A Sense of Doubt blog post #3747 - Dungeons and Dragons - Greyhawk Back in Play and Scheduling Rules Hack

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3747 - Dungeons and Dragons - Greyhawk Back in Play and Scheduling Rules Hack

I originally discovered Greyhawk in the 1979 supplement to the original white box, three-volume set of D&D rules.

Seeing this article as I researched whether to buy the 2024 D&D books of expanded 5e rules, I was happy to see Greyhawk back in the mix.

I also bought the map and campaign setting release.

But then there were a lot of years that I did not play regularly enough or at all, and when I did play, I was playing a campaign with a friend based on 2e rules and no need for too many extras.

I love all the books and supplements because I love things. He does not.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to share this article her on the blog when I was researching, and then I saw Kieron Gillen's scheduling rules hack and decided to do a double feature.

Also, playing D&D online with friends tonight, so this post is timely.

Thanks for tuning in.

GREYHAWK

https://www.cbr.com/dnd-5e-dmg-greyhawk-world-setting/

By 

John Curtin

Published Mar 11, 2025

D&D 5e's 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is the perfect stop for a game master preparing for everything from their next game to a big new next campaign. Loaded with charts, tables, and advice for everyone from the greenest newbie to the most grizzled grognard, the 2024 DMG has tools, tips, and tricks for DMs regardless of their skill level. After a section on making homebrew campaigns, the 2024 edition details the Greyhawk setting, one of the original settings created by Gary Gygax in the infancy of D&D.

Greyhawk is a storied world setting, home to some of the most famous names in the world's most popular roleplaying game. It has also featured as the location for many D&D's most popular adventures over the years, like Tomb of Horrors and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Using the campaign in the DMG as inspiration or setting for home games lets DMs draw from some of the most established lore in the game, ensuring they will always have plenty of opportunity for adventure around their own tables.

Greyhawk's History Within D&D Makes It Nostalgic, But What Is It?

Greyhawk Is A City, A Castle, And The Generic Setting Name

The Free City Of Greyhawk is a central trade city in the Flanaess, a tumultuous land of fallen empires and rival kingdoms plagued by bandits, monsters, and villains. The city of Greyhawk is a political powerhouse in the area; its high concentration of adventurers and learned individuals make the bustling city a nexus for knowledge and power. The nearby Castle Greyhawk was once the seat of power during the reign of the Mad Archmage, but has since become a ruined maze of danger and opportunity.

As if the two Greyhawks weren't enough, the overall region near Greyhawk is often just abbreviated to Greyhawk when talking about the game setting published by TSR and then Wizards of the Coast. Castle Greyhawk was the first dungeon Gary Gygax made to test the rules and gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons, but the campagin soon expanded to him detailing the Free City of Greyhawk. Eventually, the politics and the history of the region were detailed in the 1980s World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting. Today, dozens of different D&D adventures, books, and articles across the different editions of Dungeons and Dragons have added to or updated the world of Greyhawk.

What The Dungeon Master's Guide Has To Say About Greyhawk

This Robust Setting Is A Thoroughly-Populated World For Players To Explore

The Dungeon Master's Guide gives both a high-level overview of the world of Greyhawk and a close-up detailed view of the city of Greyhawk. The book defines some of the important geographic terms and establishes the tone of Greyhawk, a land of dangerous threats and powerful secrets. It then immediately begins detailing the biggest threats in the region: evil dragons influenced by the evil dragon god Tiamat; the evil demons, planar lords and elder gods who make up the multifarious villains of the Elemental Evil; and the demigod Iuz the Evil who covets powerful artifacts after escaping from captivity beneath Castle Greyhawk. Each of these threats gets a description of their overarching villainous goals and a sketch of a story arc, including adventures already set in Greyhawk or that can be easily translated to the setting.

After Greyhawk's conflicts, the Dungeon Master's Guide details the cultures and world that players can find on the planet Oerth. The calendar is detailed with fictional names for the months and the days of the week, plus festival events for players to experience. This level of verisimilitude lets DMs really dial up the immersion for their players. One of the most interesting sections for players and DMs alike is the section on Factions and Organizations that call Greyhawk and the surrounding countries home. Groups like the Knights of the Watch, the Order of the Hart, and the Scarlet Order provide potential allies and enemies for any campaign and deliver plenty of adventure hooks for a session sidequest or a longer campaign chapter. Sections further describe the cultural effect of magic in the Greyhawk area, the gods of Greyhawk's pantheon, and mysteries that define the region of Eastern Oerik where Greyhawk is located.

The City Of Greyhawk Is A Perfect Campaign Base

Its Central Location Geographically And Politically Makes It An Intriguing Setting

The Free City Of Greyhawk makes for a perfect setting for any average DnD campaign. Its blend of fantastic magic and tense politics lends it to multiple styles of gameplay. Adventurers can follow rumors and legends out to ruins in the near distance, while schemers can rub elbows with the varied factions and influential NPCs that populate this lush setting. An established history of warfare, monsters, and cults means that there's a battle around every corner. The city is additionally the local hub of information and commerce, meaning that many of the adventuring parties and power brokers of the region pass through the city for intelligence, supplies, and equipment.

Greyhawk's role as a hub city means that it will make sense at some point for a campaign to visit and likely settle there. The party may find themselves looking for powerful magicians to consult with, drawn into the morass of urban politics, or in the market for a bastion to call their own. Greyhawk was designed to be a one-stop shop for player needs and an urban playground for DMs to explore during player downtime.

Greyhawk's Details Are Made To Inspire Stories

A Variety Of Detailed Locations Await DMs

The most valuable part of the Greyhawk setting found in the DMG is the detailed gazetteer describing the neighborhoods and prominent locations of the city of Greyhawk. The location descriptions are full of flavorful NPCs, background hooks to draw players into the fabric of the city, and concrete reasons to visit each location. By giving DMs fleshed-out locations to draw from, they can seamlessly stitch their own labrynthine plots and stories into the existing history and politics of Greyhawk, creating the illusion of a living, breathing world for their players.

Whether players are seeking divine intervention from one of Greyhawk's temples, researching in the Great Library, or find themselves with pressing business in the Grand Citadel's dungeons, DMs can flip to a description and have some idea of who might be there and what might be going on, saving them time and creative energy for other parts of their game. As players move further from the city center, GMs get less and less descriptive and rules support for the surrounding locales. The Dungeon Master's Guide provides area maps to guide players to new and interesting locations for dozens of miles around the city, with mapped nearby locations getting a quick description to inspire the creation of relevant adventures.

The final section details the furthest corners of the continent, giving a brief political history before giving broad regional guides. Each of the five regions includes a table of lightly-sketched locations, details on events and culture that permeate the region, and a number of adventure ideas that are suitable for the given region. Many of the adventure ideas even come with references to pre-published adventures that are or could be set in the location, giving DMs with little prep time a great resource to find adventures closely tied to D&D's official lore and canon.

Greyhawk Easily Fits Into Any Game

Greyhawk's Flexible Setting Is the Default D&D Setting

While certainly not the only Dungeons and Dragons setting, the fabled mines and mountains of Greyhawk are home to many of the published adventures that have released over the last five decades. Nearly all the sample adventures in Chapter 4 of the DMG can be set in the Greyhawk region, and Quests from the Infinite Staircase and Tales From The Yawning Portal both have adventures set in Greyhawk. Thanks to Wizards of the Coast's expansive and colliding multiverse, adventurers don't need to start on the same plane of existence as Greyhawk - they can still find their way there through magic portals or through the machinations of one of DnD's powerful plane-hopping magic users.

Depending on the story a DM wants to tell with their players, they can freely start a campaign in Greyhawk proper, or use one of the DMG's adventure examples to start the players in the surrounding countryside. Then, when players come to the Free City Of Greyhawk to sell their treasure and follow up on leads, the city maps from the Dungeon Master's Guides and the descriptions in City Locations can turn a shopping trip into a whole session's worth of exploring the details and the dangers of the city.

Later, when players are high level and traveling to far-flung locations befitting their legendary status, Greyhawk can become both a home base and a resource. The high-powered spellcasters of the Circle Of Eight, the archmages of the Great Library, and the archpriest of The Temple Of The Radiant Dawn all provide high-powered magic casters to consult and learn from. Greyhawk is also well-suited to player bastions, having ample real estate and resources for fledgling adventurers to begin creating a home base.

As players leave the familiar fields around Greyhawk behind, the Greyhawk guide serves as inspiration and suggestion for further adventure. Using the broad strokes presented in brief location or adventure descriptions, DMs can design adventures and characters tailored to each region's overarching tropes and make the world feel differentiated and alive. Drawing from Greyhawk's ample documented history and speaking authoritatively about the mad archmage Zagig or the customs of Old Keoland will help players feel like they're exploring an ancient land of wonder.

Greyhawk Is Perfect For Players Who Want To Explore D&D's History

The Setting Lets Players Rub Elbows With Some Of D&D's Original Characters

When Gary Gygax began testing rules in a ruined castle named Greyhawk, he had no idea of the looming success of Dungeons and Dragons. The setting contains multiple references to the original campaign that explored Castle Greyhawk and the City of Greyhawk; powerful wizard Mordenkainen is named after one of Gygax's player characters, and his companions in the Circle of Eight are named after assorted characters from the original home game who became legends in the game world. Even the wizard Zagig, who built Castle Greyhawk, is a respelling of Xagyg - Gygax's name backwards.

Much of the history of Greyhawk is based on the original exploits of the first players, and many of its dungeons and adventures were first published in older editions. Now, with books like Quests From The Infinite Staircase and Tales From The Yawning Portal updating some of DnD's earliest adventures, players can experience the early game world as fans did at the game's creation in the 1970's.

Playing in the world of Greyhawk is Dungeons and Dragons as it was originally envisioned - mighty heroes changing the fate of a strange and wondrous fantasy world through feats of power and acts of will. The iconic DnD setting continues to thrive in its latest iteration and promises to entertain players for many years to come with its rich lore and expansive world.

Dungeons and Dragons

A fantasy roleplaying tabletop game designed for adventure-seekers, the original incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons was created by Gary Gygax in 1974.

Franchise

Dungeons & Dragons

Original Release Date

January 26, 1974

Publisher

Wizards of the Coast, TSR Inc.

Designer

E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson

Player Count

4-8 Players Recommended

Age Recommendation

12+

scheduling

https://oldmenrunningtheworld.com/where-i-solve-the-scheduling-problem-in-dungeons-dragons/

Where I Solve The Scheduling Problem In Dungeons & Dragons

Written by

Kieron Gillen

in

advice

I was recently in a pub, talking to a friend about their collapsed game of Dungeons & Dragons. I was somewhat frustrated by their tale of woe – perhaps the most common tale of woe. I imagined all these decades of people wasting time, just waiting for that one player to be free on Friday.

I decided to solve their problem by writing a patch for the 2024 edition of the D&D Players handbook.

Here’s a PDF to download.

Print it out and slide it in after Page 8.

This is probably overkill, but it breaks my heart, and made me laugh. You can’t resist yourself sometimes. It is actively strange that RPG folks write rules about everything, but have avoided giving actual advice on basic play culture ideas. Generations after generations of players, falling into this particular trap. No more, I say.

Go! Print out! Stick it in manuals worldwide. This can be a better world, or at least one where people go down dungeons and fight kobolds more often.

It may work on other RPGs too.

I wanted to include it on the page, but I ran out of space, but a recent episode of Fear of a Black Dragon discussed this topic at length. If you want further inspiration, you can listen here. The segment starts 19 minutes in.

Thanks to this homebrew toolset which made the homage easy. It’s genuinely astounding work. Also, thanks to Stephanie Hans for letting me use her art from DIE RPG.

Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen lives in Bath, for a certain value of the word “lives”.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2505.22 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3612 days ago & DAD = 267 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.