D&D 5E (2014) Greyhawk: Pitching the Reboot

[Paul Farquhar]

We* don't normally, but we have and it could be done. We only have one caster in my current group. If people understand from the get go of the setting that X, Y, & Z class/subclasses are not available or changed in some way, I don't see why it would be an issue (other than for sales).

The issue is, if you throw out 90% of the rulebook, it's not 5e at all, is it? It's more of a reskin, like The One Ring or Esper Genesis.

Yes, depending on what you are going for those could be banned too. There are still more than enough non-magic using classes & subclasses (I made a list in another thread not to long ago).

I make it four subclasses in the core rules, and something like another four in expansions.

Now, personally I think you could do low magic easily with 1/3 casters.

I wouldn't call "everyone has a little bit of magic" low magic. I would say "no more than one party member has any magic whatsoever" would qualify.

I think that works really well for a Witcher type setting.

I wouldn't call The Witcher low magic. The place is stiff with bloody sorceresses!

 

[Mort]

As much as I like the megadungeon idea, I'm not sure it provides anything distinctive about Greyhawk. You can plop a megadungeon anywhere. I'm sure that the Forgotten Realms would be more than willing to eat them whole.

I think it's all in the presentation and execution.

Castle Greyhawk for the Grognards. A whole new world to explore for the newer faces. Populate with different and interesting stuff, like portals to weird lands, and have different things like the 9 imprisoned Gods that the PCs have to interact with in interesting ways - it could work.

I mean, just about everything has been done, including tons of takes on Greyhawk itself.

The trick is to do it in a fun, new way that appeals to the old and new crowd - which I think is your whole point, No?

 

[hopeless]

Hmm interesting.
So maybe Clerics & Druids must abide by an oath or a series of obligations that not only grants them their power, but also reins them in in case they fall.
For example a game I played in I was asked to convert a Ranger into a Cleric as the other players were running two wizards and a rogue.
Anyway the character became a 148 year old 2nd level cleric who had been raised within an abandoned temple in the Feywild where she was a Fey Outlander (the only difference was a change of tool kit to herbalist as thats her profession) and she had spent the last 50 years in her then home world only really improving in her clerical abilities after her marriage collapsed and she had to raise her son alone.
My reasoning that she chose to step away from her clerical duties when she began her relationship that led to being briefly married and bearing a son before being forced to raise that child alone as her ex-husband's new wife's family didn't believe she would settle for divorce (they're only human and she isn't not that they knew that!).
Once her son grew up and left home she ventured out herself slowly rebuilding her clerical career.

My point is that a cleric or druid can either focus on their career or their family not both and that would explain why so few members of these faiths actually gain the power of a true cleric or druid and ascend in power as very few of these would have the ambition and determination to put their career ahead of any relationship.

This should be the same for wizards, sorcerors and warlocks as these relationships are ultimately either a red herring they use to hide their talents or a potential weakness to be exploited by those that either don't harbor such feelings or lack the understanding about why they're so important.

How many liches become liches if they have still living family?
How many warlocks would walk away from their pact for the good of their family?

What do they really know about elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, dragons, goblins, orcs or even changelings?

Sorry for the longwinded prose, but there is so much that could be used to help explain this setting and its dependant on its dungeon master and whats known about the setting.

I believe someone was doing a 5e representation of Mystara could the same be done for Greyhawk?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The most fun I had with Greyhawk came from filling in details that the folio didn't. The descriptions of the various states and organizations were relatively short and gave me enough of a skeleton to build more details on. I know that, depending on each DM's approach, all settings are effectively like that - but Greyhawk seemed especially like that for me. And that's why it's my favorite.

Just think how much fun you could have with an empty notebook!

 

[Mort]

I wouldn't call "everyone has a little bit of magic" low magic. I would say "no more than one party member has any magic whatsoever" would qualify.

You have to be very careful how you implement something like that. Too often, the Magic wielder ends up completely outshining the rest of the characters as far as power/usefulness.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You have to be very careful how you implement something like that. Too often, the Magic wielder ends up completely outshining the rest of the characters as far as power/usefulness.

I wouldn't disagree with that. I don't think low magic works with 5e.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

For everyone talking about 5E and low magic, Cubicle 7 did a great job with Adventures in Middle-Earth, for the 5E OGL version of The One Ring. And we will just have to wait and see it the new company continues with that great job.

 

[Stormonu]

I’ve run myriad games set in Greyhawk, yet at the same time I haven’t delved deeply into the surrounding politics and such - except slightly in my latest Saltmarsh campaign.

As such, I haven’t seen Greyhawk as a low-magic or exceptionally humanocentric campaign world, at least ruleswise. What makes Greyhawk stand out has been a “feels” sort of thing - the same sort of atmosphere that you would use to set Ravenloft apart. Very little would be something that would translate into actual, physical rules. For me Greyhawk differs from the Forgotten Realms in that

A) Greyhawk promotes being more (selfishly) mercenary than getting into adventures because you’re ”good guys”. Greyhawk parties loot forgotten dungeons for wealth and personal power - not to clear out the local bad guys who the local town has begged the PCs to clear out. If the latter were to occur in Greyhawk, the town would have had to pay (through the nose) up front for the party to take on the job - or the local sheriff made taking the job a requirement for parole from the party’s latest bar brawl.

B) Magic is rare only if you aren’t an adventurer. The common populace knows and has strong superstitions about magic, but they’ve likely never seen it in action. It’s scary and dangerous in their mind. In FR, someone’s gotten into a bar fight using magic missile ... again - must be a Tuesday.

C) A lot has been forgotten or lost - villages are insular and tend to lack information (and often the desire to know) about what is going on outside the town’s edge, there are abandoned tombs and dungeons seemingly everywhere filled with foul creatures and lost bits of power and information spreads slowly, if at all. Unlike FR’s Candlekeep where knowledge is recorded, stored and generally available to others, I’m not aware of any such “Library of Alexandria” sort of place in Greyhawk, and such knowledge would be guarded jealously with highly restricted access to it.

D). There is a sense of internal rot. Greyhawk was very much a product of the 70’s and the feeling of the time how society had passed from the glory days of the 50’s, into the turbulent 60’s and the dissatisfaction of the 70’s. It’s an ugly time where there is a sense of desire for self-fulfillment but still a nobler self-awareness that such desires are petty and corrupt - but you do it anyway and feel guilty about it, all the while wanting better. The foundation of society is crumbling underfoot as people turn their back on the old ways but aren’t sure what to replace it with.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think it's all in the presentation and execution.

Castle Greyhawk for the Grognards. A whole new world to explore for the newer faces. Populate with different and interesting stuff, like portals to weird lands, and have different things like the 9 imprisoned Gods that the PCs have to interact with in interesting ways - it could work.

I mean, just about everything has been done, including tons of takes on Greyhawk itself.

The trick is to do it in a fun, new way that appeals to the old and new crowd - which I think is your whole point, No?

I mean, a gonzo Castle Greyhawk (dungeons) would certainly work, especially if it mixed some of the gonzo ideas from the 70s with a more modern re-mix sensibility.

That would be a great stand-alone project. And (hopefully!) wipe away the terrible taste of WG7!

But it runs into possible IP problems as well as not being the full world that many of us would love to see.

 

[Oofta]

I enjoyed Greyhawk back in the day, it felt different to me for a few reasons. In some ways I patterned my home world after it.

So what made it feel different to me? Bearing in mind that there have been many editions and I'm not a grognard on the subject in any way.

FR has such a tendency to rely on cultists and gods. While you do have rulers like Iuz, he is still rooted in the "real" world. He's not bent on invading, he's conquering and expanding a kingdom he inherited.

While there are very powerful NPCs, they don't feel as ubiquitous or interfering as FR.

I like that it's largely kingdoms and city-states warring against each other. That, to me, feels more grounded in the way the real world works.

Most regions are human dominated. There doesn't have to be prejudice against non-humans, I wouldn't even expect them to limit the races open to PCs because they want to sell supplements. But a firbolg PC should be an oddity wherever they go, if they're allowed. Personally I'd limit races, but even an elf or dwarf would get stares and comments in many places.

I don't think it needs to necessarily be grim dark (whatever that means) but it is a world that in some ways is trying to fight back against the darkness and is slowly losing. That means that the PC heroes have more of a stake in helping to fight back that darkness.

I guess I just get tired of FR games where the question always seems to be "what type of cultist are we fighting this campaign arc?"

In addition, I liked the blank spots left for people to fill in. FR is just too crowded for my tastes.