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'.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Snarf Zagyg I can confirm that there is a discussion of the gods of Oerik, and thar the chart is explained as a limited selection of deities likely to be significant for a DM and players.

Xan Yae and Zuoken approve of this development!!!!

I mean, getting cut to put in a name THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER SEE OR UTTER?

Harsh, bruh.

 

[pemerton]

the general Campaign section goes quite a bit into "Flavors if Fantasy" and how to differentiate, say, High Fabtasy from Sword & Sorcery from Political Intrigue. And each region of the Flannaes is set up to show off a flavor of Fantasy, actually usually a couple but here are the ones I remember off-hand

• Old Keoland is High Fantasy, where the nation's are buds fighting Giants and Dragons and other Monsters
• The Western Flannaes are set-up to show off political intrigue
• The Northern Flannaes is set up for Sword & Sorcery
• The Central Flannaes are setup for Epic Fantasy
• The Eastern Flannaes are set up for War stories (Iron League vs. The Evil Empi...Great Kingdom)

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.

I saw Greyhawk as multi themed from the beginning.

I'm with @Voadam on this. For me, and just within the centre of the maps, you can have LotR-esque stuff with Celene and the Lortmils and the Orcs raiding up from the Pomarj. Or Conan-esque stuff in the Abor-Alz and Bright Desert (and even Hardby and the Wild Coast). And urban sword-and-sorcery in Greyhawk.

And of course war and politics in the Great Kingdom and surrounds; and more Arthurian/romantic battle stories between Furyondy and Iuz.

 

[AnotherGuy]

MMMm..... Hoi polloi.... now I want some avgolemono soup.

There is always time for some avgolemono, you philhellene

 

[Zeromaru X]

This is what I was talking about the other day. And this guy is polite, I grant him that...

Entirely Unsolicited Grognard Opinions on the World of Greyhawk in the 2024 D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide

Art by Francesca Baerald I got a look at the World of Greyhawk section in the 2024 Dungeon Master Guide (DMG) and that is two hours of my precious time on this green Earth that I’m never getting ba…

ageofgreatsorrow.wordpress.com

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

That was a great read.

 

[Zeromaru X]

That was a great read.

Yeah, it was interesting to read, but in the end it can be sum it up to "new is bad, old is good". And sure, people like what they like, but this new Grewhawk is supposed to be done to attract new people. We should accept that the new things are going to be part of Greyhawk now.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, it was interesting to read, but in the end it can be sum it up to "new is bad, old is good". And sure, people like what they like, but this new Grewhawk is supposed to be done to attract new people. We should accept that the new things are going to be part of Greyhawk now.

I mean, it's just someone posting online. Just ignore it.

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, it was interesting to read, but in the end it can be sum it up to "new is bad, old is good". And sure, people like what they like, but this new Grewhawk is supposed to be done to attract new people. We should accept that the new things are going to be part of Greyhawk now.

New is bad, or retcon's and changes to existing elements of a setting are bad?

 

[Scribe]

That was a great read.

This part pretty much nails it for me, along with the Ravenloft discussion elsewhere, and the Dragonlance discussion when that was retconned. Let the settings be distinct.

Greyhawk does not need species diversity to be diverse. It has plenty already. It is a setting where the clash, mixture, and merger of different human cultures is a central theme. It also has the standard array of 1980s D&D species. Since Greyhawk fell out of favour with TSR and later WotC , it was not updated with the newer species (ironically it became the true forgotten realm). As a result of this benign neglect, it could have been an example to DMs of how they don’t need to cram every single feature of D&D into their homebrew settings. It could have been something different, something interesting.

 

[Yaarel]

This is what I was talking about the other day. And this guy is polite, I grant him that...

Entirely Unsolicited Grognard Opinions on the World of Greyhawk in the 2024 D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide

Art by Francesca Baerald I got a look at the World of Greyhawk section in the 2024 Dungeon Master Guide (DMG) and that is two hours of my precious time on this green Earth that I’m never getting ba…

ageofgreatsorrow.wordpress.com

At least, the critic understood why it is unfun to rely on ethnic stereotypes. (I did kinda agree about setting a Tiefling over the indigenous Rovers, seeming counterproductive.)


The rest of angst about "disregarding canon" ... pretty much confirms why it is a good idea to make the core books be the only "canon", and only in the sense of a default, if not choosing any other setting.

Every DM will decide what ones own canon will be.

The DM is the canon.

Every D&D movie will decide what setting makes sense for the narrative and adjust the D&D setting accordingly.

There is no reason for angst either. At least at the moment there are robust fan sites the track and compile every official reference to the Greyhawk setting. I wouldnt rely on these sites uncritically, because they likewise preserve the problematic ethnic stereotyping. But they are valuable resources to pick-and-choose from, for those who are interested in fleshing an area of the now default Greyhawk map.