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

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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[Yaarel]

I think some fans want to avoid having their favorite setting become another "kitchen sink" where everything that WotC sells is put into it canonically. Some settings exclude certain player options to help them feel more "special," or even just to fit the theme.

That is ironically humorous. The point of inventing the Greyhawk world setting (different from Gygaxs city setting), is to be a kitchen sink that includes everything that TSR ever published.

My favorite way of doing this was 3e Eberron, where as new 3e books were released with new player options they'd have a little sidebar suggesting how these options could fit into Eberron etc. It was not assumed by default that every player options had a place in the setting.

Eberron does so many worldbuilding things right!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It actually occurred to me that the lore book from the Lore & Arcana guys might be that project, but focused on the huge amount of FR lore and updating the lore.

I could be wrong, I mean its not unreasonable to think WotC would want do a FRCG themselves, but if its a pure lore and art FRCG for 5.75e then getting these folks to do it can't be precluded.

I hope we don't have to wait until 5.75e. That would take another 27.5 years

 

[Parmandur]

It actually occurred to me that the lore book from the Lore & Arcana guys might be that project, but focused on the huge amount of FR lore and updating the lore.

I could be wrong, I mean its not unreasonable to think WotC would want do a FRCG themselves, but if its a pure lore and art FRCG for 5.75e then getting these folks to do it can't be precluded.

Yeah, I had the same thought: something like a cross between Art & Arcana and the James Wyatt penned Magic: the Gathering Setting art books focusing on the internal logic and lore of the Forgotten Realms would be great, and would sell very well IMO. It could even act as a rules neutral campaign setting easily enough.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I will never for the life of me understand Greyhawk fans.

You want the setting to come back, but you don't want ANY changes to the setting, NOTHING new. What do you want? Them to copy and paste the exact text from 2E books, same art of course since yall usually get mad over new art, and then put it into a new book with "5E" on the logo????????

I've never understood the inability to embrace change to an IP. Evolve the idea, play with it, and if you don't like it you have all the old stuff still remaining.

One of the things we have tried to do on the Dragonlance Nexus fan site is to embrace change. For one's brand (in this case, a setting) to continue to succeed, one must remain relevant.

I understand where the old-school Greyhawk fans are coming from. They have a lot of love for their setting and want it to remain as they have perceived it for decades. Thing is, they can still enjoy Greyhawk the way they want. Nobody is coming to their house to take their stuff or force them to use another rules system. Not even the Pinkertons.

I, for one, am anxious to see an updated Greyhawk. I'm happy that the "birthplace of adventure" continues to live on and will be available for a whole new generation of fans.

 

[timbannock]

I love Greyhawk and I absolutely have no need for it being updated by WOTC because I can jettison the bad parts on my own with ease. Plus DMsGuild has the 32 page folio and City of Greyhawk as print on demand for cheap, and they are good quality. I do slightly prefer the 1e box set for its depth on deities and such, but that was easy to get second hand, and I'm sure that'll be up on DMsGuild for POD eventually, too.

More to the point, there's nothing they can do in 10-15 pages in the DMG that would be surprising/hard to DIY/worth looking at...aside from the poster map. That part is pretty stellar. But for the Greyhawk grognards? There's no way that appeals as a major/sole selling point except to collectors: the Paizo-era Flanaess map and the (several) City of Greyhawk maps available online can be purchased or printed for cheap. Far cheaper than buying a brand new DMG for them plus a few pages of "already read that" setting info.

Based on all that, I gotta agree with the folks saying this is about finding a setting that can be pulled together quickly, and is lore-light enough to fit into a short section, plus has the nostalgia value for the 50th anniversary. Greyhawk hits all those notes, but there's literally nothing they could do that would make it a "killer app" version of the setting that would cause the old-timers to buy it for this reason as a main selling point.

That's my take, at least.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I'd be fine with them kicking the timeline up 100 years and saying "This is how it is now after some change", but what they like to do is just recon things and say "This is how it's always been."

 

[Dire Bare]

As an aside, a decentering of the Forgotten Realms in the Core does make it much, much more likely that a fat Forgotten Realms Setting product might be coming down the pike.

Maybe . . .

In the 2014 core rule books, the Realms was not the "default" or even "example" setting, the multiverse was. Of course, most of the big adventure books were set in the Realms.

Greyhawk isn't the new "default" setting for the 2024 core rule books, it is just the "example" setting in the DMG. The core setting is still the multiverse.

Will we get a nice fat Realms sourcebook to rival the 3E campaign setting book? I hope so! But I don't think Greyhawk being included in the new DMG makes it more or less likely.

In fact, I kinda think it's more likely we'll get a Greyhawk campaign book! I'm not making predictions, but . . . each of the 5E campaign books we've gotten so far have been both campaign guides and guides to different genres to play within D&D. A Greyhawk book expanding on what is in the DMG could be the "how to run a standard campaign" book!

 

[timbannock]

I'd be fine with them kicking the timeline up 100 years and saying "This is how it is now after some change", but what they like to do is just recon things and say "This is how it's always been."

I wonder how much of that is "ease of use" (you don't have to "know all the lore") versus it being a reaction to how the timeline jump in FR for 4E was so poorly received?

The Realms reset + ten year jump in 5E has been so haphazard and internally inconsistent that it's really hard to grasp how much of what they do is reactionary versus well-thought-out.

Either way, I agree that Saltmarsh, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance all seem to point to you being right. And in theory, I think it is the right path. D&D as a game-first (rather than a source of settings for fiction-first) should be about sharing the experiences of the adventures, not the sweep of big histories and events across any given campaign settings.

 

[Voadam]

I'd be fine with them kicking the timeline up 100 years and saying "This is how it is now after some change"

I felt that was terrible for Forgotten Realms and would be terrible for Greyhawk.

I expect them to either do 1e time period or 3e LGG post Great Wars/FtA, post crook of Rao reset last current date time period.

I expect a big picture overview hitting things like:

Iuz
Great Kingdom
Scarlet Brotherhood
Pomarj
Possibly Horned Society depending on time period

Pirates
Bandit Kingdoms
Fantasy Vikings
Other Barbarians
Fantasy Arabs

Greyhawk
Furyondy and other non-evil Great Kingdom splinter kingdoms
Wild Coast

Elven Celene
Valley of the Mage

The gods, hopefully broken out as multiple pantheons. Mention of druidism as old faith.

Possibly the Greyhawk ethnicities.

Mention of Rain of Colorless Fire and Invoked Devastation as ancient history big events.

Possibly some knighthoods.

Probably the most focus on Greyhawk with some mentions of Castle Greyhawk so it is a legendary site to be homebrewed as a megadungeon or allow a future big module.

 

[Queer Venger]

Honestly the issue I had. I wanted to get into Greyhawk just because I love digging around in fantasy worlds, but some of the names for things just felt so goofy. Iuz?

Maybe I'd get used to it with time, I got used to Forgotten Realms after all.

same, Waterdeep, Sword Coast, Silverymoon, even Thay sound a helluva more fantasy world than...

Yeomanry,
Ulek...

Wooly Bay LOL (come on, its already challenging making my players immerse in a fantasy world without dropping "And you journey to the coast of Wooly Bay..." as they start laughing and cracking jokes).

But I know these were the conventions of Gygax naming things after his friends (or anagrams)