Only the Lonely: Why We Demand Official Product

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not that players will know his level. It's that mechanically, a difference in level provides additional capability that a DM may need to take into account.

Let's say for argument's same that the PCs end up fighting this guy. The party wizard casts a fireball. The Rgr14 takes half damage on a save. The Rgr15 who takes Evasion as his archetype feature at lvl 15 takes no damage on a save.

A good DM isn't going to say "he made the save.". He'll say something like "you watch as the fireball explodes. As you see the flames dissipate, Kimbertos casually puts out a small fire that erupted on his shirt sleeve but is otherwise unscathed. He doesn't look amused."

Do the players go "uh oh this guy is unstoppable" or do they do their research, knowing that the king started out as a ranger before being crowned king and realize that more powerful rangers have the ability to shrug off such attacks?

Yes, yes the DM can fudge things, but the more you handwave without a valid reason, the more it comes back to bite you.

So make him the appropriate level to challenge the players. If you think the fight will be more interesting if he has evasion give him evasion. NPCs tend not to have class levels in 5e anyway, just give him whatever stats and abilities will make for and interesting battle.

 

[jmucchiello]

It's not that players will know his level. It's that mechanically, a difference in level provides additional capability that a DM may need to take into account.

The DM should always take the foes' capabilities. I'm not getting it. The DM picks a level for this foe. If he thinks the PCs will fight him, he better prepare a stat block for him. You make it sound like the DM is surprised the king has evasion or not.

Let's say for argument's same that the PCs end up fighting this guy. The party wizard casts a fireball. The Rgr14 takes half damage on a save. The Rgr15 who takes Evasion as his archetype feature at lvl 15 takes no damage on a save.

Again, I say so. If you players are so up to date on game mechanics that they know, because they read a book 20 years ago, that the character they are fighting may or may not have evasion, they are not playing inside the rules. They are metagaming.

When the DM says, "he twists supernaturally and takes no damage from the fireball," they can react out of character "hey he has evasion" but in character, they just have to roll with it and try a different way to defeat him.

But now I'm not excepting your argument's sake. How are the PCs in one-on-one combat with a king? When the wizard casts fireball, a volley of 50 crossbow bolts should come flying at him from the balcony as the king's guard make a pin cushion out of him. He can merrily go to his grave having been "right" that the king did not have evasion because he was 14th level.

The characters should not know the class/level of their opponents. And complaining "Hey, in that book released in 1989, this guys is only 7th level" should be responded to with "He's gained a few levels since 1989." (Or, if you're really surly, "Who's the DM again?")

 

[Maxperson]

That's a different issue than what you were discussing in the post I quoted, but okay. Wanting some crunch support is fair enough. Though, as someone that has run and played Greyhawk in 5e, what exactly are you looking for crunchwise? I'm not really seeing anything that can't be handled by the options we already have (unless you're really trying to shoehorn something extremely niche)—except in the case of some monsters (and I'm always open to new monsters) or new backgrounds.

Specific subclasses like maybe Scarlet Brotherhood, maybe a feat or two, some specific backgrounds like the FR book has, etc.

 

[Azzy]

It's not that players will know his level. It's that mechanically, a difference in level provides additional capability that a DM may need to take into account.

Let's say for argument's same that the PCs end up fighting this guy. The party wizard casts a fireball. The Rgr14 takes half damage on a save. The Rgr15 who takes Evasion as his archetype feature at lvl 15 takes no damage on a save.

A good DM isn't going to say "he made the save.". He'll say something like "you watch as the fireball explodes. As you see the flames dissipate, Kimbertos casually puts out a small fire that erupted on his shirt sleeve but is otherwise unscathed. He doesn't look amused."

Do the players go "uh oh this guy is unstoppable" or do they do their research, knowing that the king started out as a ranger before being crowned king and realize that more powerful rangers have the ability to shrug off such attacks?

Yes, yes the DM can fudge things, but the more you handwave without a valid reason, the more it comes back to bite you.

Can't you just decide which level he is? If you're adverse to deciosion making, got with the lasted printed level (and treat it as errata to the previous material). This isn't a big deal, just make a choice and go with it—you don't need a new setting book to fix this for you.

 

[ChaosOS]

...This King's level discussion is the weirdest thing to me. Are people seriously arguing that different levels across different editions of the game, where "facts" about the world like the XP curve and class features per level need a canon answer that is objective and differentiated from just designing a highly powerful King that emulates some cool features in an appropriately challenging manner for the player characters?

 

[The Green Hermit]

I have an advantage in that when I need to be consistent with what I've improvised in a previous session I can go back and look at my wife's copious notes.

I'm jealous. While I am slowly getting my teens to be more consistent note takers, they usually leave out the most important bits. At least they have finally figured out that they need to write down quests, quest givers, and any stated rewards.

I know, a friend of mine had to give up DMing because of it. Creating a campaign setting is time consuming. But learning one from a book isn't less so.

Honestly, it depends upon how you learn/create. I am fairly creative and now that I know more about D&D than when I started, I am fairly positive I could homebrew -- if I never had to go to work. On the other hand, I can quickly read and absorb published material, leaving me room to adapt it as needed. I was reading Shakespeare in Kindergarten, though. My reading and comprehension level has always been extremely high. For other people (possibly even yourself) mapping is much easier (and I agree a good map makes it much easier to plot things out). Everybody plays to their strengths -- especially when they start really adulting.

 

[Azzy]

Specific subclasses like maybe Scarlet Brotherhood, maybe a feat or two, some specific backgrounds like the FR book has, etc.

Backgrounds seem like a natural fit. What kind of (5e-style) feats would be Greyhawk specific, though? Feats in 5e are kind of funky, and don't fill some of the same design space as they did in 3x (so regional feats would seem amiss), so I trouble seeing how they'd expand the list meaningfully. Scarlet Brotherhood? They've always been standard monks, assassins and thieves, and the PHB already covers that handily. At this point, the design space of subclasses is becoming fairly niche (if the past several UA are any indication), there's really little that can be done that would really be representative of Greyhawk. I guess we can look towards 3.x prestige classes for inspiration: The Silent Ones, Fists of Zuoken, Masks of Johydee I guess you could make sublasses out of, but they'd need to have applicability outside the setting (like Ravnica's Order Clerics and Spore Druids, SCAG's Purple Dragon Knight, Sun Soul Monk, Bladesinger, etc.) to entice those that aren't fans of the setting to buy it. Fortunately, there are all sorts of monsters that can be added to a bestiary chapter.

Mind you, I'd like a Greyhawk setting sourcebook (if they don't screw it up) but it's the easiest setting (along with the Forgotten Realms) to run out of the box as it doesnt need or warrant any mechanical support at all. I'd love it they used the very noob-friendly approach that they used in the Eberron book (which I think is the best setting book format in D&D's history), but to make it have wider appeal, they need to add some mechanical geegaws to sweeten the deal. That's where I get hung up on—what do you do for a setting that the core rules already cover?

 

[pemerton]

Here's the thing. I have very, very limited time and I don't even had time to prepare everything for my adventures, let alone the rest of the game world. If you do, great. Now, I'm very good at improvisation, so it doesn't bother me to make something up on the fly. However, many DMs are not good at improvisation and need those details figured out in advance.

<snip>

Having an updated version of Greyhawk with those details filled in by WotC would allow those DMs to run Greyhawk.

You can't just expect those sorts of DMs to just "make a decision" when it comes up. Creativity is not the same as making a ruling on a rule.

The DM not having those details can work for some groups, but other groups are going to be unsatisfied with a bunch of clueless NPCs.

<snip>

A new Greyhawk setting would do well for a myriad of reasons, even if you wouldn't buy it because you can make stuff up.

The issue that @3catcircus raised id not a lack of detail. It is about conflicting details.

A GM who has only one sourcebook isn't going to be bothered by those conflicts - s/he won't even no about them - and so they aren't a problem. Any GM who has bought multiple sourcebooks and has noticed the conflict is already committed enough that I'm sure s/he can spare the extra 15 seconds to make a decision should it be required.

As far as running GH, the point I have repeatedly made is that any 5e GM who wants to run GH can do so. All s/he needs to do is buy a copy of the boxed set of DM's Guild for about $10. That has evertyhting s/he needs: maps, descriptions, history, etc. The information about the levels of the leaders is all usable, because every class mentioned is a class or subclass in 5e. The only mechanical detail that can't just be used in 5e is the information about the gods and clerics - but 5e has its own well-developed rules for specialised priests (ie cleric subclaasses) and so my hypothetical GM will be able to use those in lieu.

If people are declining to run GH because they won't do so until WotC tells them which 5e cleric subclass they should use for each GH god, well, I would think that's a pretty sad state of affairs.

GH is almost a special case. It exists in a state of veneration unlike Dark Sun, or some of the other settings that come up as prime for reissue. The problem WotC faces is that hardcore Greyhawk players don't really need the setting book. They are probably already playing in the setting and may or may not be playing 5e. The veneration for the setting also derives from it's Ur status as the first D&D setting, written and developed by the man himself. So between the enormously diehard fans and the setting's status, I think that for GH the internet shouting would be magnified no matter what the 5e book looked like. On top of that GH doesn't really have anything to offer new players, or at least anything new. Don't get me wrong, I love Greyhawk, but there's nothing different about it, or at least IMO different enough that the rules or crunch would be enough to sell the book to people not interested in the setting, and the setting itself perhaps isn't different enough to attract enough new players. Anyway, my point is that I think GH presents some additional difficulties for WotC and as a result may not be as high in the design queue as people would like.

GH is one of the few published setting I've ever used, and over the years I've run close to two decades worth of games in it. I own nearly everything published for it pre-3E, and some of the 3E material also. That probably makes me a hardcore GH player.

I don't care what WotC publish in future in respect of the setting, though I probably won't buy it given that I would be unlikely to use it. Most recently I've been using GH for a Burning Wheel game, using the amps and the basic lore, but certainly not worrying about what level ranger the king of Keoland might be. My existing material - which tells me that Hardby is a tributary city to Greyhawk and is ruled by a magic-wielding Gynarch; and that the Bright Desert is a place where (to quote one of my BW players who was hoping to round some up) "Suel tribesmen are as common as fleas on a dog" - is eminently suitable for these purposes.

If WotC does decide to publish a GH setting book I am very confident it won't be in order to authoritatively resolve the question of the king of Keoland's class and level. Nor will it be to tell people that their battle-axe wielding bear barbarians should come from the north and their open hand monks should come from the Scarlet Brotherhood: anyone can work that out!

It will be because they think there is a significant market among new players for whatever new mechanics they've written up, and for the setting in which they;re locating them. It seems unlikely to me that that would be anything which is distinctively Greyhawk or aimed particularly at existing GH players.

 

[pemerton]

But I don't know of any campaign setting books that would give you that level of detail anyway. You would still have to make it up.

The City of Greyhawk boxed set has this sort of detail on inns and taverns. And, as it happens, it is available from DM's Guild for US $9.99, or more if you want it in hard copy. Problem solved!

 

[pemerton]

the issue is that existing settings that don't have a 5e update were developed by multiple developers and influenced across multiple Gencons or multiple in-house TSR campaigns. The source gets corrupted in a whisper-down-the-lane across later publications.

Greyhawk is relatively clean in comparison to Forgotten Realms, but it is still in need of a good scrub. I'm not talking about RSEs that may not be popular amongst those with experience in prior products (such as the Greyhawk Wars or the 4e FR treatment), but basic failure to do research when writing a new product or failure of the publisher to maintain continuity of the lore.

I still don't understand how you think that a problem that results from multiple publications by multiple authors and editors over multiple years is going to be resolved by yet another publication 20-odd years later by new authors and editors.