D&D 5E Greyhawk: Why We Need Mo' Oerth by 2024

[David Howery]

OR you you could have it both ways and have the Scarlet Brotherhood be emerging as the major player (and all the consequences of that happening).

I suppose WOTC could do one big book with pre and post Wars info. The Post Wars WoG, though, has a lot more changes than just the SB being outed. A couple of nations just disappear, the Flan are damn near exterminated, Hepmonaland is revealed as an SB backwater place instead of the mysterious (and neat) jungle area it was before, etc. It's a lot of changes. Hardly surprising that the opinion on it is divided...

 

[Maxperson]

Short version: If you publish Greyhawk, do it in a classic style that retains the Gygaxian vibe. If you want a setting that expresses the game and community as it is today, make a new setting -- one that is explicitly designed to embody the qualities of D&D, c. 2020s.

Use different settings as opportunities to explore different styles and themes, rather than feel the need to cram everything into every setting (e.g. my joking example of "Starshimmer Elves" in Dark Sun, or "nice Drow"in Greyhawk). Each setting can and should be distinct and unique, imo.

If they put out a classic version, I will buy it and enjoy it. If they update it to include Tabaxi and other new races, I'll buy it and enjoy it.

Gygax didn't shy away from adding new and strange things to his setting. When he wanted an alien spaceship, he popped on in that had crashed on the Barrier Peaks. When he wanted walking vegetable men, he created vegepygmies. I've no reason to think that he wouldn't have eventually created cat men(Tabaxi) or dragon men(Dragonborn) and popped them into a spot he felt appropriate on Greyhawk, so I don't think that adding new races would be going against the grain of the setting.

 

[LordEntrails]

Then Greyhawk was elevated back to the "default setting" in 3e, except while that was the official stance, Forgotten Realms quickly usurped it to the extent that most people didn't realize that Greyhawk was technically supposed to be the default setting.

I learned something new today, thanks!

You can always get a reprint of the old stuff if you want- I want a new generation to have their own Greyhawk.

Amen!

 

[Mannahnin]

They published the "last gasp" of setting material for Greyhawk for 2e and really wanted to make it work. It was a mixed bag of material - very much a product of the 90s.

Then they tried to make Greyhawk the "default setting" for 3e - including making the Living Greyhawk gazetteer and the setting book you quote, but also trying to thread Greyhawk setting info into the PHB and the DMG. But by 1999 the "default setting" for D&D wasn't anything like Greyhawk anymore - it was much closer to the Realms even by that point. So pretty quickly all that was left of that "default setting" was the names of the gods and a few locations (Saltmarsh showed up again in the DMG 2 for example).

If they do decide to do a 50th anniversary Greyhawk release it'll be interesting to watch the fireworks online. If I were Wizards I wouldn't want to go anywhere near it, except to maybe do a special reprint of the original Folio or boxed set the way they did the OD&D white box set back in the day.

Yeah, it seems to me like WotC originally wanted to focus on Greyhawk as part of their "back to the dungeon"/back to classic approach with 3rd, but they didn't know how to execute on it properly.

They gave us the gods in the 3E PH but not much more by way of setting. They did the cheap little gazetteer and used Greyhawk for the living campaign, but didn't give it a boxed set or a nice hardcover like FR got 1-2 years later.

Then the FRCS got a more deluxe treatment (perhaps aided by the fact that Ed Greenwood was still involved and interested in writing for it, though Sean K. Reynolds, Skip Williams and Rob Heinsoo also worked on it, so evidently a lot of the core team was behind it), and apparently a better reception. And in 4th they decided to try the new PoL/Nerath setting as default, while also supporting FR.

The 32 page gazetteer GH got reminds me a bit of the relatively short softcover splat books 3.0 originally had (Sword & Fist, Tome & Blood, Song and Silence, Masters of the Wild, and Defenders of the Faith). Which were functional and reasonably affordable, but I'm not sure gave as much depth as people wanted.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'll say this much:

• I loved Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I'd buy a sequel or companion product, if such a thing was offered.
• I use the Greyhawk gods in my homebrew campaign setting because they are my favorite.
• I'm not all that excited about the Spelljammer 5E setting, the Dragonlance 5E setting, or a hypothetical Dark Sun 5E setting. But I'd be very excited about a Greyhawk 5E setting.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I'll say this much:

• I loved Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I'd buy a sequel or companion product, if such a thing was offered.
• I use the Greyhawk gods in my homebrew campaign setting because they are my favorite.
• I'm not all that excited about the Spelljammer 5E setting, the Dragonlance 5E setting, or a hypothetical Dark Sun 5E setting. But I'd be very excited about a Greyhawk 5E setting.

Point for point.

I have not incorporated the gods in my own creation yet but always talk my DMs into adding them to theirs so I can play clerics of wee jass pelor etc!

 

[Jer]

Then the FRCS got a more deluxe treatment (perhaps aided by the fact that Ed Greenwood was still involved and interested in writing for it, though Sean K. Reynolds, Skip Williams and Rob Heinsoo also worked on it, so evidently a lot of the core team was behind it), and apparently a better reception. And in 4th they decided to try the new PoL/Nerath setting as default, while also supporting FR.

I suspect that it's more that they always intended to support the Realms with a full campaign line push - I vaguely remember them talking about it when 3e was released. The Realms were the big setting in 1999 - successful novel lines, multiple computer games over the years (including Baldur's Gate, which had just come out the year before), and a large for the time Living Raven's Bluff RPGA campaign being run at cons. It was THE core setting for D&D - even moreso than it has been for 5e in some ways.

I remember being a bit baffled at the decision to make Greyhawk the default setting for the 3e PHB. In retrospect I think Wizards was trying to spin up Greyhawk as another Realms-level behemoth of a setting that they could have novels, computer games, a living RPGA campaign, and whatnot around. But it didn't work - and they eventually decided to make a new setting to try to be the second major D&D setting. And so we got the "make a new setting" contest and Eberron for 3e.

(As for why it didn't work - I think there are multiple reasons. One IMO is because of the mismatch between what the D&D default setting actually was by 1999 and what Greyhawk is. To sell Greyhawk even in 1999 you probably needed to emphasize its differences from the Realms, and its position as the "default setting" made that really impossible to do.)

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

This goes back to that thread in which the OP equated (confused) quality and popularity. I won't speak for @Ruin Explorer , but I don't think he's at all saying that GH is or was a creative failure, just that it failed to take off as a popular (and thus economically viable) setting in early 2000, as some at WotC hoped it would.

That’s something like I was assuming, but I think the Greyhawk run during the Dragon/Dungeon line from Paizo was a fine success, not a complete failure. Which is why I think Ruin Explorer’s hyperbole needed more defining.

 

[Mort]

I suppose WOTC could do one big book with pre and post Wars info. The Post Wars WoG, though, has a lot more changes than just the SB being outed. A couple of nations just disappear, the Flan are damn near exterminated, Hepmonaland is revealed as an SB backwater place instead of the mysterious (and neat) jungle area it was before, etc. It's a lot of changes. Hardly surprising that the opinion on it is divided...

Personally, I would stick the setting at right before the Greyhawk wars with a clear indication that Iuz is about to make a big move and spark them thus setting off the dominoes (including the Scarlet Brotherhood's later moves).

But that's because I like putting PCs into a powder keg and seeing what they do from there - it forces them into action and makes my job as DM easier (IMO).

 

[jolt]

They made Greyhawk the default setting for 3.0, but never pushed it. I had never even heard of the Living Greyhawk campaign until after it ended. The campaign guidebook never showed up in any of the local stores and the owners seemed surprised that there had ever been a Living Greyhawk Campaign at all; they had never been made aware of it. Now, in the early 2000's I knew a lot of people who didn't even have computers let alone Internet access, so it's possible it was just never communicated well.