D&D General Melf's Guide to Greyhawk Coming From Luke Gygax & WotC

[Saracenus]

I retract my statement that Jay is on the Melf project currently. I have edited my prior post to refelect this and the reasons why. I will also say, I have not worked with Jay for many years and I am not privy to his current state of mind.

 

[Parmandur]

EDIT: I do not have an X account, I killed mine when it changed hands, and thus, I did not have access to the full thread of replies. I reached out to a friend that does have an active X account and got the low down, yeesh! The friend and I talked it through and we believe that prior to WotC approaching Luke there indeed was a team of fans associated with the project, but it is a question whether any of them will be part of the project going forward.

I mean, given that Greyhawk is DMsGuild legal, it would not surprise me for any Greyhawk DM to be working to put some material up.

 

[Dire Bare]

. . . (think like that Exodus sci-fi game WotC produced but didn't create) . . .

WotC did create Exodus. The Exodus video game and tabletop game are being developed by Archetype Entertainment, a subsidiary of WotC.

WotC published the initial tabletop RPG, but have since licensed it to Renegade Studios. But it is still a WotC developed game, and fully owned by WotC.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm hopeful this is a full on separate book (think like that Exodus sci-fi game WotC produced but didn't create) and not "just" a supplement, so it can adjust the 5.5e rules to be closer to old-school styles while using the current D&D "engine". No tieflings/aasimar/goliaths/dragonborn/orcs as playable races, for example, since that doesn't fit Greyhawk (no "weird" races, period, just standard things including Half-Elves and Half-Orcs). Maybe automatically use some of the optional rules like short rest being 1 day and long rest being 1 week, that kind of thing.

They won't really win back old-school fans who aren't happy with the current edition/tone unless they scale back some of the rules too IMHO. More than anything else, the issue is that most old-school players think the rules themselves don't lend themselves to a grittier style game, which is why they gravitate towards rules that emulate B/X or AD&D. If they don't fix that, this project is DOA.

I know one of the guys who said he's on Luke's team has been running a campaign in greyhawk for around 46 years, and he said there is no WotC internal personnel involved, so I'm hopeful they will be able to actually do things and not be forced to shoehorn in 5.5isms where they don't belong. He said they will absolutely be doing things like having inherently Chaotic Evil Orcs, and no fey Hobgoblins, stuff like that, so I'm hopeful about them removing a lot of the WotC changes that were pretty inexplicable.

This could be the reality of the "WotC is working on 6e and making it closer to old-school rules" rumor that's been floating around.

Why do you care about how other players are using Greyhawk? Seriously, what business is it of yours if I have tiefling PCs in my Greyhawk campaign? You do what you're gonna do, and bless. Extend me the same courtesy.

 

[Saracenus]

Why do you care about how other players are using Greyhawk? Seriously, what business is it of yours if I have tiefling PCs in my Greyhawk campaign? You do what you're gonna do, and bless. Extend me the same courtesy.

Clint, it is pointless to argue with Greyhawk Grognards about The World of Greyhawk. Thankfully they are a tiny sub-culture of a small sub-culture of a slightly bigger small sub-culture we call D&D.

My introduction to Greyhawk was close to the start of my D&D experience (1979) with the publication of T1 The Village of Hommlet (1979) and the World of Greyhawk Folio (1980) a year later. I remember devouring articles by Gary Gygax in Dragon Magazine that expanded upon bare outline we were given. Beyond that there was no one to tell me how to run that world and I made it my own.

Then the great sundering happened in 1985 when Gary Gygax lost control of TSR. Then TSR Cease and Desisted all the burgeoning D&D fan sites into oblivion and the Greyhawk community splintered into two locations online. One was the official TSR AOL forums and the other was hush, hush secretive Greytalk mail list and IRC channel. This was the breeding ground of the idea that the Greyhawk fan community needed to defend, nay save Greyhawk from TSR.

I remained blissfully ignorant of this because I was busy playing D&D in the World of Greyhawk (and many other worlds) with my friends. Our Greyhawk as a living thing that was played.

During all this drama/trauma there was a push to codify and canonize Greyhawk that still exists today and frankly, it was and is toxic.

I was briefly caught up in this toxicity by becoming a canonista when Living Greyhawk (LG) burst upon the scene in 2000. By 2007, when LG was wrapping up there were a bunch of new Greyhawk fans to be brought into the tribe. I watched in horror as the Greyhawk Old Guard rejected them, bullied them, and silenced them.

I have since gone back to my roots and my Greyhawk is my Greyhawk, and yours is yours. I do not bother with people telling me what is and is not Greyhawk. They are just a dying, tiny group of reactionaries that amplify their voices via the internet.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

 

[R_J_K75]

For many of us, the barebones was the point of Greyhawk. When the Forgotten Realms came out I thought "cool ,another framework" but as I looked though it, so much was already detailed that I bounced off the setting hard. There didnt seem to be room for my ideas.

Eventually for me, all the FR setting was, was for stealing mechanics and ideas from.

I ran a few of the adventures in the 2024 DMG, set in Greyhawk. They were so barebones that it actually required a lot of work to flesh out into something cohesive and interesting. The Realms on the other had are detailed enough that I can use what I want and disregard what I don't. IME most players are casual enough that most won't know the difference between canon vs non-canon lore. I haven't kept up on the lore of the setting in probably 15 years but when I did, I played in a few games and I could always tell when DMs took creative license, or glaringly disregarded key fundamentals of the setting to the point it left me questioning why we were even playing a game set there. So, there are definitely times when it is too detailed for its own good.

 

[R_J_K75]

I think that's very deliberate on WotC's part. People just want to emulate their favorite stories and the average player who neither reads Fantasy Novels, ENWorld, Reddit or watches DnDTube is content bonking goblins on the head and making inappropriate passes at the barmaiden while drinking with friends.

This pretty much how we play TTRPGs these days, minimal prep, on the fly games while having drinks. I stopped taking the game too seriously years ago.

Homebrewing and make-up-stuff-as-you-go style DMing which is very en vogue right now requires significant investment and buy-in in the Forgotten Realms. Greyhawk is a bit more forgiving.

I haven't met any new D&D players in a while, and my experience is that most players aren't overly familiar with the setting besides playing the Baldurs Game PC games so I wouldn't feel restricted by having to strictly adhere to setting lore. I would though if the players knew the setting and had buy in because at that point I would feel like I was letting them down on their expectations.