"Everyone is 0 level" is standard in Forgotten Realms too, btw. It's just the FR just has SO MUCH MORE STUFF. There are mountains of NPC's, so, you have this idea that there are all these powerful NPC's around every corner. It's more a perception than a reality.
Agreed. The closest leader in GH to someone like Lord Neverember was Prince Thrommel, and we know how that ended up. Even so, playing the Battle of Emridy Meadows you can tell he's mostly doing things for the glory, not for altruistic reasons.Oh sure. Sorry, didn't mean to imply that it couldn't. But, that being said, if I wanted to do Epic Fantasy I wouldn't use Greyhawk. The sweeping scale of Epic Fantasy, cast of thousands, fate of the world, grand stories are better suited to FR. You expect FR characters to hob nob (after a few levels anyway) with the great and good of the setting. In Tyranny of Dragons, for example, the PC's are sitting at the table with the most powerful leaders in the Sword Coast.
This isn't what I would expect in a Greyhawk campaign. Number one, if you set a table for ten of the most influential leaders in GH, probably two or three of them wouldn't survive the meal.Someone's getting stabbed, poisoned, or otherwise harmed. Trying to get them to work together would be a Herculean task and it's just not something I would expect to see in a GH campaign. That's why I see GH as a much more S&S setting. FR leaders work together because most of the faction leaders are good or at least leaning that way.
That's the difference. GH is a far darker setting where everyone is out for themselves. Virtually no one is actually "good". States are just as likely to venerate a demon lord as they are fight one.
Speaking of Ator, The Fighting Eagle, with its S&S hilarity. There's an example of the kind of personalized story common in S&S that can make it a little more difficult to galvanize in a party format. The antagonist makes a personal affront to Ator, stealing his sister wife and baby napping him to some day throw him at a rival and all that. It is usually so much more personal vendetta with those baddies... instead of we Avenger-meet at a tavern to slay some generic global threat guy. That personal motivation for the protagonist is a very big thing in S&S. Conan's usually starts with needing gold to feed his bombastic hedonistic urges. Other times its paying a dept. Other times it is dealing with troubles with the law
It's much more local. Look at the iconic AD&D GH modules - Slave Lords, GDQ, the S series. None of those feature grand, sprawling plots. If the party doesn't go to Barrier Peaks, nothing really changes in the world. Even in the old U series, if the heroes do nothing, all that really happens is a fairly small town is destroyed. 
Eh, there's also the leaders of the Shield Lands and the Iron League, and well, there's the general alignment of various countries:
That's a WHOLE lot of evil and not a lot of good.
Honestly fairly...balanced.
Yeah, this screams "Sword and Sorcery" to me.
(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.
