Greyhawk: Crown of the Witch Queen announced as 2027 adventure

[Remathilis]

D&D is, at heart, Sword & Sorcery where Elric, Conan and Fabfred & the Grey Mouser are all hanging out with Merlin and Bilbo Baggins.

Fighting creatures of Greek myth, horror icons and rubber kids toys.

Honesty, up you have to laugh at the notion that D&D has ANY genre purity. Sword and Sorcery might have been AN influence, but clearly mythology, horror, sci-fi, heroic fantasy and fairy tales all played equally important roles in those early years. Honesty, it's D&D's strength. You can match wits with an evil sorcerer and his snake cult one week and explore a crumbling gothic vampire's castle the next. You don't pick a genre for D&D as much as pick which one you are focusing on, but the idea of cutting D&D down so that only the S&S (or horror, etc) parts remain is both a fools errand and against the spirit of the game's creation.

 

[Parmandur]

Fighting creatures of Greek myth, horror icons and rubber kids toys.

Honesty, up you have to laugh at the notion that D&D has ANY genre purity. Sword and Sorcery might have been AN influence, but clearly mythology, horror, sci-fi, heroic fantasy and fairy tales all played equally important roles in those early years. Honesty, it's D&D's strength. You can match wits with an evil sorcerer and his snake cult one week and explore a crumbling gothic vampire's castle the next. You don't pick a genre for D&D as much as pick which one you are focusing on, but the idea of cutting D&D down so that only the S&S (or horror, etc) parts remain is both a fools errand and against the spirit of the game's creation.

Nope, genre crossover was always a staple.

However, thst is also true to a large extent of Sword & Sorcerery stories: the first Conan story has Conan encounter a space alien who ties directly into the Cthulu Mythos, the broader meta narrative around Elric being the reincarnating Eternal Champion mashed a bunch of Space Opera stuff in there, and so on and so forth. Sword & Sorcerery in the pulps was omnivorous. Heck, one of the Sword & Sorcerery media things of the 1970s when D&D got going were the Conan comics, which explicitly tied Conan into the Marvel Universe alongside Godzilla and the Transformers.

 

[Parmandur]

I do think that folks tend to over-generalize the difference between the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, just as some tend to conflate them over much.

Greyhawk is to the Forgotten Realms as butter chicken is to chicken tikki masala: the spices are different, the butter chicken has no tomatoes, but both are kinds of chicken curry. Both are delicious, and you may be in the mood for one or the other at different times.

Biggest difference really I think is generational and personality differences between Gygax and Greenwood.

Gygax was born in 1938, while Greenwood was born in 1959.

The Hobbit would have been a childhood experience for both, but Gygax was 16 when LotR came out and ~35 when the Simirillion came out. It is clear to me from eh Grey Box that reading the Simirillion was a formative experience for Greenwood, not sure if Gygax enjoyed that so much.

Greenwood would have read Narnia as a child, hence Aslan literally being in the Forgotten Realms to this day, but not sure Gygax was that influenced by it.

 

[Remathilis]

Biggest difference really I think is generational and personality differences between Gygax and Greenwood.

I think it's more personality than generational, truth be told. Gary seems he came from the weird fantasy lens, while Ed was much more heroic fantasy. I sometimes think it's easier to see Forgotten Realms as a clash of Good vs Evil and Greyhawk as Law vs Chaos (with the addition that Law bends towards benevolence and Chaos malevolence). The Realms this feels more traditional in terms of clashes (the good folk vs evil forces) while Greyhawk often feels like civilization defending itself from anarchy and destruction. Now, that is a gross oversimplification of both and exceptions abound, but I feel it sums up that tonal difference between the two worlds even if the share a huge amount of the same DNA.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I sometimes think it's easier to see Forgotten Realms as a clash of Good vs Evil and Greyhawk as Law vs Chaos (with the addition that Law bends towards benevolence and Chaos malevolence)

I think the tendency to view “law”, particularly LN, either as authoritarian or broadly benevolent, tells us something about the culture and belief systems of the two authors.

 

[Parmandur]

I think the tendency to view “law”, particularly LN, either as authoritarian or broadly benevolent, tells us something about the culture and belief systems of the two authors.

Greenwood is a Hippie, Gygax was...definitely not.

 

[Remathilis]

I think the tendency to view “law”, particularly LN, either as authoritarian or broadly benevolent, tells us something about the culture and belief systems of the two authors.

True. Likewise, chaos as freedom vs chaos as destruction shows the opposite side of the coins.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think it's more personality than generational, truth be told. Gary seems he came from the weird fantasy lens, while Ed was much more heroic fantasy. I sometimes think it's easier to see Forgotten Realms as a clash of Good vs Evil and Greyhawk as Law vs Chaos (with the addition that Law bends towards benevolence and Chaos malevolence). The Realms this feels more traditional in terms of clashes (the good folk vs evil forces) while Greyhawk often feels like civilization defending itself from anarchy and destruction. Now, that is a gross oversimplification of both and exceptions abound, but I feel it sums up that tonal difference between the two worlds even if the share a huge amount of the same DNA.

This feels like a much better framing than the "swords & sorcery" one.

It does a nice job of being the connective tissue between the Shield Lands (fighting bandits and fiends) and the Great Kingdom (fighting fiendish corruption from within) and the Wild Coast (bandits, hordes from the Pomarj) and elsewhere.

Civilization is fragile, even if the things that threaten to tear it down (like your empire's ill-advised program to create nation-destroying magical effects) vary from place to place.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Forgetting questiona about nation alignments...

The reason FR is a Points of Light Setting has to do with the huge, enormous stretches of howling wilderness inhabited by Trolls, Dragons, Giants, Yuan-Ti, Beholders, etc.

There is a wilderness North of the Moonsea that is like...all Monsters, all the time. And it is large.

That doesn't make it a points of light setting. The area north of Moonsea, is, as you say, a wilderness. But, also, there's nothing really in it. Points of Light means that there are actually POINTS OF LIGHT in those places. The overwhelming majority of the people of Faerun live in areas that are well settled and not particularly dangerous.

The wilderness in the north is just that - a point of darkness. You have to go there to fight the trolls and dragons and whatnot. They don't come to you. In a Points of Light setting, the darkness isn't hundreds (or thousands) of miles away. It's right outside your door.

 

[Parmandur]

That doesn't make it a points of light setting. The area north of Moonsea, is, as you say, a wilderness. But, also, there's nothing really in it. Points of Light means that there are actually POINTS OF LIGHT in those places. The overwhelming majority of the people of Faerun live in areas that are well settled and not particularly dangerous.

The wilderness in the north is just that - a point of darkness. You have to go there to fight the trolls and dragons and whatnot. They don't come to you. In a Points of Light setting, the darkness isn't hundreds (or thousands) of miles away. It's right outside your door.

Not really. Look at Princes of the Apocalypse: it covers an area the size of Oregon, which is to say larger than the United Kingdom, and there are barely any settlements, and they have vast wilderness between them. Thst is true all over Faerun, the settlements are sparse, the Monster filled wilderness in between is vast.