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

[Chaosmancer]

Everything starts somewhere, and that changed(for the most part) long before WotC took over.

And so therefore doing things the way they were done once before is bad and againstt the "assumption" of the game?

DnD doesn't assume anything about how you world build. I should know, I'm playing in a collaboratively created world. I'm also playing in a homebrew world where I made only the culture of my character. I've also played in pre-built worlds. DnD didn't becoming easier or harder, and the world building didn't become better or worse with any of those.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Do you know people from Ohio hate the Baltimore Ravens? They have good reasons too. There is an entire history.

As a fan of an Ohio team that hates the Ravens (although not the team that has reason to really hate the Ravens), I can admit that such hatred exists. And I can also admit that it's totally irrational. It's just a game, after all. Which is true both for the NFL and D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And so therefore doing things the way they were done once before is bad and againstt the "assumption" of the game?

DnD doesn't assume anything about how you world build. I should know, I'm playing in a collaboratively created world. I'm also playing in a homebrew world where I made only the culture of my character. I've also played in pre-built worlds. DnD didn't becoming easier or harder, and the world building didn't become better or worse with any of those.

Never said it did. I'm going by what the books say, what the culture I grew up prioritized, and my personal opinion. I never said other methods of worldbuilding are worse or better, and if the official books start saying that the whole table should be making the world together, and the DM is just some guy who runs the NPCs, well, I guess that's what WotC thinks the majority wants.

 

[JEB]

And as I mentioned in another post re: Valachan, the 2e and 3e books had a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, and rapiness. And in some cases, like Valachan, Souragne, and Dementlieu, the only way to get rid of those issues was to rewrite those domains completely.

And as I noted upthread, the author explicitly created the new Valachan as an evolution of the old, not a reboot from scratch. These goals - continuing from the previous version of a world and updating it for modern sensibilities - aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You're right. Clearly I and a tiny number of pre-5e Ravenloft fans are the only people who didn't love VRG. Really, expressing such opinions at all is a cultural faux pas for which we should be harshly judged.

Do you not see the difference between saying “I don’t like this” and saying “this has no right to exist”?

 

[Maxperson]

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"

Tieflings need no explanation. Iuz is present and demons abound. Tieflings are just another type of cambion when you get down to it.

Orcs were already present in nearly every major city and country anyway, so no need for new explanation there, either.

Psionics were present. New mechanics for it don't need new explanation. It's a setting, not a rule set. If you run 1e Greyhawk, you use 1e psionics. If you run 2e Greyhawk, you use 2e psionics. If you run 3e Greyhawk, you use 3e psionics. If you run 4e Greyhawk, you use 4e psionics. If you run 5e Greyhawk, you have no psionics which is where the explanation, if any, would need to happen.

Dragonborn could probably use a home, but don't really need one. And a DM could just make one up pretty easily. I made up one already in this thread(I think) and it took me a few seconds.

You're overthinking this. As I said above, it's a setting, not a rule set. It will use whatever rule set you attach to it, which could even be some other game entirely.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes the 5e DMG is bad. We know it. WotC knows it. Everyone knows it.

Presuming that WotC is incapable of learning from mistakes seems a bit harsh. After all, the beginner box sets are generally held in very high regard. Phandelver is generally seen as an excellent example of how to make an adventure.

It’s not like WotC has abandoned DMs in 5e.

The information in the 5e DMG is actually pretty darn good. It just has the worst organization that I've seen in a professional RPG book, so new DMs have to struggle too much to actually find the information that they need, and very few actually read the DMG straight through.

 

[pemerton]

it's a setting, not a rule set. It will use whatever rule set you attach to it, which could even be some other game entirely.

I recommend Burning Wheel. Also Torchbearer!

 

[Demetrios1453]

Tieflings need no explanation. Iuz is present and demons abound. Tieflings are just another type of cambion when you get down to it.

Tiefling origins are completely obvious from a lore standpoint (plus, they can come from the Great Kingdom as well), but even when presented with this logical, lore-friendly explanation, some of the most hardline Greyhawk grognards simply refuse to accept it. Once, long ago, when a "tieflings in Greyhawk" conversation came up here, I got one to admit that yes, creatures with the exact same origins and descriptions as tieflings no doubt exist, and probably in large numbers, in Greyhawk, but those creatures couldn't be tieflings since tieflings don't exist in the setting. It's just weird how the name sticks in their craw.

 

[Autumnal]

I recommend Burning Wheel. Also Torchbearer!

I spent some time this weekend looking at the 3e Gazeteer and thinking about Ironsworn and Loner. It’d work with very little fuss, I suspect.