D&D 5E (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'.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's ... really interesting!

I'm not sure how I feel about it, and it will probably require a lot of thought (and at least 37 essays) to work through. My initial reaction was, "Wut? Campaign settings are supposed to have a single flavor. This isn't Baskin Robbins, this is HIGHLANDER! There can be only one!"

But then I thought to myself, "Self, why does that have to be the case? If god hands you lemons, FIND A NEW GOD! Why not have a setting that has multiple flavors in different areas? Not only could you run different campaigns with different flavors, you could even have one campaign that moves around and subtly changes the flavoring!"

I need to think about this.

VGR did it first, assigning flavours of horror to different domains.

 

[Parmandur]

VGR did it first, assigning flavours of horror to different domains.

It's definitely an evolution of how WotC has been working for the past decade across various products.

 

[Zeromaru X]

That's ... really interesting!

I'm not sure how I feel about it, and it will probably require a lot of thought (and at least 37 essays) to work through. My initial reaction was, "Wut? Campaign settings are supposed to have a single flavor. This isn't Baskin Robbins, this is HIGHLANDER! There can be only one!"

But then I thought to myself, "Self, why does that have to be the case? If god hands you lemons, FIND A NEW GOD! Why not have a setting that has multiple flavors in different areas? Not only could you run different campaigns with different flavors, you could even have one campaign that moves around and subtly changes the flavoring!"

I need to think about this.

Well, that is thing. The moment they decided to use Greyhawk as the sample setting, it stopped being the D&D setting intended for old-fashioned Gygaxian fantasy, and became a setting for basic D&D (and that includes anything D&D has to offer, at least on a basic level — and with basic, I mean what D&D 5e considers basic). Sure, you can still use it to play the Gygaxian experience, but that is not the purpose of the setting anymore.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

stopped being the D&D setting intended for old-fashioned Gygaxian fantasy

I’m pretty sure Gygax didn’t design Greyhawk to be the “old fashioned” setting.

 

[Zeromaru X]

I’m pretty sure Gygax didn’t design Greyhawk to be the “old fashioned” setting.

Oh, it was brand new by his time. It became old fashioned by the time they began to create all those new, shining settings, tho.

I think Gygax designed it to be the sample setting as well, but they later went against that premise when they began to develop it and advanced its storyline, making it a setting for an specific kind of narrative (although I think this wasn't done by Gygax).

 

[Remathilis]

That's ... really interesting!

I'm not sure how I feel about it, and it will probably require a lot of thought (and at least 37 essays) to work through. My initial reaction was, "Wut? Campaign settings are supposed to have a single flavor. This isn't Baskin Robbins, this is HIGHLANDER! There can be only one!"

But then I thought to myself, "Self, why does that have to be the case? If god hands you lemons, FIND A NEW GOD! Why not have a setting that has multiple flavors in different areas? Not only could you run different campaigns with different flavors, you could even have one campaign that moves around and subtly changes the flavoring!"

I need to think about this.

I mean, this is basically Golarion's method. Regions have different types of fantasy themes and you can walk from one to another. It's only D&D that forces each world to have one and only one genre.

 

[Zeromaru X]

I mean, this is basically Golarion's method. Regions have different types of fantasy themes and you can walk from one to another. It's only D&D that forces each world to have one and only one genre.

The kitchen sink approach existed in D&D since always. That's the Forgotten Realms thing, tho.

 

[Parmandur]

@Zeromaru X the book doesn't really address the "place" for any species in the Setting, but perhaps tellingly the Free City section goes out of it's way to provide a location and NPC contact thwt can work for each Background: for instance, the innkeeper at the Black Dragpn Inn is a charitable veteran so os a good contact for Soldiers and Wanderers, while the (disguises dragon) Wizard Morley running the magic shop Unearthed Arcana is a good contact for Charletans or Hermits "because Morley has peculiar interests".

 

[Yaarel]

Oh, it was brand new by his time. It became old fashioned by the time they began to create all those new, shining settings, tho.

I think Gygax designed it to be the sample setting as well, but they later went against that premise when they began to develop it and advanced its storyline, making it a setting for an specific kind of narrative (although I think this wasn't done by Gygax).

Also, fans morphed the Greyhawk setting into a hypothesis that everything TSR ever published (including magazines) was somehow simultaneously true. It became the first "kitchen skin" setting, despite the 1983 World of Greyhawk being more a wargame premise.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Also, fans morphed the Greyhawk setting into a hypothesis that everything TSR ever published (including magazines) was somehow simultaneously true. It became the first "kitchen skin" setting, despite the 1983 World of Greyhawk being more a wargame premise.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted in Greyhawk.
Hasan-i-Gygax