It would require somebody who can better define the setting than how it has been largely described in 5e. The setting is on the brink of war. There's a lot of nations who are packed together and don't trust each other. The realms has several nations but you don't have the constant threat of conflict. Mystara's nations are packed right next to each other but you've got two giant empires in Thyatis and Alphatia locked in a cold war that isn't going hot anytime soon.
It's a low magic setting in the fact that almost all the magic is going to be low level. A fireball is not a spell most people see cast, a meteor swarm spell is talked about only in legends. High level characters number in the dozens, you don't find them in every single town like a good chunk of the realms.
The theme of Greyhawk is tension. Focus on that. War is looming. There's big bads just on the edge of civilization waiting to attack. Just ask the Duchy of Geoff. Drow are the unseen boogie men rather than a playable race. Ramp up the fear of the unknown. Play up the racial tensions that are a major factor in the setting. Sell Greyhawk on its theme. And get somebody that understands that to be the pitchman.
What I find amusing about this post, is that this is exactly how I would describe Eberron.
The War was paused, not ended. Political, religious and racial tensions are still high. A single spark could ignite everything.
Most of the magic in the setting is low-level. There is a chance you've seen battle magic, but the dead being returned to life is something spoken about, not something you would expect to happen. Powerful NPCs include a figure head child priestess, a Tree, and a court of spirits bound to their isle. No one can go and do anything about the majority of events in the setting.
There are differences. Eberron feels more connected, the organizations feel more powerful and organized, but everything you said here, can apply there.
Based on their characterization of me in the sister thread to this one, I don't think that OP is really interested in digging into the meat of what makes Greyhawk feel like Greyhawk. I am not certain why, but they seem to take our attempts at trying to get something concrete to work from in a discussion as painting them in a corner so that we can say "AHA, Greyhawk isn't with a campaign setting!".
I have legitimately tried to work with everyone here to try to nail down some themes for the setting to work from but I'm having a strangely hard time getting the big fans to engage on a level deeper than broad brush ideas.
I was just wondering about that.
Like, I'm 9 pages in the thread and the best we have is "more political and the PCs work for money, not the good of the world" along with some "grittier and less magic" being tossed around.
But, none of that sounds like something I can't do in another setting.
Since I've been deep diving Eberron, let me just reference it again. Q'Barra or the Demon Wastes are a great place for a gritty, desperate struggle against threats like disease, injury, and "low level" monsters on the frontiers. Poltical? Eberron is defined by the politics of the Houses, the Five Nations, the various religions and even mercenary bands which tend to have political ties.
And in a setting with Mega-corp proxies, working for profit and glory is more common than being a good person.
Not that I don't think Eberron is very very different from Greyhawk but... Greyhawk doesn't seem to lend itself to these sort of elements any more than any other setting. Sure, FR has the NPC problem if you run it "canonically" but you don't have to ever introduce those characters. So, it circles back to me. What about Greyhawk as a setting is the hook?
I could have a player come up to me and say "I want to play a game that focuses on the Psychic Oppression of the Riedran people and how it might be possible to fight an enemy that controls the minds of an Empire." or "I want to play a game that focuses on the Reconstruction of Neverwinter, after it was destroyed by yet another cataclysm, and how the forces of the Thayans are trying to infiltrate while the city is weakened"
But, I don't know anything about Greyhawk. They have an evil empire run by a half demon... that is interesting, but I don't know anything more about that land than that. Is he just sitting in his castle waiting for us?
There is a council of powerful wizards? Okay, get in line behind every setting ever.
What is actually a hook for the setting? What am I exploring? Why should I care about [insert name here]?
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.
A very interesting post, but I find myself... not quite seeing the difference in most of these.
Like, 1, 2 and 3 are just running a player focused campaign that cares about the Lore. I mean "Greyhawk has a history that informs the setting" is about as generic a statement as I think you can make.
4, 5 and 6 really kind of confuse me. There is a vast variety of evil in Greyhawk, but nowhere else? Villains have no backstory in other settings? That doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can ever tell. Again, I've been deep diving Eberron recently, but the Dreaming Dark, The Lords of Dust, The Daelkyr, Lady Illmarrow, The Daughters of Sora Kell? All of them have deep backstories tied into the history of the setting, and are threats that have arisen and been beaten back time and time again, shaping the history of the world.
7... Seven is the weirdest claim that I often see. Especially since (and I know this wasn't your post, but an old repost of someone else) but they talk about militant neutrality, and how they prevent good or evil from winning.... and then list all the times they stopped evil.
I never hear about the time Mordenkainen destroyed the church of Pelor. Or some other time when these "keep the balance" people attacked the forces of Good. And often, when I see the argument that "good" can't be allowed to win, it is because good becomes tyrannical and evil when it wins... which means it was never good.
Now, I will agree that FR is certainly a world where good is more prevalent than neutral or evil. The Good Guys are definetly winning in FR, but is "the fight between good and evil is more evenly matched" really have enough appeal to make a full setting stand up on?
And 8.. is a good point, but I think that doesn't really apply to the setting unless there are rules for customizing your own spells. Which would immediately be taken up by every setting because that is a thing everyone would want to do. Greyhawk just had the luck to be the first setting, so it got to name some of the iconic spells.
So, in all, I think that was a very good post, but I think my confusion is clear on why it leaves me scratching my head. None of that is really unique. Unless the history is so compelling to be able to stand on its own.
I didn't make myself clear. I did not mean that it's impossible to play in Greyhawk. Every gaming group is different. I'm sure you could get players interested in almost any kind of material, if you're passionate about it and your enthusiasm is contagious.
What I'm saying is that no one in this thread has managed to describe what Greyhawk is - or could be - in a way that would make a new GH book distinctive and interesting to new GMs and players. Or rather, those who tried to do that didn't get the approval of the Greyhawk grognards. Which leads me to think that releasing a 5e version of the Greyhawk campaign setting is probably impossible.
Honestly... I wonder if part of it is that people just assume that everyone knows the plot points of Greyhawk.
Like, people keep saying "The Scarlet Brotherhood" like they are a big deal, but I literally have no idea who that is. The history of Greyhawk is supposedly incredibly important to running it... but I have no idea what that history is.
I can name nearly a dozen cities and countries for FR, but for Greyhawk I only know that there is the Free City of Greyhawk... and I have no idea why it is called the Free City. Is it in the middle of that Evil Empire of Iuz? What makes the city of Greyhawk special enough that I'd want to go there?