Is Greyhawk Relevant?

[the Jester]

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.

Nyrond and Furyondy even sound similar, pick one. One type of barbarian will do, frost, ice and snow is two too many. One Arab nation, not three. Don't need both Rel Astra and Greyhawk, so the former has to go. Get rid of all the little crap around Keoland. Sea Barons or Sea Princes, pick one. Etc.

Wow. I so totally disagree with all of this. Totally.

 

[Klaus]

Wow. I so totally disagree with all of this. Totally.

Yep, I disagree with that too. For instance, Sea Princes vs. Sea Barons offers the chance for great seafaring rivalry, a la Portugal vs. Spain!

 

[carmachu]

Sadly, I'd have to say that Greyhawk is largely irrelevant to many gamers these days. I personally love the setting, but it's mostly a "legacy setting" to today's gamers.

I'm actually running a Greyhawk game right now under Pathfinder rules for my players that don't really know much about it. I specifically went with Greyhawk because most of my players don't know it very well--unlike the Realms, not every corner has been highly detailed and the overall feel of the setting is wilder and grittier. The players have immensely enjoyed getting to explore it.

I'm using a combination of the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and previous edition supplements and this suits me just fine. In fact, I'd rather not have any official support for the setting at this time. If they change things around as much as they did for the newest version of the Forgotten Realms or to try to make classic Greyhawk appeal to newer gamers, I'd prefer for it to lay fallow.

Is your game posted anywhere or the after reports? I'd love to see an old greyhawk game run with modern rules and see what you do. Sooner or later our Ptolus game is gonna end, and someone else is going to have to take over. I'd like to take it to greyhawk, since its such a wide open setting....

 

[grodog]

Hmm, avoiding setting proliferation makes sense too. Honestly both Greyhawk and FR are very very similar, no matter how much their respective fans may disagree. [snip]

I agree completely there: I'm sure that's one of the reasons that TSR chose to replace GH with FR when Gary was outsted from TSR. It's pretty easy to port over to FR from GH (and vice-versa) because you can find so many similar cultures, topographies, etc. They are both very much settings that play to D&D's reuquirements (human and demi-human lands/nations, zones of wilderness, outer planes, etc., etc.).

In any case, these are picky differences that matter little to the casual player. When comparing the two settings, FR has the upper hand. Even if the game suppliments for Greyhawk sold numbers comparable to FR products, FR also has a significant and popular book line, licensed electronic games like Pool of Radiance, Baldur's Gate, and Neverwinter Nights, and so on. Greyhawk just doesn't have all that behind it, so it makes sense that it gets less support.

I don't disagree with that logic either. I brought up Lisa's quote because many folks have echoed the wrong idea that FR far outstripped GH in product revenue, and therefore the setting was killed because it just couldn't pull it own weight, so to speak. I make no bones about the similarities of the settings, and I'm happy to steal ideas from the FR articles from Dragon, the 1e campaign setting set, sourcebooks, gazetteers, etc. for use in my GH campaigns: a good idea's a good idea, regardless of what setting it originates in

One of the strengths of Greyhawk was that it did a good job of having just enough detail to entice you and interest you, but remaining somewhat generic. By extent, this also meant that each group could take Greyhawk and have the ability to make it their own. Hack & Slash dungeon crawling, political intrigue, and carving out a kingdom in wild and unknown lands were all possibilities, and only a few possibilities among many.

That's what I was trying to drive at above, so naturally I agree

I think a more versatile system which better supports a broader array of play styles would better fit Greyhawk and maintain the memories that people have of being able to make Greyhawk into their Greyhawk. What I think drew people to Greyhawk was the freedom to live the fantasy they wanted to live through their character.

And that's why I run GH in a 1e rules system, because for me, that provides the flexibility that matches how I want to play in Greyhawk. I've also played GH extensively under 3.0 and 3.5---under an excellent GH DM (Marc-Tizoc González)---while I was living in CA, and had a wonderful time. I think settings should, ideally, be able to transcend system, and should therefore work well in any system. If it doesn't, in my mind, that's a problem with the system, not the campaign setting.

The 1st ed AD&D folio and boxed sets actually identified numerous high-level NPCs as part of the world - I remember the rulers of Stonefist and of the other northern barbarians being particularly high level, but by no means the only ones. There were also the NPCs in the Isle of the Ape, and by implication the original campaign NPCs - Bigby, Mordenkainen etc - had to be pretty high level just to account for the spells they'd researched (I know that Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure has them at around 12the level, and I can't remember what level they are in the Rogue's Gallery).

I think Mordy is 16th level in RG, and Bigby is 14th or 15th IIRC. Most of the GH NPC stats in RG except Robilar were made up by Brian Blume, according to Gary. In the 1980 folio and 1983 boxed set, the rulers of various nations were mentioned as various class levels, most of whom were at least 9th level, and ranging up to 17th or 18th in some cases (the ruler for the Scarlet Brotherhood, and perhaps the Valley of the Mage come to mind immediately).

I've certainly played GH as lower-level magic, but it has its high-fantasy side as well: most of the artifacts from Eldritch Wizardry and the 1e DMG originate in Greyhawk, and PCs definitely found and wielded them in the Lake Geneva campaigns, so to say that GH is only a low-magic setting is clearly false.

I would love to see what Paizo, Goodman Games, and other publishers could do with the setting and their game systems. Not to mention that they Gygax Estate would be so much freer to release material of Gary's that is held up from publication.

Just because the GH IP is owned by WotC doesn't mean that Gary's, Rob's, and other's original GH manuscripts couldn't be published. There are several strategies to working around the IP issues, including getting permission to use them, licensing it, and using generic names that are readily identifiable to those in the know ("Castle of the Mad Archmage" for example).

 

[grodog]

I don't think it needs a reboot, if that's the goal. I think a line of novels would do the trick.

That would be fun, Hobo, especially if they were written with an appreciation for the setting and what has gone before (vs. the 3.x novels, which were mostly comedic in nature, other than the Tomb of Horrors by Keith Strohm, which I thought was pretty good, although it had too little about the Tomb itself in it).

Setting novels need to, among other things, showcase the setting.

Exactly!

 

[Umbran]

I don't really know what you mean by "relevant". But I'll put my answer thus:

Have I felt any need or desire to play in the Greyhawk setting, or steal elements from it for my own games in the past decade? No.

I've considered stealing elements and inspiration of FR, Dragonlance, Eberron, other settings, and genre fiction recently, but not from Greyhawk. If it says out of print, and becomes scarce, I am unlikely to notice. In that sense, I don't feel it is particularly relevant to me.

 

[billd91]

The 2nd ed Greyhawk material didn't do anything to reduce this proliferation of high-level NPCs - what with the Circle of Eight in its various incarnations, the evil NPCs in Iuz the Evil, etc - and I don't think things were very different in 3E's Greyhawk either.

Now I don't know FR very well. Maybe it has twice or ten times as many high-level NPCs. Nevertheless, Greyhawk as published has never been lacking them, and to that extent I wouldn't call it low-powered.

Doug's right. FR is sort of like GH but with the amp turned up to 11. Check out Volo's Guide to Waterdeep and you'll get a sense of just how high magic FR really is. Now, I'll acknowledge that, thanks to the number of former adventurer innkeepers who stash +2 weapons and armor in their bedrooms, FR was a setting that kept the civilians formidable in case the PCs caused trouble with their adventurer's hubris. It just so happened, I preferred 3e's solution to it with NPC classes.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Despite the crashed spaceship, quasi-gods with six-shooters, portals to Alice in Wonderland, the usual D&D zoo of about five thousand different monsters and eighty different varieties of evil humanoid, Greyhawk does feel a bit more historical compared to Forgotten Realms. NPC levels are lower, magic is rarer. Battles described seem to have been decided by cavalry charges and the like, not wizards and dragons. Which is actually a bit odd, given that D&D grew directly from the fantasy supplement for Chainmail.

All the crazy stuff is hidden away, encountered by the PCs, but not the general inhabitants. Wherever the PCs go they encounter villages where the bar man is a 4th level ranger with a +1 battle axe and so forth ofc, and there are evil cultists hiding in the local temple, but that's adventure fiction for you. The protagonists have to be challenged and have interesting adventures. One could argue that the discrepancy between PC and NPC experiences of the world is itself lacking verisimilitudinousness due to inconsistency.

Relevance to the modern gamer I will take to mean, "Is Greyhawk a good fit for 3e or 4e D&D?" 3e by default is a high magic world, magic items can be bought and sold. 4e says nothing about the world, it only describes the PCs' interactions with it. PCs can buy magic in 4e but this is not necessarily true of the rest of the world. I think the PCs can have plenty of magic without it not being Greyhawk, because the PCs' adventures in Greyhawk have always been more magical than the general setting.

If the PCs had as little magic as the rest of the world that would be at odds with the published texts, particularly the adventures. Nonetheless this could be easily achieved in 4e by making magic item bonuses inherent (a 'hero bonus' or somesuch) and restricting the PCs to martial classes only. One could also stay on Heroic tier. It's trickier to do this in 3e, but possible. One could go the E6 route.

What about spiked chains, double axes, tieflings and dragonborn? Greyhawk has always been weird. PC races such as gnomes are weird. But, I admit, it's a different flavour of weird.

Otoh there is a precedent for monster PCs in very old school D&D. There's a balrog PC in the first dungeon adventure and OD&D talks about how to handle monster PCs by starting them weak. As has been often noted, there's a strong gonzo element running thru 70s D&D, which certainly surfaces in Greyhawk in the form of the stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph.

I think if gnomes and cambions are fine, then so are dragonborn and tieflings. Again just because they are PC races doesn't mean they have to be common in the world.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

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.

Nyrond and Furyondy even sound similar, pick one. One type of barbarian will do, frost, ice and snow is two too many. One Arab nation, not three. Don't need both Rel Astra and Greyhawk, so the former has to go. Get rid of all the little crap around Keoland. Sea Barons or Sea Princes, pick one. Etc.

Keep the good stuff only, such as the Free City of Greyhawk, Iuz, Great Kingdom, Scarlet Brotherhood, Theocracy of the Pale, one of the good guy nations, etc.

When to set it is tricky. The classic prelude to war period is best for a rpg campaign setting, but it smacks of the Cold War, not the 2010s.

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

No, no, a thousand times no.

Do this and you'd kill many of the aspects of the setting that attracted fans to it in the first place. For one thing, having those multiple similar nations adds a subtle layer of realism to the setting. To a North American like me, the nations of places like the Middle East, Africa and South America all seem fundamentally the same, but as anyone who actually lives in those continents will tell you, every country has its own distinct traits and variations, howevermuch they might be similar in other ways. The same thing applies to English-speaking countries, when you see the cultural differences that separate the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and the differences each has within its own borders. They might seem fundamentally the same to an observer from Asia or South America, but people who actually live here know how untrue that is.

Having so many of these different nations around allows DMs to engineer conflicts between them, or to play up shades of grey-is Keoland a benevolent overlord to ungrateful surrounding territories, or does it unfairly use its military and diplomatic power to bully its neighbours? Can Urnst and Nyrond honestly get along with one another, or are they constantly seeking to undermine each other due to a history of mutual repression and recrimination? What happens when the nations of the Iron League are at loggerheads over matters of trade-how do Idee and Onnwal maintain their alliance when they're competing for favorable trade and military alliances with Greyhawk and Keoland?

Good and evil fundamentally exist in Greyhawk, but the lines are often much blurrier than you'd think. Evil forces will fight each other as much as they do the good guys, the good guys themselves will jockey for power and position the way allied nations tend to do in the real world. Just look at how the United States has butted heads with its European allies during World War II, the Cold War and even today.

As for "relevance", arbitrarily adding more female rulers reeks of simple political correctness. If you read my own works at Canonfire, you'll find that discrimination against women and/or demihumans is perfectly legal even in places like the Yeomanry, Ratik and Nyrond. I certainly don't endorse these types of attitudes, but I do want to emphasize that Greyhawk is far from being a perfect world. Indeed, it can add make for interesting role-playing challenges if female PCs have to prove themselves along the lines of Jeanne of Arc, Marie Curie or Empress Maria Theresa, women who all had to prosper in times and areas dominated by men but were able to do so through their own talents. This is something many women even today will be familiar with, too.

As for minor wars raging, this happens all the time in Greyhawk. From Gygax onwards, published materials are full of references to raiders, invasions, and brewing wars. Not to mention that many of these wars can be nipped in the bud by daring bands of heroes-indeed, this was arguably one of the points of Against the Giants, namely to thwart an impending giant invasion by slaying its leaders and striking at their home bases before they are ready to strike. In my own version of the Greyhawk Wars, the successful completion of these adventures decapitated the leadership of the impending giant invasions. The giants still attacked, but they had no leadership and no coordination, and so they ultimately failed to conquer Geoff or Sterich. Both nations emerged from the Wars battered and bloodied, but victorious.

As for the rest of the "relevant" parts, I'd say that if you're going to introduce real-world themes, you need to do it subtly. There's nothing I hate more than fiction of any type that beats you over the head with the symbolism and the message-and some of the things proposed here, like a new king taking control of the "evil empire" and ending the war-cut way too close to overtly political themes, and that could put off more conservative players.

One thing I'd view as absolutely essential is for liberals and conservatives alike to be able to enjoy fiction, whether it's comic books, TV or fantasy games.

 

[Stormonu]

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.