D&D General 50th Anniversary WotC live panel at PAX Unplugged 2023.

[Parmandur]

The fantasy that kids are consuming today tends not to be medieval and it tends to have a bit of cutesy weird built in. Imagine the uproar from grogs if they cutsey-weirdified Greyhawk to make it palatable to The Kids.

That's what i mean by baggage and why i think something completely new works better as an example and teaching setting for 5E 2024. They don't have to hammer any square pegs into round holes, don't have to erase any canon, and don't have to pretend perform convoluted retcons to explain why dwarves can be wizards and where dragonborn came from (or whatever).

it is true that you can do the teaching part with some location in Greyhawk or with Nentir Vale or a new setting equally effectively. but the benefits of being fresh and unencumbered and built for the audience far outweigh the perceived value of the Greyhawk or Nentir Vale brands. Obviously IMO and YMMV and all that. I just have not heard a compelling argument that suggests you can make Greyhawk current and relevant more easily and effectively than doing something new.

Thing is, they already made those changes to Greyhawk in 2019, and the blowback was...not significant. Co siderimg it produced one of the best selling 5E books.

 

[Reynard]

Thing is, they already made those changes to Greyhawk in 2019, and the blowback was...not significant. Co siderimg it produced one of the best selling 5E books.

How many pages did Saltmarsh dedicate to its Greyhawk setting guide?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The fantasy that kids are consuming today tends not to be medieval and it tends to have a bit of cutesy weird built in. Imagine the uproar from grogs if they cutsey-weirdified Greyhawk to make it palatable to The Kids.

That's what i mean by baggage and why i think something completely new works better as an example and teaching setting for 5E 2024. They don't have to hammer any square pegs into round holes, don't have to erase any canon, and don't have to pretend perform convoluted retcons to explain why dwarves can be wizards and where dragonborn came from (or whatever).

it is true that you can do the teaching part with some location in Greyhawk or with Nentir Vale or a new setting equally effectively. but the benefits of being fresh and unencumbered and built for the audience far outweigh the perceived value of the Greyhawk or Nentir Vale brands. Obviously IMO and YMMV and all that. I just have not heard a compelling argument that suggests you can make Greyhawk current and relevant more easily and effectively than doing something new.

I think that opinion is very fair.

OTOH, I think that the benefits (both of appealing to existing fans, and of teaching new fans some history while also showing them the game, as well as other benefits, such as having much of the work already complete, ideas-wise, and familiarity on the part of whoever is writing the content, etc, etc) could possibly, when considered by the designers, outweigh the benefits (introducing actual new content, appealing to the kids) of creating something else.

And on the other, other hand, it could go either way. Both approaches have merit, really, now that I look at it more closely.

 

[Parmandur]

How many pages did Saltmarsh dedicate to its Greyhawk setting guide?

30 pages, focused on the ~3 or 4 Hexes around Saltmarsh.

Enough to establish human ethnic diversity, Tieflings, and Dragonborn as presen with a standard 5E D&D tone: which is very in line with what the kids are into these days.

 

[mamba]

John Peterson helped write it. and it includes never before seen correspondence and other things. It includes a full replica of OD&D

over 500 pages long

It's like an OAR!

wonder how much overlap there will be with the upcoming Playing the World 2e

https://www.amazon.com/Playing-World-2E-Invention-Histories/dp/0262548771/

 

[Lanefan]

And as I mentioned before, they went on a bit when talking about Hommlet, which is a great example of starting small and then building from there. Thus why I think it's going to be one of the min-adventures in the DMG.

If so, I hope they don't nerf it too much. The original Hommlet is a nasty, lethal adventure for just-starting-out 1e PCs; I hope they keep that premise in the 5.5e version if that version is made.

 

[Lanefan]

The fantasy that kids are consuming today tends not to be medieval and it tends to have a bit of cutesy weird built in. Imagine the uproar from grogs if they cutsey-weirdified Greyhawk to make it palatable to The Kids.

That's what i mean by baggage and why i think something completely new works better as an example and teaching setting for 5E 2024. They don't have to hammer any square pegs into round holes, don't have to erase any canon, and don't have to pretend perform convoluted retcons to explain why dwarves can be wizards and where dragonborn came from (or whatever).

While I agree that a new-from-scratch vanilla setting would probably be the way to go here, I heartily disagree that non-medievel cutesy-weird is the right direction for that setting to take; and suspect such a setting would go over like a lead balloon.

 

[Reynard]

While I agree that a new-from-scratch vanilla setting would probably be the way to go here, I heartily disagree that non-medievel cutesy-weird is the right direction for that setting to take; and suspect such a setting would go over like a lead balloon.

Your preferences, while totally valid, are demonstrably not in line with the D&D mainstream. You must know that.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I guess we'll see. If it were me, I would invest time and energy in something 15 year olds might actually like.

Fun fact, I got into Greyhawk when I was around that age, in grand old 2009 along with other D&D stuff

I am not an old fan, but I still quite like and appreciate it.

Why do you think new people won’t like it.