D&D 5E (2014) I believe the Greyhawk Campaign setting was a missed opportunity for Wizards of the Coast.

[aramis erak]

They don't need an Ed Greenwood or Bob Salvetore to do something good with GH.

I think you maybe giving Bob too much credit with regards to FR.

Drizzt has been a major seller for years. Whatever his flaws as an author, he sells.

And he puts the setting into the mind of fans.

There is a long history of fans of the novels finding the RPG... not just D&D, either. Traveller, Castle Falkenstein, Star Wars, Star Trek.

Decent movies do it better, but books are a big part of the brand. And, to be honest, RA Salvatore's name is pretty well the name most people think of when they hear "Forgotten Realms". Even many gamers think Salvatore before Greenwood. (For me, the order is Salvatore, Gygax, Greenwood. And Greenwood was only added to my mental map this year. And I've never even read a novel by any of them.)

So, even if his role in the game side is negligible, RA Salvatore is big in brand awareness. His writing may be formulaic, or dross, but if so, it's dross that sells.

Greyhawk needs either an analogue to RA Salvatore, or an analogue to Ed Greenwood, or both. And Jim Ward really didn't do what Mr Greenwood did.... (The Greyhawk hardcover really isn't good. And despite having been there in the beginning, Mr. Ward wasn't out there hyping it to fans. And he wasn't driving it 30+ years later, either. Unlike Mr. Greenwood.)

Greyhawk's never had an analogue to RA Salvatore. Until this year (2015), despite gaming for a 34 years, I was unaware there had ever been Greyhawk novels.

So, really, if Greyhawk is to get anything, it's likely to be a one-off. If it isn't a one-off - it's going to be tied to some videogame, licensed on the cheap, or novel coming out, written by a fan, sold to the publisher on the cheap, and published on speculation.

In terms of making the setting popularly known, so something people want to play in? Probably more Salvatore than Greenwood.

Mr. Salvatore made it well known. Mr. Greenwood made it worth playing in. Different contributions.

 

[DEFCON 1]

if they keep pillaging Greyhawk lore and items there wont be anything left for it to sell us or want to play in Greyhawk! Its almost enough to go back to Pathfinder instead of 5th.

You mean all Greyhawk has is Tiamat, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and whatever two or three other things WotC might use for their follow-up adventure books? After that, Greyhawk is devoid of anything else useful to put in a campaign book and there's nothing new they can create or add?

Wow. If that's true... then yeah, maybe Greyhawk really does suck and isn't deserving of a campaign book at all if that's all they got to put in it.

Unless of course you were just being ridiculously hyperbolic in an effort to make your point seem actually true or worthwhile. LOL.

 

[carmachu]

You mean all Greyhawk has is Tiamat, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and whatever two or three other things WotC might use for their follow-up adventure books? After that, Greyhawk is devoid of anything else useful to put in a campaign book and there's nothing new they can create or add?

Wow. If that's true... then yeah, maybe Greyhawk really does suck and isn't deserving of a campaign book at all if that's all they got to put in it.

Unless of course you were just being ridiculously hyperbolic in an effort to make your point seem actually true or worthwhile. LOL.

Whats rediculous is that if one ever expects greyhawk released, taking its stuff and sticking in the realms where its NEVER been will guarentee you will never see greyhawk. Will they create anything? Again, doubtful if you take what was before and stick it where its never been.

Again, greyhawk has had half-ass support for a very long time. FR never had elemental princes trying to enter. Thats where the princes should be.

 

[carmachu]

2. It has a spiritual successor to me in Paizo's Golarion. Golarion has mixes of cultures, downed ancient spaceships, slaver nations, devil worshippers, red cloaked assassins from hidden jungle regions, world cataclysms, deities running nations, and one city in the center of it all with world spanning trade, with numerous houses/guilds vying for control, same as Greyhawk. Little wonder since Erik Mona was a Greyhawk Uberfan from back in the day. Golarion gives me all the Greyhawk flavor I ever wanter streaming out of its pores. Hell, their current adventure path is Expedition to the Barrier Peaks writ large, and their next is essentially Against the Giants! (minus the drow behind it all, and if they were I'd clap for joy.)

the problem with that is that unlike greyhawk which felt like a unified world, the more I played in Golarion the more it felt more like a patch work world rather then one that flows together- here be pirates, here be french revolution, here be gunpowered, here be tech, here be Egypt and so on......to me it never seemed to flow together like days of old.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Whats rediculous is that if one ever expects greyhawk released, taking its stuff and sticking in the realms where its NEVER been will guarentee you will never see greyhawk. Will they create anything? Again, doubtful if you take what was before and stick it where its never been.

Again, greyhawk has had half-ass support for a very long time. FR never had elemental princes trying to enter. Thats where the princes should be.

So the only stories worth doing in the Realms are rehashes of the ones they've already done. I see. The Realms has so much lore, there's no reason to make any new lore, they should just keep repeating the lore they have over and over and over again.

Who needs to introduce Elemental Princes into the Realms, when they already have so many other things they've already written about in countless sourcebooks before and could just copy/paste and re-write once again! Why have a segment of the Cult of the Dragon evolve their philosophy? They've only had the same exact machinations for countless centuries which have never worked and that have been described in grand detail in both the 2E 'Cult of the Dragons' sourcebook and a section of the 3E 'Dragons of Faerun' sourcebook. Why didn't they repeat and write this same exact detail and lore in 5E too so people could buy it all a third time? I mean, it's not like they can;t buy any of all this older Realms material from the originals sources it was made, because none of these older FR campaign books are available for purchase in PDF form from dndclassics.com

And after all... the Cult only gave themselves 500 years to accomplish their goals... that's not nearly enough time for some parts of it to get disgruntled and try and change it up. So shame on WotC for not photocopying the lore from all the previous books and re-binding in in a 5E one!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Greyhawk has brand recognition only within the hardcore tabletop D&D community.

Meanwhile, Forgotten Realms has at least two media properties that reach a significantly wider audience:

1. Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter games for the video gamer audience
2. R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels for fantasy reader audience

Those two properties alone make using FR a much better choice, especially for attempting to get new players.

Greyhawk is my favorite setting, but this is dead on target. If you want brand recognition, back your winning horse. Just try not to beat it to death ...I'm looking at you, RSE's!

Greyhawk needs either an analogue to RA Salvatore, or an analogue to Ed Greenwood, or both. And Jim Ward really didn't do what Mr Greenwood did.... (The Greyhawk hardcover really isn't good. And despite having been there in the beginning, Mr. Ward wasn't out there hyping it to fans. And he wasn't driving it 30+ years later, either. Unlike Mr. Greenwood.)

Edit: On Greyhawk novels, I think the best ones were the Paul Kidd novels -- the ones that used the classic adventures as setting. I definitely preferred his Justicar and Escalla characters to Drizzt et al.

The Greyhawk iconics novels were OK for RPG fantasy; better than many of the FR and DL novels I've read but still not great fantasy on an absolute scale. Gord the Rogue ... well, it was some classic Gary feel but avoid the last couple that weren't written by Gary.

Greyhawk did get the great Scourge of Worlds interactive DVD adventure in 3E, though -- that things is still fun.

 

[carmachu]

So the only stories worth doing in the Realms are rehashes of the ones they've already done. I see. The Realms has so much lore, there's no reason to make any new lore, they should just keep repeating the lore they have over and over and over again.

Who needs to introduce Elemental Princes into the Realms, when they already have so many other things they've already written about in countless sourcebooks before and could just copy/paste and re-write once again! Why have a segment of the Cult of the Dragon evolve their philosophy? They've only had the same exact machinations for countless centuries which have never worked and that have been described in grand detail in both the 2E 'Cult of the Dragons' sourcebook and a section of the 3E 'Dragons of Faerun' sourcebook. Why didn't they repeat and write this same exact detail and lore in 5E too so people could buy it all a third time? I mean, it's not like they can;t buy any of all this older Realms material from the originals sources it was made, because none of these older FR campaign books are available for purchase in PDF form from dndclassics.com

And after all... the Cult only gave themselves 500 years to accomplish their goals... that's not nearly enough time for some parts of it to get disgruntled and try and change it up. So shame on WotC for not photocopying the lore from all the previous books and re-binding in in a 5E one!

Again, the realms DOES have tons and tons of lore to draw on. Myth Draneor could come back or be exploited. Red wizards civil war or get together to conqueor areas. North unites and tries to bring winter down with them. Tons of other stuff.

Again, stealing from greyhawk or other items leaves that setting poorer, and LESS likely to have any support. Nobody but your absurd hyperbole is saying they need to rebind and reuse the same items as before. But they can use the crap ton of lore they have to make an adventure without pulling from greyhawk or other areas.

 

[Henry]

the problem with that is that unlike greyhawk which felt like a unified world, the more I played in Golarion the more it felt more like a patch work world rather then one that flows together- here be pirates, here be french revolution, here be gunpowered, here be tech, here be Egypt and so on......to me it never seemed to flow together like days of old.

If there is one thing Golarion is missing, it's Gary's maps of ancient tribal migrations across Oerth. Neither Greyhawk nor the Realms ever felt like parts of it "belonged together" to me, so I've not felt anything missing. I hear that Kingdoms of Kalamar did a great job with world consistency, as has the setting Glorantha, that I'm getting familiar with through King of Dragon Pass, the IOS game.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'll try to briefly identify what I think are the connections I see:

• Simplified class design: the classes have a straightforward construction (with a little variation, also straightforward)
• Stripped down combat (even though one can add in some nice extra bits through the DMG) with the best bits from other editions added in as specific class features
• The old way of doing spells (sure, the cantrips idea is new, and there is no bonus spells with ability scores--super smart--and there is concentration, and there are new classes that do things differently... but the cleric and wizard are back!)
• Tables! Random tables!
• A certain aesthetic of the game that brings me a certain je ne sais quoi

Seriously, the two games I immediately thought of running were Temple of Elemental Evil (Greyhawk, CY 573) or the Scrolls of Hyskosa (Ravenloft) campaign. And I think that they would work great with limited changes.

(I did consider changing 1/2-orcs to something more 1st edition...)

What, GDQ1-7 didn't jump immediately to mind? After ToEE, Against the Giants, Descent into the Depths, and Vault of the Drow make for the classic high-level Greyhawk campaign (Demonweb Pits is a poor final chapter despite some great sandboxy sidetrips, and can be included or omitted to taste.)

 

[MerricB]

You mean all Greyhawk has is Tiamat, the Temple of Elemental Evil, and whatever two or three other things WotC might use for their follow-up adventure books? After that, Greyhawk is devoid of anything else useful to put in a campaign book and there's nothing new they can create or add?

It's a lot worse than that, as Greyhawk doesn't really have Tiamat or Elemental Evil!

One of the important things to understand about Greyhawk is that, although it's the origin of a lot of D&D material, the link of that material to the setting is often not as strong as you might expect. The Queen of Chaotic Dragons" appeared in Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975), and so might have been part of the early D&D games when Greyhawk was the only setting - most of what appears in "Greyhawk" is considered generic D&D. She is first actually named "Tiamat" in the first Monster Manual (1977). She only gets one passing mention in the Babylonian mythos section of Deities and Demigods - apparently Marduk's battles with Tiamat are legendary - and is listed as a lesser god in the Nonhumans section with no further details forthcoming.

She got raised to the rank of deity by Len Lakofka in Dragon #38 (published about the same time as Deities & Demigods), and at that point she basically disappears from things related to Greyhawk (except for a couple of modules by Frank Menzter which aren't normally considered Greyhawk adventures).

Tiamat's doppleganger, Takhisis, appears in memorable fashion in the Dragonlance Saga, and that's the biggest influence Tiamat has had on the game.

Meanwhile, Tiamat makes her first appearance in a Forgotten Realms product in H4: The Throne of Bloodstone (1988), where the players are told that the Wand of Orcus can only be destroyed by bathing it in her heart's blood. (And yes, the PCs do encounter her). She pops up in other Realms products from time to time, in particular the Draconomicon (1990), which places her very firmly in the Realms.

All of which is a long way of saying that Tiamat is part of "generic" D&D - the core underpinnings of the game which we then put setting material on top of. There's no special connection to Greyhawk at all, and she's certainly never really been part of any important Greyhawk adventure or product.

On the other hand, Elemental Evil...

The Temple of Elemental Evil is a core part of Greyhawk mythology. In fact, its one of the few bits of Greyhawk mythology we have, and one of the few important sites that gets a mention in the "Brief History of Eastern Oerik", which appears in both the 1980 Greyhawk folio and the 1983 boxed set. Of course, it's mention in the Village of Hommlet (1979), but it would be five years - and after Gary left the company - that the actual site itself was detailed (1985), with the manuscript finished by Frank Mentzer.

However, it's not the only Elemental Evil. In 1981, the Fiend Folio came out and amongst its monsters were the five Princes of Elemental Evil, designed by Lewis Pulsipher, one of the significant figures of gaming. Interestingly, it seems that the manuscript of the Folio may have been completed in 1979 - for Games Workshop - before it eventually got published as the first product of TSR (UK) (see the Acaeum).

The Princes of Elemental Evil have hardly been used. Monte Cook decided to put one in his Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which made sense - sort of - but the original adventure mentions them Not At All.

And here we run into one of the conceptual problems of later developers in Greyhawk. The original story for the Temple probably involved Lolth. Then things got changed around, and the published product has Iuz and Zuggtmoy setting up the temple. Well, mostly Zuggtmoy, the Demon Lady of Fungi. Why Elemental Evil? Because she thinks its more attractive than Fungi to worshippers. She probably had a point. Blasting people with (evil) fire is a lot better than feeding them mushrooms. But there's no real *power* of elemental evil in her worldview. Instead, she's just harnessing the power of the elemental planes to evil ends. This is in sharp distinction to Lewis Pulsipher's Princes of Elemental Evil.

At this point we have the Greyhawk conception of elemental evil against the generic D&D conception of the Princes of Elemental Evil. They're two different things.

And then we get to the complications. Gary Gygax included in his D&D adventures two rather unusual deities. Tharizdun and the Elder Elemental God. They were not intended to be the same thing. Here's Gary on them from Oerth Journal #12:

"The Elder Elemental God I saw as a dark creative deity, one that spun form out of chaos in his portion of one universe, then lost control of his creation--as is the story with so many deities of this sort in the mythology of various peoples of earth, from Babylonian and Egyptian on. Tharizdun is a larger and more pervasive force that is multiversal but not omnipresent. That is what he sought, of course, along with omnipotence. Tharizdun failed on both accounts."

"The EEG was indeed meant by me to have a place in the very nethermost recesses of the ToEE. An anomaly there allowed him to manifest a portion of himself, and by doing the wrong (right from the DM’s point of view) thing the adventurers could release him also! Of course that would counter somewhat the freeing of Zuggtmoy, had she been loosed, so on balance it could serve to redress that error. But, alas, I was too busy with other things at the time when the project was being completed. As it was already quite hefty, I decided to omit any mention of this to Frank Mentzer, and so the ToEE was released with only the Eye of Fire as a clue to what I should have included in the adventure."

The Eye of Fire is the symbol used by the elemental cultists, which is also the symbol of the EEG in the Giant/Drow adventures. (It's misdrawn in the Hommlet adventure...)

Of course, Monte Cook decided that the EEG and Tharizdun were one and the same, and so wrote in RttToEE a story where Iuz and Zuggtmoy were the dupes of Tharizdun, who was using them all to get freed... Thus, the Elder Elemental Eye turns up. And lovers of Gygaxian Greyhawk get very annoyed!

However, note what Gygax uses to describe Tharizdun: "multiversal". It seems fair to have Tharizdun turn up in the Realms when he's described as such... unfortunately, we have to deal with the conflation of him and the EEG.

(In fact, this use of Tharizdun is some way from the original Greyhawk conception of him...)

Cheers!