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

[Parmandur]

I've still got just a few pages to catch up on before I'm current, but I had to stop here.

Because this is factually wrong.

Greyhawk was created as a catchall place to playtest everything in the new game as Gygax was designing (1973) and publishing it (1974).
It wasn't 'til seven years later that the World of Greyhawk folio came out after fans were asking about the names and places mentioned in core source material, catering to a demand. But, the world was not created from whole cloth in 1980. Its creation began in 1973 and grew, changed, and added all the new rules options for years, before the setting was ever even published.

Well,no, excuse the World of Greyhawk is specifically not Gary's home campaign aside from some proper nouns: the original campaign was the Great Lakes region, with Greyhawk being located where Chicago is. The published world was absolutely made as a response to the Judge's Guild making money woth the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

 

[RedSquirrel]

Kara Tur was intended to be Oerth. It got put on Faerun because after Gary's ouster, the intention was to bury Greyhawk and promote the Realms.

This is an urban myth, a repeated and perpetuated inaccuracy having been read somewhere on the internet.

To be clear Gygax was still with the company when Kara-Tur was written.

Kara-Tur was never "intended" to be put in Greyhawk.

Francois Marcela-Froideval was the original author of Oriental Adventures (1e). He submitted a manuscript, and it was advertised in Dragon magazine, in October (#102) and November (#103) of 1985. But it wasn't Kara-Tur and was never called so or referred to that way.

"After this month, your AD&D® game will never be the same again …. ORIENTAL ADVENTURES is here! With official Samurai, Ninja, and Wu-jen character classes, Oriental magic, martial arts, and an expansion of the WORLD OF GREYHAWK™ setting covering the Oriental lands of Oerth, you know it's going to be the hottest item around!"
—
"Previews", Dragon Magazine #103 (November 1985), p.55

Then David "Zeb" Cook was also assigned to edit and write on the work, and (for reason we do not know) instead of working with and expanding the manuscript he had, he scrapped it, and wrote whole new material for Kara-Tur specifically. The material Gygax had approved (and later said he preferred, right here on ENWorld) wasn't used, and by the time Cook's version was submitted, they were so close to publication, they didn't have time to go back and change it.

It had nothing to do with Gary choosing to leave the company, after being relieved of being Chairman.

 

[Faolyn]

What I find interesting is that some of the designers did hint at the actual existence of the previous iterations of the setting (Dominic d'Honaire's cameo in Dementlieu, the domain remnants in Klorr), and at least one domain (Valachan) was written with the idea that it had explicitly been the older version at one point. The final product basically reduced these to Easter eggs in a brand-new setting, of course...

Well, it would be hard to include Valachan without updating it to the point it would be completely unrecognizable. So the best choices would be to either not include it at all or to completely rewrite it from the ground up.

 

[Staffan]

All good points. The issues I have with WotC's treatment of their own IP really don't much apply to Greyhawk. I withdraw my complaint regarding this specific issue.

Well played sir.

Wait... did I just win an argument on the Internet? I didn't think that was possible!

 

[Parmandur]

Wait... did I just win an argument on the Internet? I didn't think that was possible!

You have become too powerful

 

[RedSquirrel]

Well,no, excuse the World of Greyhawk is specifically not Gary's home campaign aside from some proper nouns: the original campaign was the Great Lakes region, with Greyhawk being located where Chicago is. The published world was absolutely made as a response to the Judge's Guild making money woth the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

Of course. Fair point.
But, that's a difference without distinction.

Yes, Gary's home game wasn't the same as the published "World of Greyhawk" folio (or boxed set). And, yes, we know in the earliest days, it had slightly different geography, et al. And no one's debating any of that.

Village of Hommlet, Temple of Elemental Evil, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, et al. were written in very same seven-year window before WoG. It's disingenuous, at best, to make that assertion to make it sound like it somehow wasn't Greyhawk 'til 1980. If that were the case, some of the greatest GH content we've ever had wouldn't be in Greyhawk.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, it would be hard to include Valachan without updating it to the point it would be completely unrecognizable. So the best choices would be to either not include it at all or to completely rewrite it from the ground up.

Not including it would have been better. Better still would have been to do that and also include the new domain that you would then not call Valachan.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Wait... did I just win an argument on the Internet? I didn't think that was possible!

Well, I suppose anything is possible if someone on the internet can convince me I was wrong about something. Please enjoy your well-earned laurels. Your triumph is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

 

[Faolyn]

Not including it would have been better. Better still would have been to do that and also include the new domain that you would then not call Valachan.

Here's where I seriously disagree.

Urik von Kharkov, as had been written, was an animal who had been changed into a human--but not just any human but specifically a Black man--and he was one of a very tiny number of POCs in the setting at the time, and the only one in the Core. And his shtick is that because of his animalistic nature, he rapes and abuses his wives until they either die from their injuries or commit suicide out of despair. While I'm sure that whoever created him specifically didn't intend for anything other than a "one's true nature always comes through" type of story, what they got was pretty much the embodiment of some very racist ideas about Black men and violence that are still believed by far too many people.

WotC obviously couldn't include this as-is. They could whitewash von Kharkov so he's no longer a POC, but that wouldn't be any better (and in a way would be worse, because there aren't many of the darklords they could make not-white in exchange--and anyway, this would also anger the purists). They could tone it down or change it so that he's actually not a horrible husband but his wives are cursed to die anyway, which changes the racism to sexism by turning the fridging the wives. They could just not include the domain but make a new domain that's also cat-themed, and have everyone complain that they should have just included Valachan--and that would leave Valachan open to people who want to write 3pp for the DM's Guild, which doesn't solve the problem at all.

So they did the only thing they could do: rewrite the domain from the ground up. Here's 5e's Valachan. You don't like it? Go grab one of your 2e and 3e books and use that version instead.

 

[Shardstone]

I've still got just a few pages to catch up on before I'm current, but I had to stop here.

Because this is factually wrong.

Greyhawk was created as a catchall place to playtest everything in the new game as Gygax was designing (1973) and publishing it (1974).
It wasn't 'til seven years later that the World of Greyhawk folio came out after fans were asking about the names and places mentioned in core source material, catering to a demand. But, the world was not created from whole cloth in 1980. Its creation began in 1973 and grew, changed, and added all the new rules options for years, before the setting was ever even published.

So what you're telling me is we should all use Greyhawk as a playtest ground for our wild D&D ideas? Bet.