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.

 

[Parmandur]

Hollow World confirmed.

Well, Mystara has a whole chapter in that new srbook coming out in a couple weeks...so not impossible.

 

[R_J_K75]

This just seems odd to me. If they really wanted to teach a new DM how to create a campaign world, I think they should have done a chapter similar to what Ray Winniger did in his Dungeoncraft column that started in 1999 in Dragon Magazine #255. Instead of just showing DMs what a campaign setting looks like, why not suggest how to actually create it?

 

[Hussar]

This just seems odd to me. If they really wanted to teach a new DM how to create a campaign world, I think they should have done a chapter similar to what Ray Winniger did in his Dungeoncraft column that started in 1999 in Dragon Magazine #255. Instead of just showing DMs what a campaign setting looks like, why not suggest how to actually create it?

Because forcing a new DM to actually create a campaign setting from the ground up is far too daunting for new DM's. Instead, here's a canned setting, ready to go, but with lots of free spaces for the DM's to fill in without having to spend hours and hours doing all the high altitude stuff.

 

[R_J_K75]

Because forcing a new DM to actually create a campaign setting from the ground up is far too daunting for new DM's. Instead, here's a canned setting, ready to go, but with lots of free spaces for the DM's to fill in without having to spend hours and hours doing all the high altitude stuff.

A new DM wouldn't have to start off creating an entire setting. There is at least one introductory adventure which I'm going to hazard a guess that most new DMs will use as a starting point. So I think guidance on how to create an adventure and world after that would be more valuable than an example setting. Even if the adventure in the new DMG is set in Greyhawk I think a lot of new DMs after finishing it will ask "now what"? Does a new DM having a generic version of Greyhawk actually answer that question? Perhaps this is addressed in the book somewhere, IDK.

 

[Hussar]

A new DM wouldn't have to start off creating an entire setting. There is at least one introductory adventure which I'm going to hazard a guess that most new DMs will use as a starting point. So I think guidance on how to create an adventure and world after that would be more valuable than an example setting. Even if the adventure in the new DMG is set in Greyhawk I think a lot of new DMs after finishing it will ask "now what"? Does a new DM having a generic version of Greyhawk actually answer that question? Perhaps this is addressed in the book somewhere, IDK.

What do you mean by "now what"? They have a setting - albeit a skeleton one. They will have an adventure in the DMG (I think) to start the ball rolling.

World building is the absolute last thing that a new DM should have to think about. Not the first.

 

[OptionalRule]

It seems like they intend to publish the seed of the setting in the DMG and leave the rest to the community to tailor how they like.

 

[R_J_K75]

What do you mean by "now what"?

If I was a new DM and I finished the starter adventure, how do I go about continuing it by either writing my own adventure or adapt pieces of the campaign setting into a usable one, that's what I mean by "now what"?

World building is the absolute last thing that a new DM should have to think about. Not the first.

I'm not saying that a new DM has to create a new world but even if they are taking a small portion of the example campaign setting and using it for an adventure, aren't they at least doing minimal world building? At 30 pages I'm going to assume there is still going to be a bit of fleshing out that needs to be done.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Not surprised at all. Other than Forgotten Realms are they going to revisit any setting? I don’t get the impression DragonLance or Ebberon will be getting any new material either.

 

[TiQuinn]

Given the connection to Gygax, and the degree to which old school fans disliked previous updates to the setting, I think leaving Greyhawk largely untouched going forward was probably the right call. Decent risk of PO’ing fans of the setting for little reward. The most important point is that it frees up people to publish DMGuild content for it.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Will be unlocked in DMGuild? We shouldn't need more.

And a sobresaturation of FR shouldn't be good for the brand. You shouldn't put all the eggs in only one basket.

They are think they doing the big FR books to appease FR fans so they can move on to focus more on other settings, I mean not completely we might still get the Red Wizard adventure, but by and large I expect less focus on FR after those two books, with an occasional exception.