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'.

 

[pemerton]

In my current Torchbearer campaign, there is a (Forgotten) Temple (Complex) of Elemental Evil. It is located at the edge of the Griff Mountains, at the spur that runs westward above the northern edge of the Troll Fens.

It came about because (i) one of my players decided that his hometown was a Forgotten Temple Complex, and (as I mentioned upthread) he nominated its location as the mountain border of the Pale; and (ii) when I asked him what gods/temples were in the Forgotten Temple Complex he answered - very emphatically - "Explosives!"

So when, some sessions into the campaign, I decided to convert the Moathouse from T1 to Torchbearer 2e, it made sense to put the Moathouse in the Troll Fens - it is in a swamp, after all - and to have the Forgotten Temple Complex be the (now fallen on hard times) Temple of Elemental Evil. To the Explosives cult (Fire/Air), I added some others: Smithing (Fire/Earth), Herbalism (Earth/Water), Potions and Vapours (Fire/Water), and Wind and Sky (Air/Water). The Air/Earth cult - the cult of the Void - was (as per the intro text for T1) a sixth, secret cult.

I didn't need Hommlet - the PCs already have their home bases - but I wrote up Nulb as a village, frequented by river pirates, on the eastern edge of the Troll Fens.

I don't pretend that any of this is "canonical". But it is easily added to the GH maps, and easily reconciled with default GH background/history/context.

This is what I look to GH for: places, names, geography, historical/political context. It's been helping me out for 40 years!

 

[Autumnal]

That’s neat, and reminds me to dig out my copy of the Gazeteer to see if I’d like to use it that kind of way for Ironsworn or Loner.

 

[amethal]

When the owner of the product and the author of the product are different, there will inevitably be fans who have completely different views of what is canon, and they’ll argue their view is right until the cows come home*.

* I’ve never understood this phrase. Why wouldn’t the cows be home?

In the day, the cows are out on the pasture. In the evening, they come home to sleep in the cowshed.

Depends to some extent on the climate, of course. Google seems to think the phrase originated in Scotland, where it can get cold.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Depends to some extent on the climate, of course. Google seems to think the phrase originated in Scotland, where it can get cold

And cattle roamed freely over common land. They did not live in a field with a fence round that was owned by the farmer.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Snarf Zagyg, to be precise. CANON!

.... unfortunately, I am not the Absolute Dictator of Reality.

...yet.

Ahem. As @Hussar has noted, a lot of battles about "canon" are really battles about personal preferences. Personally, one of the things I love about Greyhawk (at least, in my conception) is that it isn't crufted up and stuck with too much lore and canon.

I've always felt that canon and lore are an uncomfortable match with D&D campaign settings. It's a very delicate balance- yes, we know that nerds, in general, love getting all the details and debating endlessly about lore and canon. But campaigns are supposed to be unique to tables- that's the magic of it! I don't want to play in Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms. I don't want to play in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk.

I want the scaffolding. I want hooks and hints. But everything else? That's for my table to develop.

(I would add that this is one the reasons I loved the original Gygaxian multiverse and wrote all those posts about it- the idea that every table, every Greyhawk, existed on the prime material plane... that was perfect, simple, and provided everything that was needed. It's all been downhill since the Manual of the Planes.)

 

[Emerikol]

.... unfortunately, I am not the Absolute Dictator of Reality.

...yet.

Ahem. As @Hussar has noted, a lot of battles about "canon" are really battles about personal preferences. Personally, one of the things I love about Greyhawk (at least, in my conception) is that it isn't crufted up and stuck with too much lore and canon.

I've always felt that canon and lore are an uncomfortable match with D&D campaign settings. It's a very delicate balance- yes, we know that nerds, in general, love getting all the details and debating endlessly about lore and canon. But campaigns are supposed to be unique to tables- that's the magic of it! I don't want to play in Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms. I don't want to play in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk.

I want the scaffolding. I want hooks and hints. But everything else? That's for my table to develop.

(I would add that this is one the reasons I loved the original Gygaxian multiverse and wrote all those posts about it- the idea that every table, every Greyhawk, existed on the prime material plane... that was perfect, simple, and provided everything that was needed. It's all been downhill since the Manual of the Planes.)

If I were going to use a store bought campaign setting, I would agree 100%. I've tended to create my own as I love world building. I did DM at least one campaign briefly in Greyhawk but I've never DM'd in Forgotten Realms or Eberron. I own a lot of their stuff though. I find reading setting info can be inspiring. I prefer my players to know what their characters know to the degree it can be achieved.

 

[Stormonu]

Yeah, that's how I've come to consider the various campaign settings that have been released.

What TSR/WotC puts out is the 616/Sacred Timeline. Everyone else's campaign is an alternate timeline, mine included.

I no longer care about incorporating the Time of Troubles, Greyhawk Wars, Great Conjunction or all that from releases that I haven't used in my games. They've diverged, and I'm fine with that - I can make my own stories and don't have to worry that the TVA is going to come to my house and prune my game.

 

[Azzy]

Right, there’s a whole fandom of Greyhawk that digs deep into whatever source they can to try and suss out what was a Gygax idea present in his game versus something concocted for publication by others. I don’t give the map of Oerth much credence because well, it’s horrible, IMO.

So true. I ignore that awful and uninspired map in my games.

 

[Voadam]

But @pemerton, why would you consider Living Greyhawk canon but not the three Dungeon Adventure Paths all set in Greyhawk? Those are actually official and carry the official seal of approval.

Well for setting canon there is a difference between setting sourcebooks like the LGG and potential scenarios like the adventure paths.

RPG modules are generally designed to be potentials for your group to play prospectively and not agreed upon facts of the world the way that setting sourcebooks are designed to do.

So it can be reasonable to say LGG is setting canon but not the Age of Worms events.

But modules do have setting aspects too, such as where locations are and background facts.

So a number of people might say that the Temple of Elemental Evil canonically exists in a specific place and Zuggtmoy was imprisoned beneath it, but not say that T1-4 establishes canonically what happens to Zuggtmoy in the setting. You can still place the temple elsewhere for your game, that just means a number of people would say your campaign deviates from setting canon in that detail.

Also there is the aspect of timeline advancement, 3e timeline advanced Greyhawk Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil assumes that 1e original setting prior era T1-4 has happened, the 2e setting boxed set From the Ashes assumes that the events of the two Vatun/Iuz modules happened to set off the Greyhawk Wars, and so forth.

Paizo did it a little differently with their APs and Golarion canon. Each real life year advances the timeline in the setting one year and each AP is set in a specific year. Canonically Golarion assumes the APs happened and the world did not end, but also keep it vague on specifics like who the mythic heroes who stopped the demon apocalypse were. The one off module events though are not really incorporated into the setting, though setting details generally are.

So modules are messy when it comes to canon.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So true. I ignore that awful and uninspired map in my games.

The map is not only awful and uninspired, but if it's just a massive "supercontinent" as shown, the effects on the interior would be dire.

But you know, that's reality. I don't think anyone draws fantasy maps with a keen eye toward things like plate tectonics and weather patterns.