Welcome to Greyhawk
Greyhawk is my favorite campaign setting. I started playing back when 1st edition was released. Greyhawk was the place to be - or at least for your characters to slay dragons, do dungeon dives, and wander around killing monsters. For a 13-year-old, there is a lot to love about it, from the cool location names and places you could visit, the history you could read about in various modules and Dragon magazines, and most importantly, the marvelous map of Oerth. Other campaign settings, including Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravinica, Ravenloft, and others, were soon created. Unfortunately, with the introduction of The Forgotten Realms setting, all these worlds fell by the wayside, some disappearing forever. Greyhawk was relegated to bottom-tier status, but my love for it never waned.
Set in the world of Oerth, Greyhawk was introduced in Supplement I Greyhawk in 1975. Gary Gygax created it as the setting for his home game. When D&D came out, there was very little in the sense of homebrew anything. Doing a nonstop dungeon crawl worked at first, but your players needed somewhere to be when (if) they emerged from the depths below. The game needed a world to be played in, and Greyhawk was it.
Oerth was the world. Oerik was the continent. The Flanaess was the eastern part of Oerik, where the adventures were set. At the center of it all was the Free City of Greyhawk. (Sound familiar? I’m sure it does, as the Forgotten Realms was set up similarly.) The map of Greyhawk in the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide is almost identical to the one from the 1st edition. You can explore the Sea of Dust, the deadly desert on the western side of the Flanaess. In the middle are the Shield Lands and Bandit Kingdoms, and to the west is the Bone March, where humans were wiped out by the orcs still residing there. Throughout the Flanaess were places such as the Principality of Ulek, Nyr Dyv Lake, Ragigast City, and the Temple of Elemental Evil.
If some of these locations sound familiar, you’ve read your D&D history. Greyhawk was the birthplace of some of the most iconic characters in all of D&D. The ultimate BBEG, Vecna, came into existence with his plans of world domination. (Note - The amount of information found in the new DMG leads me to believe that we will see Iuz the Evil become the primary bad guy in Greyhawk) Central Flanaess is home to White Plume Mountain, and the adventure bearing its name is, in my opinion, the best adventure module ever. Bigby, he of the hand spells (there are over a dozen throughout the editions), calls Greyhawk his home.
With the release of D&D 2024, Greyhawk has returned, replacing The Forgotten Realms as the official default setting. The new Dungeon Master’s Guide has a wealth of information on the City of Greyhawk, including various neighborhoods, factions who run them, and key locations. The rest of the Flanaess receives a surprising amount of love, with way more detail than you might expect. I hope Wizards will update such adventures as The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Tomb of Horrors, and the aforementioned White Plume Mountain for the new edition.
Is this just a point of difference WotC uses to differentiate the new edition from 5e? Are they pandering to the old guard who long for the world they once played in? Or did the well run dry on ideas for the Forgotten Realms? Whatever the reason, I’m pleased to see it return, and hopefully, you are, too.
If nothing else, you get a cool map when you buy the new Dungeon Master’s Guide.
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