Greyhawk vs Other Settings
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- Опубліковано 20 лип 2024
- I take a look at what distinguishes Greyhawk from other D&D settings, especially the Forgotten Realms.
0:00 What's today's video about?
0:34 Non-Realms settings
4:20 Forgotten Realms
13:07 Thanks
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#Greyhawk #D&D #OSR #DnD - Ігри
Greyhawk is definitelly a sword & sorcery scenario. Being more human centered with not-so-high magic makes it more 'old school D&D' imo. Forgotten Realms is to over the top magic, with a diverse array of species walking down the streets, like a medieval Star Wars.
I agree and it was always my setting to compare with anything new: Golarion, FR, Midland of Low Fantasy Gaming... It suits my taste of how I see a World of D&D. FR ruinned that. Same with 5e color full books and they Zoo Ancestry.
Forgotten Realms (the 1st Edition 1987 box) was not that. It was a near-Tolkien setting, with fading elves and defeated dwarves. But yes, from 2e onward it only got worse. Now it IS the Mos Eisley Cantina...
I've been playing in Greyhawk since 1980, and it is still my favorite setting.
Yes!
@diegoborges3716 Considering that all the super powerfull wizards like Mordenkainen, Melf, Tenser, Otiluke and Bigby originate from Greyhawk I'd say it is quite the stretch to describe the setting as not-so-high-magic.
As a matter of fact: There are no low fantasy settings for D&D. Ravenloft is as close as it gets to that.
For comparison: A low fantasy setting is the world of Conan. Magic exists, but most people rarely if ever come into contact with magic or magical creatures (which include elves and dwarves by the way).
@@HH-hd7nd it is not so high comparing to FR. I know Oerth had some huge magical events, like the Invoked Devastation. And, of course, we have the Circle of Eight. But isn't like you could find Mordekainen in the corner.
Honestly with the current writers at Wizards, I don't want them touching anything remotely Greyhawk.
I'd rather the worst of Living Greyhawk 10x over than anything they produce.
GH fans have definitely dodged a bullet.
Kinda glad WotC has left the Mystara setting alone too, at least to my knowlege
The forgotten realms feels very top down: start with the gods, nations cultures, magic, realms, history and everything has to line up. Greyhawk feels bottom up where small things pop up and might not relate to each other but instead just sit apart doing their own thing
I like both settings, but I prefer Greyhawk. Greyhawk feels like it was designed so that it had space for the GM to make it their own. It also has a more pulpy feel.
FR feels more polished and it's something you play *in", but doesn't quite feel like you are a partner in its design.
Grey hawk is what I aim, FR however keeps turning up despite my efforts!
Agreed!
I always preferred Greyhawk because it leaves more space for me to create the local environments I need.
Agreed. You added a town in the Realms and someone would start screaming it wasn’t logical for that place/time.
With Greyhawk you had space. Space to improvise.
Exactly. It has enough lore and background material but it is definitely wide open to allow the DM to shape and fill as desired.
I feel the same although I tend to want to make my work harder because I like making my own worlds. ;). Homebrew ❤
This is also a strength of Mystara/The Known World IMO. There are well-defined realms but many miles of wilderness and "grey areas" at the outer edges of them where a creative DM can elaborate and modify the setting. Goes double for Hollow Earth, the mirror of the setting.
In FR you can mix vanilla with vanilla bean. And the thousands of 15th plus level heroes running around gets old pretty fast.
I've always liked the size (physical) and scope of Greyhawk. I could have an idea in my head for a campaign, pick a nation/region where it works, and go with it. I never had that feeling in FR, Arcanis, DL, or other settings -- even if I enjoyed them. Even FR felt more like a story and so many modules revisited the same cities and area. It was more like fitting yourself in a book rather than having a nice overview but able to do your own thing.
I think this was best illustrated in the Living Campaigns. Living Greyhawk immediately divided it's world into regions -- managed by actual regions of the world (based on language, interest, population, etc.) As such, you'd read modules written for the Duchy of Urnst and it would have its own feel. Likewise, go play in the Perrenland, it it had its own thing (key NPCs, leadership issues, plotlines, etc.) Plus they had 'generic' ones in the unaligned areas such as Greyhawk itself. Meanwhile, Living City (set in FR) did none of that. It was just random modules most of which set in the same city with generic NPCs, lots of "book" references, etc. Everything felt generic, like you were playing the same big MMO. In Greyhawk, each region had its own thing.
In a home campaign setting, I still like Greyhawk better both because when you pick a starting area, you have more freedom and because your players also get to experience that setting at the same time. If you start them in Ratik and tell them their are viking-like raiders to the north and an collapsed evil empire to the south... that's all they need to know and you can go with it.
I also think a major difference between the two is how involved deities get in the affairs of mortals.
In FR, there are a LOT of deity-related events. From the Time of Troubles to the narratives from the original Baldur's Gate video games, and beyond.
In Greyhawk, major deities appear to be far less interested. Instead, you get demi-gods (like Iuz). But for the most part, the "greater powers" stay out of the picture and let their followers work it out.
There is an agreement with the Gods not to directly interfere in Greyhawk with the exceptions being "Iuz the Old" since it is his native plane and "St. Cuthbert" whose exception was never explained. Clerics act as their Gods' direct emissaries.
In one of "Gord the Rouge" books "Nerull the Reaper" was walking about the plane concerning the artifact known as the Theorpart the key to freeing Tharizdun.
When done well Iuz comes across as a lesser Sauron, which seems to be his place. And Cuthbert really sould have an "out to lunch, be back at 1:30" sign on his churches.
@@Netseer2000 An old Dragon Mag article had mention of at least one notable incident of a Hextor avatar, but it took one of his high level followers sacrificing himself to possession to do it, and was still only temporary.
Greyhawk is certainly the more 'old school' setting in that it's low(er)-magic than Toril or Krynn, and it feels like low-level adventurers can have a real impact, at least locally.
Kara Tur, Al Quadim, Red Steel, Mystara, Hollow World, Maztica, Odyssey, so many campaign worlds WotC dropped. They even did collabs with Lankhmar and Hyperboria. For me Greyhawk remains the point of reference where all the original modules fit and where Gary Gygax and Rose Estes' novels happened.
I love the Lankhmar modules in particular. I use them a lot to flesh out my own City of Greyhawk.
Greyhawk is a barebones setting. Mystara is unique and filled out a lot more. Forgotten Realms is a combination of both to the extreme. Plus the kitchen sink.
I think the closest to Greyhawk might be Mystara/Blackmoor...and to be fair, my understanding of Gygax and Arneson's original plans for D&D would have Castle Greyhawk, Castle Blackmoor, the dungeon I made, the dungeon you made, and the dungeon of Jimmy down the street would be on the same world, with the Dungeon Master just being in charge of the Dungeon and maybe a few leagues around it.
Even then, Mystara bases a lot of it's civilisations on Real-world civilisations and extrapolates how they'd develop magic and interact, while Greyhawk seems to borrow more from extant fantasy.
Spelljammer ain't a setting. It's Amtrak for DMs who bought too many setting-specific products he or she wants to run. :-)
WotC won't touch Greyhawk because, unlike the Remembered Lands, not every area has proportional representation of every race (I guess theyre using ancestry now?), cataclysmic events don't happen every six minutes, and not everyone and their mother knows at least six 10th level heroes that have saved the day multiple times.
WotC leaving Greyhawk behind was probably the best thing they could do for the setting. Just like Birthright, Darksun, and Mystara.
KEEP GREYHAWK ALIVE!
Greyhawks’ population is also extremely low and the geography is larger so you have more space to work with
I noticed when you have low pop and run old modules, the old school feel returns.
Mystara is my setting. I respect Greyhawk. I have zero use for or interest in the other settings you mentioned.
More research is needed, but I think you may be wrong about Greyhawk being the first sci-fi-fantasy mix. I think that first appeared in Temple of the Frog from the Blackmoor book, 1975, by Dave Arneson. Blackmoor was set in the "first fantasy campaign" world, which predates D&D, and in the 1980s is revealed to be the world of Mystara in an ancient age. I am more familiar with the DA series of modules than I am with the original edition books.
Love the videos :)
In the end, I'm glad Forgotten Realms supplanted Greyhawk as the default setting. Grey box FR was good and Ed Greenwood's contributions are staggering. But FR became a victim of it's own success. It got overdeveloped and now you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an arch-mage. If that degree of development happened to Greyhawk, I don't think I'd think I'd feel the same about it.
100% this.
What about Mystara/Known World? :) I think Greyhawk feels more authentic/verisimilar than the more "artificial" Mystara. But it has awesome gazetteers.
That was my favorite back in the day.
@@kmaguire7161It's my favourite now - of the various D&D settings that have come out over the years, it's the one that I feel aged best (with the exception of a couple of gazetteers that were kinda clumsy, and Darokin being incredibly boring by virtue of being an unambiguously successful capitalist utopia with absolutely no internal problems or external threats).
I really like how the conflict between the shadow elves and the surface elves is a political one, rather than having one side just be unambiguous villains. In fact the majority of conflicts are political rather than the typical good vs evil that's often seen in other settings, and I find that quite refreshing. The fact that the setting also has floating islands and airships is just icing on top of an already delicious cake.
For Keoland!!
I always thought Keoland the laziest title of all the 'realms' in Greyhawk. Just call it Oakland and be done with it. :P
@@FabioBittar I'm pretty sure it was named after the late Don Kaye, who co-founded TSR with Gary Gygax.
No. Keoland is named after EGG's childhood friend, Tom Keogh.@@GreyhawkGrognard
@@jasonjacobson1157 Yes! I knew it was someone like that.
Ah, the glorious times when Greyhawk & Mystara existed together like brothers, one of Gygaxian & the other of Arnesonian D&D.
I value your perspective so much. Lots of great comments here as well. I love our hobby!
Greyhawk is a fine vintage wine. Forgotten Realms is bud light.
I actually agree with everything you said, Joe. 🙂Greyhawk has always been "it's own thing", which does not mean to say the other settings are unworthy of consideration. Yet it always seemed to me that WotC thumbs it's nose at the World of Greyhawk just for petty reasons. Every role playing game (and RPG video game) on earth, especially the various D&D game settings, owe a debt to Gary Gygax that few of them will ever admit to.
I'm currently hacking Greyhawk (mostly using the boxed set) for Shadowdark, and it's looking to be a great fit. A much pulpier and grittier setting than FR, with plenty of room for DM tweaking, and no high-level NPCs that are inextricably woven into the setting to muck things up (looking at you, Elminster and Harpers). I can't wait to run it.
Hey Thanks Man!
What IF... GreyHawk was left undeveloped for danm good reason? They picked FR to develop because... and they left similar GH precisely because it would allow players to go in any direction whilst DM can draw from ideas of all the more developed worlds. It's a GIFT :) Surprise, haha!!
I started with 3e Greyhawk and I kinda prefer it. There's a few things like Waterdeep & The Mad Mage that's in Faerun but the setting of Greyhawk caught my attention.
I have a fondness for Greyhawk. When I started my first AD&D campaign in high school, I picked up a copy of World of Greyhawk - the one that came in the large folder. At first, I didn't read through it in great detail but it gave me a sense of security. I made up a lot of my own stuff and then when I was stuck, I might look at WoG for guidance. I've tried other published worlds and also started my own world but I still favor Greyhawk. Perhaps it is for the reasons that you cite.
Greyhawk has a feel that draws from the pulps and other stories of Gygax's youth. While I don't in any way say Greenwood wasn't influenced by those, I suspect they were part of Oerth's DNA, as it were, in a way they were not in the Realms: the Realms seemed more influenced by the fantasy of the 70s. I think that's where the vibes differ.
Two points: (1) What I love best about Greyhawk is all the history of which countries were part of what others, were part of what others, etc. And... who owes fealty to whom. Let's say you start in Hommlet. You may not care about the history. But, if you do, it's something like this: Hommlet is in the Viscounty of Verbonce, which owes fealty to the Prelacy of Veluna, which, at one point, was part of the Kingdom of Keoland, until they won their independence. If memory serves, the traditional religion of Hommlet is Druidism (got a love it! Any neutral character can be member of the Old Faith), but the Viscount has been pushing the Church of Cuthbert, because the Prelacy is pushing the Viscount, partly because the Prelacy wants a lawful good stronghold against the Temple of Elemental Evil, but probably also just because Veluna wouldn't mind terribly if their lawful good religion took over vs the Old Faith of the Druids. Now, that's background! I love it!
(2) IMO, Greyhawk has three main themes: sword and sorcery, Tolkien-esque epic fantasy, and Edgar Rice Boroughs-ish / King Kong-ish exploration adventure. The eastern area, where all the parts that used to be the Great Kingdom are, the crumbling Great Kingdom itself, and the Iron League, feel sword and sorcery to me. In sword and sorcery, the world's a bad place, and, if Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser help you, you'll take it. Everyone who theoretically owes fealty to the Overking is a nasty SOB. It's an area where heroes define themselves against the world. Ditto for the barbarian lands of the NE.
In areas like Hommlet, the Grand Dutchy of Geoff, and anywhere threatened by Iuz, you get more of the epic fantasy, ala Tolkien and his imitators (like Willow and countless JRPG's). I could very easily imagine some kids from the sticks in Hommlet rising to the occasion to save their world from the demoness of the Temple of Elemental Evil and, as a sequel, rescuing the world again from the Drow and the giants who work for them, and then finally contfronting Iuz in the final part of the trilogy.
Other places like the Sind Desert or the Savage Coast are good settings for the bushwacking adventurers in search of treasure in ancient ruins.
What I want in an TTRPG setting is a place to put my adventures and develop my campaign. It doesn't need to be a place where anything is supposed to happen. In fact, it shouldn't be. It should be a place where anything can happen, and that's exactly what Greyhawk is.
Thanks for the the video! I think WotC / Hasbro feel, and have always felt, that GH is the setting of the fans. I think that is why we got Living GH. I think doing a GH product in-house post-TSR is the third rail of D&D and they know it. Plus, there's a lot to learn about GH before one can do something in GH, and that might be too much like work for them. Sure, there are folks out there like yourself or Erik Mona who could probably tackle it but there would still be a large swath of people who would reject any interpretation of GH that wasn't exactly to their own specs. Personally, I have been a homebrewer since 1974 and while my own setting can never have the same depth as GH, since I am a lone creator, it still is my own baby.
Ignoring all the written adventures, the atlas by Anna B Meyer sells Flanaess. Looking around just Hommlet, the villages are close together, towns are nicely spread and cities few and far between. The whole map is just playable.
I was heavily influenced by Greyhawk in designing the universe we use. But then, I also grew up with the idea of a mish-mash. I had lots of toy soldiers, and they were from all kinds of settings: cowboys, Indians, knights, Anglo-Saxons, vikings, astronauts, etc. I made up all kinds of scenarios to explain why they were all in my battles that I set up. I think that influenced my universe pretty strongly, as I have different groups of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Hobgoblins, different ecosystems on different continents, with different cultures and levels of technology, and they all got there due to manipulation of time and space by psionic species, who then fought amongst themselves until they were finally defeated and annihilated by all of the aforementioned groups (and more), using magic and the power of their gods, who had gained power due to the increased numbers of worshippers. Anyway, I've made this post TL:DR for most people. As usual, another great analysis and video. Have a great day!
Love the creativity!
Thank you!@@danielgoldberg5357
The Abbernoth campaign for Castles and Crusades has a VERY Greyhawkian feel to it as well as the map; color that thing and throw it on a hex map and you have that Darleen feel all over again.
One of the reasons I don't use some of the later Greyhawk stuff was that it tried to become more "uniform" by having Iuz, the Scarlet Brotherhood, Tharizdun, and Vecna (really redundant when you have a Tharizdun) behind most everything.
I think you really hit it on the head, the difference between Greyhawk and The Realms. To be honest, the Earth WE live in is a generalist setting. It also jibes with your video of why there are no epic fantasy, "save the world" campaigns in Greyhawk. I always wondered what it was exactly that I didn't like about the "Greyhawk Wars" and "From the Ashes" direction that TSR/WOTC took Greyhawk after Gary left, and this video finally makes it clear in my mind - they tried to homogenize Greyhawk and make the whole thing into one epic fantasy story, which completely misses and ruins the generalist feel. Great video!
Excellent point about the Greyhawk Wars and From the Ashes. Neither of which ever occurred in our version of Greyhawk. 🙂
Just started watching your channel. I like your enthusiasm for the setting.
Do you feel that the subsettings of Forgotten Realms (those set on Toril: Kara-Tur, Maztica, Al-Qadim & The Horde) also have the same Ed Greenwood feel? Especially Kara-Tur which 1st appeared in Oriental Adventures (as a kid my friends and I Ioved this book) which lists Gary Gygax as a an author. In your opinion did Kara-Tur end up with an overall Ed Greenwood feel because of the later material?
When Oriental Adventures it was in the GH but was moved to FR. This was a long time ago and my memory is foggy but in Dragon Magazine a map expansion to GH which had oriental counties equivalent to Wa and Shou Lung.
@@Netseer2000 Well, occidental because GH's "Eurasia" is flipped.
As the Gygax estate has loosened its grip, I've been really reconsidering my OSR products of choice. I've always liked Castles and Crusades, but the possibility of the Trolls being the new home of post-Greyhawk Greyhawk is making me weigh my particular vehicle of play...
Greyhawk kinda invented 'vanilla fantasy D&D', and rightfully so. I never liked (until the last 20 years, LOL) the Forgotten Realms because of Greenwood's overly verbose caulking of every nook and cranny of creativity - whereas Gygax left room to innovate. The original Baldur's Gate games sort of changed my opinion in a way that Pools of Radiance did not (though I like them more now than as a 14 year old D&D geek). I have a love for the Forgotten Realms when I don't have to DM it or deal with sycophantic fanboys arguing about minute details of Drizzt and his relationship to Icewind Dale and specific timelines. Ugh. I hate that stuff, and I'd never run Forgotten Realms without the disclaimer that I'd use nothing after 1989 or something...
Greyhawk is comfortable, like a pair of slippers that are broken in. Any research I do feels organic, like someone presenting an idea - not a thesis on the evolution of slang or particular trade avenues that operate at specific intervals of seasonal weather conditions. I remember hating Greenwood's Ecology articles in Dragon because they felt like they were pigeonholing monsters into HIS view, whereas Gygax always left me room for 'what if?'
The infinite minutiae of the Forgotten Realms was what turned me off from ever trying to absorb any of it. I did it for other settings - Ravenloft or Kalamar in particular - but the endless prose and fiction written - AS CANON - in Greenwood's masterpiece (yes, I admire it) really, really turned me off from ever running anything in it.
T1 remains my favorite TSR module for a lot of reasons...
The Forgotten Realms has become emblematic of everything I hate about modern D&D. Everything and everyone is now over-the-top fantastical... therefore nothing and no one is over-the-top fantastical because that's now the baseline and you can't push the envelope any farther. Makes one want to roll a male human fighter just out of sheer spite and defiance.
I remember a sense of wonder when the Myth Drannor box set came out decades ago, because the fantastical overabundance of magic in this one location rife with so much danger should you go for it still maintained a balance. Since it came out, though, everybody has mythals, mythilars, the Netherese came back, we've gone through 3 Mystra's, and death no longer has consequences. Screw it.
The 1987 1e grey box set was really good, however. The elves had all but left (a la Tolkien), the dwarves had most of their kingdoms destroyed, and the Sword Coast was mostly a wide open sandbox. The FR5 Savage Frontier was a great addition to it. From 2e on, however, it got more and more over the top, and now is what we despise.
The Forgotten Realms is based on Tolkien and Lewis
Greyhawk is based on Howard and Moorcock
That’s a little harsh to Tolkien as magic has limits there, don’t know enough about Lewis to compare!
Forgotten Realms is based on vanilla ice cream and white brand potato chips.
Greyhawk is based on the plastic toy collection of an 8-year old in the 60's.
1e box set was VERY Tolkienesque (fading elves fleeing, destroyed dwarf realms), plus it was a bare bones write up, allowing for lots of open space.
Brilliantly stated! Thank you very much.
You were right to characterize FR as heavy-handed, because Greenwood frequently used his beloved NPCs to overshadow PCs in both adventure modules and in the setting books. I've grown to hate it the more it's developed.
All must bow and pay homage to the Great Elminster!
@@lastedain450 LOL don't get me started on the Avatar adventures!
@@stephenclements6158 Weren't those mostly Denning though?
@@DIEGhostfish so the novels were not Greenwood, but the modules where you could play through the stories were Greenwood. In reading his other modules, it's the same problem, the NPCs WILL be cooler than the PCs.
I was thought of greyhawk as a bit of horror in it. I think forgotten realms is more shiny and colourful. Maybe because of luz and the lack of description that brings this horror/mystery feel
The fog of war can be very strong. For example there's always a slightly spooky feel when I read some of the older warcraft novels despite all my time in WoW, because I know they predated it, so somehow my brain brings back the mystery around ti. Mostly Jeff Grubb's "The Last Guardian." Yeah the one who also did some early dnd stuff for various settings.
Ahhh....poor Mystara is always forgotten which is sad because I like that setting. I started playing D&D with Basic D&D back in the 80ties and Mystara is the default setting of that version. It's also sad because in a way Mystara is the oldest D&D setting because of Blackmoor (Blackmoor was the first setting used before Gary Gygax developed the Greyhawk setting; it was later included as a setting in the distant past of Mystara).
Realms is not just European settings btw - Maztica, Al'qadim and Kara Tur are also part of the Forgotten Realms setting (though not detailed in the basic boxes and books). The feeling of these parts of the setting is very different from the "normal" Forgotten Realms.
Greyhawk is an excellent setting. There was a glimpse of hope when WotC 3e revisted Greyhawk at their main setting.
Joseph is doing a great job to keep Greyhawk relevant and interesting with new materials and videos! If it was of him, that setting would be left to shelf and digital archive...
Is Greyhawk only known by players from the '70-90 era? I wonder...
Much as I appreciate the praise, I can't take nearly as much credit as you give. There are several channels here on YT, and a lot of fan groups on social media that are keeping the banners flying.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I like your adventures set in Greyhawk, I have not seen many designers doing that :).
do you have recommandations of YT channels?
@@patrickgaron1728 Just off the top of my head, Lord Gosumba's channel stands out.
I didn't quite realize what Greyhawk WAS when I started in 3.5 since unless you were doing Living Greyhawk stuff, the actual setting details were so scant.
I think that's spot-on; Grehawk became an amalgamation of fantasy settings by adding stuff in, where the Forgotten Realms became an amalgamation of fantasy settings by fitting stuff together. Which means that the more Greyhawk grew, the more varied it became - whereas the more the Forgotten Realms grew, the more _consistent_ it became, as its established patterns were reinforced (and reinforced themselves) over a larger and larger space.
I have always loved both the Greyhawk and the FR settings. To me they are both the best of what I love.
One big difference for me is that the world in general seems to take center-stage. While the dieties of Greyhawk are quite cool and interestingly unique, I love how their sphere of influence seems to be more nuanced than with other settings. I really like the execution of the Quasi-dieties and their influence over their specified domains. The world seems like it has an order but that part of that order, is a lingering chaos, that without it, the order of everything else might be broken. "Expecting the unexpected" in Greyhawk, indeed takes on a whole new meaning and I love that about it over other settings.
Let me qualify myself by saying most of my Forgotten Realms knowledge is from the 5e era, where the setting’s ‘rough edges’ have been kind of sanded down, and some elements have become homogenized due to the corporate desire to make the setting appeal to as many people as possible.
When I look at Greyhawk, it looks like a sort of desaturated, almost sepia-tone version of the Forgotten Realms. The magic isn’t as high, it’s more humanocentric, it’s more medieval fantasy compared to Forgotten Realms. The forgotten realms feels extremely vibrant in the broad strokes of weird magic, the laundry list of vibrant and weird races walking around, and the gradual lean into more steampunk/runepunk with magitech becoming a little more common in larger cities and stuff like that.
That said, I know very little about Greyhawk outside of the fact that the Sword and Sorcery OSR people really love how ‘normal’ it is, and how humanocentric it is, and that it doesn’t have things like dragon men and cat people wandering about the place willy nilly. I don’t know what ‘interesting’ (by my metric, but I’m a weird furry that likes the idea of dragonborn spellswords and ardling warlocks and whatever running around all over) things are in Greyhawk. My only real exposure to it was in D&D 3.0/3.5’s core book, where I think Greyhawk was the ‘assumed setting’ included, with greyhawk gods for the clerics and etc. So don’t take this opinion as gospel.
Hence… your Podcast. I concur.
Greyhawk and Blackmoor were the originals (along with Tekumel - sure I massacred that). Never liked the power gaming feel of FR (city guards with magic weapons - seriously?). All the others feel like poor cousins compared to Greyhawk. Almost forced in trying to be as difficult as possible from the originals - but just coming off as weak imitations and warped shadows of their sire. Greyhawk rules.
For me, Greyhawk is in the middle of the scale where one end is the clean and shiny Forgotten Realms and the other is the blood, mud & suffering Warhammer Fantasy.
I think you are spot on for WOTC 2015. WOTC 2024 wont touch Greyhawk now because:
* Gygax is seen as some kind of monster by the Twitter-nazis. And WOTC likes to align with the Twitter crowd.
* Greyhawk is the most medieval of the settings and hence has a lot of Christianity in its DNA. Again, persona non-grata for modern WOTC.
Ha, not only Gygax. They try to tar and feather any old dm from back in the day that likes swords and breasts as a natzeeee.
So I get out the caryatid columns (fiend folio).
@@The_Custos for sure. I’ve been playing since 1980 and 99% of that time is as a DM.
@@solomani5959 hell yeah. Ran horror on the hill last night. First session on the hill.
I don't know much about Greyhawk but FR is very much my least favorite campaign setting, unless wrangled in by a strong willed DM the setting is clumsy and hard to present as a non-generic pick your flavor of fantasy type of setting. It tries so hard to be everything it ends up being nothing. No strong themes or aesthetic, just the most lackluster corporate boardroom super-safe fantasy possible.
I think that they probably couldve used either setting as their "main" setting and chose forgotten realms because Ed's still around making licensing easier
For me personally, Greyhawk is the best setting. My adventure began with the 3rd edition (Living Greyhawk), and I would like to return to that setting in OSR. Do you think it's a good source of information, or is it better to rely on older handbooks?
How would you compare it to Known World\Mystara then? As that to me has always seemed to have that patchwork approach, taken ti the extreme of being a bit incoherent.
It's funny you assert that the Forgotten Realms feels more homogenous than Greyhawk due to the "heavy hand of Ed Greenwood", when ironically the shift from Greyhawk to the Realms could largely be contracted to Gygax's own firm meddling in Greyhawk's development. Whilst obviously there are other factors, namely the big push to expel Gygax from TSR in 2nd edition, a fairly major reason why the Realms came to dominate over the course of 2nd edition was that Greenwood was very willing to both expand the setting for audience consumption and let others play in his pool - Kara-tur started as a Greyhawk expansion in 1e, whilst the Moonshae Isles, Al-Qadim and Maxtica were all originally meant to be independent settings, but when TSR decided they'd probably get more of a boost by being pitched as Realms expansions, Greenwood let them do it. Even if he did complain that Maztica in particular was a bad idea because its tone was completely different to the wider Realms'. In comparison, Gygax released Oerthian content as slowly and miserly as possible, because he was still actively gaming in the setting and he was afraid that his players would exploit his writings.
Honestly, it's sad but fascinating to see how the original four big settings of Mystara, Greyhawk, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms fell. Mystara was held back by being shackled to the Basic D&D line, which fans largely ignored in preference of Advanced D&D, which had better marketed and greater flexibility. Greyhawk was held back by Gygax's reluctance to expand the world himself, and then by his war with the other heads of TSR, resulting in it being deliberately downplayed. Dragonlance was held back by its tight connection to both Weiss & Hickman and to the novels as a whole, which held up the setting's sourcebooks and left players feeling largely superfluous. For all its flaws, the Realms gave players more freedom to play with, and so it snuck ahead.
I will say that the homogenity of the Realms is, to me, more of a 5e issue, caused by the desperate drive by modern "writers" to create a pseudo-modernistic, politically inoffensive world. And I say this as somebody who is sick of humanocentrism. If the Realms are bland and samey now, it's because writers are more concerned with getting social media brownie points (and/or scared of being cancelled) than with creating a world that actually feels diverse.
But what do I know? I prefer the Nentir Vale and wouldn't give you two bob for anything WotC has written since Curse of Strahd and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.
Slay, King.
I feel very much the same. The 1e Forgotten Realms certainly does not suffer from "sparkle troll" inserts which have corporately ruined 3rd edition and beyond.
I tend to think the Forgotten realms "cohesion" works in its favor. The more plausible the setting is, the more I believe the focus is on the "story" being told. Not the individual players - but the experience all of the players create (and the reverberations of their actions changing the world bit by bit). That should take center stage. While climbing a great mountain and looking over the summit for the first time...to find a crash-landed space ship was very on-theme in the late 70's and 80's, it breaks the 4th wall a bit too much for me. The "Hey look we're doing that thing," snapshot-in-time cultural reference moments are well and good for those that enjoy them, but I see them as disruptive to people that want a gritty fantasy epic to game in.
Forgotten Realms has been that font of authentic fantasy for me. It doesn't make sense to have a big dungeon that everyone knows about but no one of note has done anything about, particularly when a handful of PC's proves they are up for the job. So no one else in the history of ever was up for the job? Its little world-inconsistencies like that which are too "gamey" to me and break with the cinematic experience roleplaying can provide. Greater written detail with a higher degree of polish opens up new possibilities like the subtleties of political subterfuge and intrigue, or an all-Underdark campaign that never sees the light of the Faerun sun.
All that said, FR still has its bits of eye-roll, like Waterdeep. But when you showcase the low magic, high adventure small-town countrysides which there are plenty of, you can very much enjoy the smaller scope and scale campaign...with the promise of much higher stakes which lay beyond the horizon.
I like the Forgotten Realms too, but it does feel like Drow all Over the place! 😉
And now half of them aren't even evil. Ridiculous.
@@sunsin1592 And then there's all these Half-Drow!
@@calvanoni5443 I understand rogues hate the Half-Drow, because the latter have a step up on on the cool edgy backstory...
I prefer Greyhawk being left to the fans. I like the way it provides a loose framework and inspiration, but is still vague enough to allow individual DMs to develop.
I've always loved Greyhawk over other settings simply bevause it was the first main world setting and it always felt 'homey' to me.
Each edition has its own setting linked by aesthetics and sometimes mechanics:
BECMI = Mystara
AD&D = Greyhawk
2E = FR
3E = Greyhawk/Eberron
4E = Nentir Vale
5E = FR
So especially for the older settings, one should be mindful of which system to use in which setting. If you're going to run in Mystara, the Rules Cyclopedia is probably a better place to start and then bring in whatever rules from AD&D, etc. as needed.
This may sound like heresy, but I've been running two games in golarion and making them more like Greyhawk. ➕ 😡
Going through old modules, low pop, lowish magic, fighters, rangers, and thieves are common, players really can have sway. High level npcs are not all over the place, far more unstable and dangerous than steady and predictable. Had to take it to Golarion's border realms, but there Into the Unknown fits.
Greyhawk suffers from overlapping with the Forgotten Realms as a default kitchen sink setting for D&D. For better or worse, WotC doesn't really see a benefit from producing Greyhawk content. While there are clearly fans of Greyhawk like Chris Perkins at WotC, the most that they have produced specifically for Greyhawk since 2006 has been a few mentions of Mordenkainen and Bigby, Tasha/Iggwilv's prominence in some adventures, and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I personally feel that they don't want to dilute the Forgotten Realms' brand by making too much Greyhawk stuff.
That being said, at least Greyhawk stuff is still being used. Other settings like Birthright are too niche and others like Dark Sun and Mystara are positively toxic in 2024.
Greyhawk also lacks the massive amount of lore the Forgotten Realms have, making it very well suited to DMs making up lore for whatever area is relevant to their campaign (and Greyhawk's tonal diversity means the DM's made up lore is almost guaranteed to not feel out of place!). I also like that the Flaneass feels analogous to medieval Europe, with major kingdoms, a variety of smaller feudal states and an arabic neighbor. The Forgotten Realms don't really have any region that's quite that.
To me, that's a huge plus. If I was running FR, I'd be constantly afraid I'd be doing something that was contradicted in some novel or module. With Greyhawk, the amount of lore is still managable.
@@GreyhawkGrognard For sure, that makes Greyhawk a great setting for creative DMs. I do like the Forgotten Realms as a player however, because I love reading lore. But then I end up knowing more lore than the DM :/.
@@GreyhawkGrognard as a guy whose played and run Greyhawk since 1980, I just decided to run my B/X game (OSE Advanced Fantasy) in the Realms for the first time ever. I am strictly using the 1987 1e Grey Box and FR5 Savage Frontier (1988). If it wasn't spelled out in those two works, it is up to DM fiat. It is the only way I'd run it.
Dragonborn and Tiefling would fit in Greyhawk just fine. But the Dragonborn would undermine the uniqueness of the Dragonlance setting.
When I first was introduced to AD&D in the mid 80's. As a yound novice DM I was thrilled to have actual locations for the various adventures in the Greyhawk setting. It was very generic to me with little in the way of detail. To be honest in that time I was mostly doing dingeon crawls and my groups had little to no inteteraction with the setting. Later I was introduced to the forgotten realms grey box. I loved the setting..gods...the maps etc. Not to mention the world coming alive in novels. Definitely a Realms fan.
🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉
Greyhawk was first, and wotc wants to get rid of Gray Gygax.
Forgotten Realms ALWAYS felt like a diluted copy of what was already available in Greyhawk. At the time FR was introduced, it seemed as though the apects of Greyhawk that made it full of wonder was presented as mundane and ordinary in FR - which made it instantly boring on every level. It seemed in FR that outcomes were predetermined in favor of heroes destined to win no matter what the threat (ex: Orcus, Tiamat, etc.) Greyhawk very much felt like the world was under constant threat by innumerable demonic lords and their spawn (ex: Lolth, Demogorgon, Grazz't, Orcus, Zuggtmoy, Fraz'Urbluu, Iuz, Saint Kargoth, etc.), many extremely powerful wizards and witches (ex: Mordenkainen, Tenser, and the rest of the Circle of Eight, Iggwilv, etc.), not to mention unreal, nigh unbeatable foes (ex: Vecna, Kaz, Acerak). Every locale and dungeon seemed deadly to degrees never captured in non-Greyhawk settings (Tomb of Horrors, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, even the Lands Beyond the Magic Mirror). I honestly feel nothing in the Forgotten Realms ever compared to Greyhawk.
Greyhawk is probably the weakest of the campaign settings due to the fact it's so generic in it's presentation. It does have some interesting depth like with the region politics but you have to delve pretty deep into the setting to really find anything that makes it stand apart from other settings like Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Dragon Lance, Dark Sun or pretty much any other setting that has been produced by TSR/Wizards. To this day, I am the only person I know that ever ran a Greyhawk campaign long form which I did for about 6 months back in 2005 into 2006 before giving up and realizing it's not that fun of a setting to run. According to several people I know that have played since the early days of D&D, the main reason no one runs Greyhawk is that it's boring and uninteresting and the campaign setting itself gets in the way too much. At best, the map is fun to use but throw away the setting and just make up your own stuff from the map.
Man, are you on the wrong channel.