Pholtus being good ones with fairly christian-esque trappings and tropes to work from for their followers and religious stuff compared to say an Olympian deity model, but they are still not monotheists as written even if Henotheism works well here. I would not say default Greyhawk religious and cosmological setup explores monotheism of any variety.

Making it so in your individual campaign is of course fair game.

I think Baklunish elements are much more focused on evoking the non-religious specific Medieval Islamic world (also Mongol hordes and steppes people who may or may not be Islamic) tropes and narratives: warriors with scimitars, a place to run Ali Baba and the 40 thieves type of adventures, West versus East border potential conflicts, etc. The biggest departure to me seems to be explicit polytheism and polytheistic cosmology.

So more Shem, Turan, Hyrkania, and Afghulistan from Conan where everyone is polytheistic.

 

[Yaarel]

"Resemble" in terms of being more likely to have purple eyes and curly white hair, not "resemble" culturally. Again, to start with, the Noethern Kingdomgs are not Norwegians. The Suel really, really are not Norwegians.

By the way, only "some" Suel have curly hair. Most have straight hair.

Whether Suel has purple eyes or green eyes might be important to racists, but it is irrelevant to Norwegians. We are a subarctic ethnic block, adapting light skin, such as to increase vitamin D production from sunlight. But Norwegians include a wide range of complexions.

I have blue eyes, my brother has gold-grey eyes. I have dark hair, my brother gold-blond hair. (As infants both of us had copper red hair.) My brother can develop a suntan in sunlight, I cannot. And so on.

 

[Yaarel]

Interesting tidbit from Quests from the Infinite Staircase, in terms of how modern WotC sees the Setting and is using culture: the Greyhawk suggestion for I3 Pharaoh is the Bright Desert...right in the middle of the Flannaes near Greyhawk proper, which traditionally is a Flan/Suel mixed area of pastoralists.

So, the ancient Pharaoh Amun Sa might be part of the Suel diaspora after the twin cataclysms...that opens up some fun ideas.

I am unsure what Egypt is doing in the Bright Desert. But I support almost anything that discontinues the idea that Suel is a "race".

Regarding fantasy Egypt. Reallife Egyptians care deeply about their cultural heritage, and take offense when others misrepresent it. I relate to this kind of sensitivity. Many people were caught by surprise when widespread protests in Egypt erupted because a movie misrepresented details of Egyptian history.


Moreover, one cannot have an Egypt without the context of the rest of Africa, especially the civilizations of the Nile river basin. Wherever one places fantasy Egypt, fantasy Sudan, Ethiopia, and so on, come with it.

To locate fantasy Ancient Egypt in the Bright Desert makes little sense. Maybe a specific family and a group around them immigrated to the Bright Desert. At the moment, the only thing I can think of that might motivate Egyptians to leave Egypt (other than military territorial expansion) would be a quest to acquire lapis lazuli or comparable fantasy valuable.


Where Suel is a heritage, perhaps it is specifically a magical tradition relating to wizardry. Wizardry in the sense of spellbooks, protoscience, and material components − perhaps they learned it from the Egyptian community in the Bright Desert then developed their own Suloise version of it.

 

[Yaarel]

That is quite a jump of inferences to get to monotheistic Islam in Greyhawk.

The title Sultanate does not override the actual text setting up the setting as polytheistic with an actual pantheon of gods.

Religiously and cosmologically all of 2024 Greyhawk is presented as D&D polytheism, there is no monotheism presented. The big 5e change is taking out the explicit ethnicity associations for multiple pantheons and just presenting a list of the polytheistic Greyhawk gods as if they were part of a single polytheistic pantheon.

Baklunish Xan Yae worship is as monotheistic Islamic as worship of Boccob the Uncaring is monotheistic Christian.

Some of the gods present opportunities for closer references to Islam and Christianity, such as say St. Cuthbert and Pholtus being good ones with fairly christian-esque trappings and tropes to work from for their followers and religious stuff compared to say an Olympian deity model, but they are still not monotheists as written even if Henotheism works well here. I would not say default Greyhawk religious and cosmological setup explores monotheism of any variety.

Making it so in your individual campaign is of course fair game.

I think Baklunish elements are much more focused on evoking the non-religious specific Medieval Islamic world (also Mongol hordes and steppes people who may or may not be Islamic) tropes and narratives: warriors with scimitars, a place to run Ali Baba and the 40 thieves type of adventures, West versus East border potential conflicts, etc. The biggest departure to me seems to be explicit polytheism and polytheistic cosmology.

So more Shem, Turan, Hyrkania, and Afghulistan from Conan where everyone is polytheistic.

Unless I missed something, "Baklunish polytheism" doesnt exist in 2024 Greyhawk. None of the descriptions of Baklun (that I read) discuss polytheism. Notably, the "gods of Greyhawk" dont mention Baklun.


2024 Greyhawk is brief, salient, and reasonably well thought out. It gives all of us a fresh start to rethink the earlier Greyhawk traditions.

We cannot accept earlier Greyhawk as-is uncritically because there are too many problematics of various kinds. But Greyhawk is beloved and is a valuable resource. We should pick and choose the traditions that are useful for D&D today as a global phenomenon.

 

[Yaarel]

Looking in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, here are the Greyhawk Oerth suggestions:

- The New Orleans/Carribean-esque city-state of Zinda is suggested to be set either in the Hold of the Sea Princes or the Lordship of the Isles, so thisnis another way to show a Suel culture. Names used there include Amos Nir, Azra Nir, Jacopo Ain, Jeli, Kala Mabarin, Myx Nargis Ruba, Samira Arah, and Zenia Ruba.

I read Lordship of the Isles as more Bahamas/Jamaica. But that makes sense for Zinda too.

Much of the geography of Flanaess resembles North America but it is missing much of the Pacific Coast. I prefer using the Hold of the Sea Princes as a relocation of it, for places like Acapulco, Sanfrancisco, and Vancouver, including the Indigenous populations around there.

- Tlepetec is a Central American Indigenous Setting that it suggests cna be set in the Souther Hellfurnaces, near the Amedio Jungle.

Tlepetec near Hellfurnaces tracks, which correspond the Sierra Madre ranges of Mexico.

Notice that A"medio" is "Central" America. The area around the "Yucatan Peninsula" of Flannaess corresponds the realife dense tropical forests there.

Also I view aspects of Sea of Dust as a consolidation of harsh areas of desert in Mexico.

- The Persian-esque city-state of Akharin Sangar is suggested as follows: "The wester edg eof the Barrier Parks and the Crystalmist Mountains hold many isolated, arid regions where Akharin Sangar might exist. Isolated reaches of the Bright Desert also make logical locations for the city-state". That would make the city-state either Baklunish, in the neighborhood of Ull, or Suel/Flan near Greyhawk, the former probably fits better overall.

Cool! That tracks with what we are looking at here too, regarding Baklun and latitudes of Asia. We now have a clearer location for fantasy Persia. Persia is mountainous and nieghboring the deserts of Iraq. We should assume the Crystal Mountains themselves are lush with rivers, even if they dont flow in the direction of the Dry Steppes.

- the West African influenced realm of Djaynai is suggested dror the Coast of Hepmonaland.

That works well for fantasy South America.

Like Egypt in Bright Desert, it seems necessary to explain how West African cultures arrived here.

- The Venezualan-inspired land of Atagua has the following suggesstion: "Atagua could occupy a region of the Plains of Paynims wast of Ket and the Barrier Peaks. Alternatively, the plains of the Great Kingdom might include or border Atsgua, with the land's culture holding connections to the sky-worshipoing Aerdi people". So suggesting this Latin American setting could be either Baklunish or Oerdian.

Those suggestions surprise me. Geographically, Venezuela corresponds Hepmona land. Of the two suggestions, I prefer associating the European aspects of Venezuela with Aerdi.

 

[Parmandur]

By the way, only "some" Suel have curly hair. Most have straight hair.

Whether Suel has purple eyes or green eyes might be important to racists, but it is irrelevant to Norwegians. We are a subarctic ethnic block, adapting light skin, such as to increase vitamin D production from sunlight. But Norwegians include a wide range of complexions.

I have blue eyes, my brother has gold-grey eyes. I have dark hair, my brother gold-blond hair. (As infants both of us had copper red hair.) My brother can develop a suntan in sunlight, I cannot. And so on.

OK, so yes, Gygax is using outdated race based anthropology as the source for his fake academic (though it should be noted the original book is explicitly from an untrustworthy narrator, a device to facilitate DMs changing stuff), you continue to miss the narrative point about the Northerners: they are unique among the Suel diaspora not because of race, but because they are the ones who didn't flee destruction. They are the ones who chose to leave the Suel Imperium and reject it's culture before things actually began exploding.

 

[Yaarel]

OK, so yes, Gygax is using outdated race based anthropology as the source for his fake academic (though it should be noted the original book is explicitly from an untrustworthy narrator, a device to facilitate DMs changing stuff),

As far as I have seen so far, the term "race" no longer exists in 2024. The terminology is either "species", or "peoples", "cultures". I dont recall seeing the term "ethnicity", but wisely "culture" is more inclusive.

you continue to miss the narrative point about the Northerners: they are unique among the Suel diaspora not because of race, but because they are the ones who didn't flee destruction. They are the ones who chose to leave the Suel Imperium and reject it's culture before things actually began exploding.

Can you give a source for the earlier migration of Thillonrians?

 

[Parmandur]

Regarding fantasy Egypt. Reallife Egyptians care deeply about their cultural heritage, and take offense when others misrepresent it. I relate to this kind of sensitivity. Many people were caught by surprise when widespread protests in Egypt erupted because a movie misrepresented details of Egyptian history.

Yeah that ia why WotC brought in a serious full-on Egypyologist as the sensitivity readers for this and made major, major revisions to the adventure to be sensitive (such as removing specifice Egyptian deities).

Moreover, one cannot have an Egypt without the context of the rest of Africa, especially the civilizations of the Nile river basin. Wherever one places fantasy Egypt, fantasy Sudan, Ethiopia, and so on, come with it.

Yes, yes you can have a fictional equivilent Egypt without that context. That's the point: absolute geographic determinism is not the way to go, anymore than 19th century racial pseudoscience.

the only thing I can think of that might motivate Egyptians to leave Egypt

They weren't Egyptian, the module is about the fictional Kingdom of Beskar. They are no more Egyptian than the Frutzi are Norwegian, they are both make-believe.