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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 4791889" data-attributes="member: 44797">I don't think Greyhawk is special the way that Dark Sun is.  Dark Sun has a clear theme and gameplay is altered to cater to that theme.  When people play Dark Sun, they know the are getting into an apocalyptic desert world, or something like that.Greyhawk is a little different.  First, yes, there is nostalgia.  Greyhawk is where a lot of the initial big names came from -- Mordakein (sp?), Rary, all those powerful guys who have spells named after them.  For those of us playing from the beginning, history is a powerful tie.Second, while Greyhawk doesn't have a specific theme, it is nice in the sense that many themes play well in Greyhawk, so you don't have to feel limited.  There is piracy for those who like playing Swashbucklers and such.  There is the Scarlett Brotherhood, for those who like playing asian themes.  I mean, ninjas and samurais fit in well with the Brotherhood, although they're pretty evil, so you might not have lots of friendly nice samurais running around.Also, for DMs who like to create their own monsters, the Scarlet Brotherhood has an island called Bos Lofsok (or something like that) where they have been creating hybrids and other monstrous freaks to unleash upon their enemies.  It's nice to have an in-game place where you can slot that stuff in and feel like it fits the theme.On the eastern side, you have a huge number of islands (can't recall the name, it's had two or three over the centuries, one was Lendore) where elves have retreated in a sorta Lord-of-the-Rings style, but with a twist in that they are pretty racist/isolationist and will just raid and kill non-elven ships that come near them.Near those islands you have Rel Astra, possibly the biggest city in Greyhawk (bigger than Greyhawk city itself).  Rel Astra is interesting because it is run by an evil undead creature called an animus (Lord Drax) with a right-hand-man who is a two-headed demon or devil called the Fiend-Sage of Rel Astra.  These guys walk the streets and don't seem to have trouble being overthrown, apparently because they're pretty good at running the city and the citizens think that makes them pretty decent rulers.You can throw some more mechanized/Eberron stuff into Rel Astra -- I've done a couple of "clockwork" adventures there -- while still having other lands be more traditional fantasy.There is a lot of fascinating history to Greyhawk.  I'm currently running a game in the years right after something called the "Flight of Fiends."  This was a time when Iuz, an evil demigod or something like that, unleashed demons upon Greyhawk, essentially destroying the entire continent.  However, the Fiend-Sage turned against his own kind (I think?) and used an artifact called the Crook of Rao to run every demon/devil (except himself) off the planet.  I'm doing this in a 3.5 edition game, but what it gives me is something like the 4th edition "points of light" scenario.  Most stuff is ransacked, humanity is on the ropes, and things be wild.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />There are lots of other locations that provide good feature-rich environments for DMs to exploit.  There can be areas so backward that people live in tents & caves, all the way up to very advanced cities like Rel Astra, which probably should resemble something more like Tarant from Arcanum than anything else.The other very compelling thing about Greyhawk is that Living Greyhawk (where locations in Greyhawk are mapped to real-world locations and then players in those locations play out and even set the course of events & history) is the first and longest-running living campaign.  Stuff that real-world players have done in Living Greyhawk has made it into official timelines and such.  There is a web site to join up, I can't recall the name.  But I have to say that such a thing is very compelling to many.The other thing that I personally like about Greyhawk is something rather obscure -- most people don't use it, and it doesn't even show up on many official maps.  That is, Hepmonaland.  This is something like a spinoff continent to the south of Greyhawk, full of lush jungle, tribal natives, and hyper-dangerous unexplored territory.  To me, it's a great excuse to try all sorts of new things, or to throw a monkey-wrench into an otherwise predictable campaign.  Jungle, Mayan, Incan, Egyptian, Indiana Jones, all those themes might fit in very well.Oh, and throwing Planescape portals into Greyhawk seems fitting.  Not so much in Dark Sun.  It's certainly possible for any DM to do anything he/she wishes, but I'd never have players going from Sigil to Dark Sun and back.  It simply doesn't "feel" right.  However, I'd have players going from Sigil to Greyhawk and back, no problem.  Clearly extra-planar creatures were already gateing in from Baator and such, so it's not much of a stretch.</blockquote>

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