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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7084189" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>Yes. This is why I think any updated version of Greyhawk is essentially doomed.</p><p></p><p>Greyhawk as a published setting is an artifact of its time. The kind of fantasy it represents is a mid-70s aesthetic. Some folks like to say that the difference between Greyhawk and FR is that Greyhawk is "sword and sorcery" while FR is "high fantasy", but I think that's not quite right. Greyhawk has its share of Tolkien tropes and FR has its share of Howard inspired sword and sorcery tropes and you can do either high fantasy or sword and sorcery in either setting. It's more that Greyhawk as published is a very 1970s vision of fantasy, while the Realms as published are a very 1990s vision of fantasy (except for the grey box, which is a very 1980s vision of fantasy). Where Gygax threw together a world based on Howard and Lieber and Tolkein and Moorcock and other authors who published in the span from the 20s through the 70s, the authors who grew the Realms from Greenwood's original vision were all influenced not just by the authors that influenced Gygax, but also MANY other authors because the 60s/70s/80s were an explosion for fantasy. Authors like Eddings and Brooks and McCaffrey and LeGuin and later even Weis and Hickman and their Dragonlance books all influenced the people who grew the Realms from Greenwood's original vision, making it a more contemporary fantasy setting while Greyhawk sat untouched by the publishing schedule for the most part and didn't grow in that way.</p><p></p><p>It's been in the hands of players for a far longer span of time than it was actively being published by TSR/Wizards. And all of those players have their own vision of what Greyhawk is. The Realms had dedicated line editors and authors (like Greenwood and Salvatore) to define what the Realms were for players from the time it was first published until fairly recently (and still has Ed Greenwood somewhat acting as the Voice of God). Greyhawk was left without anyone in TSR/Wizards to set direction for it and so players were on their own. And each of them developed their own vision of what was important in the setting and what was to be ignored.</p><p></p><p>I actually shudder to think about how they might relaunch Greyhawk. If they consciously try to make it a setting with a 70s fantasy aesthetic it will likely come across as an exercise is retro-nostalgia with limited interest to the wider fantasy gaming population. And possibly of little interest to Greyhawk fans who might (possibly rightly) view it as the "cover band" version of the setting that is inferior to the original. If they don't consciously try to stick to the 70s aesthetic, then modern influences will definitely creep into the mix and provide a whole lot of fodder for people to angrily denounce it as "not Greyhawk".</p><p></p><p>I actually kind of think that Greyhawk might best be served by just putting the original works up on DM's Guild, putting out a 5e conversion guide, and then letting the fan community publish on DM's guild without Wizards actually trying to relaunch it themselves. Then the fan community can fight amongst themselves about what Greyhawk "is" without having Wizards to use as a punching bag. It just seems like the kind of exercise that will take up a lot of resources and nobody is going to be happy with the end result. (And they can devote that time/effort to updating settings like Dark Sun or Eberron - both of which have mixing older and contemporary influences together at the heart of the setting and so both are more amenable to adapting to current fantasy ides than Greyhawk would be. Or here's a dumb idea - maybe they could try launching a new fantasy setting to be "the" setting that reflects the contemporary fantasy ideas of this decade the way that Greyhawk was for the 70s, Dragonlance was for the 80s, the Realms were for the 90s and Eberron was for the aughts...).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 7084189, member: 19857"] Yes. This is why I think any updated version of Greyhawk is essentially doomed. Greyhawk as a published setting is an artifact of its time. The kind of fantasy it represents is a mid-70s aesthetic. Some folks like to say that the difference between Greyhawk and FR is that Greyhawk is "sword and sorcery" while FR is "high fantasy", but I think that's not quite right. Greyhawk has its share of Tolkien tropes and FR has its share of Howard inspired sword and sorcery tropes and you can do either high fantasy or sword and sorcery in either setting. It's more that Greyhawk as published is a very 1970s vision of fantasy, while the Realms as published are a very 1990s vision of fantasy (except for the grey box, which is a very 1980s vision of fantasy). Where Gygax threw together a world based on Howard and Lieber and Tolkein and Moorcock and other authors who published in the span from the 20s through the 70s, the authors who grew the Realms from Greenwood's original vision were all influenced not just by the authors that influenced Gygax, but also MANY other authors because the 60s/70s/80s were an explosion for fantasy. Authors like Eddings and Brooks and McCaffrey and LeGuin and later even Weis and Hickman and their Dragonlance books all influenced the people who grew the Realms from Greenwood's original vision, making it a more contemporary fantasy setting while Greyhawk sat untouched by the publishing schedule for the most part and didn't grow in that way. It's been in the hands of players for a far longer span of time than it was actively being published by TSR/Wizards. And all of those players have their own vision of what Greyhawk is. The Realms had dedicated line editors and authors (like Greenwood and Salvatore) to define what the Realms were for players from the time it was first published until fairly recently (and still has Ed Greenwood somewhat acting as the Voice of God). Greyhawk was left without anyone in TSR/Wizards to set direction for it and so players were on their own. And each of them developed their own vision of what was important in the setting and what was to be ignored. I actually shudder to think about how they might relaunch Greyhawk. If they consciously try to make it a setting with a 70s fantasy aesthetic it will likely come across as an exercise is retro-nostalgia with limited interest to the wider fantasy gaming population. And possibly of little interest to Greyhawk fans who might (possibly rightly) view it as the "cover band" version of the setting that is inferior to the original. If they don't consciously try to stick to the 70s aesthetic, then modern influences will definitely creep into the mix and provide a whole lot of fodder for people to angrily denounce it as "not Greyhawk". I actually kind of think that Greyhawk might best be served by just putting the original works up on DM's Guild, putting out a 5e conversion guide, and then letting the fan community publish on DM's guild without Wizards actually trying to relaunch it themselves. Then the fan community can fight amongst themselves about what Greyhawk "is" without having Wizards to use as a punching bag. It just seems like the kind of exercise that will take up a lot of resources and nobody is going to be happy with the end result. (And they can devote that time/effort to updating settings like Dark Sun or Eberron - both of which have mixing older and contemporary influences together at the heart of the setting and so both are more amenable to adapting to current fantasy ides than Greyhawk would be. Or here's a dumb idea - maybe they could try launching a new fantasy setting to be "the" setting that reflects the contemporary fantasy ideas of this decade the way that Greyhawk was for the 70s, Dragonlance was for the 80s, the Realms were for the 90s and Eberron was for the aughts...). [/QUOTE]
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