D&D General Melf's Guide to Greyhawk Coming From Luke Gygax & WotC

[Remathilis]

You had a hand of vecna?

Who hasn't? Say what you will about the guy, he was sure handy...

 

[Parmandur]

Not fair to WotC. The community wasn't aware of Phoenix's toxicity until later.

Right, but the fallout when a lot of those sorts of things started getting revealed is when WotC distanced themselves from most of the celebrity D&D scene.

 

[Nobleshield]

I'm hopeful this is a full on separate book (think like that Exodus sci-fi game WotC produced but didn't create) and not "just" a supplement, so it can adjust the 5.5e rules to be closer to old-school styles while using the current D&D "engine". No tieflings/aasimar/goliaths/dragonborn/orcs as playable races, for example, since that doesn't fit Greyhawk (no "weird" races, period, just standard things including Half-Elves and Half-Orcs). Maybe automatically use some of the optional rules like short rest being 1 day and long rest being 1 week, that kind of thing.

They won't really win back old-school fans who aren't happy with the current edition/tone unless they scale back some of the rules too IMHO. More than anything else, the issue is that most old-school players think the rules themselves don't lend themselves to a grittier style game, which is why they gravitate towards rules that emulate B/X or AD&D. If they don't fix that, this project is DOA.

I know one of the guys who said he's on Luke's team has been running a campaign in greyhawk for around 46 years, and he said there is no WotC internal personnel involved, so I'm hopeful they will be able to actually do things and not be forced to shoehorn in 5.5isms where they don't belong. He said they will absolutely be doing things like having inherently Chaotic Evil Orcs, and no fey Hobgoblins, stuff like that, so I'm hopeful about them removing a lot of the WotC changes that were pretty inexplicable.

This could be the reality of the "WotC is working on 6e and making it closer to old-school rules" rumor that's been floating around.

 

[Parmandur]

I’d prefer if he were more experienced by the time he is working on this, correct. That he gains experience from it is irrelevant.


Not exactly ringing endorsements… As I wrote somewhere in this thread, him contributing some knowledge about Greyhawk (or notes from his father) is fine. In fact that is probably where he could help the most.


only if the other projects had exactly two creators each. The adventures run in the 40-60 page range. The exception being Lost City if Gaxmoor that he wrote with his brother, which runs about 140 pages.

There are plenty of 40 page or so adventures from a single author around. No one says he cannot have an editor or people contributing art.


I see his main draw is potentially having access to notes of his father and memories from being in his campaign, other than that… no idea if he will be the lead, it’s certainly not the role I would prefer him to have


I probably will

So, the word that was used several times was "consultant"...with Widlemoint, Mercer and Co did a lot of work, with supervision and close help from the core D&D team whipping it into shape. The panel going on at GaryCon right now has Justice Arman with Luke Gygax, so they may go into more detail on the process. But I don't expect this to rely primarily on Gygax alone. Maybe this is what Shawn Merwin was jriex to work on for WotC, who has extensive professional credits and was a leader in Living Greyhawk for years.

 

[mamba]

I know one of the guys who said he's on Luke's team has been running a campaign in greyhawk for around 46 years, and he said there is no WotC internal personnel involved

that would be interesting, no idea about what the result will be, but certainly interesting to find out

 

[mamba]

So, the word that was used several times was "consultant"

I have no problem with that role, it’s basically what I think he is most suited for

 

[Voadam]

No tieflings/aasimar/goliaths/dragonborn/orcs as playable races, for example, since that doesn't fit Greyhawk

FYI, in classic 1e Greyhawk humanoids like Orcs fit right in walking around in the Free City of Greyhawk.

From the 1e World of Greyhawk Boxed Set. "The large free cities are also known to allow various sorts of humanoids free access to their precincts."

 

[Parmandur]

FYI, in classic 1e Greyhawk humanoids like Orcs fit right in walking around in the Free City of Greyhawk.

From the 1e World of Greyhawk Boxed Set. "The large free cities are also known to allow various sorts of humanoids free access to their precincts."

View attachment 432454

Honestly, give how barebones the 1E depiction is, even the box set, and that it is written by an obviously biased unreliable narrator as a tool to let DMs customize...I never saw any conflict between rimming the OG Greyhawk with stuff like Goliath and Dragon on, etc.