Greyhawk is a traditional fantasy style world and, as I said, possibly one of the original worlds for Dungeons and Dragons. It has the elements of spell casting while focusing on a war style of game. But in order to differentiate itself from war games, there was the role playing element added to it, and it was a dungeon, an early dungeon crawler, that eventually ended up in having a 13 floor dungeon in which players battled their way through traps, monsters, found secret passages and eventually made their way down to a slide in the 13th floor which would take them back to the outside. Then Gygax stepped aside and let someone else run a game in Greyhawk and working with that DM, eventually the dungeon under the old castle Greyhawk reached 50 levels.

If you’re following along with the Dungeons and Dragons source books for 5th Edition, you’ll have heard of the book Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes or heard of the spell Bigby’s Hand. These are characters who were created and played in this Greyhawk setting, so, beyond them, a lot of interesting characters who have continued to shape the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons came into being.

Greyhawk as a setting for playing it, again it’s going to be that more traditional setting. I’d probably say it’s somewhere between Sword and Sorcery and High Fantasy setting, but it is fairly Forgotten Realms before Forgotten Realms was a thing. If you wanted to start out as nobodies to eventually become a hero, you would play a game in Greyhawk. The one difference is as an older setting it’s going to be filled with dungeon crawling experiences. Yes, you might end up exploring the lands, but it’s a setting where you’ll go from a dungeon to a dungeon more than you would in the Forgotten Realms.

Would I play in this world? Probably not, again, because we have Forgotten Realms now. If someone suggested a game in this world and wanted to adapt it for 5th Edition, I guess I would, but there isn’t a massive reason to do that as Forgotten Realms can do the same thing. It is a good setting if you wanted to adapt a dungeon delve. Like I was saying at the beginning of the article, there is a dungeon under the old castle Greyhawk that goes down 50 levels. So if you and your group want to turn that into something for 5th Edition, it’s sitting out there ready to get taken on, it’ll just take time to convert it.

How about you? Would you play as a PC or run a game as a DM in Greyhawk? Is there anything unique that I should have pointed out?

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Alright, now that my bad joke is out of my system, let’s talk about Gnomes in Dungeons and Dragons.

Gnomes, as you can guess, are very small. They are between 3-4′ tall and because of that, they end up moving slower than other races. However, they make up for that by being smart, which comes out in some areas like them being able to talk to animals and being really good at tinkering with little mechanical devices. This is shown in some of the racial abilities that you get, but also with the bump to the intelligence stat that you get. For that reason, Gnomes make very good Wizards.

Gnomes are also a naturally curious race that has a real joy for living. Though, they might accidentally blow themselves up, they really seek to live life to the fullest. And that includes trying new things, trying to make new things, and with that they are a race that really makes a lot of sense to go adventuring. Also being friendly, they are going to get along with all of the other races very well. This love of life and curiosity also tends to make them good jokesters. And while everyone might not appreciate their gnomish humor, that generally isn’t going to dissuade them.

Because of those traits, you can really have a lot of story hooks. A gnome merchant would make a lot of sense as someone who might go along with adventurers if there is a chance to make a profit and see more of the world. Gnomes also leave their homes for stuff like tutoring a noble family, since they are so smart, they will leave to go study at different places and learn even more. Their tinkering and nature focus also can allow them to develop little trinkets that they want to show off.

Let’s jump into some adventuring backstory ideas that are pretty gnomish.

You always had a deft hand with tinkering and making things. It brought you a lot of joy and everyone in the town loved the shows that you’d put on with your little clockwork creatures. You decided to pick up and take your show on the road. It was a great time, however, you weren’t super business savvy and after a little while you ended up losing most of your money and you had to start selling your clockwork performers. Now you just have one left, but you’ve figured out you can make some good money adventuring, and then you’ll track them down and get all of your old friends back.
Class: Wizard/Sorcerer
Alignment: Neutral Good
Background: Entertainer

As one of the smarter gnomes in your village you were recruited, as one gnome was every generation to tutor the local human noble’s children. It was a great job that everyone wanted and while there, you got training with combat that you wouldn’t have gotten back home. But the best part was teaching the children, until one of them was killed with what looked like a gnomish dagger and poison. You had to go on the run as they thought it was you. You, however, are fairly confident that it was an up and coming neighboring noble that had this done, you just need to prove it.
Class: Any Class
Alignment: Lawful Good
Background: Sage

Being small has it’s advantages. It means that I was always able to get into smaller places and get the leftovers in the kitchens while the cooks weren’t looking. That allowed me to survive. My parents left me behind, accidentally I think, in the city when we visited when I was young. I learned quickly to fend for myself and that people weren’t as nice as they seemed. I fell in with a group of children and we were able to survive and eventually we had a nice little group that I was running. Now, I’ve gotten older, a lot of the group has disappeared. I want to go and find my parents if I can to see why I was left behind.
Class: Rogue
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Background: Urchin

That’s a pretty brief overview of playing a gnome. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes has more information on gnomes that you can read if you want. Would you play a gnome in a Dungeons and Dragons game?

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I’ve gone through how I build a campaign, and I just picked up Mordenkainens Tome of Foes. Reading through that, or starting to, it was giving me ideas for more campaigns, and even some games that are actually set in the the realms created by Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons and Dragons and not just my own home brew games.

The Blood War, an eternal struggle between the ordered planes of the 9 Hells and the masses of the Abyss. The Devils of the 9 Hells have different hierarchy in the levels of what each one of them does, while the Demons of the Abyss throw their giant numbers in a much more chaos filled ways at the Devils.

That’s the simple backstory of the Blood War that rages on. There are a whole lot more details, but we’re going to focus on an interesting campaign idea surrounding that.

The idea is that if the balance is broken, either the planes will be overrun by chaos as the Demons run wild or the Devils will impose their own “perfect” order onto the planes. Something is now trying to throw off the balance. The Demons have allegedly found some sort of way to infiltrate Mephistopheles ranks and are going to be taking some of his research out with them, when they figure a way back out.

The adventuring party starts to see more random incursions of Demons and Devils into the Forgotten Realms. They are in fact contacted to dispatch and deal with some situations that are going on. Most of the time the Devils are countering some idea that the Demons have had to get their spies out of Cania in the 9 Hells. The work of the adventuring party doesn’t go unnoticed and an emissary of Asmodeus. The party eventually takes on a fairly powerful Demon and wins, and the party will be approached by an emissary.

The emissary will have a contract that is sealed with Asmodeus’s seal that lays out what he wants them to do to figure out the problem. Laying out how, if the Demons are able to leave with the information it might be enough to turn the tide of the war and the Devils would turn the Forgotten realms into a smoldering world of chaos. He offers the party some money immediately and provides them with some additional information on the 9 Hells.

Unfortunately for the characters, this isn’t something that Asmodeus really wants know what is going on. As part of the deal they are sworn to secrecy. And that also means that while he can give them information about how to get to the river Styx, he can’t just take them straight into Cania, they will have to go through the other layers of hell.

This is the big crux of the adventure being created. How are the players going to get through the 9 Hells? What tricks or bribes will they have to use when they inevitably run into one of the Lords of one of the levels of hell?

You can determine how you’d want your story to end, maybe someone was trying to play a trick of Asmodeus, and there wasn’t an spy in their midst. Maybe there was a spy in their midst. Maybe it is a situation where Asmodeus is testing his own defenses, but remember that Devils are Lawful Evil in what they do and order is extremely important.

I would expect each level of hell, there would only be eight as they aren’t going to Asmodeus level, would be about three to five sessions. So this should be a pretty long campaign, unless you play longer sessions. At the end of the dungeon, players should be hitting 15-16 level. You could even then continue after that, most likely having to face off against some high Demon in the Abyss if you want to finish it off. I’d also expect the party to be around level four or five by the time they hit the river Styx.

This is going to be a grueling game for the players. I would make things such as create food and water, maybe they work, but because of the extreme heat or cold of the levels of hell, probably won’t actually be able to sustain them. So they are going to have to be resourceful. And while there will be combat, create tempting spots for the players to sneak into, give them interesting loot, devil focused loot. At the end, you should have a well geared out party because of what they are finding on other adventurers who have braved the 9 Hells, and the Devils who have collected trophies.

What do you think of this game idea?

I think this would be interesting because you can create very thematic sessions as you go through the levels of hell. It is also interesting to have an adventuring party doing a good thing for a very evil being. Technically Asmodeus is having them do it so that he doesn’t lose, but it actually ends up helping the planes of existence from being destroyed or turned. However, it probably won’t be the happiest game, and it won’t be the most murder hobo game, though you won’t feel bad about killing anything. I’m also guessing this isn’t that unique an idea, but the Blood War was something I just learned about.

Would you want to play in a game like this one? Would you want to run a game like this one?

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