Is Greyhawk Relevant?

[billd91]

I think that Greyhawk fans have been justifiably confused. Even though it appeared that GH was a supported setting in the 3x era, it was more a case of expedient marketing with the implied setting and the RPGA living campaign, while the great material from the Paizo Dragon and Dungeon magazine era apparently resulted from an all too brief aberrant bubble of creative freedom.

You have to go back to the 1990s to find a Greyhawk-brand product line, and you have to go back about 20 years to find the last full sized setting treatment.

This really isn't entirely true. There was the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer in 2000 which is pretty much a full-sized setting treatment, the Age of Worms campaign in 2005(?), and the Living Greyhawk organized play campaign. There certainly was plenty of opportunity to get your Greyhawk on and, for organized play, I understand it did very well.

 

[Nematode]

This really isn't entirely true. There was the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer in 2000 which is pretty much a full-sized setting treatment

Sure it is. The last full sized treatment was From the Ashes in 1992: 2 books, 3 maps, assorted other things, and a box. LGG was a list of nations & places & dieties, as in, a Gazetteer. Its purpose was to establish a baseline of information for and orient players to the Living campaign. LGG was great, but it was not a full sized setting treatment.

the Age of Worms campaign in 2005(?)

That was a product of the Paizo magazine era. Great stuff, a classic, but it was the result of a fortunate anomaly rather than a decision on the part of WotC to sell a Greyhawk product line. Notice that it's "Greyhawk with the serial numbers filed off."

and the Living Greyhawk organized play campaign

Yeah, it was great. I even have a writing credit on one of those modules. RPGA's purpose is to market products for the company through social networking. GH was a good way for them to advance the goal. But again that's not the same thing as a branded product line.

nematode

 

[Starfox]

If I was doing Greyhawk first thing I'd do is cut the number of nations by about two thirds. There's way too much repetition, the place is far too balkanized

[...]

Relevance:
1. More female rulers and NPCs.
2. Environmentalism vs commercial development. Environmental disaster, perhaps represented by magic gone awry while attempting to control elemental forces such as giants or the Temple of Elemental Evil.
3. Economic decline, possibly due to the aforementioned disaster. Hits City of Greyhawk hard. Many made homeless.
4. A new, good-aligned ruler comes to power in the Great Kingdom. Ends war, forges diplomatic ties with good-aligned nations.
5. Minor wars still rage. With the Baklunish if you want to be super-obvious. Savage humanoids in their mountain strongholds would be another option. Or perhaps dwarves.

The world I recently made up for a session at the weekend had economic decline in a Roman/Holy Roman-style empire, and commercial exploitation of the environment as its big issues. Both were probably unconscious on my part.

<- Relevant

Let me jump on the badwagon and say that this is NOT the way to go to make GH relevant. This is the way to go to make it bland, and in many ways the fault I find with FR.

I could reserse this to make my own list:

Relevance:
1. More courtly intrigue and succession issues, largely ruled by custom.
2. Feudalism vs commercial development. Monetary economy vs. feudal economy..
3. Economic advancement creates social disorder. City of Greyhawk becomes so rich it disturbs many of the old powers.
4. A new lawful-aligned and competent ruler comes to power in the Great Kingdom. Tries to re-unify the country, bringing peace and "good" results, but not necessarily by good means. How do the players face this?
5. Minor wars still rage. With central authority weak, conflict is const both in border regions and between feuding nobles. War is as much within each culture as between different cultures.

In my personal GH campaign, I play up the cultural conflicts between the different humans - and how these are slowly merging into a "common" mercantile culture with strong points in cosmopolitan cities like Greyhawk, Ironforge, and Sasserine. I play up how, good or evil, there is a natural conflict between various interest groups - Feudal vs. Merchantilist, Republic (Perrenland) vs Monarchy (Furyondy) and so on. Sure, these are just backdrop elements, but that is what a campaign world is all about.

I must also agree that Golarion feels much like Grehawk II. It is very easy to steal elements of golarion and fit them into Greyhawk - some almost feel like they were originally written for greyhawk. Red Mantis Assassins => Scarlett Brotherhood (or a part of) - who conveniently worships a god of insects named Bralm.

I am considering stealing the nation of Andorian, the republic from Golarion, and placing it in the northern part of the old Great Kingdom - culturally it seems like a perfect fit. As my next campaign is set to play out in Ahlissa in the south of the old Great Kingdom, this would be quite relevant (but again backdrop).

Another long-ranging plot I've been thinking of is to have Dwarfs invent and mass-produce the Warforged - and instill them with many dwarf virtues (loyalty, thriftiness). This seems pretty close to how Warforged already are. Together these two races try to enforce "stability" in western Flaness - which inevitably leads to conflict with both giants and humans.

This is one thing I like about an officially "dead" setting - it is ALL MINE to play with. There will be no further official releases that I have to decide whether to use or not. Of course, this also means that the setting will disappear from the minds of the gaming audience at large.

 

[MerricB]

Sure it is. The last full sized treatment was From the Ashes in 1992: 2 books, 3 maps, assorted other things, and a box. LGG was a list of nations & places & dieties, as in, a Gazetteer. Its purpose was to establish a baseline of information for and orient players to the Living campaign. LGG was great, but it was not a full sized setting treatment.

The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer was 192 pages, which is about 70 more pages than Greyhawk got in the 1983 set. From the Ashes had (ahem) 192 pages in its two main books. (It also had a number of reference sheets).

This isn't the D&D Gazetteer we're talking about, but one of the GH team's shining moments. To my mind the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is the best presentation of the setting after the 1983 boxed set (which I suspect I love more partly for nostalgia reasons).

It is most unfortunate that Wizards never supported the LGG with a brand line of Greyhawk products. Ah well. We did get new Greyhawk adventures in Dungeon Magazine, though, of which Age of Worms is the most notable example. (It has Tenser in it... appearing much as he did in Isle of the Ape).

Do I think Greyhawk could be successful today? Yes, I do - assuming it had a great team behind it.

However, there is a greater part of me saying that it probably isn't worth doing. For me, I have my version of Greyhawk and almost inevitably, any new published material would diverge from that version. I have a version of Greyhawk inspired by the 1983 set, the original modules, later material, and many years of play.

Cheers!

 

[Nematode]

The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer was 192 pages, which is about 70 more pages than Greyhawk got in the 1983 set. From the Ashes had (ahem) 192 pages in its two main books. (It also had a number of reference sheets).

This isn't the D&D Gazetteer we're talking about, but one of the GH team's shining moments. To my mind the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer is the best presentation of the setting after the 1983 boxed set (which I suspect I love more partly for nostalgia reasons).

Ahem if you must but you know as well as I Merric that LGG simply wasn't intended to be a full blown treatment. It lacked the features: no Greyhawk monsters, no Greyhawk magic items, no special character stuff or prestige classes, no starter adventure, no section focusing on a city; the things that back then came in the box, and I'm assuming (simply for the sake of comparison) are representative of the sorts of things that appeared in the 3e era FR books - I don't know, I don't own em - and presumably still appear in the hardbacks of setting treatments.

It did have some material necessary for play like favored weapons and clerical domains. And later we got some nice stuff in the Living Greyhawk Journals. But otherwise LGG was boxed in by Greyhawk being the implied, rather than supported setting.

I love my copy of the LGG, too.

nematode

 

[Jhaelen]

Saying Greyhawk is "not relevant" is about like trying to say that the Lord of the Rings Middle Earth isn't relevant in today's world of Harry Potter, Eragon and the like.

It simply isn't true.

Relevant in what way and for whom?

Greyhawk may be relevant for historians and - maybe - D&D's designers. It's utterly irrelevant for someone playing D&D today using any campaign setting except Greyhawk.

If the designers are mining the setting for everything that was cool about it, that's great. But do I have to know where the stuff actually came from? Not really - unless I'm interested in the history of the game.

 

[vagabundo]

If Greyhawk was to re-released for the current edition it would need a hook - other than it's pedigree.

It could be a set of rules that bring back some of the old skool flavour: hex-crawling, random encounters, a set of mini-less (quick) combat rules and some of the older modules re-released for the setting.

If you're going to go for nostalgia they should go all out.

 

[Dausuul]

You know, I've never played in Greyhawk, but out of the classic three (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance) it's my favorite, and the only one in which I myself would ever consider running a campaign.

FR strikes me as a forerunner of modern "kitchen sink" fantasy--every damn thing you can think of crammed into a single world without rhyme or reason. It makes it fertile ground for work-for-hire novelists and module writers, since they can create whatever they please and plunk it down in the Realms someplace. But it lacks any kind of coherent theme. If you asked me to describe FR's "setting hook," I would be completely at a loss--it ain't got one.

Dragonlance is very coherent (although the parade of apocalypses and total-world-changing events diluted that coherence somewhat), but it's so tightly tied to the novel storyline that I would have trouble figuring out where to fit my own plot into the world. Dragonlance's major NPCs and established metaplot are so big they suck all the oxygen out of the place. At least for me.

But from what I've seen of it, original Greyhawk looks like an excellent swords-and-sorcery world. Lots of powerful villains but no single Big Bad; scraps of backstory but no overarching metaplot; a consistent flavor and feel across the setting. And the whole place feels much more authentic to me--like a real, lived-in world, such as one might expect from a setting designed by a history buff.

 

[Mallus]

Greyhawk is relevant to me in that it helps inform most, if not all, of the D&D settings I've worked on. I'm especially fond of some of the names --the Nyr Dyv, Verbobonc, The Theocracy of the Pale-- the epic ancient stuff - The Rain of Colorless Fire!-- and the gloriously silly stuff --Murlynd with his six shooters and spoon.

It plays a big role in defining "D&D-style fantasy" for me. That said, I have no desire to run it ever again, though I'd happily play in a Greyhawk campaign.

 

[Doug McCrae]

FR strikes me as a forerunner of modern "kitchen sink" fantasy

I think of Greyhawk as kitchen sink fantasy also. Anything that uses all the monsters and classes in D&D is kitchen sink imo. The Greyhawk wandering monster tables include all those in default D&D and even add xvarts, flinds, ogrillons, norkers, quaggoths and qullans. I don't even know what qullans are! All the classic modules are located in Greyhawk - GDQ, A1-4, S1-4, T1-4, EX1+2. Lots of gonzo there, including the crashed spaceship and Alice in Wonderland. And there's Murlynd with his techno-magic.

When I played in a Greyhawk set campaign, the GM greatly reduced the number of evil humanoids to be found in default D&D, to make it more plausible and Tolkien-esque. Ie less kitchen sink.