Greyhawk being dumped as the core setting in 3.5

[MerricB]

To say I'm conflicted about this is an understatement.

I consider WotC to be in a "no win" situation with Greyhawk.

Living Greyhawk has apparently been extremely successful, so Greyhawk is being supported on at least one level.

If WotC produce their own Greyhawk products, we have a divergent timeline that will confuse the Living Greyhawk players.

Regardless of the quality of WotC Greyhawk products, a large section of Greyhawk "fans" will dislike them, because they aren't written in the same way as those as Gygax/Sargeant/Moore/etc.

The same applies if they license Greyhawk out!

So, no true solution for Greyhawk. If one considers the 'true' Greyhawk as being the campaign of Gygax, Kuntz and others of that group, then 'true' Greyhawk died a long, long time ago as a published product. Though we might wish that it had been otherwise, it is only a wish, not reality.

Cheers!

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Supporting Greyhawk

I think that the setting should be kept. This is coming from someone who has played precicely two sessions in Greyhawk (Living Greyhawk at a Con). The reason is not a rational one either. To put it simply, I think that the NPC's in Greyhawk are better used then in Forgotten Realms. Mordenkainen, Bigby, Rary, and the rest don't seem to overwhelm the setting the way Elminster and Khelben do.

But if WotC was to support Greyhawk better, then it should be done differently then what is done for Forgotten Realms.

For Forgotten Realms, there has been mostly rules expansions. New spells, feats, prestige classes, PC races, etc. By and large, most of the stuff that has come out for Forgotten realms has been the sort of thing that you might find in a Core book.

For Greyhawk, the support should be in the form of adventures.

You would not even need to make new ones, you could simply update the old 1st and 2nd edition adventures to 3rd edition rules. They could also do sequels, as was done with Tomb of Horrors / Return to the Tomb of horrors.

The nice thing about adventures is that unlike region specific splat books and gazeteers, you can easily just juggle a few names to transplant them into another setting. From a DM standpoint, other then a few minor spell changes, a 12th level evil cleric of Hextor can be replaced by a 12th level evil Cleric of Bane.

Besides, I just want more decent published adventures to use.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Aloïsius]

There will be this new setting, soon... What about this one ? It would be a simple way to promote it, no ?


PS : "Et voilà !" means "There !"

 

[buzz]

If WotC produce their own Greyhawk products, we have a divergent timeline that will confuse the Living Greyhawk players.

Would it? I mean, all the FR propducts assume it's 1371 or something, right? The players take it from there. Same with LG, the main gazetteer assumes it's CY 521 (or whatever), and then the RPGA products advance the campaign beyond that. As long as the published material doesn't move past that date, it woulnd't step on the toes of the LG.

I mean, it's not like we're dealing with WW-style metaplots or anything. *ducks*

 

[diaglo]

it ain't canon so i don't care what they want to do with it.

 

[Psion]

THAT DEPENDS

I like the default cosmology, and think that WotC would be remiss in leaving it out. It's a D&D tradition for many players who don't even play Greyhawk.

THAT SAID

Nothing about the PH was a more bone fide pain in the arse than assuming that the "new age" Greyhawk deities were some sort of norm. Deities need to be way more toolkit in nature, and the role of the DM in determining such aspects in the game needs to be put in giant flashing red letters.

 

[The Lemon Merchant]

I voted yes to get rid of it, but I'm not a fan of Forgotten Realms either. I'm a big fan of Ravenloft and homebrew, so I'm all for yanking the fluff out of the core books. If you want a pregen world setting, go the route of FR, I don't want to have to deal with that info if I'm not using it.

 

[Glyfair]

THAT DEPENDS

I like the default cosmology, and think that WotC would be remiss in leaving it out. It's a D&D tradition for many players who don't even play Greyhawk.

THAT SAID

Nothing about the PH was a more bone fide pain in the arse than assuming that the "new age" Greyhawk deities were some sort of norm. Deities need to be way more toolkit in nature, and the role of the DM in determining such aspects in the game needs to be put in giant flashing red letters.

Runequest 3 was an attempt by Chaosium to make Runequest a more generic system. They had the "toolkit" approach to the gods and goddesses (and a pretty good one, too). This was probably one of more criticized changes to the rules. Players wanted specific examples of Gods & Goddesses, not "the War God" or "the Agricultural Goddess).

Admittedly, Runequest was much more tightly tied to Runequest than Greyhawk ever was to D&D. Still, I think the general principle applies. Players want examples, not "toolkits." Of course, the ideal method is do both (give the toolkit, and examples made with the toolkit and fleshed out).

Also, remember, the people that should care either way are the players who are just getting into the game. They don't usually get into the game because they want to create their own gods & goddesses. That comes later. Give them a default to start with. How many experienced roleplayers actually think "I hate Greyhawk, but that's what's in the PHB, so that's what I have to use."?

Glyfair of Glamis

 

[Chauzu]

I think they should keep it as the default setting... if they put a chapter in the DMG about Greyhawk, kinda like they did in OA.

 

[Jesse Day]

#4. THE PANTHEON!!! I'm sorry, but I just can't get excited about the Gods of Greyhawk, and their names just turn me off. Heironeous (all too often pronounced by my friends as hairy-anus)? Give me Torm anyday- he sounds like a rear-kicker. Boccob? Wee Jas? What kinds of names are those, compared to Mystra or the tolkienesque Selune? And BANE- there's an enemy for you- none of this Hextor stuff...

Very good point. On the preparation/character creation session before the first 3e campaign I ran, the players were looking through the books, and one of them opened the PHB to page 31 and started incredulously reading off the names of some of the gods, and we all started cracking up at how utterly stupid they are. (Well, I knew what to expect, so I just kinda smirked a little bit, but still...)

Heironeous, Wee Jas, and Hextor, of the ones you mentioned, were all soundly laughed at, as were Kord (they say he's the God of Strength, but I know that he's just a length of rope, twine, or wire), Fharlanghn (this might work in a setting with the right sort of... what is it, Celtic? flavor, but it just looks bizarre lumped in with the rest... and besides, God of ROADS? like there's enough spiritual significance dedicated to ROADS that they need their own patron deity. I mean, really now, at least write "God of Travellers" or something instead. Roads. Sheesh.), Obad-Hai (like F's name, it just sounds out-of-place and ugly when mixed with the rest), and St. Cuthbert (what the heck is a Christian saint doing listed as a God among a polytheistic list like this? and no supreme being should EVER have a name ending in -bert. It's too mortal-sounding, like having a deity named "Wallace" or "Thomas" or "Frederick". Just doesn't work.). Maybe knowing the Greyhawkian background of these deities makes the names seem less stupid, but my players (and probably a good 50-75% of other players) know only what they see in the PHB.

Even Pelor, Boccob, Erythnul and Nerull are pretty so-so, like they fell off the wrong end of a random syllable generator. The FRCS has some deities with mediocre names, and a few that are outright ridiculous, but it's hard to match the PHB list for outrageousness.

Why even have example deities at all? Why not just give the domains, and mention that the nature of deity your character worships will determine what domains are available... i.e. if you want the Fire domain, don't worship an ocean god; if you want the War domain, don't worship a god of peace, etc. Then throw in a section in the DMG about designing a pantheon, which couldn't be expected to cover more than two or three extra pages at most (and certainly you could make up the room for that in other areas). This would perhaps create the problem of players trying to mix-and-match the "best" two domains, then justify it in reverse (unless the DM laid out a clear pantheon), but in allowing deityless clerics, that's already an option anyway.

...

Wee Jas is the worst. It makes me cringe in disgust.