Greyhawk in 5 Minutes! Dungeons & Dragons Setting Guide

Would love to start my own D&D podcast series that uses Greyhawk as its setting! 😃.

OK so you earn a sub for your correct pronunciation of Oerth... But points off for choosing the wrong side in the Drow pronunciation battle. It's Drow like crow and harrow and sorrow, not like cow and sow and clown.

After, exploring the lore of Forgotten Realms, now I'm going to the lore of Greyhawk

There is one caveat that modern players should keep in mind if they want to play in Greyhawk, especially if you want use the classic material: the poorly-aged themes present in early D&D are more prominent in Greyhawk than in any other setting. Goblinoids—or, as Gygax called them, “Evil Humanoids”—are very Evil and the setting says they need to die. Half-Orcs are rape-babies. Slavery is considered Evil in alignment terms, but is commonplace as a practice through the entire setting. I could go on.
If you want to play in classic Greyhawk today, you need to get everyone onto the same page about how you are going to handle these themes, if at all. It's not bad to play with uncomfortable themes! If done responsibly it can be very good for roleplay and even provide some insight into real-life issues. In our group, we are acutely aware of how casually fucked-up a lot of this stuff is, yet we play most of it pretty straight. And for us, it works—but only because we know what we're getting into and have collectively decided to go through with it.

Excellent. Subscribed.

I still have most of the Greyhawk modules.

its mordenkainen's and iuz's world man ...

Greyhawk will always be my favourite D&D setting. Who hasn't had to escape a dungeon after being imprisoned by the Despotrix of Hardby?

I bought Salt Marsh at our local game shop, and decided to run it. But you need seas and bays to run ships so...I just pulled my 1980 Greyhawk map out of storage to have a copy made. I want to use the copy to put all my old modules and homebrew. This way I can draw all over the copy and not care.
Thanks for a good video.

People should play 1e AD&D again, and play Greyhawk.

Turn down your background music. It’s like you’re having to shout over a band.

It is unfortunate that Gary decided to destroy the setting in his novels after TSR decided to treat him poorly despite him being one of the primary creators of the game.

As i have only played dnd in crpg form, the temple of elemental evil pc game is my only and first exposure to greyhawk. Greyhawk feels like huge potential to expand officially or unofficially. I do enjoy forgotten realms immensely but greyhawk has strange allure. At quick glance, it feels a bit darker and mysterious!

Melf was literally from his player in one kg Gary's high lethality games not bothering to fill out more than M. ELF (Male elf) is hilarious to me.

Dude, love the energy and narration. But what's with the strip mall nail salon music?

I'm old and Greyhawk was our first setting. You make an error speaking about creatures, the Drow and the underdark were always part of the forgotten realms and separate from Greyhawk. Not that stopped us from adding them in anyway.

Background music is too loud and thus, distracting.

I can’t remember where I saw this but I like that there’s also an Aerth, Ierth, Urth, and Yarth in addition to Earth and Oerth.

I love the self-named spells, mine would be Agaragar’s Find Exploding Familiar.

I guess if your insanely anal it might not be that appealing. Seems silly to play a module verbatum without tweaking it to make it your own. Seems like a good idea since it's your story to tell.

ZAGYG LIVES.

i read somewhere Pholtus predated St Cuthbert. Is that not correct?

It helps to remember Greyhawk is a post post-apocalypse, Twin Cataclysms and all that. There used to be more powerful magic and bits of that and other ancient things remain.

The quality here is criminally underrated.

I really liked Saga of Old City when I read it. I’m a big fan of the Forgotten Realms too, I wish there were more novels to explore Greyhawk in.

Its the best setting ever...Mostly because every fucking inch of the world is not detailed like that other popular setting Remembered Realms???

To this day, I still run my campaigns in Greyhawk. Currently running an Old School Essentials campaign set in the Wolf Nomads, and a 5e campaign on the Wild Coast!

For those who like human characters, the human etnicities of Greyhawk are it's strong point. The baklunish, suel, flannae, oeridian, etc have a rich history and culture who add flavour to a human character.

I played starting in the late 70s and I didn't know some of this stuff. Liked and subbed, thanks for the content.

orcs and goblins in grey hawk were red skinned not green btw

Interestingly, I grew up playing D&D in the 70's and 80's with Greyhawk as the first and mostly default setting but never actually adventured in the City, Castle, or famous dungeon of Greyhawk. All of the great adventures of the time were set elsewhere and the City of Greyhawk stuff was mostly just lore until the mid to late 80's. For such an iconic place, Gary's initial mega-dungeon, I assume most players of the time never adventured there. I wonder if that is true or just my experience.

Fun video. Love D&d history. Keep up the great work.

Technically, he didn't "create" St Cuthbert- St Cuthbert was a real person who lived in Medieval England. Gygax just made it that the historical Cuthbert was brought to Oerth by the gods and eventually ascended to godhood, and supposedly there was even an early adventure where Greyhawk adventurers travelled to Earth to retrieve his cudgel from a London museum.

I highly disagree with the low magic part, but overall, a great introductory video.

Any Pathfinder videos?

YESSIR

This is such a well-put-together video. I’m surprised it doesn’t have more views. For quality like this I think I’ll stick around.