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D&D (2024) How Does Greyhawk Fit In To The New Edition?

Dungeon Master’s Guide contains a sample setting—and that setting is, indeed, Greyhawk.

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According to Game Informer — “the surprising importance and inclusions of what is arguably the oldest D&D campaign setting of them all – Greyhawk.”

So how does Greyhawk fit in? According to GI, the new 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide contains a sample setting—and that setting is, indeed, Greyhawk. Not only that, but the book will come with a double-sided poster map with the City of Greyhawk on one side and the Flannaes on the other—the eastern part of one of Oerth’s four continents.
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Even as the multiverse of D&D worlds sees increased attention, the Dungeon Master's Guide also offers a more discrete setting to get gaming groups started. After very few official releases in the last couple of decades, the world of Greyhawk takes center stage. The book fleshes out Greyhawk to illustrate how to create campaign settings of your own. Greyhawk was the original D&D game world crafted by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax, and a worthy setting to revisit on the occassion of D&D's golden anniversary. It's a world bristling with classic sword and sorcery concepts, from an intrigue-laden central city to wide tracts of uncharted wilderness. Compared to many D&D campaign settings, it's smaller and less fleshed out, and that's sort of the point; it begs for DMs to make it their own. The book offers ample info to bring Greyhawk to life but leaves much undetailed. For those eager to take the plunge, an included poster map of the Greyhawk setting sets the tone, and its reverse reveals a map of the city of the same name. "A big draw to Greyhawk is it's the origin place for such heroes as Mordenkainen, Tasha, and others," Perkins says. "There's this idea that the players in your campaign can be the next great world-hopping, spell-crafting heroes of D&D. It is the campaign where heroes are born."
- Game Informer​

 

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Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I have neither the time nor the resources to dig through decades of Dragon Magazine and col-pladoh posts, but I will say if Gary had a definitive vision of the setting, he has plenty of opportunities to express it and didn't. I think a lot of fans have spent a lot of time retroactively trying to assign greater design and meaning to Greyhawk that wasn't considered at the time.
I agree, but that means you cannot talk about something betraying a vision of which you have no evidence.
 

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Mournblade94

Adventurer
That flavor already died in 2000. Attempts to retroactively add limitations to species and classes in Greyhawk have been created by grognards who want to use Oerth as a battleground for a type of play that hasn't been dominant for 20+ years. It was never the intent of Gary nor any of the writers who worked on it since.
According to the Troll Lord guys Gary wanted to keep that intent hence his development and their Kickstarter (Based on the work he was doing with them but they had to stop publishing once he passed.)

I don't see the point in making something in Name only. This would not be Greyhawk, it would be a place now infested with animal races, and Half planar things. Far from the flavor of that world. I would agree though, the Flavor started to die in 2000. So don't use that as the new setting.

Corporate though only cares about the brand (Like Zaslav with Tolkien), and figure if they have a map it doesn't matter. They already brought just about ALL the unique characters to Forgotten Realms anyway. They've mined Greyhawk already that the mountaintop is basically blown off.

My desires are different that the owners of course. But I would much rather see something not adapted at all rather than having it be a shell. Greyhawk's Spirit does not work with the current zeitgeist. This is not a judgement on the modern gaming.

Doing it right... would mean limiting options. They should at least give guidance for DMs at what to Ban if they want to keep the world state Spirit of Greyhawk.

At this point they should just use Eberron as the default.
 

Stormonu

Legend
Settings have locations and histories, not just proprietary names. How much of that was evident in the 3e era? How many Greyhawk-branded products were there? Anything beyond Living Greyhawk? I'm not sure, but I know it was a lot fewer than any other supported major setting at the time.
the Living Greyhawk RPGA network had tons of Greyhawk adventures, I ended up playing in a few.

The Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, etc. were based in Greyhawk, well about as much as the old 1E adventures were. WotC initially refrained from branding as they were just coming off the issues from TSR where putting the campaign world on the cover would tend to see smaller sales as people would (rightly) assume that it was only for use in THAT campaign world. They would later start the practice back up after dropping the FR campaign setting book.

However, there was The Fright At Tristor, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil for 3E - again, they simply didn't put a Greyhawk banner on the cover. Dungeon had the Age of Worms and Savage Tides series that was set in Greyhawk, and several smaller adventures. Of course, there was also Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk - don't think you can get more Greyhawk than that!

Just prior to 3E they did quite a few Greyhawk adventures - Crypt of Lyzandred, The Doomgrinder, Slavers, Return of the Eight and Star Cairns, along with Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff, so Greyhawk was very fresh in the designers minds.

As for me, I ran my entire 3E campaign in Greyhawk, with the PC's traveling from the Free City of Greyhawk and south into Wooly Bay via river with several of their adventures being 1E modules converted to 3E. When I played our 5E Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign, the escapades of my 3E group was lore that my 5E group learned - and the 3E group (as NPCs) showed up to help in the final battle against the sahaugin!

So Greyhawk works plenty well with 5E.
 








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