In addition to the long post I made yesterday, there's the old "Greyhawk in the Hawk" post from the Greytalk listserv days which might help focus the tone/elements-that-define-the-setting discussion a bit more concretely. I didn't post this earlier since it really positions GH and FR in direct opposition, and I don't think that's very productive, but I think that it is still useful as a quick prompt to try to build some more specificity into the discussion.
This was originally written by the Greytalk user Nitescreed and published to the listserv in 1996:
Allan.
Thank you for posting something concrete to chew on.
Criteria 1: Applied Internal History is Critical. I think to grab this and make it a "hook" for a campaign setting, you would be advocating for the book to include a decently detailed "History and Politics of Greyhawk" chapter with a caveat that when running a GH campaign you should be using aspects of this history (not just the last few years) in your adventure and plot design. This seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do and (I haven't read the Eberron book to know this for certain) it seems like something that differentiates it from the other settings.
Criteria 2: Player resolution of critical events. I wrinkled my brow at this as I was reading it and then looked to see when this was written. I didn't realize it was closing in on 25 years ago. I think that "modern" adventure path design and expectations has made this a universal trait for D&D in general by this point. The dated examples of "in the FR Elminster just fixes everything" doesn't stand the modern example of something like ToA, where the PCs are tasked with saving the world from an evil artifact, despite being D tier candidates at pulling that off when the adventure starts. I don't think that any particular campaign setting can hang its hat on this hook anymore.
Criteria 3: NPCs reward more than they direct. If your setting book gets wrapped up in an adventure path I don't see this being able to be accomplished. They pretty much require, by design, a bit of the old NPC needs you to do this railroading. As a strict setting book, however, this could be a good include in the "How to run a game in Greyhawk" section. By explicitly saying that its rare that PCs walk through town looking for quest icons above the NPCs heads, an instead the group should be more self motivated it would give you a direction to start designing in. This also tends to set up a more "sandbox" feel for a campaign, so I feel that a deeper dive into designing a good sandbox in the GM section would be kind of a requirement to support this. I think MANY players (mine included) have a hard time not looking for the quest giver icons when they get bored.
Criteria 4 & 5: Persistant Evil and Various Villany. This kind of runs together to me, and to a certain extent, like Criteria 2, feels a little outdated in 2020. I don't feel like there is some fundamental difference in feel between the Scarlet Brotherhood and the Zhentarium, as both represent "bad guy organizations with nefarious purpose". I don't see this as a defining trait as explained here, but I may be missing something. Now, when it comes to "You cannot defeat evil" as a campaign hook, that is very different in feel from the FR. But at the same times its kind of the main hook to Ravenloft. I think that it would be an interesting include in the campaign to have some "eternally present, at best you can banish him for a short time" main villain like Iuz, and it might be even more interesting to have the bad guy actually "Rated R" bad, but I can't see that making print in a 5e book.
Criteria 6: Heroism with a price: I think this is another good nugget to latch onto to create a distinct identity for the GH setting. By emphasizing in the "How to GM this setting" portion of the book how each success paints a target on the PCs backs, and how the opposition to them as individuals by evil proper grows with their exploits you have a hook that would make me want to play in this setting. Beef up the "opposition" with a decent rules module for "Renown", that operates similar to standing in an organization, but in a bad way to put some crunch on that tasty bone and you have me ready to make a character TODAY!
Criteria 7: Militant Neutrality: This is another one that I see as not being particularly Greyhawk. Then again in my homebrew campaign I only paint in shades of grey (the main villain is a theocracy of Tempus who has been crusading for 30+ years and the world is getting tired of it). I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of someone "fighting against good" that isn't evil. What are the good teams doing that the neutral teams find offensive, and is something that offensive considered good? This one I would have to discuss further to see what you are aiming at.
Criteria 8: Personal Magics: Everything you describe here I like to do in my homebrew campaigns (unique magic items moreso than spells) and I fully support it. Other than the Named Spells in the PHB, though, I never recall seeing custom items or additional named spells in any of the adventure modules so it could be that this is part of GH I just never experienced.
Those are my thoughts on what might make a good GH campaign book. As mentioned by the OP, they would like to see nonmagical variations of some of the player classes. While I don't think GH ever had these in its setting in the past, I do think that the inclusion of a spellless Ranger/Paladin/Bard would be a worthy addition to a settings theme....as well as just a general sales generator for WotC in general. Those could be plucked out and used in pretty much any campaign easily and would be worth the pages invested.
