D&D (2024) Greyhawk Confirmed. Tell Me Why.

[Chaosmancer]

The Blue Goblins are on the Shattered Obelisk.

Ah, I still haven't read through that yet

 

[Chaosmancer]

Nah

What I am saying is that a player will make a Dragonborn in Greyhawk and have characters that are not tied and have bonds to the setting. And there are drawbacks to that.

Why will that happen in Greyhawk, but not Theros? Or Strixhaven? Or any other setting.

Greyhawk has dragons, it has half-dragons, it has people who worship dragons, it has (from 3e) people who study ancient arts to turn into dragons.

Why are we assuming that a person who makes a Dragonborn in Greyhawk, with their DMs permission, is going to have zero ties to the setting, nothing to bind them to it? You keep stating it like it is a fact, but I don't see any reason why this would happen. If someone came up to me, right now, and demanded to play a Dragonborn in Greyhawk, but had no idea how to fit them into the setting... I've got two quick solutions immediately.

 

[AstroCat]

So... you have no idea what the flavor or integrity of the Greyhawk setting even are? Once confronted with defending your position beyond "I want the same things we had in '83?" you have nothing to say except to start acting like we are bullying you?

See, my problem is that adding things "in a really good way" can mean anything from "I want some explanations that work with the setting" to "No no, nothing you say is good, there is no good way, I'm just saying that so it doesn't seem like I am against any changes what so ever". And I can't tell which you mean until we engage in actual discussion of why it is so difficult to have the things in the PHB in the setting.

Of course I have an idea what the flavor or integrity of the Greyhawk is, I've been using the setting forever. Good grief, I was being sarcastic to show the ridiculousness having defend such begin simple concept. I am not going to write a complete lore guide, those already exist. Just read one if you want. Again for the zillion time, you can add stuff to GH and still explain it in away the makes sense with the setting. Not sure I will ever understand why this is a bad thing, and not a good one. You get the setting and the new stuff both.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, come up with a cool way to introduce Dragonborn... they could be from a lost valley, or uncharted land where a ship has gone astray and landed. Any way to introduce a new entity into the setting without breaking the world. As others have noted the setting is very forgiving to funky and weird.

Yes, exactly. So what is the problem? No one has an issue with doing that. Okay, setting purists might have an issue with that, but no one else has called that a problem in any way.

It doesn't have to be DB were always in every town and every place because we say so. Some thought could be put into it and make it dare I say, cool... or if you don't like DB or whatever avoidable in your home game. But this seems to be too extreme of a though process, because it holds some preservation and respect for the original setting, and I am learning that is thought of as a bad thing for reasons.

No it isn't. No one has said that.

 

[AstroCat]

You do realize the irony of complaining about absurd absolutes and then in the next setting talking about how lore is the "story and reason for the world" and how nothing else matters, right?

Lore is important. I agree. But, how that lore is presented is how you get the different feelings of setting because it's all D&D. There is a huge amount of overlap between the settings, simply because they all draw on the same well - the Monster Manual for one. How that lore is presented though is what differentiates Greyhawk from other settings. The lore itself? It's not like there's much actually unique to Greyhawk. Not after decades of being mined by other settings.

I mean, what separates the Free City of Greyhawk from Waterdeep? They are far more similar than different. But, how those differences are presented is the core of the setting.

There is... I am not going to write a lore and world setting essay here. There are plenty of books out there you can look over at your leisure that cover both settings. Your opinion of the GH setting and mine are different. I find much more value in it then you do. That's ok, for example, I don't love FR and others do.

 

[Staffan]

I bought the Dark Sun set on release, and I remember the planar assumption being it was cut off. This was further reinforced in the early novels. So your definitley correct about that assumption in the rules.

This is a bit of a tangent to the Greyhawk stuff, but it's not like we don't digress every now and then.

The original boxed set from 1991 didn't say much at all about planar stuff. There was a list of monsters from the MC appendices at the time that the designers felt appropriate, which included elementals and genies. It also had this text: "Fiends from the Outer Planes Appendix (MC10) can travel to and from Athas at will, but do so rarely, only when summoned by dragons or great wizards." The spells chapter, which does modify some spells to make them more Dark Sun-appropriate (mostly nerfing ways to create water or metal) has nothing to say about any planar travel or summoning spells. There are also several adventures in which you'll find monsters from other planes. My impression is that there's nothing preventing planar stuff on Athas, it's just that it's a backwater which doesn't have much to do with the planes.

Dragon Kings expands somewhat on this, mainly by suggesting that epic-level clerics and druids should be spending a portion of their time on the elemental planes to deal with stuff there. There's also the priest sourcebook, Earth Air Fire and Water, which gives Athas an alternate set of para-elemental planes: Sun replacing Smoke as the fire/air plane, Rain replacing Ice as the air/water plane, and Silt replacing Ooze as the water/earth plane (Magma is still Magma). This is, I think, the first inklings of Athas cosmology not being D&D-standard.

The revised boxed set from 1995 is much the same as the original boxed set with regard to planar stuff – that is, rather silent on the issue. It does however refer to the Monstrous Manual rather than the Monstrous Compendium for appropriate monsters, and it includes Baatezu, Githyanki, Tanar'ri, and Yugoloths in the list.

The real change comes with Defilers and Preservers from 1996, a wizard sourcebook. This defines the planes of the Grey and the Black, which were first mentioned in the novels (I think the Grey featured some in the Obsidian Oracle, and the Black was definitely a thing in the Cerulean Storm and might have been mentioned as early as the Amber Enchantress). There's also a sidebar on how the Grey impedes planar travel to and from Athas, moreso toward the Astral/Outer planes than to the Ethereal/elemental planes. But this is the first mention that planar travel works differently in Dark Sun.

 

[MGibster]

Did the Warforged make it into the PHB without me noticing? I've run a few 5E campaigns, and I've never had anyone try to play a Warforged.

 

[Minigiant]

Why will that happen in Greyhawk, but not Theros? Or Strixhaven? Or any other setting

It would happen in Theros

Strixhaven, No. And Yes. Depends. Because it's a magic based setting for caster.

Well this question will answer my concerns.

Fans with Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, how does the book handle and explain playing a class without magic?

 

[Hussar]

Did the Warforged make it into the PHB without me noticing? I've run a few 5E campaigns, and I've never had anyone try to play a Warforged.

Since their introduction in 3e, Warforged are the go to example for entitled players ruining DM's carefully curated settings and a sign of everything wrong with D&D.

DIdn't you know that?

 

[pemerton]

That attitude is condescending and elitist. You don't get to decide that anything is or isn't "great literature" and therefore can be manipulated and rewritten with impunity, or at least without complaint. None of us are that important.

Sorry, it's not elitist to point out that GH is not great literature. It's a hodgepodge setting for FRPGing.

And nothing is being "manipulated".

I have a shelf of GH material: Folio, Boxed Set, City of GH Boxed Set, FtA Boxed Set, The Adventure Begins, Living GH, plus various modules from classic A&D and 2nd ed AD&D. Nothing that WotC does this year will change any of that stuff.

My current Torchbearer game and current Burning Wheel game both use GH as their setting (the area around Tenh, the Pale and the Bandit Kingdoms for Torchbearer; Hardby and environs for BW). I use what I need and ignore what I don't - eg in our TB game Burne (a NPC from T1 Village of Hommlet) is the wizard of the Wizard's Tower on the Bluff Hills; the Forgotten Temple Complex in the foothills of the Griff Mountains adjacent to the Troll Fens (placed there by a player as part of PC build) is modelled on the Temple of Elemental Evil; the Moathouse is in the Troll Fens with Nulb a Remote Village on the south-east border of the Fens.

These published settings are for game play. Not for admiring as exhibitions.