D&D 4E Greyhawk 4e: Back to the Beginning...

[Prism]

Clearly you have a different definition of 'trashed' than I do. I meant 'destroyed'.

in fact, this new/old greyhawk sounds a bit like a world called yarth. At least the idea of such. A very similar reboot

 

[I'm A Banana]

I like the plan, and would get behind it.

What I'm not a huge fan of is retconning Tieflings and Dragonborn into everything.

Look, lads and lasses, we don't need them.

I think they'd fit well into Greyhawk, though. No major harm done (and Tieflings fit the Sword-And-Sorvery/Evil-Alongside-Good feel of the place pretty well).

So I guess while it rubs me the wrong way in general, I'm okay with it here, so 'sallright.

I'd like a non-cataclysmic, non-novelized D&D setting, I think. FR definitely doesn't do that, and DL wouldn't. GH would, and GH's "shades of grey" atmosphere is pretty distinct. Sounds OK to me!

 

[catsclaw227]

I'd like a non-cataclysmic, non-novelized D&D setting, I think. FR definitely doesn't do that, and DL wouldn't. GH would, and GH's "shades of grey" atmosphere is pretty distinct. Sounds OK to me!

Me too.

And on a half-tangent, Shades of Grey, the Necromancer Games' 3.x adventure was pretty dang good, too.

 

[Mercule]

Of course they wouldn't be accepted in normal human society, but like Iuz they could have two forms, one human, one demonic.

Pure awesome. I'm going to yoink this for my 4e homebrew, since it hasn't started, yet. Tieflings look human until they're bloodied (as a stand in for angry, lusty, etc.), then their demonic heritage is unveiled and the horns, serpent eyes, or whatever non-standardized marks show up.

Dragonborn are a stretch. Personally I'd leave them out, but having them originate from somewhere beyond the southern ocean is hardly going to trash Greyhawk. Greyhawk has tons of weird races introduced over the years, one more won't hurt.

I think dragonborn could fit in as a race that has moved into the Sea of Dust, or lived to the southwest of the Suel and were allied with them or otherwise caught in the Rain of Colorless Fire. They are only now showing up in the Flanaess.

Of course, that gets into adding things to canon that some/many would have an issue with. Maybe the right thing to do for such a venerable setting is to not force things like dragonborn into it, but add some options. If my idea was tossed into a "What's New" chapter that specifically addresses how current 4e assumptions differ from 25 year old canon, it'd probably be easier to swallow.

I don't see the Great Wheel as an issue, either. There's nothing in the 4e rules/implied setting to indicate you can't have 17 closely tied planes floating in the Astral Sea and those 17 be the general scope of Oerthly knowledge.

 

[Mercule]

Greyhawk was commonly seen as a "shades of grey" place, where good, neutral and evil peoples and powers intermixed, without one ever entirely gaining an advantage over the other.

The phrase that stuck in my head was "evil-hating neutrals".

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

The phrase that stuck in my head was "evil-hating neutrals".

For some reason, this made me think of Zapp Brannagan, and his thoughts on the Neutral people.

"What makes a man turn neutral..."

The entire "maintan the balance" thing always seemed, at best, silly to me.

 

[Klaus]

The phrase that stuck in my head was "evil-hating neutrals".

I forget where I read it, but this was explained to me as "even if you're neutral, who would you rather have as a neighboor: an evil person or a good person?". So helping good people at times out of sheer selfishness is neutral.

 

[ki11erDM]

From the Ashes was a massive, top-down change that radically altered the setting for the worse, and trashed many traits that fans had come to associate with the setting.

After reading your post this is what I took away from it: Just another jaded gamer.

Why in the world would some 16 year old just starting D&D in 1992 want anything to do with a setting that had 16 years of poorly documented history? Did you expect them to go buy every adventure and piece together the campaign? They “blew up” the world for the same reason they just blew up FR, to make it more approachable to new players. The players that will carry this game for the NEXT 40 years, not the ones keeping it stuck in the past. As best as I can tell no one ever made you change your campaign just because a new book came out.

To the OP and the thread, WotC has publicly said that they are not sure what to do with Greyhawk. Mostly because if they release a setting it won’t mesh with any old timers champions, so they won’t buy the heretical book, and no one under 30 has really played in a fully supported GH world, so they will have no reason to buy it.

So they have to come up with a shtick to sell it to their old and new consumers, because we are well past the time when WotC or TSR can release a vanity product. A good reboot might just do the trick, and might be the ONLY thing they would. And to be honest it would not surprise me one bit if this was ‘leaked’ to get some marketing feedback.

I for one would love it if they rebooted Oerth and release books just as they are for FR. That campaign guild is everything I want it to be. It gives you the basics of the world/region/country and lets the DM build his/her own world. Just like my World of Greyhawk box set let me do.

 

[catsclaw227]

Why in the world would some 16 year old just starting D&D in 1992 want anything to do with a setting that had 16 years of poorly documented history? Did you expect them to go buy every adventure and piece together the campaign? They “blew up” the world for the same reason they just blew up FR, to make it more approachable to new players. The players that will carry this game for the NEXT 40 years, not the ones keeping it stuck in the past. As best as I can tell no one ever made you change your campaign just because a new book came out.

This is basically my stance on setting reboots, resets, nuking, RSE, whatever you want to call it.

The change is to usher in a new generation of gamers that will, in the future, defend this version of the Realms/Greyhawk/Eberron against the next generation of changes.


(BTW, quoting pieces of post with your custom font is a pain in the keester).

 

[Klaus]

I don't see why there has to be a reboot to draw in new gamers. A re-release, with polished up and new material, taking what worked best in the past and adding/emphasizing things that might appeal to a new demographic, I can see.