D&D 5E Greyhawk: Pitching the Reboot

[Pauln6]

I gotta say man, I think approximately 0-10 D&D players are interested in a setting like this. Grimdark pre-war? For D&D? Are you even slightly serious?

Grimdark is already like, targeting an old people audience, frankly, grogs and aging edgelords. D&D is absolutely terrible at grimdark. There's no reason to engage with the politics of any of the Greyhawk nations as they're all pretty lame. This is a recipe for selling like hundreds of copies instead of thousands, let alone tens of thousands or millions. It would probably sell worse like this than catering to the ancient fans, even, though I admit not a huge amount worse.

I strongly agree with your general suggestions, but the world you outline doesn't seem one likely to attract players now, in 2021. In 2003 or something? Sure.


In D&D? I don't buy it. I don't buy that that audience really plays TT RPGs, or if they do, wants D&D to be like that. And D&D is extremely bad at that because of the Vancian magic system. The idea that you can have "grounded low-magic" when people are daily summoning magic animals and shooting fireballs and so on at level 5 is pretty silly imho.


But that's not what D&D is about or like, even slightly. D&D is inherently high-magic, and the only way around it would be to literally cut every single full-caster class from a setting, at which point, it's not really D&D.

As for Greyhawk, I think the only way it comes back and actually sells any copies if it's a modernized gonzo dungeon-crawl fantasy setting leading with strong visual design, an appealing suggestion for how campaigns there should basically work, and one that differentiates it from other "generic fantasy" games, and where the strong villains are used to provide adversaries for adventuring, not fodder for politics.

I think you misunderstand Greyhawk's version of low magic. The PCs can still be magical but the world isn't. The PC cannot pop along to the local wizard school in the village to stock up on potions. Nations have a court wizard or two, and some of the larger nations even have wizards among their armies and navies but the population views them as awe inspiring and unnatural.

There are many temples but very few truly powerful clerics. Powerful druids form mysterious cabals and become hermits.

Places dominated by magical beings generally suffer as a result. The main villains are magical.

Greyhawk City was always the exception. Full of unusual races, ambitious casters, as well as many martial characters.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I think you misunderstand Greyhawk's version of low magic. The PCs can still be magical but the world isn't. The PC cannot pop along to the local wizard school in the village to stock up on potions. Nations have a court wizard or two, and some of the larger nations even have wizards among their armies and navies but the population views them as awe inspiring and unnatural.

There are many temples but very few truly powerful clerics. Powerful druids form mysterious cabals and become hermits.

Places dominated by magical beings generally suffer as a result. The main villains are magical.

Greyhawk City was always the exception. Full of unusual races, ambitious casters, as well as many martial characters.

but then where are the pc coming from?
the low magic ideas for old school demands that most players have almost no magic either which would be fine if this was Conan but dnd never really works like that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you misunderstand Greyhawk's version of low magic. The PCs can still be magical but the world isn't. The PC cannot pop along to the local wizard school in the village to stock up on potions. Nations have a court wizard or two, and some of the larger nations even have wizards among their armies and navies but the population views them as awe inspiring and unnatural.

There are many temples but very few truly powerful clerics. Powerful druids form mysterious cabals and become hermits.

Places dominated by magical beings generally suffer as a result. The main villains are magical.

Greyhawk City was always the exception. Full of unusual races, ambitious casters, as well as many martial characters.

I don't misunderstand anything there, sorry. What you're describing isn't "low" magic. It's "rare" magic. But when magic does appear, it's just as ultra-powerful as usual.

 

[Parmandur]

I think you misunderstand Greyhawk's version of low magic. The PCs can still be magical but the world isn't. The PC cannot pop along to the local wizard school in the village to stock up on potions. Nations have a court wizard or two, and some of the larger nations even have wizards among their armies and navies but the population views them as awe inspiring and unnatural.

There are many temples but very few truly powerful clerics. Powerful druids form mysterious cabals and become hermits.

Places dominated by magical beings generally suffer as a result. The main villains are magical.

Greyhawk City was always the exception. Full of unusual races, ambitious casters, as well as many martial characters.

The demographic and economic tools in the 3E/3.5 DMG suggest otherwise.

 

[dmar]

Focus on the isolation and the racial and cultural disparity. This is not a land where you walk into a Tavern and find one of every race singing at the bar like in the Forgotten Realms art. And else walking into a human village is probably the first elf they have ever seen period and they will have all sorts of incorrect knowledge about them.

There is no way current WotC goles for this.
Also, slightly impractical unless you restrict player choices.

 

[Marandahir]

I'd reboot Greyhawk by finding a place to put Nentir Vale and Nerath in it. ;D

 

[Parmandur]

I'd reboot Greyhawk by finding a place to put Nentir Vale and Nerath in it. ;D

Not super hard: Nerath could just be the Great Kingdom, and the Nentir Vale can probably fit in somewhere to the West.

The Rieflings can come from the ancient Suel empire, and Dragonborn primeval empire could be Baklun easily enough.

 

[Quartz]

I think you misunderstand Greyhawk's version of low magic. The PCs can still be magical but the world isn't. The PC cannot pop along to the local wizard school in the village to stock up on potions. Nations have a court wizard or two, and some of the larger nations even have wizards among their armies and navies but the population views them as awe inspiring and unnatural.

Yes. Just because the PCs encounter a lot of magic / weird stuff / monsters doesn't mean that everyone encounters a lot of magic etc.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I don't misunderstand anything there, sorry. What you're describing isn't "low" magic. It's "rare" magic. But when magic does appear, it's just as ultra-powerful as usual.

Rare is a good way to put it. Magic is not visible in daily life, but the few who know it, can do powerful stuff. Instances of magic visible in the general world would be rare as well, confined to ruins or underground, or very specialized places. You're not going to see a magical fountain of light or floating cities passing through the countryside though.

"Low" magic typically describes a world of low-powered magic. Spells are around, but they can usually only have minimal effects unless boosted in some way. Like limited to Cantrips up through 2nd level spells.

 

[Pauln6]

I don't misunderstand anything there, sorry. What you're describing isn't "low" magic. It's "rare" magic. But when magic does appear, it's just as ultra-powerful as usual.

Yes, a more accurate description for sure. A world with the Circle of Eight is not low magic in the traditional sense.

Also, I agree that the amount of magic found in monster lairs has always been ludicrous.