D&D General Greyhawk setting material

[Parmandur]

Traditionally, if you didn't like Greyhawk, you just traveled to a different world. The walls of the multiverse are porous in Oerth.

Or read those French comic books by Gygax's buddy.

 

[Parmandur]

Chroniques de la Lune Noire by François Marcela-Froideval is what I am referring to: he was TSR's French translator in the late Gygax days, and contributed to Oriental Adventures. His graphic novels take place in the Far West of Oerik, per his mutual head-cannon with Gygax, and the Dragon Annual #1 map of the whole continent.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't recall the Tiefling in the original.

No, the village wasn't really fleshed out in the original module, and even if it had been, it was published before Planescape so tieflings weren't a thing.

The sea elf has always been there though - possibly the first appearance of that subrace in D&D?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe Greyhakw needs its own Kara-Tur,

Kara-Tur was originally Greyhawk. It moved to Abeir-Toril later (when Gygax left). These continents can be slippery.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, that is probably correct. When we first acquired OA we simply assumed it was Greyhawk, since it didn't say otherwise and everything else we had seen up until then had defaulted to Greyhawk.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The return of Kara-Tur will be after a playtesting with "wuxia" classes, like the martial adepts: crusader, swordsage and warblade. Asian fans will suggest new ideas, for example cute nekonomimi ("animal ears") as PC race because they are very popular in Asian MMOs. Somebody will say samurai and ninja should be complete classes and not only subclasses.

Other option could be to recycle "Dragon Fist", a mini-setting for Greyhawk, or...

...my worst fear is something like the equivalent of the sundering for Greyhawk, when continents from Abeir-Toril were exchanged. Even the island of Jackandor, the mini-settin, could reappear like Oerth.

I wonder about WotC creating an "oriental empire" to be adapted for a future videogame for Chinese market.

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* Could WotC to buy the rights of the world of "Dangerous Journeys", Gygax's world after TSR?

 

[GlassJaw]

No doubt I'll get chastise for this but I always found the original World of Greyhawk boxed set a bit dry. It read like an encyclopedia. It was chock full of info no doubt but I always found it difficult as a campaign resource. It was too broad of an overview.

For me the City of Greyhawk and From the Ashes boxed sets were much more evocative and had way more information that could be used to run a campaign.

I also fully admit this could be nostalgia plus my age when I came to acquire these things (middle school in the 80s).

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lkj]

In all honesty, I think that my original comment stands (at least for me). But I guess it depends on what you want out of a campaign setting?

For my purposes, the 1983 Boxed Set was absolutely perfect, because, well, the Darlene Map (still gorgeous!) and because the information was absolutely perfect in terms on providing information and hooks ... it gave all sorts of ideas for adventurers and plots and ideas, without forcing any on me.

I still do not think I have ever read a better example of that- something that felt like it was calling on you to make the adventures. It was like the world's most wonderful coloring book, waiting for me to fill it in.

From that interview awhile back, Mearls seems to agree with you completely, arguing that this is the best part of Greyhawk. He clearly would prefer to go back to the original box set.

In this context, however, I do think there might be an easy compromise. Given how lean the baseline Greyhawk could be, it would be pretty easy to add optional timelines and optional pieces to such a setting presentation. Something like:

"Adding Tieflings and Dragonborn to your Greyhawk game"

"Greyhawk Alternate Futures"

Or some such. I really like Greyhawk and I prefer the original box. But I'm not a purist and wouldn't mind having suggestions for some of the newer game options, so long as it's done fairly lightly.

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