Editing Greyhawk (section)

==Why Certain People Love Greyhawk==

When you're a kid, some of those first things you experience will always be magical.  The first porn you see/watch.  That first booze you drink.  The first hit of a joint.  First time you have actual sex.  Sure, you may have other great versions of that experience, but the more you do them, the fewer of them stand out as exceptional.  But that first time?  It's special, it's a milestone in your life.

Greyhawk isn't just the first campaign most people play.  It's the first full campaign setting created (Blackmoor was just a single city, paper clippings in comparison to Greyhawk).  Sure, it doesn't always make sense.  The fact that some of the nations have leaders like "His Transcendent Imperial Majesty, Overking Xavener I, Grand Prince of Kalstrand, Crowned Head of House Darmen" gives Greyhawk that eternal homebrew feel.  It was created all hodge-podge, and sure it got a little ridiculous in places, but you can really feel Gary Gygax's love of D&D when you see all the little silly details he put into this thing.

This game setting is a labor of love.  It doesn't always make the most sense, but it's as comfortable as those sneakers you wore in high school, and it's always there for you.

Forgotten Realms?  Fuck that noise.  Sure it might have started that way, but it's turned into a Goddamn marketing strategy, one in which <s>Marty Stu</s> Elminster gets to fuck women he's three times (or more) older than, including goddesses and pretty much anyone Ed Greenwood feels he should have gotten to fuck in life.  Even Gygax admitted that Mordenkainen was a bit of a dick who didn't really have all the answers he claimed to, he was just winging that "enforced neutrality" bit.  Plus, [[Mordenkainen]] isn't some pushy perverted creep; he might be a fuck-up and retard, but he's got some standards.

Eberron isn't bad in and of itself, it's just a bit less fantasy and more steampunk-ish, plus the setting is geared for low-level PCs which means you'll be breaking the world in half in a few sessions if the DM isn't careful.  Dark Sun is pretty fucking grimdark; your players need to be ready to make new characters every few sessions if they treat it like a beer-and-pretzels thing.  Mystara is the only other thing that compares, and only because it is just as homebrew in nature.  The only reason Mystara isn't quite as good is because it's a little more constrained (no gods, little in the way of cosmology), but in other ways it has great stuff (complicated domain and war rules/mechanics, very complex political situations).  Dragonlance is a bit more on the high-fantasy scale, similar to LOTR in scope and theme; sure you do some dungeon-crawling, but it can't just be to get rich or die trying, it's because "things" are happening.  Birthright isn't terrible, but there's probably better systems for running empires and wargames.  Planescape and Spelljammer really aren't even their own settings, they're "unified" settings meant to mix and match with the rest of them.

Greyhawk is best if you want to play a homebrew setting without all the work involved in making one yourself, but is still inclusive enough to give you room to add your own little touches as you like to it.  And that's what Gary wanted us to do: share this hot mess of an idea and put our own little spins on it.