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

[Charlaquin]

Major additions:
1. The Deities. The Box added 50 deities.

Oof, way too many for my taste. I like a tight core pantheon of perhaps a dozen or so major deities, and the implied existence of many “small gods” that don’t really need explicit detailing.

2. Country descriptions. The Box doesn't significantly change country descriptions (but the Box is better), but does add information (names of rulers) and changes details (populations).

Now that, on the other hand, is the kind of information I love to have in a setting guide!

3. Runes. Weirdly, the folio has more runes than the Box.

I’m not sure what that means. What are these runes?

4. Added information- everything from social hierarchies to weather tables to encounters to more adventure seeds and hooks.

Cool stuff!

 

[Parmandur]

Awesome! I’ve never really messed around with Greyhawk, except in the incredibly vague sense that at some point I played 3.5e and didn’t mess around with its setting assumptions too much. I’m really interested to dive a bit deeper into it with 5.24. The way you pitch it sounds very familiar to exactly what appealed to me about my own favorite setting, Nentir Vale.

Definitely no accident there: while the 4E team was definitely doing something new with the Nentir Vale, a big part of their goal was to re-captire the energy of early Greyhawk or Mystar, unburdened by metaplot or canon.

The one point here that is not so appealing to me is this idea of “muscular neutrality.” I’ve always found the whole “balance must be maintained, too much good could be just as bad as too much evil” thing a bit… I don’t know, silly? It’s one thing to have villains who represent traditionally “good” ideals pushed to an evil extreme, but actually having the ascendancy of good be some sort of existential threat due to “imbalance” just doesn’t work for me. Fortunately, it sounds like the setting is flexible enough that this theme can be safely ignored. Though in my understanding there are some fairly prominent “muscular neutral” characters in the setting, such as Mordenkainen. I wonder about maybe including them, but portraying them as misguided - having the need for balance being a belief they hold rather than truly being important for the wellbeing of the cosmos.

I think this is an artifact of the original 3 Alignment system: Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. Makes way more sense that way, the 9 Alignment system is metaphysical gibberish, and this comes out here.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I’m not sure what that means. What are these runes?

Just what you might think! Runes and what they mean, so you can use them for, um, runing? Decoration? Party tricks?

Technically, they have both runes AND glyphs. Don't want to forget you glyph-lovers!

 

[Parmandur]

Oof, way too many for my taste. I like a tight core pantheon of perhaps a dozen or so major deities, and the implied existence of many “small gods” that don’t really need explicit detailing.

The Folio straight up provided no deities whatsoever, just expected the DM to make up their own or use Deities & Demigods for real world stuff (Gygax used real world gods and some made up stuff at home). Hence the country descriptions for theocratic nations not mentioning which gods are worshipped in said nations...

It looks like the DMG is in the middle somewhat.

 

[Parmandur]

Just what you might think! Runes and what they mean, so you can use them for, um, runing? Decoration? Party tricks?

Technically, they have both runes AND glyphs. Don't want to forget you glyph-lovers!

Probably born out of some old school evil DM chicanery under Castle Greyhawk.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think this is an artifact of the original 3 Alignment system: Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. Makes way more sense that way, the 9 Alignment system is metaphysical gibberish, and this comes out here.

Oh, that’s really good context to have! balance between order and chaos makes infinitely more sense to me as an actual important thing to maintain than balance between good and evil.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m not sure what that means. What are these runes?

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

 

[Parmandur]

Oh, that’s really good context to have! balance between order and chaos makes infinitely more sense to me as an actual important thing to maintain than balance between good and evil.

That was a major theme for Michael Moorcpck's Sword & Sorcery fiction, which Gygax literally borrowed from: Law and Chaos as two kond of problematic but necessary forces in the universe, and true "good" was in finding the balance.

 

[Charlaquin]

Just what you might think! Runes and what they mean, so you can use them for, um, runing? Decoration? Party tricks?

Technically, they have both runes AND glyphs. Don't want to forget you glyph-lovers!

So, like, a fictional runic alphabet? Introduced in the folio and expanded on in the boxed set? Are these runes associated with a particular language or culture within the setting?

 

[payn]

Awesome! I’ve never really messed around with Greyhawk, except in the incredibly vague sense that at some point I played 3.5e and didn’t mess around with its setting assumptions too much. I’m really interested to dive a bit deeper into it with 5.24. The way you pitch it sounds very familiar to exactly what appealed to me about my own favorite setting, Nentir Vale.

The one point here that is not so appealing to me is this idea of “muscular neutrality.” I’ve always found the whole “balance must be maintained, too much good could be just as bad as too much evil” thing a bit… I don’t know, silly? It’s one thing to have villains who represent traditionally “good” ideals pushed to an evil extreme, but actually having the ascendancy of good be some sort of existential threat due to “imbalance” just doesn’t work for me. Fortunately, it sounds like the setting is flexible enough that this theme can be safely ignored. Though in my understanding there are some fairly prominent “muscular neutral” characters in the setting, such as Mordenkainen. I wonder about maybe including them, but portraying them as misguided - having the need for balance being a belief they hold rather than truly being important for the wellbeing of the cosmos.

I like the idea as a philosophy of neutral characters, not so much as an objective reality.