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

[Helldritch]

Personally, I have no need of such a product, and neither do most existing fans of the setting. They'll only get so much out of it. You seem to want to capture a new generation of fans for the setting. This is not in any way a bad idea.....but I think that the question then becomes: "how do you make Greyhawk seem as awesome to people today as it did to the early gamers?"

And that's kind of tough.

Simple, it's a place where you can build your own kingdom. It happened a few times in my campaigns. Yes we did a lot of reset. But the fun is being able to do it and how it will turn out.

 

[Stormonu]

The old school fan who doesn’t want anything updated and is still running out of the 1983 box is already not a potential customer. They’re not going to buy a 5e Greyhawk because they are not in the market for one. You make a 5e Greyhawk for those who are open to it and never concern with those who put themselves out of the demographic for it.

Not necessarily - I bought into Curse of Strahd and greatly enjoy it, but I'm not overly fond of the likes of the Domains of Dread - especially events after the Great Conjuction. Curse of Strahd deals only with Barovia without pulling all of the Domains of Dread baggage in, and it works. While not WotC, something similar was done with the L5R rpg - for several years they had been rolling the campaign world forward to keep up with the CCG, but lately they rolled the campaign back to its first iteration - prior to the Scorpion Coup - and it is doing well.

I think the same could be done with Greyhawk - roll it back to the '83 box set state of affairs and flesh the entries out. There could be hints at later events such as the Greyhawk Wars and beyond, but not actually implemented.

Now, if they could roll back FR to before the Time of Troubles, that would be a feat...

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Now, if they could roll back FR to before the Time of Troubles, that would be a feat...

I would by a 5e FR book that was a redo of the gray box.

 

[Hussar]

A slightly separate point: @Hussar, I agree with some of what you say about cast. REH's Conan stories are in a certain sense personal or initmate. I think this is connected to the short-story/novella form. I don't think this fully connects to "epic" vs S&S: the Earthsea stories are likewise rather personal/intimate but in my view, considered as fantasy stories, have more in common with LotR than REH's Conan.

To be fair, there are more sub-genres in Fantasy than just S&S and Epic fantasy. The Earthsea stories are YA fiction, which is a genre unto itself.

 

[pemerton]

Were there many statted up NPCs and creatures in the boxes set from the 80s?

In the original folio, no: class and level for rulers was it.

In the boxed set, there were stats for some deities and quasi-deities.

The City of GH boxed set and From the Ashes have much more mechanical info about NPCs and creatures.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Simple, it's a place where you can build your own kingdom. It happened a few times in my campaigns. Yes we did a lot of reset. But the fun is being able to do it and how it will turn out.

In any campaign setting you can build your own kingdom. If the players want to. If they don't, no matter in what setting are they playing, there will be no appeal to that idea.

So, why use this particular idea for publiciting a setting? There is no particular appeal to this kind of play, and is not an exclusive Greyhawk thing.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Simple, it's a place where you can build your own kingdom. It happened a few times in my campaigns. Yes we did a lot of reset. But the fun is being able to do it and how it will turn out.

Okay, but that’s not something unique to Greyhawk. I’ve GMed or played in multiple settings where we built our own kingdom.

I’m honestly not knocking the setting. I just think that it’d be a tough product to create.

The old school fan who doesn’t want anything updated and is still running out of the 1983 box is already not a potential customer. They’re not going to buy a 5e Greyhawk because they are not in the market for one. You make a 5e Greyhawk for those who are open to it and never concern with those who put themselves out of the demographic for it.

I’d be all for this approach, myself. Although I suppose the concern would then be losing some of the elements that made it distinct and enjoyable in the first place.

But I agree that if I had to pick an audience to appeal to, a new audience is the only sensible answer.

 

[Helldritch]

In any campaign setting you can build your own kingdom. If the players want to. If they don't, no matter in what setting are they playing, there will be no appeal to that idea.

So, why use this particular idea for publiciting a setting? There is no particular appeal to this kind of play, and is not an exclusive Greyhawk thing.

Try that in the Realm... It's too full. Greyhawk has a lot of empty space to do it. Of course you can still do it in other setting, but Greyhawk is especialy good for this.

 

[MichaelSomething]

As I mentioned much, much earlier in the thread - Erik Mona. He's a Greyhawk fan from way back, has done products in the setting and has lots of experience working for WoTC.

My criteria includes "availably" and isn't Erik Mona currently in charge of Publishing over at Pazio? Getting him to do it seems like a really long shot to me...

 

[Zeromaru X]

Try that in the Realm...

Well, there are places specifically designed for this purpose in the Realms (for instance, thr Border Kingdoms area, or Neverwinter if you use 4e), though I get your point.