D&D 5E (2024) What 2014 settings should get a new 2024 release & what should it get?

[Bravesteel25]

I don't know much about the setting as it wasn't one that they tried to force everywhere like Faerun, but I always thought the appeal of Oerth was that there were these different nations at odds with each other and all these looming threats out there like Iuz and the Temple of Elemental Evil, where things were just ready to explode and get worse and there wasn't someone looking over your shoulder like FR. All things that don't matter if there's Dragonborn, Goliaths and Sorcerers and Warlocks because it's still the same with them.

Totally valid. I think having the circus troupe effect brought into Greyhawk diminishes the early medieval fantasy feel of the setting and launches it squarely into high fantasy a la Faerun. That doesn't mean high fantasy is bad, Faerun is the world I play in the most, but it certainly changes the flavor that I thought the setting always had.

 

[Remathilis]

Which isn't something to ignore. I am totally open to a reimagining of Greyhawk, but WotC are going to have to really sell it if they are going to take away some of the original "grognard-ness" of the world. Otherwise, why not just play in Faerun where cosmopolitan aspects exist heavily now, or Khorvaire where it is baked into the setting?

That's the catch 22, isn't it? Once a media property reaches the age it can apply to AARP membership, you end up with strong oppositional forces fighting for the heart of the IP. Star Wars is the perfect example: do something new and fans hate it for not staying true to the original, play the hits and people complain you aren't doing anything new. Change things to modernize it and purists complain, but keep it the same and people complain you are banking on nostalgia and reselling the same thing over and over.

Bring it back to D&D: would a functional reprint of the 1980 Folio remain true to the spirit of Greyhawk? Maybe, but who's it for? Longtime fans who already own it? New fans who weren't born when D&D had downwards AC and Dragonborn were always part of the PHB? (They have been in the PHB for 18 years!) Are we looking to it to be an expansion to the game as it is now or just to validate that circus troop D&D is wrong?

I guess it's a bit moot. Luke is making a Greyhawk book with WotC's blessing. Maybe it will have a "no kenkus, no dwarf wizards and no non-evil drow" warning on the front page. But maybe it doesn't despite Luke being the closest thing to it's creator we have left. We'll see eventually.

 

[SkidAce]

Just for an anecdote, our campaign had playable lizardmen in Greyhawk.

Before we switched to the current homebrew setting, we loved Greyhawk as a framework, and felt FR was too constricting with too much history pre-set.

I think that was the main difference in "published" settings, because once all the DM got their hands on Greyhawk, we starting modding it anyway.

"There's no room for X in OG Greyhawk"

"Oh really" DM side eyes adjusted color penciled map.

As a side note (i know its heresy) the original greyhawk map was really easy to use a pencil eraser on, then recolor...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Just for an anecdote, our campaign had playable lizardmen in Greyhawk.

Danger at Dunswater was originally published for Greyhawk, and had a “lizardmen are people not monsters” theme.

 

[Bravesteel25]

That's the catch 22, isn't it? Once a media property reaches the age it can apply to AARP membership, you end up with strong oppositional forces fighting for the heart of the IP. Star Wars is the perfect example: do something new and fans hate it for not staying true to the original, play the hits and people complain you aren't doing anything new. Change things to modernize it and purists complain, but keep it the same and people complain you are banking on nostalgia and reselling the same thing over and over.

Bring it back to D&D: would a functional reprint of the 1980 Folio remain true to the spirit of Greyhawk? Maybe, but who's it for? Longtime fans who already own it? New fans who weren't born when D&D had downwards AC and Dragonborn were always part of the PHB? (They have been in the PHB for 18 years!) Are we looking to it to be an expansion to the game as it is now or just to validate that circus troop D&D is wrong?

I guess it's a bit moot. Luke is making a Greyhawk book with WotC's blessing. Maybe it will have a "no kenkus, no dwarf wizards and no non-evil drow" warning on the front page. But maybe it doesn't despite Luke being the closest thing to it's creator we have left. We'll see eventually.

You're completely correct, and at the end of the day we can all play Greyhawk how we want, that's one of the great things about it.

I just want to reiterate that I'm not saying that people using the circus troupe approach are wrong, only that is conflicts with my internal understanding of the setting.

I'm looking forward to the book Luke Gygax is making, whether is gives Greyhawk a cosmopolitan paint job or not.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

5.5e keeps on putting additional bastions in supplement books but we've yet to have an adventure or campaign setting designed around them. In the way that Eberron is "the magitek setting" and Ravenloft is "the horror setting", I think they could reboot Birthright as being directly integrated into the bastion system, with the bastions being part of the territory your PC controls. Optimally this product would be a campaign guide with a meaty adventure in the back to showcase the design intent on how to work bastions into a 5.5e campaign, because that's something as a DM I'm struggling with.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

who's it for?

Wargamers? It’s pretty useless as a setting for fantasy roleplaying, but it has lots of info about what armies each kingdom can field and what kind of polearm they use.

Used to own it. Threw it away. Definitely not a fan. Ditching Greyhawk for FR and Krynn wasn’t just done to spite Gygax. Those settings were better.

 

[sevenbastard]

Danger at Dunswater was originally published for Greyhawk, and had a “lizardmen are people not monsters” theme.

Quag Keep, the first Greyhawk Novel from 1978, has a Lizardman PC.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Quag Keep, the first Greyhawk Novel from 1978, has a Lizardman PC.

Personally, I prefer lizard folk, tabaxi etc to elves and sundry Tolkien knockoffs.

 

[Desdichado]

If it ain’t broke, you don’t need to fix it. No point in having a new setting unless it does something an existing setting does not.

But any existing setting will benefit from more detail, either expanding the borders or describing something like an existing institution in greater detail. The more detail a setting has the more real it becomes.

Exactly. If the old material ain't broke, don't fix it. What's the value in updating a handful of numbers because of a half edition change? Manual of the Planes for instance, was never updated from 3e to 3.5, and arguably that "needed" to be done much more than any 5e campaign settings being updated to 5.5. And yet, WotC never saw the need to do so because the material was usable as is.

In the interest of full disclosure, most of the 3e book monster stats and many of the prestige classes were eventually included in some other product, to be fair.