What is so special about Greyhawk?

[haakon1]

fan works being transformed when used by other fans is part-and-parcel of the GH setting, and the fanbase's culture!

Three snips in my campaign from the old Greyhawk on AOL discussion board:
-- Hardby is a city of spice trading, and still independent from Greyhawk, though still under the thumb of its ally politically. (I'm not sure how much of that I made up versus others. I know I was part of the discussion.)
-- Suel survivors of the Sea of Dust have a city that worships Wee Jas, with three castes and bronze-age tech. (I snipped the whole post into the background docs for my campaign, and one of the PC's is from that culture.)
-- Clockworks come from Dyvers.

Basically, my campaign is an amalgamation of the original Greyhawk boxed set, the 3rd Edition WOTC materials, stuff I've heard over the years from fans, stuff I made up, and 3rd party materials that I snipped, whether they were officially for Greyhawk or not.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The Whispering Cairn (my module in Dungeon #124 and the kick-off for the Age of Worms) is absolutely 100% a Greyhawk module, but you don't need to know anything about the setting for it to be an enjoyable "first edition style" experience.

My GM wanted to run the AoW. We already had our campaign established in FR, however. To the best of my knowledge, the ONLY thing he did to convert the module from Greyhawk to FR was change the name of the town to a town located on the FR map close to our starting location.

I really don't think there is as big a difference between GH and FR as a lot of people like to believe. I almost always pick FR as a campaign setting...yet I have read very very few of the novels or setting books, don't really care much about the overarching backstories, nor do I ever include the famous FR characters people get tired of seeing.

DS

 

[Quartz]

Advance the timeline to the year 600, keep a few marquee NPCs like Iuz and Mordenkainen, and thereafter keep the focus on the adventures of the PLAYER CHARACTERS, and not on NPCs and history, and you're back at the original formula that made the campaign setting great.

I can't help but think that a reboot would do Greyhawk a lot of good. Advance the timeline to Smuffet Pledger's era and you can still keep key NPCs. The Great Kingdom and the Lands of Iuz have become the sources of tieflings, the elves of the Lendore Isles have become eladrin, the nations are roughly as they were. No great magical changes a la Spellplague but rather just the gradual tide of history.

 

[rounser]

2. Where is popular culture heading? Can we create a setting that isn't irrelevant one or two years from now?

I do all my homebrews based on what's "so hot right now". Got the idea from Cosmo.

HOT:
Vampire boyfriends
Giant transforming robots
Sentient computers fighting wars with robots
Batman

NOT:
Vampire slayers
Zombies
Student wizards
The Macarena

Now, how can we integrate this information into Greyhawk? It should definitely not involve zombies doing the macarena, I'll tell you that now. That is, like, so last decade. And tell Bigby to lose the bell bottoms.

 

[JohnBiles]

I do all my homebrews based on what's "so hot right now". Got the idea from Cosmo.

HOT:
Vampire boyfriends
Giant transforming robots
Sentient computers fighting wars with robots
Batman

In the ancient days of Greyhawk, before the fall of the Suel and Baklunish empires, before even the days of the RISE of the Suel and the Baklunish empires, the enigmatic Ur-Flan ruled the Flanness from cities of stone and steel and crystal, warring with each other for the cosmic power contained in the places they built their cities. They built giant golem armies, piloted by young Flan who were guided by each city's 'Great Brain', a huge crystalline structure which contained the souls of past pilots, pooling their resources to guide new generations of warriors.

These endless struggles, however, depleted most of the cosmic power and the cities wiped each other out in a final apocalyptic struggle which forced most of the Great Brains into hibernation and destroyed most evidence these machines ever existed. Only a handful of lesser war machines survived, such as the Machine of Lum the Mad and the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o.

But now, the cosmic power has finally replenished itself and the Great Brains are awakening to re-open their ancient war and to find young, gullible teenagers to become their proxies to finally settle who is the Greatest Brain of All. (Research shows those teens foolish enough to date vampires are most ideal for this process!!!)

The Animal Lord of Bats is rumored to have subverted one of the Great Brains to his will, however, and recruited his own army of teenagers to try and stop the war before it destroys the Flaaness. Or possibly he's just trying to save the vampire boyfriends of the pilots.

Time will tell.

 

[Sunderstone]

Im almost afraid to see what WotC does to this setting. I have nightmares about Warforged running through the streets of Greyhawk rounding up Gnomes for public executions.

 

[Sturtevant]

... rounding up Gnomes for public executions.

That wouldn't be so bad, would it?