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.

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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​

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[Umbran]

This is the reason I log in here about every 6 months is folks always want to bring up crap like this, pointing fingers at teenagers that played the game in the 80's as if they attended clan rallies.

Mod Note:
If you want to complain about others repeatedly bringing up old arguments, using a weeks-old post to do it doesn't make you look much better, hm?

The thread rather moved on. Stepping in afterwards to be dismissive isn't much of a power move. Maybe next time, don't.

 

[Mournblade94]

Deleted due to mod remark

 

[Voadam]

These seem to generally match the 1e World of Greyhawk format.

View attachment 366934

Compare to the 3e LGG entry:
View attachment 366935

Or the 3.0 FRCS

View attachment 366938

That's a pretty good example of why the OG GH and the FRCS were more inspirational than the LGG: way more dense text in the middle example, the Folio and FRCS have some key details but get to the interesting narrative stuff ASAP.

Here is the 3.0 D&D Gazetteer entry for comparison as well.

 

[Von Ether]

As a GM who grew up more on Tolkien than history books, I'm not surprised when a war of five armies is brief compared to the rest of the book. So to have the 1e version of Ekbir go into a run on sentence about the country's army seems overly detailed -- especially when it sounds like a word math problem.

If you are not a history aficionado who gets the subtext of the time period being referred to, how does one ascertain if a 5k army is serious threat or a joke? And if you have a kitchen sink setting, how do those number mean anyway when faux Ancient Egypt goes up against faux Middle Ages Europe?

This reminds me of how much early day TSR writers assumed of their audience already knew and the resources they had access to. (I grew up in the sticks and the closest higher education library to me was almost an hour away back then.)

For me, I would have had to comb the whole book to compare army numbers to get a handle army sizes. While I am sure some of us have fond memories of doing that, I didn't even know Greyhawk - or Forgotten Realms -- existed until I got to college. By then, I was deep into making my own settings and campaign in GURPS.

 

[Dion D Ritter]

It ain't Middle Earth, but I think it should fit in well. D&D as it was meant to be. Only time will tell for sure...

 

[ilgatto]

So how does Greyhawk fit in?

I suppose one could argue that discovering and working with old Greyhawk for the first time was much like buying and driving your first 205 GTi*. It was unknown and (almost) unique, challenging, daunting even, crude and offensive, broke down all the time, and tried to kill you at every corner - but it was the first time you experienced all of that and, as the saying goes, you never forget your first time.

But above all, you wanted more of it.

So when the 206 GTi came out and it promised to be even better, you just couldn't wait to experience all of it again in ways better and never seen before.

And perhaps it did, indeed, make you revisit what you'd felt before, take you to places well-remembered along paths well-known, and bring back glorious memories - and this time even without breaking down so much or trying to kill you when you put the pedal to the metal.**

And that was exactly the problem. What happened to the fast and furious? Carl who? And YTL is everybody yelling that the GTi Greyhawk is back - when it literally isn't?

Fast forward to Greyhawk 5.next and you just know that there is virtually no chance that it will be as exciting as it once was, that it can be nothing more than a futile attempt to blow new life into the days of yore.

Is that bad? It probably is.

But is it true?

Maybe Greyhawk 5.bananas isn't the problem. Maybe it's just that you can never experience a first time again, um..., while sober, that is. So I say let's all of us who experienced those first days of Greyhawk cherish our memories, drink to them, share them, build on them, and rejoice that we were fortunate enough to be there when it mattered.

So where does that leave Greyhawk 5.lamp?

Well, there's a whole new generation that has been driving 207 GTs and has read about the legend of Greyhawk on their phones, what it was, what it did, what it brought to so many people. And I suppose at least some of them will be curious, perhaps even excited. And maybe, just maybe, whatever Greyhawk 5.whatever will become will inspire some of them to delve deep into its history and discover what it was that made old Greyhawk so special.

And if not, I gather many of them will experience Greyhawk 5.new in ways new but not unlike we did, build their own fond and irreplaceable memories of it - and complain mightily when Hasgrandcho brings out Greyhawk 7.VR 40 years from now.

Any of which, in itself, is a good thing.

But there's just that tiny bit in me that wishes they hadn't used good old Greyhawk for this.

*) Or 68 Mustang for those living across the pond
**) Which is, perhaps, somewhat less true for the Mustang of today

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[Lord Xaviar]

I used to want updates to Greyhawk, but with all Hasbro's changes in the name of profit. I really hope they continue to ignore it and leave it to fan fiction, Like the maps by Anne Meyer, Len L. E. Gygax and others.

 

[Nikosandros]

I used to want updates to Greyhawk, but with all Hasbro's changes in the name of profit. I really hope they continue to ignore it and leave it to fan fiction, Like the maps by Anne Meyer, Len L. E. Gygax and others.

GH is going to be featured in the new DMG. I wouldn't call this ignoring.

 

[seankreynolds]

Not exactly true based on what I remember from what I recall authors like Erik Mona and Gary Holian saying, I think even Sean Reynolds was involved with writing the deities section and said as much, the LGG was being written while 3e rules was still under development. There was almost nothing the rules dev team could give the LGG authors to work with for anything that needed mechanics.

Sorry to necro-reply to this comment, but…
I don't think "3e rules were still under development" accurately describes the situation of design on the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.
The 3E core books were almost done—my Living Greyhawk Gazetteer turnover file has a "file created" date of January 24, 2000, and the PH was released just a few months later.
The freelance designers for the LGG weren't allowed to create new game mechanics; the book was supposed to be a world-lore sourcebook for the RPGA's Living Greyhawk campaign and wasn't supposed to have any additional rules in it*; not because the core 3e rules weren't done, but because you were supposed to be able to show up to a LG event with your core 3e character and not feel like a character created with the LGG was better than yours.

*Knowing there wouldn't be any more actual-Greyhawk 3E releases, my deities chapter turnover included some quickly-designed "specialty priest" options for the Greyhawk deities, mainly in adding some extra abilities at various class levels. The design team nixed it because (a) the aforementioned no-new-rules limitation, and (b) it was unlike anything else in 3e at the time and they'd want it playtested before publishing it.

 

[Parmandur]

Knowing there wouldn't be any more actual-Greyhawk 3E releases

Interesting, so it was known up front that was going to be a total one-and-done?