I have read through the Greyhawk section in the new DMG. (I have a friend who pre-ordered and insisted on coming by and making me read it.) This is my review.
First, I want to be clear that I expected it to be poor. With all the statements from WotC regarding canon combined with the length of the chapter I did not expect much and so it would have something extreme to disappoint me.
Second, I will analyze this for three different things:
1. Does it live up to being an example of how to do a setting for new DMs?
2. Is it well written?
3. How does it reflect Greyhawk?
For all of these, I rate it poorly.
For the first, I do not see much of anything to guide a new DM in building a setting. Despite various promises, it is a proper noun dump with some very general and often generic suggestions as to how various bits relate to the material in the DMG for doing a campaign. "See this? Yeah, this is where you use that stuff in the other chapter." Which is all well and good, but not really any significant guidance on building. Perhaps that is covered in the other chapters, but in the Greyhawk chapter, I do not see it being implemented well.
For the second, I do not think it is particularly well written. There are a number of fails on terminology that are particularly curious because of successes elsewhere. Someone bothered to look up "Herzogin" as the feminine form of Herzog, but nobody bothered to look up "Grafin" as the feminine form of Graf for the Beygraf of Ket. Likewise, having a "Northern Kingdom of Schnai" implies the existence of a Southern Kingdom of Schnai somewhere. Then there is the confusion inherent in the term "independent fiefdom". I give it a second failing grade there.
Finally, the big part, the actual Greyhawk content. The suggestion was they were going to cover the city, originally presented in two 96-page books, and the Flanaess, originally presented in a 32 page folio, in 30 pages in the DMG. Right there, anyone should have expected it would fall short. And it does. When some of the promotional videos came out and they said it was the first time an entire campaign setting appeared in a DMG, I thought back to the Known World's first appearance in the Expert Set, along with the material for it in X1 The Isle of Dread. As could be expected, there is very little in those products, perhaps a sentence for each country.
Remember that.
Going through it in order:
Premise and Conflicts
There is conflict! There is a need for heroes! And maybe 50 more words to say that. Yep, that is the entire premise of the setting.
As for conflicts, we get Iuz, Elemental Evil, and . . . Evil dragons. Oookay. Elemental Evil and Evil dragons are, of course, two big adventures WotC has released. Of course, this Elemental Evil is the revised version from Monte Cook's 3E Return to the Temple module, where Tharizdun is in charge and Tzugtmoy is only a front. In this case, extended so that Tharizdun is one among many Far Realms entities involved in the whole mess. As for Tiamat and her dragons . . . Right. So, Iuz. Who apparently controls through alliances most of his post-Wars empire but not really so you can still have the Horned Society and some Bandit Kings around.
Greyhawk's Setting
This is a simple overview starting with a calendar. Unfortunately, they use the 6-day festivals from the Folio, not realizing how that throws off the timing of the moons. A simple check in the Boxed Set would have shown how this was fixed, but . . .
Then it looks at several factions and organizations. There is nothing notably outrageous here, but also nothing spectacular in the three they cover.
Next are some short notes on magic that are barely above generic, followed by mysteries of the setting, specifically a bunch of places like the Rift Canyon. Again, nothing outrageous but nothing awesome.
This section ends with the powers of Greyhawk. Which might be impressive except that aside from adding Berei and Syrul it is the same list as in the 2014 PHB. That makes it pretty much a nothingburger.
The City of Greyhawk
This section comes in at about 10 pages. It covers as much as could be expected, with very general summaries of the city quarters, and general descriptions of eight buildings. Most of this seems dedicated to linking the material to the backgrounds and other rules, instead of describing the features. Following that are short bits about the land outside the city. Again, nothing spectacular but nothing outrageous.
Gazetteer
As noted above, I expected this to be like the Known World in X1 and it is. What you get for most countries and a few geographic features here - a sentence; along with a ruler name and short title. Yes, there is about a page of background and plot hooks, many linking to existing products of course, for each of the five grand regions the Flanaess is divided up into, but a page for five to fifteen countries and such can hardly scratch the surface of even the short summaries of the Folio.
The history is likewise extremely clipped, with some curious alterations - the Baklunish shot first with the Twin Cataclysms now; the Bone March is occupied by Almor and Nyrond now, the Great Kingdom still ruled Furyondy 200 years ago, and other minor bits creeping in. Does this utterly ruin things? No. It will however be more than a minor shock to old timers.
That brings me to the truly gratuitous changes. While the Folio does not include the names of the rulers of the various countries, they are available in the boxed set. This uses about 1/3 to 1/2 of those names (I have not counted) and then changes the rest, with what appear to rather gratuitous name and species swaps, some of which range into overtly peculiar. (A goliath, almost a giant, is the Freeholder of the Yeomanry.) Likewise, a lot of the name changes for countries are bizarre. The Tiger and Wolf Nomads are labeled as Chakyik and Wegwiur on the map, yet it notes that they are called Tiger and Wolf Nomads in their descriptions. So, why bother? To be fair, these changes are not outrageous, just peculiar and without purpose.
What is Missing
I would like to highlight what got cut in addition to any actual descriptions of the various countries. As this is based on the Folio, there are no descriptions of the Baklunish, Flan, Oeridians, or Suloise. Which makes identifying various groups with them rather odd. There are no country or city populations noted. There are no levels or alignments for the rulers, though their names and species are given, and their sex can be implied from various titles. And there is virtually no history. That needs to be repeated. There are also no NPCs. Oh, there are links to generic statblocks for about a dozen or so, but there are no individual statblocks for them.
Conclusion
Is this a return to the Folio and the presentation of the Greyhawk setting?
From a certain point of view, that is literally what it is, so it is hardly false advertising.
From a functional point of view, it is barely much of anything. They could have reprinted most of the Folio and done it much better. Deleting several pages of the covers, introduction, glyphs, and maps would have left almost enough for all they included about the city of Greyhawk itself. In fact, deleting the geographic features material, which they effectively did anyway, would probably have been enough for the city overview they provided.
And, once again fairness, being enough of a grognard to have started with the Folio, I cannot say it is impossible to use this as a starting point, just that it seems a very poor imitation of that product. Even the D&D Gazetteer, released with the LGG, had more meat, as it was essentially a reprint of the Folio, simply updated.
I know there are people who are thrilled to see Greyhawk "back in print" and "official" and all, but I think they could have just put the Folio on sale (and/or made minor edits and given it away) and linked to it like they link to their adventure products and done a much better job of introducing their current customers to a sample setting.
This also means that when new people come along and ask about the setting, be prepared to explain a lot more than when bringing people up to date who have just read one setting book from one era. They really will not have much of a knowledge base about the setting from reading this.
Bonus Revision
Let me just say that what they did to Otto **dwarfs** what they did to Bigby.
Last edited by Samwise on Tue Oct 29, 2024 5:51 pm; edited 1 time in total
Well, that is my review.
I am sure there are people who will disagree with me.
I think people should read it, preferably lurking around the shelf in their FLGS - I could not recommend anyone actually buy the thing just for that section - and decide for themselves.
That is especially if they want to actively critique.
Mind you, I am sure I am right, but I want to be fair.
Also, to emphasize again, that is a review of the material.
It is not a review of the people who will read it and come around with questions.
If that is all they have to go on, it is not some flaw in them, it is merely all they have managed to access so far.
Give them a fair chance to engage and embrace the lore we know.
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