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

[Shardstone]

Do you think if I run Greyhawk and add stuff to it that Gary didn't that he'll come back from the dead and blow my game up? Am I allowed to make the setting my own when I run it or am I beholden to the imagination of a man 50 years ago? WHEN WILL THE CHAINS OF THE PAST FREE US, BROTHERS?! SISTERS?! WHEN WILL WE BE FREE?!

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is the real answer. The original blurb on how Kara Tur was meant for Greyhawk but ended up on Faerun post Gary's departure shows for Greyhawk was de-emphasized but if Gary hadn't left and went through with his version of 2e, D&D would be a radically different game.

Honestly, I'm pretty happy things went the way they did. Lot of great 2e content might not have existed otherwise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you think if I run Greyhawk and add stuff to it that Gary didn't that he'll come back from the dead and blow my game up? Am I allowed to make the setting my own when I run it or am I beholden to the imagination of a man 50 years ago? WHEN WILL THE CHAINS OF THE PAST FREE US, BROTHERS?! SISTERS?! WHEN WILL WE BE FREE?!

Did anyone tell you you can't run the game how you like? Where did anyone say that? I at least was talking about product releases, not games at the table. This statement is out of line, and frankly ridiculous.

 

[Shardstone]

Did anyone tell you you can't run the game how you like? Where did anyone say that? I at least was talking about product releases, not games at the table. This statement is out of line, and frankly ridiculous.

I know its ridiculous, that's why I started typing in all caps and bolding it.

 

[Shardstone]

Did anyone tell you you can't run the game how you like? Where did anyone say that? I at least was talking about product releases, not games at the table. This statement is out of line, and frankly ridiculous.

BUT WHEN WILL WE BE FREE MICAH FROM THE PAST FROM OURSELVES????

 

[TiQuinn]

Honestly, I'm pretty happy things went the way they did. Lot of great 2e content might not have existed otherwise.

Gary’s tenure was great for producing the classic adventures, and core rulebooks. 2e gave us great settings that fueled imaginations up through today.

 

[RedSquirrel]

Greyhawk was created in response to those asking for an official setting and was created as a product to cater to that demand. Gary would have made the setting accommodate whatever would help TSR sell more product.

I've still got just a few pages to catch up on before I'm current, but I had to stop here.

Because this is factually wrong.

Greyhawk was created as a catchall place to playtest everything in the new game as Gygax was designing (1973) and publishing it (1974).
It wasn't 'til seven years later that the World of Greyhawk folio came out after fans were asking about the names and places mentioned in core source material, catering to a demand. But, the world was not created from whole cloth in 1980. Its creation began in 1973 and grew, changed, and added all the new rules options for years, before the setting was ever even published.

 

[TiQuinn]

I've still got just a few pages to catch up on before I'm current, but I had to stop here.

Because this is factually wrong.

Greyhawk was created as a catchall place to playtest everything in the new game as Gygax was designing (1973) and publishing it (1974).
It wasn't 'til seven years later that the World of Greyhawk folio came out after fans were asking about the names and places mentioned in core source material, catering to a demand. But, the world was not created from whole cloth in 1980. Its creation began in 1973 and grew, changed, and added all the new rules options for years, before the setting was ever even published.

They’re referring to the creation of Greyhawk as a product, not the setting itself. It never occurred to Gygax that someone would want to actually buy a setting product; he figured everyone would create their own.

 

[RedSquirrel]

I am refuting the claim that Greyhawk was always intended to cover everything D&D, which functionally means it never had any flavor of its own.

Logical errors: False dichotomy and false equivalence.

Two things can be true, and it doesn't "functionally" mean that, at all. And asserting that's the case doesn't make it so.

Nearly 100% of Gygax's fantasy game writing (especially Epic of Aerth) was historical fantasy which, for all intents and purposes, didn't even exist at the time (at least in pop culture).. He wrote it with it's own style and feel for the now-more-common trope of the "City Run By Guilds and Thieves". But even that trope has been reinterpreted massively uniquely in the "Discworld" city of Ankh-Morpork.

Just because a setting includes well known material, or even all material, doesn't mean it can't have a unique identity.

 

[Remathilis]

Honestly, I'm pretty happy things went the way they did. Lot of great 2e content might not have existed otherwise.

Notice I didn't say better, just different.

Though I could imagine in a best-case scenario a situation closer to how Paizo handles Pathfinder. A universal setting that is literally several kitchen sinks stapled together, lightly touched on in the core books but expanded on in gazetteers and modules. A home for all of what D&D is. Of course, there is plenty of other factors to consider (the Known World/Basic D&D, Dragonlance, the absence of a 3pp like what Paizo has) but I could imagine a world where D&D is mostly known for Greyhawk which is home to nearly all of the various D&D supplements and adventures.

A very different world.