D&D's 2024 Take On Greyhawk Avoids The Biggest Forgotten Realms Mistake

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Every edition of comes with its associated setting, and the new 2024 printing of the is no exception. Although it was introduced during the first edition's reign, the Forgotten Realms setting has become near-ubiquitous in recent years. It was featured as the flagship setting in both 4 and 5e, and it only became more popular with its recent inclusion in .

But the new printing returns to Greyhawk, one of the original settings designed for, and a far cry from the Forgotten Realms in every conceivable way. In doing so, it expands on much of the original lore while keeping its core conceit intact. But it does so while avoiding a major misstep that previous official settings (and RPG settings in general) have historically been prone to, in a way that elevates it above previous editions of Forgotten Realms.

In short,the 2024 doesn't introduce some calamitous, world-changing event to the Greyhawk setting, completely altering its face from what players know and love from previous editions. Instead, it simply transfers the classic version of the setting, almost entirely intact, into the current edition.

That makes it unique among official recurring settings, which tend to undergo massive changes between editions. The Forgotten Realms have been around since the first edition, and have evolved, both naturally and unnaturally, in the intervening years. For example, 4e introduced an entirely new chapter in the Realms' world history: the controversial Spellplague. This event began with the assassination of the goddess Mystra by the god of trickery, Cyric, and the Mistress of the Night, Shar. It resulted in the disappearance of arcane magic from the world, as well as the death of several gods and some serious geographical upheaval.

The Spellplague wasn't introduced in the 4e, but in the .

That's not an inherently bad or uninteresting concept for a setting; plop an adventuring party down in the middle of that world, and there's plenty of ancient intrigue for them to dig into, lots