D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.

[Micah Sweet]

Same point as yours.

Why bother with more Greyhawk beyond the 5.2 DMG 'cause it's not worth the hassle to enough people? Nice to see we're on the same page.

 

[TiQuinn]

Why bother with more Greyhawk beyond the 5.2 DMG 'cause it's not worth the hassle to enough people? Nice to see we're on the same page.

No. Consider the pomposity of the statement that because there is a subset of fans who don’t like something, it’s reason to completely dismiss the existence of a product as not real Ravenloft or not real Greyhawk.

Unless you have actual numbers backing you up to say a majority of people don’t want something, consider instead that there are people who want the new content, someone in the company decided it was worth creating content for them, and be happy with that even if it isn’t personally your cup of tea.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. Consider the pomposity of the statement that because there is a subset of fans who don’t like something, it’s reason to completely dismiss the existence of a product as not real Ravenloft or not real Greyhawk.

Unless you have actual numbers backing you up to say a majority of people don’t want something, consider instead that there are people who want the new content, someone in the company decided it was worth creating content for them, and be happy with that even if it isn’t personally your cup of tea.

Nope. Way too much emotional investment in Ravenloft over the last 30+ years to accept the travesty of VRG with a pleasant lack of comment, as you seem to want (unsurprisingly given your fondness for the product). I didn't like it, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

 

[Minigiant]

But your reasons for those settings being "better" was that Greyhawk would need remade, because it can't handle the themes and direction of modern DnD. IE, it is a bad fit for the game. A point that you couldn't really defend beyond "5e has a lot of magic, and Greyhawl only had high level magic" which is just false since Greyhawl was the default in 3.X.

And now you've said your real argument is that if we get this chapter, we won't get a Greyhawk book, which is just pure speculation, with the Ravenloft example given above being a counter-point to that.

You misunderstand me because there are steps to it all. So let me me explain

1. My belief is that a setting designed to teach world building in the DMG should either
   1. Have the same base assumptions as the PHB and MM without needing variant rules
   2. Have vastly different assumptions as the PHB and MM but have a very detailed explanation of the difference and information how to run this different setting
2. IMHO, Greyhawk is not currently ready for either option.
3. IHO, I don't think WOTC is going to do option 2
   1. It's not their style
   2. They literally ran out of time last time
   3. WOTC is very hands off this edition on telling people what to do or even explaining the situation
4. I believe WOTC is either going to
   1. Reprint the 40year old version and to the usually throw the DM in the wild and say "You're the DM you fix it"
   2. Update Greyhawk buly stripping out it's nongeographic uniqueness and make a alternate FR-like redundant setting which would technically count as education because they'd have to explain the new version of it.
5. So in my opinion it would be better to pick another setting that is already close to the PHB and MM or a setting that already has a book.
6. Then Greyhawk can get a whole book instead of a reprinted or updated version of the setting squished in a chapter with little world building education.

 

[TiQuinn]

Nope. Way too much emotional investment in Ravenloft over the last 30+ years to accept the travesty of VRG with a pleasant lack of comment, as you seem to want (unsurprisingly given your fondness for the product). I didn't like it, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

And frankly, as a long time fan who bought the first adventure and first box set off the shelves, I’ve found something to enjoy in every iteration, and feel it’s important to provide a different perspective.

 

[Faolyn]

Ok. Some fans. Your point, other than implying how much you liked VRG?

I think the point is, "why bother?" assumes that most or all people are going to feel the same way about a product that you do. But that's clearly not the case.

They bothered because a lot of people liked VGR. Some of those people were new to the setting. Some of them were long-time fans, like me. I'm pretty sure more people liked it than hated it. So they bothered for those people.

 

[Autumnal]

I don’t see step 2. Greyhawk is a hodge-podge world of things that interested Gygax and/or his players. It runs on the same general principles as other hodge-podge settings, with things like magic now having always been whatever way the new edition does magic, classic basics, and such.

I don’t think it needs any real mechanical changes at all. It could sensibly have advice about how this option is more common than that one, and it could usefully include tweaks to subclasses, modified for rules for this and that, but really, it just needs setting foundations (including a lot of attention what characters at each tier usually do here).

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Nope. Way too much emotional investment in Ravenloft over the last 30+ years to accept the travesty of VRG with a pleasant lack of comment, as you seem to want (unsurprisingly given your fondness for the product). I didn't like it, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

And now consider people who liked the Ravenloft in 1st and early 2e consider the Ravenloft you love a travesty, you guys just bullied them into silence.

 

[Minigiant]

I don’t see step 2. Greyhawk is a hodge-podge world of things that interested Gygax and/or his players. It runs on the same general principles as other hodge-podge settings, with things like magic now having always been whatever way the new edition does magic, classic basics, and such.

I don’t think it needs any real mechanical changes at all. It could sensibly have advice about how this option is more common than that one, and it could usefully include tweaks to subclasses, modified for rules for this and that, but really, it just needs setting foundations (including a lot of attention what characters at each tier usually do here).

It would need to explain where the dragonborn came from and why there are so many tiefling and why all the orcs aren't evil and why the psionics is different and where the crashed space ships came from and why evrrrrbody and dey mama has Cantrips and spells and why feats let everyone tap into there classes so easily and why the game is "Big Damn Heroes storm Iuz's castle" over "Plucky Jerks influencing Local Politics"

 

[MonsterEnvy]

It would need to explain where the dragonborn came from and why there are so many tiefling and why all the orcs aren't evil and why the psionics is different and where the crashed space ships came from and why evrrrrbody and dey mama has Cantrips and spells and why feats let everyone tap into there classes so easily and why the game is "Big Damn Heroes storm Iuz's castle" over "Plucky Jerks influencing Local Politics"

No it doesn’t. Why would it need to explain those things when they are the same as the default. They don’t need any more explanation than Dwarves, Lizardfolk or Goblins do.
Also non evil orcs were already a thing in Greyhawk.

They don’t need to explain anything you listed, they just need to present the setting.