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'.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Wasn't the intention of the setting being "the basic setting" to start homebrewing D&D, even back then in the 80s? If a setting intended for that is unable to adapt to the new trends of D&D and accept the change of paradigms in race/species development, then yes, is bad, because it cannot adopt the new basic elements despite being the setting for the basic stuff.

Settings, of course, can change perfectly well, it’s people who can’t.

 

[Scribe]

Settings, of course, can change perfectly well, it’s people who can’t.

People change all the time lol.

 

[Yaarel]

People change all the time lol.

Canonists have great difficulty coping with change. Because, the entire reality is interpreted and understood thru the paradigm − the lense − the mode of cognition − of the canon.

The main method for how canonists change is by means of a "close reading".

They reread the precise wording of a piece of original text, in a way that is probably unintended by the original authorship. Then they use this new understanding of the text, to frame a context, within which they can pivot the entire canon around, in the direction of the necessary change.


In a complex multi-sourced kitchen-sink gonzo setting like Greyhawk the pivoting of close reading is effortless. Because. Somewhere in the sea of text, the change already exists in some sense. The future canonists only need to mention it, emphasize it, and attend to it.

Hence Tiefling and Dragonborn are seemless. They are already potentially present via the Fiends and Dragons who are present.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Apparently, this is not seen as objective truth. We had a long thread here about the 'humancentric' Greyhawk, and this latest tangent is regarding a long blog post that would seem to affirm that view

Adding a line saying "here is a dragonborn community" (or goliath, or tiefling, or whatever) doesn't remove the humanocentrism of the setting.
If I understood this @Snarf Zagyg article well, so as long as the humanoids play second bananas to humans, the setting will be ok.

And really, an unnamed community of dragonborn wouldn't steal the importance of like 30 named human kingdoms.

D&D General - Moar Greyhawk: Anthropocentrism and Humanity in Greyhawk

This post is related to another post I just wrote, about Greyhawk, here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/for-the-love-of-greyhawk-why-people-still-fight-to-preserve-greyhawk.674292/ After some time in the comments, a poster responded to a list of non-exclusive factors I wrote about Greyhawk...

www.enworld.org

 

[Scribe]

If I understood this @Snarf Zagyg article well, so as long as the humanoids play second bananas to humans, the setting will be ok.

For Snarf, or you. While for the author of that blog post, and others, its not. This is not an objective matter.

We are under no obligation to enjoy the retcons which Wizards introduces into legacy settings.

 

[Zeromaru X]

And are under no obligation of ruining the experience for those who decided to enjoy said retcons, either.

 

[Scribe]

And are under no obligation of ruining the experience for those who decided to enjoy said retcons, either.

Of course, nobody is going to kick down your door because you want to play a Dragonborn in Greyhawk instead of FR.

 

[Stormonu]

As an aside, back in 3E in the Greyhawk campaign I inserted a Warforged NPC into the group. It was a one-off that had been a creation by Amelio Jungle shaman that was powered by living hearts for a short time. The PCs killed a dragon and stuffed it's heart into the golem's chest, which permanently activated it. No homeland, unique creation and the group felt like it fit into the world without issue.

In the 5E Saltmarsh game, one of the PCs played a Kenku in Greyhawk. The player didn't found out until later that he'd come to Greyhawk via a portal (having thought he'd just ventured from a nearby kingdom) and that was why he was unable to find others like him in the world.

In the same game, the party encountered a Dragonborn ranger in their wanderings. They never did learn where the Dragonborn came from, and did not encounter any others in Saltmarsh or the rest of the campaign.

And the Tiefling in the party had been raised in a church of St. Cuthbert after having been left on a doorstep, and "fell in" with the NPC Tiefling (from Iuz) running the store in town. The party never did find out where the PC Tiefling really came from.

So, you don't have to have a homeland to introduce PC/NPCs into the campaign world, they can be one-offs and don't even have to be explained (though it can be fun to delve into such a background).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I am only going to step in again and point out two things-

1. AFAIK, there aren't major retcons to the nature of the countries. It's still a humanocentric polity for the most part. They didn't just say, "The Theocracy of the Pale is a religious Dragonborn country!" Most of the changes are small and either easily ignored or welcome (I am not going to miss the depiction of the Rhennee).

2. Greyhawk, since its first publication in 1980, was sketched out in broad strokes, and new races (species) were always assumed to "just be there" (albeit in small numbers). I can't recall a single person at the time complaining that all the various stuff that was being invented could not find a place in Greyhawk.

Greyhawk was never supposed to be prescriptive (you must do it THIS WAY). It was always supposed to be the spark for a million different, and individual, Greyhawks. Take what you want, have fun, and leave the rest.

 

[mamba]

We should accept that the new things are going to be part of Greyhawk now.

we can do whatever we want with Greyhawk, including ignoring everything in the DMG about it. I see no reason why anyone would be required to accept something they do not like at their table just because WotC published something.

If you talk about GH in the abstract, ie what WotC does with it or some players at some table you are not part of, then sure, they can do whatever they want, that has always been the case