D&D returns to Greyhawk, the setting where heroes don't save the day

Dungeons & Dragons is heading back to Greyhawk — the world of Oerth that Gary Gygax built, and the first setting to anchor the game's official supplements. D&D 5.5, released in 2024, made Greyhawk the default setting of its core rulebooks, bringing one of the hobby's oldest worlds back to the forefront.

Greyhawk isn't just nostalgia bait. Some of the most iconic D&D modules ever written are set there — the Against the Giants trilogy, The Temple of Elemental Evil — adventures that defined what tabletop dungeon-crawling looked like in the early days. The setting predates most of what players now think of as standard D&D lore, and its tone leans grittier: no legendary hero is going to swoop in and fix things for you.

While Greyhawk is the most famous early setting, it technically wasn't the first world used in a D&D game — that distinction belongs to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor. Still, Oerth is where the game's published identity took shape, and returning it to default status in 5.5 is a deliberate signal about where Wizards of the Coast wants the game's identity to sit.