D&D (2024) How Does Greyhawk Fit In To The New Edition?

According to Game Informer — “the surprising importance and inclusions of what is arguably the oldest D&D campaign setting of them all – Greyhawk.”

So how does Greyhawk fit in? According to GI, the new 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide contains a sample setting—and that setting is, indeed, Greyhawk. Not only that, but the book will come with a double-sided poster map with the City of Greyhawk on one side and the Flannaes on the other—the eastern part of one of Oerth’s four continents.

​

Even as the multiverse of D&D worlds sees increased attention, the Dungeon Master's Guide also offers a more discrete setting to get gaming groups started. After very few official releases in the last couple of decades, the world of Greyhawk takes center stage. The book fleshes out Greyhawk to illustrate how to create campaign settings of your own. Greyhawk was the original D&D game world crafted by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax, and a worthy setting to revisit on the occassion of D&D's golden anniversary. It's a world bristling with classic sword and sorcery concepts, from an intrigue-laden central city to wide tracts of uncharted wilderness. Compared to many D&D campaign settings, it's smaller and less fleshed out, and that's sort of the point; it begs for DMs to make it their own. The book offers ample info to bring Greyhawk to life but leaves much undetailed. For those eager to take the plunge, an included poster map of the Greyhawk setting sets the tone, and its reverse reveals a map of the city of the same name. "A big draw to Greyhawk is it's the origin place for such heroes as Mordenkainen, Tasha, and others," Perkins says. "There's this idea that the players in your campaign can be the next great world-hopping, spell-crafting heroes of D&D. It is the campaign where heroes are born."

- Game Informer​

​

 

[Micah Sweet]

I am a Greyhawk fan and I want new stuff for it.

New stuff, it should be said, doesn't have to cancel out or replace old stuff.

 

[timbannock]

I'm not at all surprised, just disappointed.

As I've pointed out in previous threads many times, WotC has consistently shown, for the whole time they've owned the D&D property, an irrational and fannish obsession with Greyhawk, and have repeatedly tried to "make it happen". To be fair, TSR did the same thing. In both cases, it just failed and failed because fundamentally, Greyhawk is one of the worst and most boring D&D settings.

No doubt it won't be updated meaningfully either, because it's nostalgia nonsense and trying to "bring back" something rather than an astute rational analysis that now is the time or the like.

Obviously "it's bad" is subjective, but I think you miss why people think "it's good":

Greyhawk is a setting where most of the nations are locked in a cold war, and several are locked in a hot one. Armies are constantly clashing, domains are constantly up for grabs. Evil with a capital "E" is rampant, and evil without the capital "E" is pretty much everywhere. Mercenaries aren't just common, they are necessary, otherwise civilization will fall, or become a decadent mess as it has in about 3 or 4 of the current "greatest" nations. Basically, everything is in decline.

The reason this is popular among the folks that like it is because it's the first real points of light setting with all that entails, but also because it jives 100% perfectly with the original thrust of D&D: that fortunes are won by mercenaries, and fortunes are exactly how you level up. That was the whole of the D&D reward cycle, and Greyhawk perfectly fit it.

Now...whether or not the reward cycle has anything to do with how D&D works today, I think we can all say "nope" pretty readily. But I'll posit that the bleakness, the mercenary focus, and the warring kingdoms still make for a good backdrop, even if the PCs are now no longer mercenaries but heroes and do-gooders.

Rant: People constantly say "Greyhawk is more swords & sorcery" (than presumably FR, I'm guessing the comparison goes?), but if you look at basically everything that's been published for it, I'd argue that's only passingly true, a relative statement that's not entirely indicative of the truth. Greyhawk's still, at its core, MUCH more high fantasy than Conan and a lot of the source material. Monsters and magic abound in far, far greater amounts than people give it credit for. Just roll some random stuff on the OD&D or B/X era tables to see what I mean. But importantly, everything in 2E and later is way, way higher fantasy. /rant

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Obviously "it's bad" is subjective, but I think you miss why people think "it's good":

Greyhawk is a setting where most of the nations are locked in a cold war, and several are locked in a hot one. Armies are constantly clashing, domains are constantly up for grabs. Evil with a capital "E" is rampant, and evil without the capital "E" is pretty much everywhere. Mercenaries aren't just common, they are necessary, otherwise civilization will fall, or become a decadent mess as it has in about 3 or 4 of the current "greatest" nations. Basically, everything is in decline.

The reason this is popular among the folks that like it is because it's the first real points of light setting with all that entails, but also because it jives 100% perfectly with the original thrust of D&D: that fortunes are won by mercenaries, and fortunes are exactly how you level up. That was the whole of the D&D reward cycle, and Greyhawk perfectly fit it.

Now...whether or not the reward cycle has anything to do with how D&D works today, I think we can all say "nope" pretty readily. But I'll posit that the bleakness, the mercenary focus, and the warring kingdoms still make for a good backdrop, even if the PCs are now no longer mercenaries but heroes and do-gooders.

Rant: People constantly say "Greyhawk is more swords & sorcery" (than presumably FR, I'm guessing the comparison goes?), but if you look at basically everything that's been published for it, I'd argue that's only passingly true, a relative statement that's not entirely indicative of the truth. Greyhawk's still, at its core, MUCH more high fantasy than Conan and a lot of the source material. Monsters and magic abound in far, far greater amounts than people give it credit for. Just roll some random stuff on the OD&D or B/X era tables to see what I mean. But importantly, everything in 2E and later is way, way higher fantasy. /rant

This is the best sell I've seen for Greyhawk for a long time, I must say. I think if they leant into a more Dark Souls-ish "everything in decline" (as you put it) or at least generally somewhat morally ambiguous mercenary-centric updated take, they could do something interesting. My contention though is that they definitely won't. This will be, most likely, a bland 5E take on Greyhawk with any rough edges smoothed off, and jolly heroism firmly at the centre of things, and so will manage to be even more bland and generic than earlier versions.

 

[Shardstone]

This is the best sell I've seen for Greyhawk for a long time, I must say. I think if they leant into a more Dark Souls-ish "everything in decline" (as you put it) or at least generally somewhat morally ambiguous mercenary-centric updated take, they could do something interesting. My contention though is that they definitely won't. This will be, most likely, a bland 5E take on Greyhawk with any rough edges smoothed off, and jolly heroism firmly at the centre of things, and so will manage to be even more bland and generic than earlier versions.

Elden Hawk. Grey Souls. Demon's Hawk? Hawkborne?

 

[dead]

I’m glad Greyhawk is back as the default setting, it is synonymous with D&D. I suspect they won’t mention a setting date but it will be quietly assumed to be rolled back to 576CY. I’m OK with this - the small metaplot Greyhawk had in its product history wasn’t that great. And, even if you want to, you can say the D&D Multiverse metaplot events in Eve of Ruin can easily explain the reset and Vecna will be kicked back to Oerth as an ordinary mortal lich as he was to begin with.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Since they are using it as a bare-bones sample, "boring" is precisely what they are going for here.

Maybe you should wait and see before assuming.

 

[GarthS]

Maybe you should wait and see before assuming.

From the 8 page artticle

 

[Remathilis]

I think some fans want to avoid having their favorite setting become another "kitchen sink" where everything that WotC sells is put into it canonically. Some settings exclude certain player options to help them feel more "special," or even just to fit the theme.

My favorite way of doing this was 3e Eberron, where as new 3e books were released with new player options they'd have a little sidebar suggesting how these options could fit into Eberron etc. It was not assumed by default that every player options had a place in the setting.

Greyhawk never was anything BUT a kitchen sink. And if it exists in D&D, there's a place for it in Eberron. You can make valid arguments that Dragonlance or Dark Sun aren't kitchen sinks, but those are two of the biggest sinks that WotC has next to the Realms. Those are kitchen sink in a 5 star restaurant big!

The reason people don't want dragonborn or goliaths in Oerth is just a subtle form of edition warring. The fight is to keep those dirty new options from soiling their memories of D&D before TSR went splat. That's also why people argue to bring back race class restrictions despite those being gone for half the game's lifespan. It's the same "get off my lawn" argument that gets people to complain when the classic rock channel plays those new rock bands like Nirvana.

 

[MNblockhead]

Y'know, not every setting needs it, but I always liked Greyhawk having heraldry. It was a good way of showing right off the bat that this fantasy world is very medieval feeling, not like the very high fantasy Forgotten Realms.

 

[Parmandur]

From the 8 page artticle

View attachment 363329

A lot of room for interpretation what that means in brass tacks. I think it would-be unlikely to have something equivalent to the 1980 Folio, but it could easily be less than that, in multiple tiers of potential detail. Perkins has said previously that the example Setting in the DMG will be drawn up sufficiently to play, but thst doesn't take much particularly for such a core Genric Fantasy Setting as Greyhawk.