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

[Snarf Zagyg]

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?

@Parmandur posted the page from the Box above, so you can see. They are "general" runes (AND GLYPHS!) that can be used.

Weirdly, this is the one area that the Folio has more content than the Box. The Folio has four pages of runes.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

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.

Thank you!

To briefly respond-

1. Please remember that these are just some themes that are associated with Greyhawk. The primary point is that you can use some of them, all of them, or none of them. Make Greyhawk your own!

2. "Muscular" neutrality is ... kinda weird! That said, I do think that the one thing that might make it interesting is that it provides for more complexity for certain NPCs- as I wrote, the same NPCs that are aligned with the party at one time will be working against the party on other issues. Now, this can happen for other reasons (politics, personal agendas, etc.), but it can be refreshing when the party realizes that the NPC that was aiding them at one point is now actively working against them.

 

[Charlaquin]

Thank you!

To briefly respond-

1. Please remember that these are just some themes that are associated with Greyhawk. The primary point is that you can use some of them, all of them, or none of them. Make Greyhawk your own!

2. "Muscular" neutrality is ... kinda weird! That said, I do think that the one thing that might make it interesting is that it provides for more complexity for certain NPCs- as I wrote, the same NPCs that are aligned with the party at one time will be working against the party on other issues. Now, this can happen for other reasons (politics, personal agendas, etc.), but it can be refreshing when the party realizes that the NPC that was aiding them at one point is now actively working against them.

Yeah, I think keeping it focused on what said NPCs believe helps. This is their ideology, not necessarily a cosmological truth. Are they right? Not even the gods can say for certain.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

You could consider the strong neutrality in Greyhawk to be a riff on the Non-aligned Movement during the Cold War. But a variant applied to the D&D alignment cosmology weirdness.

Non-Aligned Movement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In this case, Mordenkainen’s run of the Circle of Eight is trying to do a fantasy version of that strategy.

 

[Voadam]

A couple other themes of greyhawk

The 40 or so countries have overlap (multiple fantasy viking lands, multiple fantasy Arab lands) and distinctions for a lot of different themes.

Some of the themes:

Feudal kingdoms with orders of knights.

Fantasy Vikings.

Pirates.

Fantasy Arab States.

Theocracies. Both western and Arab. One explicitly a one true pathism.

Corrupt decadent feudal empire disintegrating and on the downslope but still strong.

Evil supernatural expansionist overlord threat.

Isolationist elves.

Fantasy Barbarians.

Jungles.

Giant infested mountains.

Humanoid nations.

Chaotic frontier free towns.

City states.

Fantasy Chicago/ D&Dized Lankhmar with politics and trade and thieves guilds and magics.

 

[Charlaquin]

You could consider the strong neutrality in Greyhawk to be a riff on the Non-aligned Movement during the Cold War. But a variant applied to the D&D alignment cosmology weirdness.

Non-Aligned Movement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In this case, Mordenkainen’s run of the Circle of Eight is trying to do a fantasy version of that strategy.

I quite like that idea

 

[MGibster]

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?

I've never been a fan of neutrality and especially muscular neutrality (not that I ever used that particular term until Snarf stabbed it into my brain). I'm with you, I can do without it. If a group helps evil, I'm just going to consider them evil and deal with them like I would any threat.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I've never been a fan of neutrality and especially muscular neutrality (not that I ever used that particular term until Snarf stabbed it into my brain). I'm with you, I can do without it. If a group helps evil, I'm just going to consider them evil and deal with them like I would any threat.

 

[Voadam]

For the muscular neutral I think it is helpful to remember the Greyhawk good guys include stuff like the Theocracy of the Pale with their one true path intolerance.

There is a lot of straight out self serving evil in the world of Greyhawk that threatens people that the Neutrals oppose but the good ones while generally overall out for good in at least some way that makes them good overall on a karma scale they are not good in every way that everybody would like and are specific individual political entities with aspects that many would not like.

Mordenkainen is against evil like the Great Kingdom or the Scarlet Brotherhood or Iuz taking over the Flanaess, but I think he really does not want to live in the Theocracy or under a feudal king or a Caliphate either.

 

[Charlaquin]

For the muscular neutral I think it is helpful to remember the Greyhawk good guys include stuff like the Theocracy of the Pale with their one true path intolerance.

I don’t know the details of this theocracy, but I suspect I would take exception to it being characterized as “good.”