The Differences in Mystara, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms (Part 2)

Picking up where we left off, we'll continue to identify all of the "greatest hits" of the three default campaign settings. We found Mystara, most associated with Basic D&D, to be a realm of exciting locations, potential for immortalized achievement, and waifus (furry and non-furry options available).

Greyhawk

In contrast, let's talk about Greyhawk, the default setting of AD&D and Gary's own creation. Perhaps my favorite official campaign setting, here are the standout qualities to me. I find this one to be the most distinct of the three. It's also, to me, the easiest to envision mechanical structures to reinforce its qualities through gameplay:

1. Sword and Sorcery, full stop. Gotta go hard in this direction. Magic is rare, powerful, and corrupting, morals and grey grey grey, people are selfish, there are no great and grand kingdoms anymore, etc.

• I think a lot of people still picture "sword and sorcery" involving deserts somehow because of Conan the Barbarian fighting desert snake cults and Dark Sun and Barsoom and, to an extent, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. When Lieber described the setting outside Lankhmar itself, he wrote, "think of Saracens, Arabs, Parthians, Assyrians even. They ride the camel and elephant, and use the bow extensively." In any case, while there are deserts in the Flaeness, you would have to be able to pretty extensively envision Sword and Sorcery without it. Which really just means...
• This is far more Elric of Melniboné than Conan the Barbarian. By a lot. You would almost certainly have to read a couple Elric stories before running a Greyhawk campaign. In fact, most of the original Appendix N had inspired this setting specifically, more than just D&D in general. So also look into M. John Harrison's Viriconium series and Jack Vance's Dying Earth, because they'll come in handy far more here than in Mystara, Forgotten Realms, or any other setting. My entire understanding of the Scarlet Brotherhood of the south, for example, comes from reading about the Melnibonéans as described by Michael Moorcock.
2. The Dark Ages setting, almost exactly. There was a grand not-Roman empire but now it has fallen and the Flaeness has fragmented into dozens of tiny, constantly-shifting states. Lower literacy rates, less travel, lower standards of living, no common law, no common currency, barely any communication, and just a general cultural barrier and hostility to overcome everywhere you go. All of these things can easily be made gameplay factors.
• However, this is all just to say this it is a period of dark ages, not necessarily analogous to the "European early medieval Dark Ages". The economic/societal structures and power dynamics are decidedly not-medieval, with instead there being a sort of Libertarian's wet dream of constant supply-on-demand off-the-shelf adventuring goods and free land to settle upon so you can construct your own fortress and call yourself whatever title you like. This is technically true also of the other two default settings, but it's a more important exception when contrasted against the otherwise higher medievalism of Greyhawk.
3. Building on that, the other main thing it does take from Europe's medieval Dark Ages is migratory ethnic conflicts being the primary drivers of world events.
• Since a lot of historians don't like the framework of "the Dark Ages" much anymore, another way of describing it has often been "the migration period" where Angles, Saxons, Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, Franks, Jutes, etc. and then later the Vikings, Varangians, Normans, "Moors," Magyars, etc. all started doing a ton of moving around Europe and getting into small wars and raids and mixing with each other and all that stuff.
• This is what inspired all the human ethnic groups of Greyhawk (e.g. the Suel, the Oeridians, the Flan, etc.) that they make such a deal about whenever you read the setting guides. In fact, emphasis on these ethnic identities and their respective cultures and communities is far more important to defining a Greyhawk campaign than including the demihumans (elves, dwarves, halflings, etc.), which are all fairly vanilla in this setting. I would probably grant all human player characters the choice of ethnicity and give a bonus language based on it.
4. It's also home to some of the really old school D&D fluff, the good ol' Fiend Folio bois and gals.
• While not required, I wouldn't use an orc in Greyhawk unless it's a 1E-style pig-faced orc. Drow are more truly at home in Greyhawk than in any other setting, contested only be the most modern versions of Forgotten Realms. You need those bulettes, owlbears, rust monsters, hook horrors, and whatever other things that aren't from mythology and folklore, but were instead made up for D&D specifically.
5. Law vs. Chaos
• Another thing borrowed from Elric, also technically retained in Mystara but it doesn't seem to come through as strongly. Keep in mind that Greyhawk seemed only to think of "Law and Chaos" as basically another way of saying "Good and Evil" when you examine how the alignment distribution shakes out across the list of races and monsters. Anything evil is nearly always also chaotic, and anything good is nearly always also lawful. You don't need to subscribe to this philosophy to still play with it in this setting. Just keep your Robin Hoods and Darth Vaders out of here. The more important takeaway is that the main thing threatening safety and prosperity is the risk of violent anarchy destroying society.
• If you want to go all in with the "alignment as faction" idea, I think the easiest way to mechanically reinforce this is with Disposition/Reaction Rolls. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, some DMs will use an old-school rule where they roll on a table to determine how a new NPC perceives the adventurers upon first meeting. One less decision for the DM. It might be something like, "Roll 2d6: 2 is hostile, 3-5 is unfriendly, 6-8 is unsure, 9-11 talkative, and 12 is helpful." Well, you could make alignment modify this roll. If you share alignment with the NPC, then you get a +1 or +2, if you have an opposing alignment then you get a -1 or -2. It makes it so every single person in this setting is wrapped up in this conflict of ideology and, more than that, factionalism.
6. As far as aesthetic goes, you tend to see a lot of dead grass and trees and brush, some poor peasants, hopefully a few crows. Pretty grim without being edgy.

• There is, arguably, a competition between the more original-yet-ugly aesthetic that reflects some of the trends of the current real-life decade you are playing in, versus the cliche-yet-charming aesthetic that belongs in fairy tales and Arthurian legends. You can see these two subtle contrasts in these pictures here.
7. If you need a big, overarching villain, you probably can't beat Iuz. Literally a demigod who just owns a fucking country all to himself. A chance to interact with a God in a setting otherwise pretty low fantasy. It's also pretty easy to mix your religion and politics here. You can be a righteous cleric waging a holy war by literally mobilizing an army to march on the fortresses of your enemy god.
8. For what it's worth, Greyhawk actually uses a geocentric solar system. I can't think how this could be made important the way Mystara's two moons can, but oh well. The main thing this sort of detail would normally tell me is that "this setting cannot be examined as a scientifically-coherent or consistent thing." It's shorthand for that tells you to think like Freud and less like Darwin.
9. It brings a slightly... American flavor to medieval fantasy.
• And not really like "what was going on in the Americas at the same time the Crusades were happening in Europe," either. Even though it has the aesthetic trappings of medieval Europe in most places and borrows their magical monsters and whatnot, it nonetheless uses a ton of "Wild West" tropes. This was true from the very beginning of the game, as noted before me.
• The original campaign map was literally just a map of North America. The Free City of Greyhawk was at Chicago, and Dyvers was at  Milwaukee. It's like a fantasy alternate universe, or maybe a post-apocalypse fantasy (like Dying Earth or Adventure Time). There are gunslingers in this setting, before there was ever any steampunk or Eberron or whatever. The name of the planet, Oerth, is literally pronounced "like if you say 'Earth' with a Brooklyn accent" (i.e. "Oyth").
10. It has the most iconic gods of the three default settings (to me, at least).
• If you want to use the official pantheon of Greyhawk, then it would be hard to beat. Pelor, St. Cuthbert, Vecna, Kord, Tharizdun, Obad-Hai, Boccob, Iuz, Wee Jas, Pholtus, etc. Its best gods, the racial deities, were stolen by other settings. Tiamat, Bahamut, Corellon, Moradin, Lolth, Garl Glittergold, etc. remain the best gods in Forgotten Realms's otherwise weak pantheon, only because they were stolen.
• But if you want the original, true Greyhawk spirit, then you don't use any of those. The original players of this setting simply invoked the names of Odin, Zeus, and Crom when they needed to bring religion into play.
11. THE UNDERDARK
• Of note, MOST settings don't have an Underdark, and since it is the #1 thing Gary played around with, it makes it pretty damn distinctive of Greyhawk. Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, don't have Underdarks. No campaign in Spelljammer or Planescape would waste its time down there instead of the main attractions of the setting. Almost all of the classic Underdark lore comes from this setting. Which... yet again makes Forgotten Realms look kind of bad. That's also the #1 thing that FR has been interested in for most of its history. Its most popular character, Drizzt, has an entire book series about Underdark adventures. But... nearly all of it is stolen from here. We'll have to tackle that in the next entry when we discuss FR.

These are, as I see it, the essential ingredients to making your players feel like they played a Greyhawk adventure and not just any adventure. The most controversial mechanic I would suggest introducing is some kind of procedure for changing the political landscape. It could be controversial because it undermines the sanctity of many iconic countries that fans of the setting have had in their hearts for decades now. How many maps would a mechanic like this render obsolete? But I think it could better reflect the themes of the setting if you could really shake things up every month or two in-universe. Procedural-generated country names, borders, and a handful of distinguishing laws and customs, all of which are subject to change every blue moon because of the constant raiding, and that would definitely capture the "Migration Period" idea.

In contrast, we'll have our work cut out for us in the next article, which will examine the Forgotten Realms.


-Dwiz