D&D General Greyhawk: Snarf's Guide to Ready-Made Campaign Themes!

Zeromaru X

Arkhosian scholar and coffee lover
To be fair though, both the 1980 Greyhawk Folio and 1983 boxed set were published before any Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance product. If isolationist elves are a boring trope, it may be because they were replicated in many other D&D settings that came after (and were more detailed than) Greyhawk. And, let's face it, the trope has its roots in Tolkien.

How different are isolationist elves from setting to setting? However different the DM decides to make them...

Truth is, they really don't need to be all that different. They just need to be sufficiently interesting for a DM and players to want to do something with them, regardless of setting. That said, I can fully appreciate why you might want to leave that trope behind in your campaign. It's been the "classic fantasy default" for quite some time, and there's nothing wrong with shaking things up a bit.

If Greyhawk doesn't appeal to you, the good news is you have the liberty to make your own setting and elvish nations from scratch (or to strip your setting of elves altogether), or to use or borrow from the hundreds of other settings in existence.

But you already knew that...
That was not my point. My point was that, if you are selling "isolationist elves" as one of the main highlights of Greyhawk, then there should be something really unique about the isolationist elves of Greyhawk that was not replicated in the other D&D settings. Otherwise, it's not really a selling point of the setting.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


Voadam

Legend
That was not my point. My point was that, if you are selling "isolationist elves" as one of the main highlights of Greyhawk, then there should be something really unique about the isolationist elves of Greyhawk that was not replicated in the other D&D settings. Otherwise, it's not really a selling point of the setting.
Again, I am really not trying to sell you anything. :)
 




Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Supporter
With your user name, I'm assuming Moon Unit sat right behind you in homeroom.

Yes, but not because of the name. And don't get me started on so-called holistic and natural ways to cure lice. You know what's natural? NOT HAVING LICE. Tell that to your mother, Moon Unit.

Ahem. As I wrote in the avatar thread, it's a tribute to Roland Barthes. But maybe not? Which is what he would like.
 

GuardianLurker

Adventurer
WRT to "Muscular Neutrality", this is one of those themes that can/might benefit from a few rounds of "why-ing". It's something I occasionally do to themes I dislike to see if I can come up with an underlying premise that gives me a better hook to explore.

As an example:
Why is muscular neutrality needed?
= There are no "natural"/"automatic" forces that maintain the Balance
=? Why does the Balance need to be maintained?
== Because if it is not, the world will "drift" too far in one direction in planar space, and be subsumed into another plane, destroying the world.
==... And those who are tied/influenced from a vector opposing the drift will be destroyed first.
==... And oppositional resources will vanish too (i.e. If you're drifting away from Plane of Earth, those magical gems and metals will vanish)
...

So now you have "activist" factions, trying to steer the world one way or another, and some factions just going "oh h*** no, we want to keep our stuff", and all without the (IMO) distasteful flip-flopper, who looks at their True Neutral alignment as prescriptive instead of descriptive, and alternates aligned deeds.

Also, keep in mind Dragonlance, where in the history of the setting, Good actually WON - and then bad things happened. Muscular Neutrality is preventative measures, if you ascribe to this philosophy/interpretation.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think any of these are the only interpretations or "why?" answers. In fact, the differing answers to these kinds of issues is what make a setting Yours, not Mine, and not Theirs either.
 
Last edited:

Zeromaru X

Arkhosian scholar and coffee lover
WRT to "Muscular Neutrality", this is one of those themes that can/might benefit from a few rounds of "why-ing". It's something I occasionally do to themes I dislike to see if I can come up with an underlying premise that gives me a better hook to explore.

As an example:
Why is muscular neutrality needed?
= There are no "natural"/"automatic" forces that maintain the Balance
=? Why does the Balance need to be maintained?
== Because if it is not, the world will "drift" too far in one direction in planar space, and be subsumed into another plane, destroying the world.
==... And those who are tied/influenced from a vector opposing the drift will be destroyed first.
==... And oppositional resources will vanish too (i.e. If you're drifting away from Plane of Earth, those magical gems and metals will vanish)
...

So now you have "activist" factions, trying to steer the world one way or another, and some factions just going "oh h*** no, we want to keep our stuff", and all without the (IMO) distasteful flip-flopper, who looks at their True Neutral alignment as prescriptive instead of descriptive, and alternates aligned deeds.

Also, keep in mind Dragonlance, where in the history of the setting, Good actually WON - and then bad things happened. Muscular Neutrality is preventative measures, if you ascribe to this philosophy/interpretation.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think any of these are the only interpretations or "why?" answers. In fact, the differing answers to these kinds of issues is what make a setting Yours, not Mine, and not Theirs either.
 

grodog

Hero
A fun little system of ideaogrpahs that Gygax came up with, don't know the backstory

View attachment 382687

I’ve done an A-B comparison of the two sets of runes—which both overlap and differ in some cases—and have that posted at https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/temp/gh_runes.pdf

I’ve also significantly expanded on the runes offered, to include gods and demon princes, and many more concepts integral to the game like alignments, gates, specific planes, etc.

Allan.
 

Remove ads

Top