Greyhawk is basically the worst setting ever created.
It took Tolkien's beautiful, expertly crafted, consistent world, tweaked it in lots of unnecessary ways, most of which were caused by bad understanding of LotR, then lumped an ungodly pile of content in there, everything from mythological monsters to Chinese toys from cancer plastic. And this could have worked out with a dedicated writer much better than Gygax, but he did in in his trademark style - just lumped them all in without giving any thought to where the harpies came from and why they would live alongside trolls. There's only one reason why this shitpile of a setting became the standard, and that reason is that it came alongside D&D. And people just came to accept its worldbuilding because it's now considered a classic and Gygax's lazy design decisions became commonplace.
Oliver Richardson
Yes. And?
Lowest Common Denominator groups like writing that's on their level.
Gavin Sanders
t. samefagging bait poster
Luis Anderson
Wait are you suggesting the first thrown together setting for a genre of gaming that was, at the time, also being more or less thrown together... has all the elements of something thrown together hastily?
Jaxon Powell
>putting a wide variety of tools in a box for people to pick and choose from is bad planning Well, we can see that you are pretty much an idiot.
Sebastian Peterson
Entirely accurate but what's your point?
Sebastian Flores
You need to find a way to have all those different elements make sense together in a setting.
Blake Powell
t. The ruse faggot, OP.
Christopher Perry
Go read Herodotus.
Juan Hernandez
Not really. you only need to pick and chose the elements you want and fit them together how it suits you. Having the tools=/=mean using all the tools.
I bet you can't understand GURPS either.
Jace Gutierrez
Not really. And if it bothers you that much, that's exactly why they made so many other settings. I don't even know if I've ever actually had someone run a game "in Greyhawk", because everyone knows it's the earliest setting and most people will use a different setting or homebrew their world. But for anyone who likes Greyhawk, who cares? I'm sure they're having fun.
Adam Allen
>It took Tolkien's beautiful, expertly crafted, consistent world It didn't, though. Only a few things(like haflings) are even remotely based on Tolkien.
Protip: LotR isn't the only fantasy book published before OD&D.
Ethan Cooper
>Greyhawk is basically the worst setting ever created.
Forgotten Realms and its 1 million 50th level Mary Sues laughs at you
Thomas Morales
>It took Tolkien's ... world It didn't. Gygax didn't like Tolkien to begin with, even though Chainmail is based on a LotR mod for whatever wargame the were playing at the time. EGG by his own admission and according to his friends much prefered Lankhmar, Hyboria, Barsoom and whatever schlocky movies were contemporary
Christopher Stewart
>for whatever wargame the were playing at the time. They were playing CHAINMAIL. The fantasy content was appended to the back.
Angel Jones
Go play FR OP...
Zachary Peterson
Gygax wasn't inspired by Tolkien's works, but Conan and Jack Vance's stories.
Caleb Hill
>Forgotten Realms is basically the worst setting ever created. For fucks sake OP at least spellcheck before you post a thread.
Robert Murphy
I am in agreement with you.
It doesn't change the fact that reading through my dad's AdnD core set is the comfiest experience I am capable of having, and has given me some kind of vicarious understanding as to why people do heroin.
Asher Cooper
This, this, and this.
If you really want to know what inspired Gygax, look no further than the books listed in Appendix N. It list a shit ton of fantasy, pulp, and planetary adventure books.
There's FAR more to D&D than Tolkien, so pull your head out of your ass and take off your LotR blinders.
Elijah Davis
Tolkien is one of 2 authors listed in Appendix N.
Gygax also writes that "the most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt.."
But Greyhawk is just some lame Middle Earth rip-off, right OP?
Justin Lee
If you're roleplaying in a published setting, you already are the lowest common denominator.
Adrian Howard
>just lumped them all in without giving any thought to where the harpies came from and why they would live alongside trolls I can see harpies and trolls working together. Makes sense to me.
But none of them inspired player races. Tolkien is obviously the most influential in that regard.
Henry Torres
>But none of them inspired player races. Tolkien is obviously the most influential in that regard.
Largely because only Tolkien gave nonhumans a prominent and heroic role.
Gabriel Bennett
B...but it was Gygax's creation, it has to be good. Seriously though, it was a a world thrown together, and the man had already been sued by Tolkien for outright stealing hobbits, could exactly steal the entire world could he?
Tolkien was university educated, studied folktales and was writing stories before Middle Earth Existed.
Gygax was a wargamer, allegedly read pulp fiction and wrote tidbits for wargaming magazines before Greyhawk existed. Hell my favorite story about AD&D is that studded leather armor exists because someone misidentified a suit of armor and Gygax went with it.
Ethan Robinson
>But none of them inspired player races. Tolkien is obviously the most influential in that regard. Actually originally the non-human races were only kind of sort of playable, they were heavily limited and intentionally made to be less than ideal PCs.
Robert Adams
And those races were only added because the original group he was playtesting the game with wanted those races for their PCs.
Also here's appendix n so everyone can see just what influenced D&D and Greyhawk.
Elijah Phillips
He's talking about the setting of Greyhawk not the game of D&D
Luis Sanchez
>Gygax didn't like Tolkien to begin with no wonder DnD esque fantasy is pleb garbage
Jordan Brown
>Dunsany, Lord Dear Gary, his first name was not 'Lord'. Love, England.
Also, witnessed
Charles Adams
Tolkien and LOTR are really low on the list of influences of Greyhawk.
Second, in general - Greyhawk would be a pretty shitty world for fantasy stories, but it's a fine one for roleplaying in, especially if you're playing a game in the style of early D&D. The setting doesn't need to do the kinds of things you want it to do. Giving any thought to where the harpies came from and why they would live alongside trolls would have made it a worse setting. In conclusion, you're an idiot.
Brandon Long
it's the same but with ridiculous amount of detail so that there's no freedom left If this is OP, I'd recommend him use Eberron, 'coz it has everything D&D has to offer without being nonsense.
Elijah Gonzalez
All fantasy doesn't have to be directly inspired or based on Tolkien's world. I see no shire on the world map. No country is not!Gondor or not!Rohan. The only thing remotely resembling Tolkien is the actual races. (orcs, elves, dwarves, etc.)
Although there is a huge selection of content, you aren't forced to play with all of it. Pick and choose what you want or need for your game, hell, change anything about it you want. The DM can do what he wants.
Tl;dr, I suggest playing a setting where everything's spelled out for you.