When did you give up on Greyhawk?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I just got played-out on Oerth after playing there since the folio edition. I went with Mystara after that, especially since I really liked the Gazetteer/boxed set approach to individual regions. That lasted me through 2E.

 

[GAAAHHH]

Greyhawk is still my favorite setting. I like Eberron also, for different reasons.

I have read and enjoyed a few of the Forgotten Realms novels, but I never could get into the setting. I have had a few DMs try to run Forgotten Realms for me, but they weren't very good and likely spoiled the setting for me.

 

[Laslo Tremaine]

I chose "Greyhawk Grognard till I die!", but it's not really true.

When playing any version of D&D, Greyhawk makes a decent default setting. All the parts are there and it just works. I'm not in love with it though.

For example, right now we are playing through the Dungeon Magazine, Age of Worms adventure path using C&C. It's basically set in Greyhawk with the serial numbers filed off, so using Greyhawk as the actual setting was the path of least resistance...

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

It was really early on -1982-3?- I had the Greyhawk Folio and fleshed out part of the Great Kingdom's social structure, and then an article in Dragon came along and invalidated everything I'd done.

I haven't run a game in an established setting since.

 

[drothgery]

The closest I ever got to playing in Greyhawk was playing in a homebrew that used the stock 3e pantheon. But I didn't start playing till about halfway through the 2e era, so not as much nostalgia there...

 

[The_Gneech]

I wouldn't say I've given up on it ... but as most of my recent enthusiasm for it was being fanned by its outstanding support in Dungeon magazine, it's going to be hard for me to continue being interested in it without that.

I think, actually, that my days of exulting in D&D nostalgia have probably passed. 3.0/3.5 was a great period to bring the best elements of the past into the present and enjoy them through an adult's perspective rather than as a kid. But, y'know, I finished that. Time to move on. (I don't mean to 4E necessarily, either. Just to something different from what I'm doing now.)

-The Gneech

 

[slimykuotoan]

I think, actually, that my days of exulting in D&D nostalgia have probably passed...I finished that. Time to move on. (I don't mean to 4E necessarily, either. Just to something different from what I'm doing now.)

C&C's lots o' fun!

 

[GVDammerung]

I have never stopped playing in Greyhawk, per se. I have taken breaks and tried FR and most of the TSR settings, and most recently Ebberon, but I've always returned to Greyhawk.

I can understand why some might have given up on Greyhawk, however. It radically changed its tone once with From the Ashes and then had two abortive restarts with The Adventure Begins and the Living Greyhawk Gaz, which was never followed up. More importantly, I think, Greyhawk has been hurt by being so confined to just the Flanaess for so long. Its like a pot of water being boiled since the early 1980's - eventually the water turns to steam and boils away.

People who call Greyhawk generic are certainly entitled to their opinion but I think such comments reveal as much about the person who finds Greyhawk generic as they reveal about the setting. Greyhawk is, IMO, the ultimate DM's toolbox setting, but like a toolbox it doesn't do much by itself. You have to use the tools. If you don't, won't or can't, Greyhawk will just sit there and seem "generic." What you bring to Greyhawk is as important, if not more important, than what Greyhawk presents to you straight out of the box. This is Greyhawk's genius, if I can use that term, and its burden. Greyhawk is not ready to rock right out of the box - it has to be assembled. You are up for that or capable of that or you are not. The experience of those who are not is that Greyhawk is "generic." In this, Greyhawk is very much old school as compared to more recent settings that come with plots and hooks you can hardly avoid and which as a DM you must either work with, ignore or work around. That's not a value judgment, by the way. It just a different way of presenting material with differing expections for how that material will be utilized.

YMMV.

 

[HellHound]

1983.

 

[ivocaliban]

I came to late to Greyhawk (2002) and I'm not leaving anytime soon. Prior to Greyhawk I had only used a homebrew campaign with a spattering of Mystara (mostly the Hollow World). In fact (apart from the aforementioned Hollow World boxed set), I never bought a single campaign specific D&D book or boxed set until 3e. Then I discovered both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms (though I had read a few of the FR novels), but I vastly prefer the former.