D&D (2024) WotC Invites You To Explore the World of Greyhawk

This week a new D&D Dungeon Master's Guide preview video was released. This one features the sample setting chapter in the book, which showcases the World of Greyhawk.

One of the earliest campaign settings, and created by D&D co-founder Gary Gygax, Greyhawk dates back to the early 1970s in Gygax's home games, receiving a short official setting book in 1980. Gyeyhawk was selected as the example setting because it is able to hit all the key notes of D&D while being concise and short. The setting has been largely absent from D&D--aside from a few shorter adventures--since 2008. Some key points from the video--

• Greyhawk deliberately leaves a lot for the DM to fill in, with a 30-page chapter.
• Greyhawk created many of the tropes of D&D, and feels very 'straight down the fairway' D&D.
• This is the world where many iconic D&D magic items, NPCs, etc. came from--Mordenkainen, Bigby, Tasha, Otiluke and so on.
• The DMG starts with the City of Greyhawk and its surroundings in some detail, and gets more vague as you get farther away.
• The city is an example of a 'campaign hub'.
• The sample adventures in Chapter 4 of the DMG are set there or nearby.
• The map is an updated version, mainly faithful to the original with some tweaks.
• The map has some added locations key to D&D's history--such as White Plume Mountain, the Tomb of Horrors, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Ghost Tower of Inverness.
• There's a map of the city, descriptions of places characters might visit--magic item shop, library, 3 taverns, temples, etc.
• The setting takes 'a few liberties while remaining faithful to the spirit of the setting'--it has been contemporized to make it resonate in all D&D campaigns with a balance of NPCs who showcase the diversity of D&D worlds.
• The backgrounds in the Player's Handbook map to locations in the city.
• Most areas in the setting have a name and brief description.
• They focus on three 'iconic' D&D/Greyhawk conflicts such as the Elemental Evil, a classic faceless adversary; Iuz the evil cambion demigod; and dragons.
• There's a list of gods, rulers, and 'big bads'.

 

[mikeburke]

How do you differentiate between a simple musican and a bard?

The latter are mostly Tieflings, for reasons unknown to science.

 

[TiQuinn]

It would be nice to have something more 'official' to go on.

Old school fans don’t like people “officially” messing with Greyhawk. Like, I’m sure these little changes alone will cause consternation.

 

[Hussar]

I think its pretty clear that the dragonborns are the descendants of specimens from the First World grown in lab by the previous owner of the crash starship in the Barrier Peak. They emerged from their vats a century ago and created a strange culture based around the worship of Bahamut (spoiler: the name of the crashed star freighter they came from), the great metalic dragon. That's why you can still find weird techs in the barrows of their shamans.

YOINK!!!

Heck, there's lots of ties between that and the Machine of Lum the Mad. Maybe Baron Lum created dragonborn using the Machine as soldiers in his armies.

 

[Yaarel]

I wonder how they will root Aasimar, Tieflings, Dragonborn, and Goliaths in Greyhawk, I mean unlike FR, Planescape, Eberron, Exandria, they don't really have a history/lore to them in Greyhawk.

GREYHAWK SETTING

Aasimar and Tiefling: arrive from the Astral Plane, and have moreorless always been around infrequently.

Dragonborn: are magically engineered Humanoids, created from Dragons while in their eggs. Possibly, they have an ancient civilization elsewhere on Oerth, such as Dragons Island in the Celestial Sea, reported to be ruled by a Dragon prince.

Goliaths: can populate the mountains west from Yeomanry (at the intersection of Crystalmist, Hellfurnaces, and Sulhaut mountain ranges), while Giants populate nearby in the Jotens mountains, north from Yeomanry.

 

[Yaarel]

Goliaths would likely come from the Crystalmists, The Hellfurnaces, and the Barrier Peaks. Much of that area was previously unexplored.

Wow. Ninjaed! Goliaths originate west from Yeomanry.

Dragonborn could have a similar origin, maybe having founded their society in the Amedio Jungle. There are enough “blank” spaces in the Greyhawk map to explain where these races originate from.

The "Dragons Island", which is only mentioned briefly as rumors, but in a prominent location and context, is a great candidate for the origin of a Dragonborn community. In the supercontinent of Oerik, Dragons Island is Central, in the Celestial Sea.

 

[Comte Cronos]

Elemental evil and dragons are the two of the big three threats I wanted to focus on in my Phandbox leading into sword coast sandbox campaign... Any Greyhawk experts have suggestions for where on the map you’d put Phandalin if you wanted to transport the starter sets to Greyhawk?

I've placed Phandalin (translated in french as « Forgecreux/Forge Hollow ») between Hardby and the Bright Desert, late 591.
The players are torn between the geopolitics of Greyhawk, Hardby and Rary.

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding the map of the Oerik from Dragon Annual 1996, it became canon, but has mixed reviews among Greyhawk setting fans.

The problem is, West Oerik seems way too large and rectangular.

Yet the named locations relative to each other work well.

If a new "more accurate" version of the map resized some of the areas, that would probably be acceptable among most Greyhawk fans? Medieval maps can be wildly disproportionate. It is easy to explain a new map that looks more "realistic" (or at least more familiar compared to reallife Earth). In any case, planet Oerth has a single massive pangean continent. It corresponds roughly to a hypothetical reallife Earth where the techtonic plates of North America and Sibera crashed into each other. So West Oerik is Europe and Africa, East Oerik is the Americas, Central Oerik is China and India. Australia is still off doing its own thing.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Anyone noticed James Wyatt kept comparing Greyhawk's 30 pages to a 320 page setting book, could he be referring to Forgotten Realms Player's Guide? Could the FRPG be 320 pages?

 

[Hussar]

Heh. I'm thinking that Sea of Nippon and Nippon Dominion is perhaps not going to fly.

 

[mikeburke]

Anyone noticed James Wyatt kept comparing Greyhawk's 30 pages to a 320 page setting book, could he be referring to Forgotten Realms Player's Guide? Could the FRPG be 320 pages?

I mean the 2024 PHB is ~380 pages, so 320 seems not-unreasonable. You are right, it's an unusually specific number.. pretty sure the sword coast adventurer's guide from early in the 5e days wasn't close to that number.