Does Wizards want Greyhawk to fail?

[Waldorf]

The current management of Wotc has done more damage to Greyhawk than I ever could.

 

[Desdichado]

Dude, do your research. The RPGA and Wotc had bigger plans for Greyhawk BEFORE Hasbro took over. After the takeover, Greyhawk was relegated to the dustbin, mostly by people within the company who don't really like the setting... *Cough cough collins cough*

Living Greyhawk limped along after that.

Well, that's a matter of opinion. It hardly seemed to be in the dustbin to me. Hell, books like the Fiendish Codices and whatnot read like Greyhawk sourcebooks. I can't freakin' get away from Greyhawk even when I try to just stick with "basic" D&D.

 

[Desdichado]

But events have shown that WotC didn't just support one setting or does Eberron not count as a setting. I know it was FR 1st and it was the only setting supported for a time. Then they had a setting search contest and I had no problem with that. I'm happy some people really enjoy Eberron. But my point is that WotC didn't stick with just one campaign setting, they focused two- FR and Eberron.

Grumble grumble. When is ENWorld going to get multiquote again?

Anyway, that's a strategic decision made in 1999 vs. one made in 2002 or 2003.

What they did with Greyhawk was consistent with their strategy in 1999. Just because they didn't keep the same strategy in the 8 years since doesn't mean that it's all just a cleverly propagated hoax to kill off Greyhawk. :\

 

[Desdichado]

Show me whats on the shelves right now for greyhawk in comparison to FR or Eberron.

You cant.

Would it help if I typed slower? I've already said more than once that I know already that there aren't "Greyhawk specific" books out there.

Those SAME otehr two...got articles all over the place as well. Support was lacking. Being a couple of names and such in teh core books does not equate to support.

Couple of names, huh? Well, we clearly have a very different perception of how saturated the core D&D line of products is with Greyhawk material.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If Greyhawk did get a new setting book, in what time period would it be set? I don't particularly like the From The Ashes universe where Evil has conquered much of the map, I prefer Gygax's original version with Evil gathering, hovering on the edge of some big disaster, that yet may be averted.

In fact that's generally true of campaign settings, the original version is usually the prelude to a big war or confrontation, so there's a sense of rising tension, followed by a denoument. This makes for a better story.

When the timeline is moved on, you lose that. So I prefer either sticking with the original, or creating an entirely new setting.

 

[Shadeydm]

I predict in three or four years when fans are asking hey when are we going to get a GH hardcover CS, we will see a response along these lines. "We tested the waters for Greyhawk back in 2007 with the release of the expedition book and found that sales did not justify further development of that setting."

 

[Rykion]

How is that a problem? We know that leading up the release of 3e, WotC did tons and tons of market research. I think it's fair to assume that when WotC decided to focus on a single campaign setting and nominally support another by making it "default" they knew what they were doing. Ryan Dancey specifically mentioned campaign setting bloat as part of their market research. I don't know what specifically they asked (much less what they found out) but I think it reasonable to assume that when they made the decision that Forgotten Realms was going to be the only campaign setting they published at the time, they made that decision based on that market data they had spent all that time collecting, especially when campaign setting bloat was one of the specific findings they called out.

On the other hand, you appear to be assuming that it wasn't and that Greyhawk should have been proven on the crucible of actual market viability and sales numbers rather than all that other data that they presumably gathered.

It's a problem because people have claimed that GH was supported , but did not sell. In fact, it has not been supported in a way in 3rd Ed that would show its ability to sell or not sell. Market research is fine, but it is far from perfect. Big comapnies put out stinkers that had positive research, and are surprised by products that they barely decided to market that do very well. I know that they pointed to campaign bloat as a problem, but I think the D20 market has shown there is room for multiple campaign worlds. Not releasing GH hasn't made me decide to buy into another WotC campaign world with a similar niche. I also believe that even if the research showed that roleplayers desired GH in an equal or slightly higher amount than FR, they would go for FR due to novel sales.

 

[WizarDru]

I think the idea that WotC hates Greyhawk and has been trying to kill it off is ludicrous. If anything, Greyhawk under 3e has never been more than a spice that WotC has used when they needed something other than Generic Fantasy Land X(tm). It seems clear to me that WotC used Greyhawk whenever they needed some place names or deities to refer to in flavor-text, but that was the sum total of 'official' support. This was not done out of malice, any more than it was in the AD&D DMG or PHB. If you didn't know who Vecna or Otiluke were, it didn't effect that much, per se.

Under 3e, there have been only three real Greyhawk products of note:

1. Living Greyhawk Gazeeter (and it's 'player' version)
2. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
3. Expedition to Castle Greyhawk

The LGG was a black and white soft-bound printing, had very little art and was almost entirely fluff. While it contained lots of good information, it was dry and was more for people who were already Greyhawk fans. It did not have enough space to really flesh out the setting or its history and was meant more for Living Greyhawk players than it was for the D&D community at large. It was far outshined by the release of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (note those last two words, that's a critical difference), an all color, high-glossy hardback printing that was dense with content, including new spells, classes, races and unique mechanics for the setting. I bought it, and I had no intention of using the setting. It's an attractive, well-made and very useful book. The LGG had nothing like that. It was exactly what it said: about five pages of history and then a listing of every country with some details about it's cities, towns and a few tidbits. What's there is good, but it's bare-bones. You got a LOT more for only, what? $12 dollars more?

RtToEE was the crowning glory for Greyhawk. Truly set IN Greyhawk, it could still be fairly generic if it wanted to be....but overall, it was strongly tied to the setting. Compare this with say, The Standing Stone. According to Hobo, the Standing Stone is a Greyhawk module, because one of the NPCs shares a rumor about Verbobonc and another mentions Pelor. I respectfully disagree. While there is nothing in the original Adventure Path that prevents the modules from being set in Greyhawk, neither is there any compelling material to force them there, either. Compare that with ANY Eberron module or City of the Spider Queen, which require significant retooling to use outside of their core setting. Mind you, that's part and parcel of Greyhawk (it is, after all, the setting that D&D was built with)...which is again, why WotC chose to use it more often than not, when they needed something.

Now, there are some books that I think Hobo would be justified in saying supported Greyhawk, if not entirely actively. Deities & Demigods (to date, my vote for most disappointing supplement) had decent Greyhawk support (limited though it was). Some books certainly used place names or deity names in Prestige Classes, such as the Temple Raider of Olidamarra. Greyhawk was certainly not left entirely in the cold, just not really strongly supported. A large part of this effort came from Erik Mona and Lisa Stevens' efforts, to be sure.

Probably some of the best Greyhawk material wasn't actually seen by many folks...it was the Living Greyhawk material done by WotC for the LG magazine which eventually merged with Polyhedron and then was absorbed into Dragon magazine. Once again, here's where WotC allowed a LOT of Greyhawk material to be produced: both Dragon and Dungeon, in their final couple of years, featured a ton of Greyhawk content. Stats for famous Greyhawk NPCs, modules in Dungeon and even mini-campaign settings like the City of Shadows. More than once, some WotC staffers implied that, by default, anything that wasn't specified was consider Greyhawk to them. And don't forget the series of Greyhawk novels WotC released a few years ago, too.

So while WotC didn't support the setting as rigorously as FR, it's disingenuous to say that they did it dirt. Clearly, WotC didn't see the same return on RtToEE that they did on some publications...especially as the Greyhawk fanbase has suffered a pretty noticable split over the years. It's been my perception that the FR fanbase didn't splinter as significantly over something like the Time of Troubles in the same way. And yes, the FR fans buy the novels. Greyhawk's novels clearly didn't sell nearly as well.

Honestly, if I wanted anything from WotC, I'd rather have just one big Campaign Setting book, like Eberron and the Realms have gotten. But I can understand why they're not supporting it, and it doesn't exactly break my heart.

 

[Desdichado]

I liked New Coke.

In any case, I don't know that I have much more to add here. I'm not a fan of Greyhawk, so I guess I see more Greyhawk material than I want to as it is. But I'm not trying to diss anyone for liking it, I just think that the notion that WotC wants the setting to die is pretty wild tin-foil hat territory. They may not particularly care; it may not be the setting that they're putting all their effort into, but the idea that they wish people would just quit playing it already: silly, IMO. Otherwise, the concept of Greyhawk as the "core setting" would never have happened. I realize that's not what a lot of Greyhawk fans wanted, but there's a difference between "not supported" and "not supported the way I want it to be."

And besides, from what I've seen, it's quite likely that nothing WotC could have done vis a viz Greyhawk would have made Greyhawk fans happy anyway.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

I liked New Coke.

In any case, I don't know that I have much more to add here. I'm not a fan of Greyhawk, so I guess I see more Greyhawk material than I want to as it is. But I'm not trying to diss anyone for liking it, I just think that the notion that WotC wants the setting to die is pretty wild tin-foil hat territory. They may not particularly care; it may not be the setting that they're putting all their effort into, but the idea that they wish people would just quit playing it already: silly, IMO. Otherwise, the concept of Greyhawk as the "core setting" would never have happened. I realize that's not what a lot of Greyhawk fans wanted, but there's a difference between "not supported" and "not supported the way I want it to be."

And besides, from what I've seen, it's quite likely that nothing WotC could have done vis a viz Greyhawk would have made Greyhawk fans happy anyway.

I can live with this. It sums up some of my own sentiments nicely. I am a fan of the setting, so I've always wanted more, but we've always had something at least. We'll see what happens in the next year or two to our beloved Greyhawk, I guess.