As for Greyhawk, I'm really not seeing it. I've been playing D&D since 1989. During that time there's been what, one crummy GH gazeteer for 3E, despite 3E being explicitly GH-as-default?
There was also the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (LGG) besides the very thin Greyhawk Gazetteer they published at launch in 2000. That book has been the post-Greyhawk Wars bible for many folks.
You are also forgetting the support for 3 Paizo-Hawk adventure paths in Dungeon and Dragon Magazines. That was:
- Shackled City
- Age of Worms
- Savage Tide
Also there were a couple of stand alone Greyhawk adventures (Mad Gods Key, The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb, etc.). And then there was Rob Kuntz publishing updated and new levels of Castle Maure (set in the Duchy of Urnst) which is based upon his work on the 1e adventure Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure he authored.
In addition there were 6 stand alone issues of the Living Greyhawk Journal and then the continued publication of LGJ in both Dragon and Dungeon magazines until the end of the Living campaign in 2008.
There also was the hardback Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk published by WotC.
All in all, 2000 to 2008 was highwater mark for officially published Greyhawk and way more content was out there than you remember.
Looking it up I see there technically some adventures for GH and "City of GH" module released in 1989, then a couple of failed attempts to make GH happen in the early '90s (involving adventures again), before it got totally cancelled in 1994. Then WotC tried to make GH happen again in late 2E in 1998, with small player's guide and "The adventure begins", a small setting-guide which hilariously I've never even heard of seen before (so it clearly wasn't making it to the various FLGSes I visited at the time).
The Silver Age of Geyhawk (WotC) was during that brief 2e window before 3e was born. Holy crap you left off a lot of stuff.
--1998--
- Return of the Eight (Adventure)
- Greyhawk Player's Guide
- The Adventure Begins (Campaign Setting)
- Lost Tombs trilogy of modules:
- The Star Cairns
- Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad
- The Doomgrinder
--1999--
- Return to the Tomb of Horrors
- Return to the Keep on the Borderlands (The original B2 was basic D&D, but the update was set in Greyhawk)
- Return to White Plume Mountain
- Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff
- Slavers (Adventure and Sourcebook)
- Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
- The Scarlet Brotherhood (Sourcebook)
- TSR Jam (it contained an adventure)
I don't have a list of Dungeon adventure's from the time.
Without this work, Living Greyhawk in 3e would not have been.
Then 3E had Living GH, via RPGA, but that seems to have reached a fairly tiny (if extremely dedicated) audience estimated by RPGA at 10k people (players and DMs), and despite all the work and literally hundreds of adventures, it's all considered non-canon by WotC. Since then we've had nothing but a couple of adventures where it's the default setting.
This was not a whim of WotC. The complicated Gordian Knot of legal ownership of various Living Greyhawk (LG) Published works prevented WotC from using this campaign as official Greyhawk. LG was still a massively important entry point for the second wave of Greyhawk fans.
So I'm mystified as to who they'd be aiming at with a GH revival. I mean, I could see it happening - we've three basically-irrational attempts to resurrect GH, in the early 1990s, in 1998, and in 2000. None of those made any sense, none of them were successful, but it didn't stop people from trying repeatedly. Could that happen again? Even in the much-more-rational WotC of 2021 and onwards? I think it could. Ray Winninger worked at TSR in the 1980s, he's certainly old enough that he could have some serious nostalgia for GH (though judging from his own RPG output, I'd be slightly surprised if he did). It's particularly odd as an idea because the sort of people I could see it appealing to are extremely well-catered to by pretty high-quality and prolific RPGs like DCC and other OSR stuff. I mean, the FR has been steadily popular for 30-odd years at this point, and they've felt no reason to go beyond SCAG and various adventures, so it's particularly hard to see why they'd go "Hey this setting was popular like 35 years ago, let's make it happen again!". I could see a "maximum nostalgia" product for D&D's 50th I guess. They certainly did nostalgia stuff with GH adventures for the 25th (which was also WotC). But looking at the irrational attempts to make it happen, you never know...
- First off, there are at least 3 major fans of Greyhawk on the D&D 5e product team... Mike Mearls, Christopher Perkins, and Chris Lindsey.
- There are a ton of folks in the Greyhawk fan community that are producing original Greyhawk content.
- Greyhawk Online (home to the Greyhawk Wiki) and even the old-lady herself, Canonfire.org has seen a huge increase in activity.
- The Oerth Journal has been resurrected and has been publishing quarterly for over 2 years.
- There are several Discord groups are dedicated to the subject.
- Countless blogs.
- Facebook, well, as someone who runs one of the medium sized (about 3000 members) Greyhawk Facebook group (and there are a lot of Greyhawk groups out there), I have to say there has been a steady increase in interest over the past 3 years in the setting.
- More importantly has been the multiple streaming Greyhawk campaigns that has brought the setting to a whole new audience. There is a dedicated Legends & Lore show that runs weekly. I can say that WotC has noticed streaming activity more than anything.
I do want to say, there were some Greyhawk stuff done even in 4th edition. Mostly in Organized Play at the tail end of the RPGA (which morphed into D&D Encounters during 4e) and by 5th edition became Adventures League.
Do I think Greyhawk will be a setting in the next 3 to 4 years, yes. Do I think it will be the next one, no.
"Need," sure. But that could apply to any number of producs. My question is, why wouldn't they? Especially if every story is set in a region and the bulk of players are new to D&D with 5E. Why not publish a product that ties it all together?
