In our gaming group, we have a DM who runs everything in Greyhawk. To him, and probably to many others, if the rules make it nearly impossible to run D&D in Greyhawk then it really isn't D&D anymore.
When 3rd edition came out, people who ran games like Dark Sun had an extremely difficult time if they wanted to use the new ruleset. My friend fears that this may happen to his beloved Greyhawk when 4E is released, but he's waiting to see.
So what new things have failed the Greyhawk Litmus Test? Things like 'Dragonborn' are simply new races that can be tossed aside. What about the magic system though? Will the changes in 4E alter the view of Tensor, Mordenkainen, Bigby, etc?
What type of rules changes do you fear might fail a 'Greyhawk Litmus Test'?
I won't be moving on to 4th edition, but if I had chosen to....the bottom line is the Greyhawk feel. The crunch makes up part of the gameworld, such as the races and classes, so those that were not there would be tossed aside or if I liked them, be given remote positions within the world. The fluff, history, NPCs, places, geography, relations between kingdoms, villains, etc. this is what makes up the game world for me.
Mechanics I would have to adopt for the most part (the headache of not doing so wouldn't be worth it).
I'd be very picky.
Mechanics I would have to adopt for the most part (the headache of not doing so wouldn't be worth it)... I'd be very picky.
I won't/wouldn't be real picky.
But I think 4/e is set to make conversion very difficult. Every class and every race is starting to look like a collection of fantastic powers -- and by fantastic I mean "conceived or seemingly conceived by unrestrained fancy."
Greyhawk, by contrast, might have lots of magic items and powerful spellcasters, but IMO the core characters and classes are regular people, most without fabulous powers.
While he's not Greyhawk, IMO Conan goes to the point. He's a skilled warrior that you could make with the fighter class and a judicious choice of feats. He's not a collection of 1/day or supernatural abilities. I'll bet Conan will be hard to duplicate with 4/e.
Time will tell, of course, and I remain hopeful (but not necessarily optimistic).
I think you could use any rules you want and run a Greyhawk campaign. So maybe I am missing something.
What crunch do you see as vital to Greyhawk as a setting.
Those are both very good points, and I'd like to hear from others who fear they won't be able to play Greyhawk in 4E.
Off the top of my head, I don't think you could pick up the rules of Shadowrun, despite its fantasy weapons and races, and easily run Against the Giants. Or maybe you could, what does everyone else think?
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I think you could use any rules you want and run a Greyhawk campaign. So maybe I am missing something.
Off the top of my head, I don't think you could pick up the rules of Shadowrun, despite its fantasy weapons and races, and easily run Against the Giants. Or maybe you could, what does everyone else think?
As I was reading the previous posts, this is the point I was going to make (although I was thinking of using Marvel Supers for the system comparison).
D&D4 is a new system. It's mostly like D&D3.x, but the differences are enough to consider it a different sub-genre of fantasy. It's more than just a set of rules, it's a definition of a kind of game you are able to play using such rules. Some are more compatible than others, but D&D4 is, as attested to by the designers themselves, not compatible with D&D3.x.
One of the things that is different is the rate of advancement. Greyhawk never had 20th level people running around everywhere, and especially not by the age of 19 or 20! Greyhawk seems to be, to me at least, entrenched in the old 1st edition pace. Elves lived that long because it took them that long to advance. A wizened old 18th level Archamge was a rarity. And gods were gods. Now with 30 character levels soon to be available, that makes the old world look even more distant.
Greyhawk is a state mind ... not the state of rules. I think you could play just about any rpg rulesset in Greyhawk, as long as you were true to the flavor.
(You don't even have to worry about finding a lair for your gnome and his lil minion. There's lots of room for a few more gnomes in Greyhawk).
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One of the things that is different is the rate of advancement. Greyhawk never had 20th level people running around everywhere, and especially not by the age of 19 or 20! Greyhawk seems to be, to me at least, entrenched in the old 1st edition pace. Elves lived that long because it took them that long to advance. A wizened old 18th level Archamge was a rarity. And gods were gods. Now with 30 character levels soon to be available, that makes the old world look even more distant.
Greyhawk has plenty of epic level characters running about - the Circle of Eight, Rary, the Head of the Silent Ones in Keoland whose name escapes me.
Oh, and lets not forget a god - Iuz - lives there too.
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One of the things that is different is the rate of advancement. Greyhawk never had 20th level people running around everywhere, and especially not by the age of 19 or 20! Greyhawk seems to be, to me at least, entrenched in the old 1st edition pace. Elves lived that long because it took them that long to advance. A wizened old 18th level Archamge was a rarity. And gods were gods. Now with 30 character levels soon to be available, that makes the old world look even more distant.Greyhawk has plenty of epic level characters running about - the Circle of Eight, Rary, the Head of the Silent Ones in Keoland whose name escapes me.
Oh, and lets not forget a god - Iuz - lives there too.
The crrent Wyrd is Mohrgyr the Old (N male human Wiz20).
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The crrent Wyrd is Mohrgyr the Old (N male human Wiz20).One of the things that is different is the rate of advancement. Greyhawk never had 20th level people running around everywhere, and especially not by the age of 19 or 20! Greyhawk seems to be, to me at least, entrenched in the old 1st edition pace. Elves lived that long because it took them that long to advance. A wizened old 18th level Archamge was a rarity. And gods were gods. Now with 30 character levels soon to be available, that makes the old world look even more distant.Greyhawk has plenty of epic level characters running about - the Circle of Eight, Rary, the Head of the Silent Ones in Keoland whose name escapes me.
Oh, and lets not forget a god - Iuz - lives there too.
Hmmm. Name doesn't ring a bell. I would have to look it up but I thought it was a she - and she was definitely a 22nd lvl caster. Or was that Lashton at the National Academy of Wizardey.
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Hmmm. Name doesn't ring a bell. I would have to look it up but I thought it was a she - and she was definitely a 22nd lvl caster. Or was that Lashton at the National Academy of Wizardey.The crrent Wyrd is Mohrgyr the Old (N male human Wiz20).One of the things that is different is the rate of advancement. Greyhawk never had 20th level people running around everywhere, and especially not by the age of 19 or 20! Greyhawk seems to be, to me at least, entrenched in the old 1st edition pace. Elves lived that long because it took them that long to advance. A wizened old 18th level Archamge was a rarity. And gods were gods. Now with 30 character levels soon to be available, that makes the old world look even more distant.Greyhawk has plenty of epic level characters running about - the Circle of Eight, Rary, the Head of the Silent Ones in Keoland whose name escapes me.
Oh, and lets not forget a god - Iuz - lives there too.
Lashton of Grayhill (LN human male Wiz19).
(My son and I had a year long campaign in Keoland until my daughter starting tasting the dice.)
Greyhawk has plenty of epic level characters running about - the Circle of Eight, Rary, the Head of the Silent Ones in Keoland whose name escapes me.
Oh, and lets not forget a god - Iuz - lives there too.
"Plenty" is so vague as to be meaningless. Greyhawk certainly isn't like the Forgotten Realms, where you can't throw a stick without hitting an epic-level NPC.
IMO, Greyhawk has "enough" epic-level NPCs, and not "too many." YMMV.
Greyhawk has plenty of epic level characters running about - the Circle of Eight, Rary, the Head of the Silent Ones in Keoland whose name escapes me.
Oh, and lets not forget a god - Iuz - lives there too.
Last time I looked at the stats for the Circle of Eight, I seem to remember a fair amount of them were not epic level (i.e., not 21st or higher level). And if you dig deep enough, you realize Iuz is really a quasi-demigod (Soulhusk Caverns...). So I wouldn't say GH has that many epic level characters running around.
Have you seen the pantheon thread?
• We don’t want deities to be thought of as
omniscient and all-powerful. Omniscience and omnipotence
makes it difficult to use gods in adventure plots
or have them interact with characters.
• We want epic characters to be capable of challenging
gods and even of becoming gods.
• We wanted deities to be designed for play in the
D&D world. Sure, it’s realistic in a sociological sense
to have a deity of doorways or of agriculture, but it’s
hard to figure out how a cleric who worships such a
deity honors his god by going on adventures.
• We wanted fewer, better deities. In your campaign,
you can have as many deities as you want, but in order to
design classes, a cosmology, and products that work well
together, we wanted a good set of deities that cover most
players’ needs without that pantheon being too complex
and cumbersome.
That's a major philosophical/cosmological overhaul. Yeah, you could still have xvarts running around, use a Greyhawk map, etc., but you really have to gut Greyhawk in order to play
with those changes. It remains Greyhawk in name only.
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Honestly I know myself enough that I'll switch to fourth ed., But that being said I will use much of the rule system but I don't have to pick up their cosmology pantheon or anything like that I'll use the ones I'm used too. Remember ultimately if your a dm you can pick and choose what you like and dislike about it. I still have stuff I use from 2nd ed because I preferred it over 3rd ed options. If you don't like it don't take it, it's as simple as that.
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Lashton of Grayhill (LN human male Wiz19).
(My son and I had a year long campaign in Keoland until my daughter starting tasting the dice.)
Looks like we are talking about two different versions of Greyhawk. In Living Greyhawk Lashton is a minimum of 21st level caster. He had to be to remove the curse I got smacked with.
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That's a major philosophical/cosmological overhaul. Yeah, you could still have xvarts running around, use a Greyhawk map, etc., but you really have to gut Greyhawk in order to play with those changes. It remains Greyhawk in name only.
The changes to gods are quite easily ignored. Cap play at 20, use the old pantheon and BOOM old school Greyhawk.
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Looks like we are talking about two different versions of Greyhawk. In Living Greyhawk Lashton is a minimum of 21st level caster. He had to be to remove the curse I got smacked with.Lashton of Grayhill (LN human male Wiz19).
(My son and I had a year long campaign in Keoland until my daughter starting tasting the dice.)
Maybe he advanced. "Lashton of Grayhill (LN male human Wiz19), an archmage of some notoriety ...."...That was from page 66 of Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (2000).
Mordenkainen is 27th level and he is "among the most potent wizards in Greyhawk--and indeed, in all of the Flanaess" (p. 92 of 'Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk' by some fellows name Bulmahn, Jacobs, and Mona).
I've never played Forgotten Realms so I can't judge and have no opinion on the question of whether or not FR has higher level characters than Greyhawk. I read a few of the FR books though and it did seem to be more packed with magic. Anything I've seen from Eberron is even more magic packed. (If I wanted to play in a world where I could take an elevator, I'd play d20 modern.)
In Greyhawk, my son got to level 13 and began to wonder why the King was only level 14. At last word, he was planning on raising an army and seizing control of the Pomarj. He's 7. I'm thinking of letting him and then giving him a lot of lessons on running a kingdom. Any good sources for that kind of stuff?
Yeah, of course you can do whatever you want. But the point is that you're not playing 4E if you do that. They're fundamentally incompatible.
I think we're approaching this from the wrong way. Riddle me this:
When 3rd edition came out, people who ran games like Dark Sun had an extremely difficult time if they wanted to use the new ruleset.
Perhaps it is my inexperience with Dark Sun, but what about the Dark Sun setting was it was difficult to run with the d20 rules set?
Perhaps it is my inexperience with Dark Sun, but what about the Dark Sun setting was it was difficult to run with the d20 rules set?
Nothing. They even had a few things in Dragon for it. What it requires is work to remove or rework mechanical elements if the DM has a flavor preference based upon a prior ruleset. Running the new Greyhawk will be a lot of work. Example: we know some 4E elves can get a shadowstep ability that lets them do a short-range dimension door equivalent. That's never been found in Greyhawk, so the DM would have to houserule it out and supply a new ability that fits within Greyhawk's canon to the PC who had the elf.
I agree with the poster who observed that Greyhawk worked best with First Edition. We never got about 8th or 9th level in 1E. Greyhawk doesn't have a lot of the powerful effects around that you see in 3E level 10+ play.
Now that said, if someone wants to convert to 4E with Greyhawk, why not reimagine Greyhawk to fit in with the new system? Come up with an explanation. Make it an event that redefines the world for a long, long time. We play fantasy RPGs. This has happened before. (Me personally I would keep my long-running games in the system that best captured the flavor I wanted, and not convert for convertings sake. YMMV.)
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Now that said, if someone wants to convert to 4E with Greyhawk, why not reimagine Greyhawk to fit in with the new system? Come up with an explanation. Make it an event that redefines the world for a long, long time. We play fantasy RPGs. This has happened before.
Geez, do you work for WotC on the Forgotten Realms team?
(Me personally I would keep my long-running games in the system that best captured the flavor I wanted, and not convert for convertings sake. YMMV.)
Oh, whew, nope you must not. :)
Now that said, if someone wants to convert to 4E with Greyhawk, why not reimagine Greyhawk to fit in with the new system? Come up with an explanation. Make it an event that redefines the world for a long, long time. We play fantasy RPGs. This has happened before. (Me personally I would keep my long-running games in the system that best captured the flavor I wanted, and not convert for convertings sake. YMMV.)
That's called a homebrew.
I'm not suggesting that GH has to be preserved in every way, but there is a quality to it that wouldn't survive a complete reimagination. Unfortunately, it's hard to define that quality.
How amenable 4/e will be to successful conversion remains to be seen.
Every day I become more impressed by how good 4/e promises to be. At the same time, every day I become more pessimistic about Greyhawk being reasonably adaptable -- it's quite depressing :/
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Difficult to do without access TO the 4E rules, but... WotC has pretty much said that this is so... For once, I'll take their word for it until I can see for myself...Yeah, of course you can do whatever you want. But the point is that you're not playing 4E if you do that. They're fundamentally incompatible.
Can you elaborate?
Not sure that helps.
When he or she said that you can do what you want but that won't be 4E ... I just don't get what the reference point is for that comment.
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I've never played Forgotten Realms so I can't judge and have no opinion on the question of whether or not FR has higher level characters than Greyhawk. I read a few of the FR books though and it did seem to be more packed with magic. Anything I've seen from Eberron is even more magic packed. (If I wanted to play in a world where I could take an elevator, I'd play d20 modern.)
I'd prefer Bloodshadows (Film-noir type adventures - complete with mostly 1920's level technology - in an otherwise typical fantasy world) for that... :D
In Greyhawk, my son got to level 13 and began to wonder why the King was only level 14. At last word, he was planning on raising an army and seizing control of the Pomarj. He's 7. I'm thinking of letting him and then giving him a lot of lessons on running a kingdom. Any good sources for that kind of stuff?
The 2e Birthright material goes into this a lot. HackMaster has Lord Flataroy's Guide to Fortifications which also covers some of it. The old H-series of modules (H1: Bloodstone Pass, H2: Mines of Bloodstone, H3: Bloodstone Wars and - to a lesser extent H4: Throne of Bloodstone, most of which - the non-empire-running portions - seem to have migrated into Expedition to the Demonweb Pits) went into it a (very) little as well; I know there are a handful of other supplements out there for other games too, but those are the closest I can think of for the D&D "family" of games.
As for using Dark Sun under 3.0 and 3.5.... I think the variant races (Mul, Thri-Kreen), prevalence of Psionics and - most importantly - the "Defiler vs. Preserver" magic can be problematic outside of specific home-brew rules or the 2e system.
Thanks CEBrown. I think I'll also throw the problems of running a keep from The Hook Mountain Massacre at him. Not much in there I can use with a kid--(I'm not complaining. Adults need to play too)--but the bit on running a keep was useful for him. I'll look for Birthright.
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Thanks CEBrown. I think I'll also throw the problems of running a keep from The Hook Mountain Massacre at him. Not much in there I can use with a kid--(I'm not complaining. Adults need to play too)--but the bit on running a keep was useful for him....
I meant, not much in Hook Mountain Massacre I can play with a kid.