Unwritten Rules

The Legends of Greyhawk organized play campaign is enjoying a beta-release as the campaign Administrators and Premier Organizers fine tune the campaign rules. You can find the current version of the rules here on the DnDBeyond website. I hope you check it out.

There are a number of labels, internal rules, and policies being created; some that vary from previous campaigns. Like any beta, there’s also things that look clear to the Admins but the Community has had questions about. Community members have been collecting responses the Admins or POs into an unofficial FAQ of sorts. Here I compile various notes taken by community members like Sledgehammer Jack, Fedwin, and others from social media, as well as add a few notes of my own. Note that these are not guaranteed to be the final version once the campaign comes out of beta, but I hope they might offer some clarity for now on the campaign’s intentions. If something is not clear, just ask!

DM Rewards

Each time you run an adventure in the Legends of Greyhawk campaign, you receive the same rewards as if you had played it. You may choose the gold or featured magic item. You may choose whether you receive a mark of prestige or not. You may apply the rewards to one of your Legends of Greyhawk characters, but it must be a character that has not played that adventure and henceforth can no longer play that adventure. For all intents and purposes, your character has now played that adventure when they accept the rewards. If you do not wish to apply the reward to a character right now, you may choose to bank the rewards by tracking them on a DM logsheet. These rewards can then be assigned at a later date. Because you can bank rewards, we do not allow you to choose the random magic item. Doing so would give DMs a significant advantage over other players, being able to know the random item before applying it to a character and match it up with the perfect character.

Cover of the World of Greyhawk campaign setting boxed setting.

Greyhawk Lore in the Campaign

While Greyhawk products published before Fifth Edition cover a wide span of years, the campaign beings in 576 CY. This year is before almost all of those products. Anything in the DMG can assumed to be true, but anything from products published in previous editions might turn out the same, similar, or end up totally different. The campaign pivots based on critical events chosen by players at debut events.

• Alignment and Deities: The Greyhawk deities as presented in the DMG do not have alignments. While your character cannot be evil, nothing is stopping you from following a deity that is traditionally considered evil. Do not use your deity to be disruptive. Evil acts make a character evil, and the DM has the right to remove such characters.

• Firearms: Pistols and muskets are found in the Player’s Handbook and so they are available in Legends of Greyhawk, even though their presence is not entirely in line with old Greyhawk lore, except for clerics of Myrlund. This choice was made to make the campaign rules easier to follow for new players (“everything in the PHB is allowed”) and not require the tracking of exceptions.

• Regional Languages: Languages like Baklunish, Flan, Oeridian, Suloise and other regional languages from prior editions do not exist as rules. For now, these would be roleplaying features not actual languages to select.

In Between Adventures

With its full release, Legends of Greyhawk hopes to have Marketplace events, Meta-Organizations, Bastions, and other special things that occur between adventures, but for the beta release, no time occurs between adventures (besides resting). This has several implications:

• Buying Gear: Selling and buying gear is up to the discretion of the DM. You cannot currently shop on your own between adventures, but if the DM believes that there was time and an appropriate location in the adventure then you could sell or buy gear from the PHB at the start, during, or end of the adventure as the DM thinks is appropriate.

• Crafting: Since there is no downtime, all crafting would have to happen during an adventure. So only those adventures that have sufficient time within the adventure may allow crafting, if the DM believes it appropriate.

• Raising the Dead: If you cannot be returned to life before for the end of the adventure, you always have the option of spending 2500 gp to purchase a raise dead. Allies at the table may choose to contribute to the cost of the spell. The availability of this spell bypasses the notes for spellcasting services below.

• Spellcasting Services: There’s no time between adventures, so you cannot have spells cast for you between adventures. In order to purchase spells casting services during play, an adventure should specifically list an NPC selling services, or the DM may decide such a spell is available in the adventure’s location. Please note that Greyhawk is a lower-level campaign and high-level casters are extremely rare… and most of those are not friendly.   

Magic Items

Finding new magic items is one of the cool rewards many players look forward. The Greyhawk setting however is a low magic setting where characters have less magic available that some other settings or organized play campaigns. To reinforce this feeling. Legends of Greyhawk has limits on how many magic items a character may own. If your character would receive an item that would put your character over the limit, you must discard either the found item or one of your previously owned items. Once discarded you cannot get that particular item back, though you could find a different copy of it in a future adventure. Item limits have some other ramifications on organized play:

• Certificates: If you have the maximum number of items and you choose to discard an item for which you have a certificate, you should turn that certificate over to your DM who should give it to your convention organizer. These will be reused to reduce printing costs for your organizer.

• Random Items: Most adventures allow characters to choose a treasure bundle that is randomly determined, potentially finding rarer items. Even if you have the maximum number of magic items, you may choose to roll on the random item table. Once you find out the result you may choose to take the random item and discard another item you own, or not take the random item and keep what you already have.

• Order of Operation for Rewards: There is no order to receiving Rewards. If completing an adventure that would level a character to tier two while owning the maximum number of magic items, a player may choose to gain experience first. This causes them to become 5th-level, and allows the character to then take and keep the featured or random magic item.

• Trading Items: Unlike other campaigns, there is no requirement to trade like for like rarity though you are limited by your maximum number of magic items based on your level (which would prevent you from getting a Very Rare magic item at tier one, for example). Trades are intended to be one magic item certificate for one magic item certificate and occur at the table. You cannot trade marks of prestige. Your character cannot be in a state that is not compliant with the rules and then trade. For example, you cannot have the maximum number of items, roll a random item, trade the random item to another character, and then discard the item that was traded to you.

Rebuilds

Legends of Greyhawk allows a character to rebuild after they level. The intent is to prevent bad feelings about making uninformed choices in the haste of a convention, or because a new rule option was adopted into the campaign but you missed out on it because you had already started playing. You can rebuild any mechanical rule. You cannot rebuild your reward choices.

Types of Adventures in Legends of Greyhawk

Legends of Greyhawk supports four types of adventures: Introductory, Standard, Special, and Limited Release. Standards and Specials make up the vast majority of adventures. Adventures that are not Standard adventures are clearly labeled. When adventures debut, they usually offer physical certificates (sometimes called “certs”) for their magic items. You must show a D&D Beyond account to receive a certificate. These cardboard certificates are not required to receive a magic item, but are a nice memento and allow the items to be traded.

• Introductory: Introductory, or Intro, adventures are generally short, lasting only one to two hours. These adventures are meant to be evergreen introductions to a location (such as the Bandit Kingdoms, Highfolk, or Lordship of the Isles). Their treasure is accordingly more limited and offer only gold and/or a mark of prestige. Other organized play campaigns might have called a mark of prestige by other names: story award, influence, contacts, or a host of other names. 

• Standard: These are the standard, average adventure. They generally run three hours, though some may include optional sidebars for speeding up or extending play by up to an hour, accommodating different length convention slots. These adventures have a choice between a featured magic item, gold, and a random magic item. They might also have one or two marks of prestige.

• Special: Specials are multi-table events often involve momentous events. Specials may involve higher risk to your character than other adventures. If played in its debut, the a special might feature a decision point or critical event, the results of which might change the future direction of the campaign as a whole. These adventures offer the same treasure as Standard adventures. In other campaigns Specials were called Epics or Interactives.

• Limited Release: This is a catch all for different kinds of adventures that are less common. These might include one-shot unique events that will not be released at other conventions that don’t fit into one of the other categories, or they might include a special kind of adventure called an Author Only adventure. These are special events are written by an Admin, Story Lead, Premier Organizer, or WOTC employee. They often deal with unique or special events, can only be run by the author, and are not otherwise released. These adventures are available in person and at online events. There’s no set treasure for unique adventures but Author Only adventures offer the same treasure as Standard adventures. However due to the limited release, they do not offer physical certificates, even if played at their debut.

Typo

There is a typo in the instructions that you should uncheck all boxes under sources. You should instead uncheck everything except core rules.