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D&D General For the Love of Greyhawk: Why People Still Fight to Preserve Greyhawk

It's difficult to come up with a so-called "Hook" given that any hook that is provided is completely rubbished, while people think that hooks for other campaign worlds ("This is where video game characters came from,") is perfectly fine.

Honestly, if you were just going for a marketing hook, I would hammer home the history- "This is where D&D started- now your PCs can be a part of that history."
What's remarkable is how hard it seems to come up with a good marketing hook that tells us what's unique about the setting. It's cool that it's tied to the origins of D&D, but if it's all there is to it, I can just find an old edition of Greyhawk and an old edition of D&D and start playing. It's not a particularly good pitch for a 5e version of GH.
 

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TwoSix

Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
What's remarkable is how hard it seems to come up with a good marketing hook that tells us what's unique about the setting. It's cool that it's tied to the origins of D&D, but if it's all there is to it, I can just find an old edition of Greyhawk and an old edition of D&D and start playing. It's not a particularly good pitch for a 5e version of GH.
I think it's a perfectly good hook. "You've heard the names...Tenser...Otiluke...Mordenkainen. Now, go back to the place where they all started!"
 


Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
That's cute, but you're not disagreeing with me either. It is obviously hard to tell what's unique about the setting.

"Clearly" and "obviously" are words used by people to assert things not in evidence.

I don't need to convince you of anything; quite frankly, at this point, I don't want your approval. I believe you came into this thread saying that the big issue is the grognards complaining about a product that hasn't been released; and yet, we have been quite clear that we'd be happy to see an updated setting that's been modernized!

It's pretty clear where the complaints are really coming from at this time.
 

That's cute, but you're not disagreeing with me either. It is obviously hard to tell what's unique about the setting.
It's not that it's unique, per se, it's that it was the first.

The various settings it seems like? They were ripping off it, not the other way around.

Greyhawk suffers from the fact that it's been poorly marketed for 30+ years. It was always so intrinsically tied to Gary Gygax that once he was out at TSR, Greyhawk was never a priority for them, and it showed.

90's Planescape books strongly hinted that Oerth itself was dying and might cease to exist soon, TSR in that era saw it as a burden and was vaguely hinting at some looming world-shaking event that might outright destroy the world. What few Greyhawk works there were in the 90's weren't widely distributed and weren't well promoted. . .as a new D&D fan in that era, Greyhawk wasn't even on the radar of settings to study, everyone was into the Realms (or maybe Planescape or Ravenloft).

The Realms became popular because of novels, and tie-in video games, and so many similar other things beyond traditional D&D books and modules that told the story, so people who were only tangentally part of D&D culture could be brought closer to it, and that helped grow the Realms a lot. Dragonlance got big like that in the 90's too (before Dragons of Summer Flame chased so many fans away by essentially ending the setting, the whole "5th Age" stuff never caught on).

3e made an attempt at a limited revival by making Greyhawk the presumed default setting (which it always was to a lesser extent, like was shown in spell names, but was treated a little more obviously in the 3e core books, like listing Greyhawk deities as player options to choose as a patron deity).

Greyhawk isn't an influential or major setting because it's unique, it's because it's the seed that so many other things in D&D sprouted out of, that it has a special and unique place in D&D history and lore.
 


Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Greyhawk isn't an influential or major setting because it's unique, it's because it's the seed that so many other things in D&D sprouted out of, that it has a special and unique place in D&D history and lore.

A lot of this feels like conversations you might have about Citizen Kane. It can be difficult to fully appreciate Citizen Kane unless you have at least a base understanding of the history of cinema. Sure, it's a good movie, but why are people always, "OMG, Citizen Kane!"

Of course, explaining some things, like deep focus or whip pans or montage or even the brilliance of the angled shots to convey emotion- if someone doesn't bother to learn why it's important, it's quite easy to say, "Well, that's just like this other movie. I saw a montage in an MCU movie. What makes Citizen Kane special? Give me a 'hook' for Citizen Kane that doesn't discuss the history, and also makes sure to distinguish it and make it 100% unique from every movie that every came afterwards"

If a person doesn't want to understand context, it quickly becomes not an opportunity to discuss, but the most pointless argument ever.
 
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Hmm... If I were trying to pitch Greyhawk as a setting when it was basically the default setting for Gygaxian D&D I'd suggest introducing two rules to it from old school D&D
  • XP for GP
  • Domain rules for characters at L10.
The first is obviously a rule to incentivise the sort of mercenary play that made Greyhawk and the second is what happened anyway.

Anyway that's what would make me as a non-fan interested in the 5th edition - getting the rules that made the setting in the first place to make the setting and the playstyle again. What would the various Greyhawk fans make of it?
 

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