D&D 5E Greyhawk: Pitching the Reboot

[Chaosmancer]

When trying to differentiate between fantasy campaign settings I like to do a mental exercise called 'Inn, Barn, Prisoner'. It's the encapsulated framework for an introductory story that makes you think about the on-the-ground details that give hints at the larger world. It's akin to introducing Middle Earth first through The Shire and the Prancing Pony rather than starting with dramatic flyover imagery, world maps and (sorry/not sorry) grognard politics. Here's how it goes:

...

It's night, cold, your steed is tired and you're terribly hungry. The only lodging is a small roadside in with a few outbuildings nestled around it, starkly lit by the heavenly bodies. You'd rather not stay here but you have little choice. You sigh, dismount and find yourself in front of the door. Before you head inside though, you hide an item or piece of clothing that you visibly wear on the road. Questions:

1) What hangs in the night sky that tells you you're in X campaign setting? Is it ominous, neutral or a good portent?
2) Why would you rather not go in this inn? What about its features - specific to X campaign setting - gives you pause?
3) What item do you hide, and why do you hide it? What allegiance are you wary of showing to the patrons of the inn - specific to X campaign setting - that you show openly on the road?
4) Look at your steed. What about its physicality, barding or demeanor is specific to X campaign setting.

The inn is warm, stiflingly so. But it's still better than the cold night. There are six patrons, all men, fieldhands and laborers , and an old woman tending a long bar of a singular make, a whimsical piece of (natural?) history reshaped into furniture. The men glance at you nervously, then back to their cups. They look like they've been in a scuffle, a few fresh bruises and scrapes among them. One is not like the others, exotic, surprising. The woman gestures for you to take a seat, wordlessly. She bears a faded mark on her arm, a token of punishment that hasn't been used in decades. There's no ordering here, it's obvious, you're are served what's cooking in the pot and what's fermenting behind the counter. Questions:

1) What is the bar made of - a material or repurposed item that is specific to X campaign setting?
2) What race are most of the farmhands, and what race is the exotic (specific to X campaign setting) one?
3) What is the mark on the woman's arm and what punishment does it represent - specific to X campaign setting?
4) The pot and the fermented drink, each includes a mundane ingredient that is specific to X campaign setting. What are they?

The men begin to whisper, looking back at you. One, the eldest stands and asks if you're looking for coin, an adventurer for hire. You are. He explains they have a "problem" that requires a steady hand and mind. It's out back in the barn. You're curious, agree to follow them. You're wary that there are six of them but they seem sensible, know that they would be fools to attack you. Your kind has a deadly reputation.

The barn is in better shape than the inn, there's a symbol above the door that indicates it also doubles as a place of worship, a church or temple. They unlock the doors nervously. Only the elder will follow you inside, a lantern raised high. You regret agreeing to help them the moment you lay eyes on the prisoner. Your life has been complicated one-hundredfold. This prisoner's fate is entwined with yours. The fate of guilds, mercenary companies, possibly kingdoms, is in the mix. It's related to the item you chose to hide before you entered the inn. You understand now why they've been locked in a holy place. Questions:

1) What do the men recognize about, in your features, clothing, or demeanor, that's deadly - specific to X campaign?
2) What symbol hangs above the barn?
3) Who/what is the prisoner? How do they relate to you and that item? Why can you not simply dispatch this prisoner without attracting dire consequences? Of course, specific to X campaign?

...

If I can sell myself first on a scene and dilemma that is unique to the campaign world, then I can sell it to my players. If the differentiating elements between fantasy settings are all bird's-eye (ie: related more to maps, ancient histories, lost civilizations) than the in-game, ground level, vibe, then I don't bother trying a new setting.

All this said, I haven't see an evidence of a big vibe difference between Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. For the DMs? Sure. For the players? No.

This is a fascinating exercise

 

[Quickleaf]

@Jackdaw McGraw I second the sentiment. Thanks very much for sharing your worldbuilding exercise! That's brilliant.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

As someone who has worked for gigantic corporations almost my whole life, they are rarely, if ever, petty and vindictive on an institutional level. That tends to be tiny company behavior, e.g. the FLGS down the street from me that sabotaged itself because the owner personally had a grudge against Warhammer.

What they are is extremely conservative, often to the point of bewildering stupidity. I am willing to bet money that the Dragonlance situation has little to do with personal emotions, and everything to do with some of the most boring lawyers and product managers you can imagine discussing the implications of having an intellectual property that you legally control, on paper, but which the market largely regards as somebody else's.

If I'm a corporate product guy, Butcher bailing is a huge red flag. It says, yeah, we legally own Dragonlance, but we really don't control it. Not really. Someone else does. The fact is that Weis & Hickman can screw up our plans just by not participating. They don't even have to say anything, and people we hire and make contracts with bail on us. It's our brand! They're not our employees! But due to consumer perception, they're still basically in control. Consequently, producing Dragonlance product has uncontrollable downsides for us because someone we can't fire, end a contract with, or otherwise end a relationship with retains the power to destroy the value of our brand because market perception is, regardless of what the papers say, is that its their brand.

Doesn't matter that Hickman & Weis didn't really go out there and try to screw up WotC. The problem is that they could. They have that power. It means that engaging with the Dragonlance brand has downside risks we can't control, and we hate that.

In summary, if they cannot completely control something, then F-it. That in a nutshell is what had happened with their reaction to Me and Gary pushing a Greyhawk reboot. And that has routes to breaking past compatibility of OD&D>Basic+1E>2E by creating 3E. The game was theirs, now, and that was that. Perhaps WotC will find out someday, just as Gary did, and much to his shock, that RPG's manifestation through D&D was a gigantic idea that had found its time and is, and will always be, much bigger than any one man or set of men can imagine within their limited scopes. Control, after all, is always about limiting scope...

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Today Gh would be practically as a spin-off of FR in the eyes of the fandom.

One of the many questions to be asked is how are the linkes between the world of Oerth, their parallel worlds and the rest of the multiverse. Are they visited usually by people from Sigil? What is the cultural impact of the "isekai", people from other worlds? Quag Keep was the first D&D novel, and it was "isekai", people from the Earth "traveling" to a fantasy world. Other question is if WotC is going to allow the alternate timelines and parallelel worlds as possible canon.

Why Gh again? One reason is to avoid a possible "surfeit" of FR, and other is because some DMs don't want to start totally from zero, but using elements known by the rest of players. A metaplot almost totally frozen since two decades ago could allow more creative freedom.

What can Gh offer? Something like those videogames with a retro or vintage look, or those TV shows set in previous decades...

What is the impact of the possible new classes added to Gh? For example the ardent, even as only a psionic subclass could cause some teological conflict with the rest of clerics and other divine spellcasters.

Could Gh to be the setting of any strategy mobile videogame? With the title "Chainmail" or like this.

How would be the cultural and technological impact of a Oerth parallel world being visited by people from Gh and our Real-Life Earth? Let's imagine some sect with a false prophet who survived the ridda wars for the age of the first calipha, or followers of the Taiping brotherhood, other false prophet who proclaimed him-self to be Jesus's brother.

Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[TwiceBorn2]

WOTC has owned the D&D brand longer than TSR. Looks at WOTC track record...

Nary a Greyhawk setting book to be seen...

I'm good.

Greyhawk setting books published by WotC:
Living Greyhawk Gazetteer
D&D Gazetteer

 

[Sword of Spirit]

You lost me half way through the OP, and I just had to bring up the giant issue standing out to me about this angle:

WHY would you change an old setting that no one cares about now to make it fit a new audience, when you could just make a new setting for a new audience?

To my mind, the entire purpose of “updating” a setting is to fit it to the newer mechanics, and maybe tweak some elements to take into account advances in the art, so that old and new players can enjoy playing together in the same shared world.

If there are going to be two versions of the setting, you now have just created conflict rather than bringing people together. I mean, I can understand why corporations do that—so they can recycle the IP they already own—but its not a consumer-affirming process, its a financially exploitative one.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm making a fashionably late entrance to this thread, but I thought that I'd give my 2 cents.

I would echo the idea of tapping into the Witcher zeitgeist. (The GoT one has passed, not with a bang, but with a whimper.) But more than that, I would pitch Greyhawk as a kingdom-builder setting. I would pitch Gold as XP rules. Make the game about acquiring riches in dungeons, spending them on building your fortifications, defending your land from invaders, and building up your kingdom gradually. This is to say, pitch Greyhawk as D&D's bizarre mix of the Witcher, Stardew Valley, and Age of Empires, where your PCs are starting from scratch to build up your lands in a decadent world on the brink of collapse.

Edit: That said, @Snarf Zagyg, you may want to check out Rob Schwalb's upcoming Tales of the Weird Wizard, which is meant to be a thinly-veiled homage to Greyhawk and Gygaxian fantasy, albeit with an updated version of Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord system.

 

[Minigiant]

Again, I never thought a GH setting book would be pure subtraction. Not sure why you are harping on that.

I'm not saying aGH setting book is pure subtraction. A setting of pure subtraction would never be booted in a new book, never gets maded by WOTC, or fails as a first book on the indie market.

The issue is figuring out what Greyhawak adds other than NPC and place names. No one agrees.

That's where the problem hits though. Greyhawk needs the answer to its "Why do you need a setting book?" hook answered. They can and have published Greyhawk based stuff previously, just look at Saltmarsh. FR's gone heavy on plot in the past, Eberron's vastly different and had its author going to bat for it, and the ones that have gotten setting stuff have tended to be all new to D&D.

NPCs aren't a selling point because they can and have done just, Greyhawk adventures without a setting book. It needs something to pull you in, and unfortunately I think people are right in saying time may have moved past Greyhawk. The way the game was expected back then just isn't how its played today. Trying to recapture that, and Greyhawk being the thing to try and catch that, is probably a disservice to Greyhawk if anything

I think the crux is that Greyhawk is very very old and now there are settings that do everything Greyhawk does better. So Greyhawk has to figure out what other new settings didn't focus on that it has and can try doing better.

To me, that is Strongholds, Followers, and Class based items. I would offer upgrades to each as alternates for Ability Score Adjustments.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'm making a fashionably late entrance to this thread, but I thought that I'd give my 2 cents.

I would echo the idea of tapping into the Witcher zeitgeist. (The GoT one has passed, not with a bang, but with a whimper.) But more than that, I would pitch Greyhawk as a kingdom-builder setting. I would pitch Gold as XP rules. Make the game about acquiring riches in dungeons, spending them on building your fortifications, defending your land from invaders, and building up your kingdom gradually. This is to say, pitch Greyhawk as D&D's bizarre mix of the Witcher, Stardew Valley, and Age of Empires, where your PCs are starting from scratch to build up your lands in a decadent world on the brink of collapse.

Edit: That said, @Snarf Zagyg, you may want to check out Rob Schwalb's upcoming Tales of the Weird Wizard, which is meant to be a thinly-veiled homage to Greyhawk and Gygaxian fantasy, albeit with an updated version of Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord system.

I kind of agree but this brings a number of problems. When you get into strongholds there is bookkeeping and bookkeeping is boring. then there is the conflict with other rulers which bring in wrgaming. And while I like wargaming, there is the questions of how do you implement it. Do you go full Games Workshop, which will be expensive to the consumer.

Balancing armies and domain management, involves an economy, which is more bookkeeping. All of this would be better done as an RTS type game. Perhaps a mashup of Heroes of Might and Magic, Fort Triumph and Age of Empires. Finally this brings up an ethical question, from whom are you going to swipe the land that makes up your domain from in the first place?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

A future economic-stragegy farm-stronghold-kingdom management videogame is in the list of D&D videogames. It wouldn't be the first time they try something like this, but today it would need a lot of playtesting.

Hasbro has to think about a reboot of the Gh geography and some event like the Sundering. One of the new WotC goals is to produce new videogames, but a partnership with other studios wouldn't be totally impossible.

West Oerik is the right space for a D&D wargame as Chainmail, or a musou videogame where one PC, or her monster pet, can defeat squads.

If planar travelers could go to the Earth and come back, could buy metric tons of salt, literally, because in Oerth is more expensive, or encyclopedias to learn about medicine or to craft electric motors. If you can cast a polymorph spell...why not to use alchemy to create graphen?

* Don't you miss the iconic characters from 3.5 Ed?