Hi to all the new-to-Greyhawk gamers here. As a Greyhawk fan since the 1'st edition of AD&D, I thought I'd share some resources with new DM's who're seeking to explore beyond the amazing new Dungeon Master's Guide focus on Greyhawk City and the wider world of Oerth.
Greyhawk Online - A searchable wiki with details on most Greyhawk Topics. Continually updated.
Cannonfire - A site with speculation, discussion, lore and stories about the World Of Greyhawk
Drivethru RPG - A good place to buy and download PDFs of older Greyhawk material, including sourcebooks and adventures that can be converted to the new rules
DM's Guild- now open for Greyhawk content (beware, some content is AI generated junk or plagiarism)
New- The Oerth Journal - a fan maintained semi regular journal with Greyhawk content. Free and of exceptional quality
If you have any questions about Greyhawk, historical adventures, settings, changes made by the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, or just want to talk Greyhawk, drop a comment. Any suggestions for more resources can be added to the top of the thread.
Internet archives should have Iquander's old site saved and the entire history of Greyhawk Gazateers, too.
For those who don't know, Iquander was THE Greyhawk expert. Most know him as Eric Mona. He established and outlined the RPGA's 3.0 (and then 3.5) shared campaign setting of Greyhawk, but was removed from that position when WotC sold the magazines to Paizo, because his primary job was editor for the magazines.
And for those used to the newer settings, Greyhawk may seem more of a shell, with less detail provided. That's because detail was created as the players needed it, not before. General material about everywhere is in place, but details? HAVE FUN.
Greyhawk has a lot to recommend it as a setting. My biggest personal gripe is, I loathe most of the names. Gygax loved his homophones and anagrams, and I...do not love that at all.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I've restarted D&D after a long break and I was wondering, has the 2024 retcon'd some of the previous Greyhawk lore? Its gone back to 576 CY and some of the ruler names etc seem to different from the older sources. Is that correct? Do we know if WotC are planning on expanding Greyhawk in future supplements?
1) Quite a bit of the olde Greyhawk lore came from Iquander's Oerth Journal and exists outside of TSR/WotC/Hasbro's intellectual property rights. So they can't use it without making agreements and financial arrangements with everyone who contributed to those articles. Finding those people, not just paying for licensing to use the material, is an expense Hasbro doesn't want to pay.
2) I know that I don't know, but memory tells me the last time WotC pushed Greyhawk forward they published one book whose primary purpose was to rewrite Greyhawk lore to remove almost all of the bigotry in the setting. Humans living in the Gnarly Forest who didn't trust any outsiders, even other humans, suddenly didn't care so much and embraced non-human sentients who wanted to be their neighbors, for example. I'm expecting this "implementation" of Greyhawk to be another "fire and forget" exercise.
WOTC did publish "Scions Of Elemental Evil" so it's likely they're going to dip into the setting from time to time, but I think the days of large scale supplement releases like we saw for Planescape and Forgotten Realms in 2-3E are over. Also we're lacking Dungeon Magazine, which was a great source for setting specific adventures even in 4E.
That said, I like the idea of starting fresh and making Oerth your own, and doing whatever you want with the setting instead of piling on events that have to happen. It's a nice base setting in the preGH wars with lots of potential. The post wars Oerth might be a little too complex for a new DM.
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Hi to all the new-to-Greyhawk gamers here. As a Greyhawk fan since the 1'st edition of AD&D, I thought I'd share some resources with new DM's who're seeking to explore beyond the amazing new Dungeon Master's Guide focus on Greyhawk City and the wider world of Oerth.
Greyhawk Online - A searchable wiki with details on most Greyhawk Topics. Continually updated.
Cannonfire - A site with speculation, discussion, lore and stories about the World Of Greyhawk
Drivethru RPG - A good place to buy and download PDFs of older Greyhawk material, including sourcebooks and adventures that can be converted to the new rules
Paizo's Dungeon Magazine archive - Multiple Greyhawk based Adventure Paths that can be converted
DM's Guild - now open for Greyhawk content (beware, some content is AI generated junk or plagiarism)
New- The Oerth Journal - a fan maintained semi regular journal with Greyhawk content. Free and of exceptional quality
If you have any questions about Greyhawk, historical adventures, settings, changes made by the new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide, or just want to talk Greyhawk, drop a comment. Any suggestions for more resources can be added to the top of the thread.
Internet archives should have Iquander's old site saved and the entire history of Greyhawk Gazateers, too.
For those who don't know, Iquander was THE Greyhawk expert. Most know him as Eric Mona. He established and outlined the RPGA's 3.0 (and then 3.5) shared campaign setting of Greyhawk, but was removed from that position when WotC sold the magazines to Paizo, because his primary job was editor for the magazines.
And for those used to the newer settings, Greyhawk may seem more of a shell, with less detail provided. That's because detail was created as the players needed it, not before. General material about everywhere is in place, but details? HAVE FUN.
Greyhawk has a lot to recommend it as a setting. My biggest personal gripe is, I loathe most of the names. Gygax loved his homophones and anagrams, and I...do not love that at all.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I've restarted D&D after a long break and I was wondering, has the 2024 retcon'd some of the previous Greyhawk lore? Its gone back to 576 CY and some of the ruler names etc seem to different from the older sources. Is that correct? Do we know if WotC are planning on expanding Greyhawk in future supplements?
1) Quite a bit of the olde Greyhawk lore came from Iquander's Oerth Journal and exists outside of TSR/WotC/Hasbro's intellectual property rights. So they can't use it without making agreements and financial arrangements with everyone who contributed to those articles. Finding those people, not just paying for licensing to use the material, is an expense Hasbro doesn't want to pay.
2) I know that I don't know, but memory tells me the last time WotC pushed Greyhawk forward they published one book whose primary purpose was to rewrite Greyhawk lore to remove almost all of the bigotry in the setting. Humans living in the Gnarly Forest who didn't trust any outsiders, even other humans, suddenly didn't care so much and embraced non-human sentients who wanted to be their neighbors, for example. I'm expecting this "implementation" of Greyhawk to be another "fire and forget" exercise.
WOTC did publish "Scions Of Elemental Evil" so it's likely they're going to dip into the setting from time to time, but I think the days of large scale supplement releases like we saw for Planescape and Forgotten Realms in 2-3E are over. Also we're lacking Dungeon Magazine, which was a great source for setting specific adventures even in 4E.
That said, I like the idea of starting fresh and making Oerth your own, and doing whatever you want with the setting instead of piling on events that have to happen. It's a nice base setting in the preGH wars with lots of potential. The post wars Oerth might be a little too complex for a new DM.