#world of greyhawk

[shaneplays]

Darlene's map (two 33" x 22" posters) for the 1980 World of Greyhawk fantasy setting. Still a beautiful work, in 1980 a hex overlaid, poster-sized, two-part RPG setting map with hand-scripted labels and full color was remarkably advanced for its time. The map is still held in high regard today, along with the artist. The map itself shows only the Flanaess region, as the scope of the entire continent (and the fantasy world of Oerth with more continents) was too large even for this size… a historic entry on Map Monday aka Dungeon Day!!

[rothebear]

Hmmm… I might have overdone it over the years with collecting D&D… what do you think?

[oldschoolfrp]

Game designer Jim Ward has passed away at age 72. He was the author of many early D&D titles and Dragon articles, including Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes for OD&D (1976) and Deities & Demigods for AD&D (1980), both with Rob Kuntz, and the AD&D book Greyhawk Adventures (1988).

He created the first sci-fi RPG, Metamorphosis Alpha (1976), and cowrote the thematically related Gamma World (1978) with Gary Jaquet. Anagrams of his name appear in Greyhawk lore as the mage Drawmij, a member of the Circle of Eight, and the Dramidj Ocean in the far northwest corner of the map.

[disgruntledexplainer]

Leading the way in terms of awards was the much-anticipated Baldur's Gate, a fantasy role-playing game set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons.

-TLDR News Daily

[outeremissary]

The problem with me making an earnest attempt to learn anything about FR is that it inevitably reminds me of how much I like Greyhawk and how good the Greyhawk community resources online can be and how Greyhawk has such a lovely and well developed wiki that is not on Fandom and I could be reading fun myths about hanging the corpse of the god of nature from a tree every winter or something instead of whatever the fuck else I was doing

[vintagerpg]

This is Dwarves (1982), the first of Mayfair’s Role Aids sourcebooks for D&D. It’s a little low rent but it is actually an example of outsiders understanding what early D&D players wanted better than the folks making D&D. The cover says this is an adventure, and there is one, and a bunch of adventure locations, but this is primarily a book of lore.

It’s pretty clear in the table of contents: “Chronology,” “Life in Ostohar,” “Religion,” “The Dwarven Rite” and so on — the book covers the history of dwarves, where they live and how they live in rich detail. We get gods, heroes, an explanation for their enmity with elves. Whereas in D&D at this point the only official knowledge about dwarves was their entry in the Players Handbook, and their entry in the Monster Manual. Noting that lack, the folks at Mayfair decided to fill in all the details they could.

This wasn’t unprecedented at the time. Cults of Prax came out in 1979, detailing the religions of RuneQuest’s various societies, and the Iron Crown’s Middle-earth books flesh out all aspects of the regions they presented. D&D had the World of Greyhawk map folio (1980) that gestures at this sort of worldbuilding without committing. More serious setting material from TSR would appear in the World of Greyhawk box set (1983) and in DL5, which is a sort-of sourcebook for the world of Dragonlance. Neither of these feel quite right in the way that Dwarves does for anyone who has ever read a ’90s era Forgotten Realms sourcebook. Dwarves and the other similar Role Aids sourcebooks nail the recipe that would dominate TSR’s approach to campaign settings and supplemental material from about 1986 until the death of the company. It’s weird!

Doubly so because Dwarves…isn’t really exciting. It’s a pretty conservative approach to dwarves the sticks to the genre clichés. You can only break so much ground at one time, I guess.

[rpgsandbox]

Vecna: Eve of Ruin

WHO WILL SAVE EXISTENCE?

Save existence from annihilation in this epic, multiverse-spanning adventure.

The notorious lich Vecna is weaving a ritual to eliminate good, obliterate the gods, and subjugate all worlds. To stop Vecna before he remakes the universe, the heroes work with three of the multiverse’s most famous archmages, travel to far-flung locales, and rebuild the legendary Rod of Seven Parts.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin is a high-stakes DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure in which the fate of the multiverse hangs in the balance. The heroes begin in the Forgotten Realms® and travel to Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk as they race to save existence from obliteration.  

A DUNGEONS & DRAGONS adventure for characters of levels 10–20. GET AN EXCLUSIVE BONUS ADVENTURE Prepare for the final battle with Vecna: Nest of the Eldritch Eye, a single-session adventure that foreshadows the events in Vecna: Eve of Ruin. This D&D Beyond exclusive releases 4/16 and is available with digital preorder only.  

Vecna: Eve of Ruin, a 256-page hardcover adventure book for 10th to 20th level characters

Double-sided poster map

30+ Terrifying new monsters spawning from all over the multiverse

Detailed character dossiers with exclusive insights into legendary allies who you may recognize from other D&D adventures

D&D Beyond digital copy of Vecna: Eve of Ruin

PREORDER TO UNLOCK:

D&D Beyond access to Vecna: Nest of the Eldritch Eye, starting April 16, 2024

Early access to Vecna: Eve of Ruin on D&D Beyond, starting May 7, 2024

Hardcover – 21 May 2024, from Wizards of the Coast.

[stevespookington]

i couldn't see (you were always right beside me) | 13.5k

Three hours later Steve logged off to get ready for his shift at the hospital. He was several levels higher and had finished the quests in Darkshore with the help of Greyhawk. He also had a friend listed in his friends list. Greyhawk had said that being friends would let them be able to tell when the other was online so they could quest again. Steve really liked the sound of that. He didn’t have many friends his own age. He and Robin basically lived in each other’s pockets at work, but with Robin’s new girlfriend and their sleep schedules, they didn’t end up getting to hang out more than once a week. A new friend sounded really nice, especially given that it was unlikely he would ever get along with his neighbors. The only resident Steve’s age on this floor was the neighbor he hated and that was very unlikely to change anytime soon. OR Steve hated his neighbor. And then Dustin and the other kiddos left for college and Steve signed up for some online game called World of Warcraft. Which was how Steve met a Night Elf druid named Greyhawk.

[lunastrophe]

Drow Lore 🕷️ Drow First Mentioned (1e)

Drow officially became part of DnD universe in 1977, mentioned in Monster Manual by Gary Gygax. Their first description was very brief, presenting them simply as polar opposites of light-loving, good-natured elves from the surface:

Drow: The "Black Elves," or drow, are only legend. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm. The drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are good. Tales picture them as weak fighters but strong magic-users.

In another fragment, it is mentioned that drow might be responsible for creation of the sahuagin:

The tritons, however, are purported to have stated that sahuagin are distantly related to the sea elves, claiming that the drow spawned the sahuagin.

And... nothing more.

Things like the first version of the history of the drow, first proper descriptions of drow abilities and equipment, first descriptions of drow city, mentions of Lolth and her evil cult - all this stuff was published a bit later, in 1978, in several Dungeon Modules for Greyhawk setting.

The World of Greyhawk is also a DnD setting, but different from Forgotten Realms. Basically, it is a part of Realmspace, but on a different planet than Faerûn (Greyhawk - planet Oerth, Forgotten Realms and Faerûn - planet Abeir-Toril). Forgotten Realms setting officially became a thing after 1987.

By the way, the first drow city ever mentioned in official DnD sources was...

...NOT Menzoberranzan 😉

It was Erelhei-Cinlu, located in Greyhawk's Underdark:

[dndhistory]

416. Gary Gygax - WG6: Isle of the Ape (1985)

With the prefix WG6, which means it's a World of Greyhawk module, it's another adventure taken directly from Gary Gygax's game as he explains in the foreword. Interestingly it's a part of the Greyhawk campaign that was never actually played as the original players decided not to go there.

It's always frustrating when a DM sets up an interesting place for players to go and they refuse to do it. The advantage of having your own TTRPG company is that you can then publish that place in a module and sell it, so it wasn't a complete loss. The story as you can imagine from the cover is a straight take on the King Kong and Skull Island story, you get caught in a demiplane in an island where there's a big ape and you need to take your high level party to sort stuff out. 

This is, as is usual with Gygax adventures aimed at high levels, a bit of a meatgrinder, the island is full of powerful monsters which can easily make your characters into paste and a bunch of spells (particularly those dealing with nature and animals) do not work on this demi-plane. Gygax also designed this to be used with Unearthed Arcana, so you need that book to play this. If you are a fan of King Kong, take your players through this and may god rest their souls.

[vixensdungeon]

If there's one thing I'd have to name that kept 4th Edition D&D from reaching its full potential, it's that the Monster Manuals didn't have enough critters from Mystara.

See, before your Eberrons, your Forgotten Realmses, your Dragonslance, and only a bit after the release of the World of Greyhawk Folio, there was a land undreamed of, known then only as the Known World, and later as Mystara. This was the setting of the B/X, BECMI, and Rules Cyclopedia versions of D&D, and oh boy was it bonkers.

The Known World was what settings like Forgotten Realms are accused of being, a mish-mash of lands inspired by disparate real world cultures, with the Scandinavia-inspired Northern Reaches right next to the Arabia-inspired Emirates of Yularuam. There was a whole Hollow Earth thing going on, and ancient scientific civilizations! It's great!

In many ways it lived separate from the other settings, being made for a different version of it for one thing, but also in its selection of monsters. While Dragonlance may have had some restrictions like no orcs, after the Basic and Expert sets the selection of monsters really went in its own direction for the Known World. And it had a bunch of monster books with all sorts of weird creatures not seen in other settings. It didn't converge with the AD&D line until a few sourcebooks were released for 2nd Edition under the name Mystara.

So what does any of this have to do with 4th Edition? I consider 4e, in its structure, the closest inheritor of BECMI. It's split into easily distinguished level tiers (Heroic, Paragon, Epic), it very nearly has the classic three-alignment system of old, and it has a built-in way for player characters to become deities.

So it would be really nice to run a Known World, or Mystara, campaign with 4e rules! But alas, many of the unique critters of the setting have not been seen again, with only some sparse appearences in 3rd Edition.

Sure I've got the classics like goblins and centaurs and hydras, but where are my hutaakans and lupins? Where my fyrsnaca at? And how am I supposed to do this without the trusty sacrol?

"You should homebrew them!" And you should call your dad more often. Say hi from me, and tell him I had a lovely time last night.

[oldschoolfrp]

Ad in Dragon 37, May 1980, for The World of Greyhawk, the original 1-volume folio version with map by Dᴀʀʟᴇɴᴇ, TSR, 1980 (edit: with David Sutherland cover art)

[howtofightwrite]

My character learned to fight with staves and spears, what would it be better for her to take to a “DnD style” dungeon? (The world is similar to DnD world, although the spear is seriously underpowered in the rules)

So, I'm going to start with a couple nitpicks.

As someone with tabletop RPG experience, labeling it as, “D&D world,” is a really weird thing to read. D&D is primarily three distinct things. The rule systems themselves, and at this point we're up to the sixth or seventh major rules iteration. D&D as settings, except you'll almost never hear this one phrased that way. Finally, D&D as branding, which is extraordinarily nebulous, and tends to pick iconography out of the rules or settings. Simply identifying something as D&D could refer to any of these.

Officially, D&D has roughly 20 campaign settings. Any one of those could be categorized broadly as, “a D&D world.” Depending on the edition, the default setting is either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. These are entirely different worlds. Greyhawk is more of the conventional medieval fantasy world, while Forgotten Realms is a setting with mountains (in some cases, literally) of fallen empires, and the world is filled with ancient ruins, in addition to the current civilizations. Both of these are extremely detailed settings with thousands of pages of background lore.

Beyond that, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, Ravnica, Eberron, Spelljammer, and Urban Arcana, all come to mind as official TSR/Wizards of the Coast settings. And it's extremely likely that even players with an extensive familiarity with the ruleset missed at least one of the above names. This isn't even counting a lot of minor settings, or the fact that Planescape and Spelljammer are both multi-world settings, and the fact that a lot of these settings technically cross over. There are Spelljammer ports on Faerun (the main continent of Forgotten Realms), and races native to Planescape (in particular the Tieflings) have become a mainstay of the games, as they wander across the planes, to the point that Planescape's Tieflings and Aasimar exist in Pathfinder.

So, “The D&D world,” doesn't really say much.

With a lot of tabletop RPGs, the setting is analogous to the ruleset. When you're talking about running a Shadowrun campaign, or a Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle, those are specific worlds. The biggest ambiguity is which edition. However, when you say you're participating in a D&D campaign, that doesn't tell you much on its own.

If you're asking from a rules perspective, that's going to depend on the edition, and this is where stuff gets a little complicated.

If you're working with the idea of a D&D style dungeon, it's probably best to consider what era of game design you're looking at. There are a couple ways you can approach dungeons.

So, basic thoughts on dungeons.

Small dungeons are designed to be finished in a single session or two. You're probably looking at a few combat encounters. But, the main arc is that your characters travel to a dungeon, they do whatever they were planning to, and get out. You might have as many as four rooms, but generally these are pretty compact spaces.

Large dungeons can either be designed around the adventurers spending multiple days in the dungeon itself, or they may be traveling in and out and resting somewhere outside. (In some cases, you'll even have towns or inns set up over the dungeon. So your adventurers are all in one compact space.)

Additionally, large dungeons can be designed around the idea that the players will penetrate a few levels at a time, gradually working their way deeper over time (as they deal with other events and problems), or it can be a very long excursions, with adventures scavenging and hunting in the dungeon for days or weeks as they progress.

In the case of truly monstrous dungeons, they might even be bringing enough personnel and resources to set up various base camps and have a full supply lines running back to the outside world, as they gradually expand their control over the dungeon.

Sort of in parallel to this, it's worth thinking about what the dungeon is. The basic concept is often, as the name implies, some kind of semi-ruined castle prison. But, you'll also frequently see crypts, and caves as dungeons. Especially as small ones. At the same time, it's worth considering expanding your concept of a dungeon a bit. Ancient ruins, old fortresses, necropolises, abandoned mines, and sewers are common. (Sewers are a little unrealistic, as real ones don't tend to be massive underground pipes you can walk in.) What's less common are massive shipwrecks, overrun cities, entire islands with dangerous flora and fauna (or just pirates), fallen cities (where entire city districts collapsed during an earthquake and now exist below ground), plague ridden city districts (plagues can actually be a lot of fun, because it will let you transform familiar territories into hostile ones as the campaign progresses. Pathologic does this extraordinarily well.) In a rather famous D&D adventure (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks), one of the dungeons is a downed spacecraft. This is before we consider dungeons with impossible geometry, such as ones that leak over into another dimension (possibly as a result of magical experiments gone wrong, or ones that exist in the dreams or psyche of an individual. (For the record, I'm not a huge fan of psychic dungeons as a play experience, but they can be done well. I've simply had some bad experiences with the concept.) Shadowrun had a related concept, with cyberspace (called, “the matrix”), as a parallel space where hackers would engage in combat parallel to the events happening out in the real world. It's weird concept, but one that you might get some millage out of, and having a parallel battle on the astral plane wouldn't be that weird for D&D.

Moving beyond that, there are some semi-common dungeon settings that you don't often see in D&D, for obvious reasons, but might fit if your setting accommodates them. Abandoned research labs, abandoned industrial areas, abandoned villages or suburban areas at the edge of a city. Bonus points if the reason it's abandoned is related to why your players are wandering into it now. City districts under lockdown, usually this will either cater to a stealth focus, and might work if you have a group of thieves or something similar, (though, at that point, Blades in the Darkmight be a better RPG pick), this setting also works when the group enforcing the lockdown are acceptable targets, such as gangs or cultists, and for bonus points you can organize these setups with multiple factions and your characters may even be able to play groups against one another, all of this also works for feral cities (which also work as large area dungeons.)

With any dungeon, you probably want to consider how it fit into the world before it became a dungeon, and how long it existed as a dungeon before your players wandered in and started ripping the place apart.

So, ultimately, the question is about the spear and staff in the rules, as you're probably looking to approximate the rules to some extent. The problem is the rules have changed a bit over the years. One problem is that the default spear is not a reach weapon, meaning you can't use it to hit targets more than a space away from you. D&D splits that into the longspear, which is a reach weapon, and you can hit targets two spaces away from you, though you do need to use a 5ft step to back away from someone in an adjacent space before you can attack them. Both spears and staves are simple proficiency weapons though some editions do let you use the staff as a double weapon (meaning you can effectively treat it as dual wielding, if you have the feats.) If you do have a second attack with the staff, or you expect to be dealing with enemies that resist non-blunt damage (like skeletons) the staff starts to become a lot more attractive.

If you're using a different ruleset from standard D&D, there may be other considerations. I'm thinking of Total War's Anti-Large rules in particular, which do make spears very attractive against larger foes as they'll deal additional damage, similarly if you have some kind of homebrew piercing damage bonus against armor, that could make the spear conditionally more appealing. And, if your character is expecting to face down minotaurs or giants, then a longspear would be a much better choice with those modified rules. Though, this comes with another consideration, back in 3.5e the longspear was a simple proficiency weapon (just like the staff and spear), but was upgraded to martial proficiency in 4e, and seems to be missing in 5e (or it was replaced with the pike, which is also a martial weapon.) The longspear (and pike) do have special rules which allow them to be braced against a charging foe dealing increased damage. So, that might be worth considering for your choices. But, again, unless you're getting proficiency for the entire spear family, this might not be a practical option.

Usually, when you're arming characters for D&D, the primary consideration is going to be the overall thematic style of the character. Sometimes you do need to go out of your way to ensure a character gets the relevant proficiency (such as a rapier wielding wizard), but generally speaking, that theme is going to inform whether a character gets a spear or staff. If you've got a druid, then the spear might make more sense. If you have a wizard or sorcerer then maybe the staff is preferable (particularly if you can use it as an arcane focus.) (Though, wizards and sorcerers don't get spear proficiency in 5e, so, that's a factor.)

That said, you're not wrong, D&D has not done a good job with the spear. Part of that is because the default D&D spear is remarkably short. In 5e, the weapons are mostly interchangeable aside from the damage type, but the staff has more potential utility (specifically the ability to get staves crafted as arcane focuses, and a wider range of enchantments for staves.) Both are 1d6 with 1d8 versatile (if wielded with 2h the damage die is increased.) This is in contrast to 3.5 where the staff was 1d6, but was a double weapon, while the spear was 1d8, had the ready against charging characters action baked into the item (without the reach keyword), and had an increased crit multiplier (x3, meaning the weapon did triple damage on a crit, though it shared this with most axes), but it was a two-handed weapon.

I suppose if your character is a spellcaster, the staff is a better choice, as it gives you more options. But, when you're talking about someone who spends a lot of time out in the wilds, a spear might be a better thematic choice. If you're working within some version of 3rdedition, then the spear does look more valuable, but in 5e it is an underwhelming choice.

-Starke

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[rukafais]

#huh my circles of people have merged again#what the FUCK is going on with the Drow lore#like#W H Y is it the way that it is#Everything about their lore feels like it's a dark glimpse into a world of weirder and weirder kink via @thepioden

Moving this here so I'm not unnecessarily clogging OP's post but I'm pretty sure drow lore is Like That because for a good while a lot of the sourcebooks absolutely refused to talk to the drizzt novels, some authors just straight up drew from greyhawk/the old old modules where it was BARK BARK HORNY LEWD DROW DOMINATRIXES BARK BARK because gary gygax was unfathomably horny, and the guy writing the novels was literally told nothing as a work for hire but also is the opposite of unfathomably horny so.

Basically there's like two or three different streams of lore (though most of the worst stuff is gone now, thank god) and people fight about it all the time because some people conflate everything together and a lot of people blame the novels for things they demonstratably did not do, because it's easier to read a sourcebook than a novel presumably.

And yet, it's still not as much of a mess as surface elf lore, which was a collaborative project in making them absolute xenophobic nightmares for no apparent reason, accidentally

[spyridonya]

I have no idea if this will be a two part post or a series of things, but I wanted to write a little about Forgotten Realms for new BG3 fans. I decided the best start was here:

Baldur's Gate Primer: Fantasy Kitchen Sink and CRPGs

The Forgotten Realms began as an official campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ("1e") in 1987 and published by TSR Inc, the gaming company that originally published D&D.

Since its introduction, the Forgotten Realms' world of Toril has been wildly popular, jumping over the then more established Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and several other settings whose influences were based High Middle Ages Northern and Central Europe (and the unfortunate implications of Central Asian Nomads with monsters such as orcs and goblins). Ed Greenwood is the loving (if slightly horny) creator of the Realms, though many authors have written stories within the setting for several good reasons.

The Realms is an excellent Fantasy Kitchen Sink.

While Toril has several European influences, it has little to do with High Middle Ages in world building and more to do with 19th century based on nation states with the aesthetics of the Late Renaissance in terms of art, culture, and technology.

Toril also took inspiration from other cultures with their nations and continents:

The first of Toril's continents written about was Kara-Tur, which was introduced before the 'official campaign book' and heavily focused based on East Asian.  

Another continent based on Central Indigenous nations (Mayan and Aztec) called Maztica, who are giving the Faerun colonists hell due to their magic and their immune systems, and consider themselves the 'True World'.

There’s the nation of Zakhara that’s based between Faerun and Kara-Tur, making it a touch on the nose since it's based on Arabian Nights.

The nation Chult is based after the Congo Basin rainforest, though it really seems like whoever made this development slept through Heart of Darkness. (It went away for a little while, but it's back now.)

Meanwhile Calimshan and Mulhorand are based after Morocco and Egypt. 

Bear in mind, despite good intentions that Ed Greenwood and TSR had, a lot of the old lore comes off as Orientalist, and WotC hasn't done much to update it save slapping a disclaimer on PDF files and not much else with these settings save a bare description.

However, if some dork-ass tells you that Wyll and BIPOC are going against the lore accuracy, tell them to fuck off. The Forgotten Realm was introduced with a BIPOC setting despite it’s flaws. 

Due to the diversity of the 'Realms', the setting has attracted writers, artists, and campaign designers who developed some of D&D's most iconic characters and thus influenced a lot of how D&D's multiverse structure. Players loved the lore of the Realms and the feeling their characters could be from anywhere and do anything. This is in contrast to Greyhawk never really growing past it's War Game boundaries as a world and Dragonlance's creators being highly protective of it's inflexible plot with the lack of multiple settings. 

So it made sense when TSR approached the game developer SISI with their Gold Box Engine with the Forgotten Realms in mind. SISI's first D&D based game is called Pool of Radiance, and the game took place in Faerun’s Moonsea region in the ruins of Phlan, where adventurers fought off undead and fiends to help give a new city a fighting chance in rebuilding. While SISI would dabble in Dragonlance and Dark Sun (a post apocalyptic setting that is so fucking grim dark, Githyanki ran away from Dark Sun's world of Athas screaming), most of their games were based in Forgotten Realms.  

For those curious about the Gold Box Game series: when BG1 was my 13 year-old-heart's special interest, I played them. It's really, really weird because so much of the story is in the manual and clunky as fuck. But I was itching to play anything DnD at the time.

In 1997, TSR was purchased in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast (WotC), though it allowed the continued development of yet another CRPG set in the Realms by a then unknown company called Bioware. In 1998, Bioware released Baldur's Gate and using the Infinity Engine Bioware, Black Isle, and WotC would continue to make several games including BG2, BG:TOB, and Neverwinter Nights before parting ways in 2006 with Bioware. Bioware would then focus on its own wildly successful CRPG IPs. 

By then, WotC was owned by Habsro (since 1999) and after two decades of excellent turn based CRPGs, they stopped focus on the genre when Neverwinter Nights 2 didn’t do as well as its predecessor and focused on different genres such as Hack’n’Slash, Action Adventure, and Boardgames - though they were all set in the Forgotten Realms.

However one of these games would reach the popularity of the Gold Box, Infinity, or Aurora engine based games (BG, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment) . The only turned based CRPGs that were released from 2007 to 2020  were remakes of the Infinity Engine games by Beamdog Studios who attempted to get the rights to make BG3.

WotC declined Beamdog, deciding to approach Larian studios instead for Baldur’s Gate 3 in 2016, likely wanting to approach a style closer to Neverwinter Nights rather than isometric. Due to D&D new popularity, both companies expected that BG3 would do well, but neither company had any idea how big Baldur’s Gate 3 would be. 

I'm likely going to do a post on the important historical events in the Realms mentioned in BG3 - and some that are not.