Each edition of Dungeons and Dragons comes with its associated configuration and the new 2024 print of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is no exception. Although it was introduced during the reign of the first edition, the Forgotten Realms setting has become nearly ubiquitous in recent years. It was featured as the main setting in both 4 and 5e, and has only become more popular with its recent inclusion in Baldur’s Gate 3.
But the new print returns to Greyhawkone of the original configurations designed for D&Dand far from the Forgotten Realms in every conceivable way. In doing so, it expands on much of the original lore while keeping its core concept intact. But it does so by avoiding a major misstep that the previous employee D&D settings (and RPG settings in general) have historically been prone to this, in a way that elevates them above previous Forgotten Realms editions.
The History of D&D’s Forgotten Realms is Chaotic
Spellplague and The Second Sundering are too complicated
Briefly, o 2024 Damage doesn’t introduce some calamitous, world-changing event into the Greyhawk settingcompletely changing the face of what players know and love from previous editions. Instead, it simply transfers the classic version of the setting, almost entirely intact, to the current edition.
This makes it unique among official appellant D&D configurations, which tend to undergo major changes between editions. The Forgotten Realms has existed since the first edition and has evolved, naturally and unnaturally, in the years since. For example, 4e introduced an entirely new chapter in the world history of the Realms: the controversial Spellplague. This event began with the murder of the goddess Mystra by the god of trickery, Cyric, and the Lady of the Night, Shar. This resulted in the disappearance of arcane magic from the world, as well as the death of several gods and serious geographic upheavals.
This is not an inherently bad or uninteresting concept for a setting; put a party of adventurers in the middle of that world, and there’s plenty of ancient intrigue for them to dig into, plenty of terraformed lands for them to explore. The problem is, for a GM who wants to create their own campaign, it is very specific.
If they want to create a story around literally anything other than Mystra’s death and the dissolution of magic as the world knew it, they will have to discard large portions of the setting’s detailsor any tasks they send their players will seem trivial or disjointed in proportion. Not to mention all the little details of the Forgotten Realms that no longer exist or have been irreparably altered by the ravages of the Spellplague.
5e then repeated this mistake by introducing the Second Sundering, another series of events that completely altered the Forgotten Realms with a wave of natural disasters caused largely by infighting among the gods. The Second Sundering effectively reversed the changes introduced by the Spellplague, but caused the same problem: the most popular official 5e setting was too specificand as a result, it could no longer function as an adaptable backdrop for any and all types of campaigns.
D&D’s 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide Keeps Greyhawk Classic
Greyhawk as you remember
In comparison, however, Greyhawk appears completely unchanged in 2024 Damage. The included guide for this setting, which makes up the second half of Chapter 5, is set in Ordinary Year 576 (CY, in the date format used by the Greyhawk setting) – literally right where previous versions of Greyhawk left off. However, no apocalyptic change has torn the fabric of reality. It’s the same one the old Oerth players knew and loved.
More importantly, however, This version of the Greyhawk is flexible and can be adapted to fit almost any type of campaign with very few changes. Although the Damage suggests a series of drawn-out campaigns, central plot points, influential factions, crucial locations, and omnipotent gods are just that – suggestions. If they don’t fit the type of story a DM and his players want to tell, it’s easy to tone down these elements, turning them into smaller arcs within a larger saga, or ignore them altogether, borrowing only the basic information about the story. world and its factions.
The question is that This new version of Greyhawk doesn’t hand the DM a campaign on a silver platter. Instead, it gives them a well-stocked pantry of ingredients and allows them to prepare any type of story they want. Sure, it offers tasty suggestions along the way, but it keeps them far enough away from the central concept that they can be easily replaced or omitted. The result is that the final product feels like the DM’s own work, not someone else’s ready-made creation that they simply dropped the players into.
A simple campaign setup is sometimes the best option
Adaptability is key
See, there is something to be said about the specific approach. Thousand-page campaign setup guides that detail every square foot of your worlds, the creatures that inhabit them, their heights, weights, daily times, likes, dislikes, wants, needs, fears: these are feats of game design and construction of worlds. They are undeniably impressive and situationally useful. It’s perfectly fine to use a pre-made campaign – sometimes a published campaign book perfectly covers the type of story a DM wants to tell, or they don’t have the time and energy to pore over custom maps and lore puzzles.
But D&D it’s a big game, bigger than any campaign played in it, or all of them combined. It contains almost infinite possibilities. Your races, classes, talents, and items are designed to serve as building blocks for any number of fantasy stories – Shouldn’t your official configuration do this too? There is plenty of room for these hyperspecific configurations in the broader world of D&D. But if any configuration details are included in the Damageor hailed as the game’s main setting (official or unofficial), they need to be malleable enough to fit into any campaign.
There’s still plenty of time for 5e to get Greyhawk wrong. At the moment, there are just a few pages of Damage. Future printings may see a full scenario guide that turns Oerth upside down when The Happening rains goblins from the sky. For now, though, its current iteration might be the best thing that ever happened. Dungeons and Dragonsand it’s certainly worth a look when creating a campaign.