Races of the Flanaess

[@jonwooldridge3766]

I think the Suelouise are more analogous to Elric of Melnibone - evil culture - albino (at least Elric) - etc.

[@BW022]

I loved the Greyhawk human races and used them a lot. They were brilliant. As you said, they hinted at real world races, but each subverted any direct comparison. Even as a young teen, they were fun to use as flavor, to ground the campaign, to give a sense of changing cultures, to add languages, to identify/differentiate people (including PCs), etc. When you travel across Greyhawk, just being able to toss in dress, accents, traditions. As a kid (and adult) it was fun. You could use knowledge of real world cultures, yet everything had a twist. Native Americans in plaid or Wolf vs. Tiger nomads being cousins, but the Tiger's having a different western and eastern racial makeup due to race. My players used it and it was a key part of whether you are a local or someone different. It was also great that the same race would be different in different areas. In my Ratik campaign, some PCs were Suel and that made a difference when they had to deal with various barbarian raiders. Years, later I had one set in the south with the Scarlet Brotherhood, and suddenly Suel meant crafty blood mages trying to keep age-old traditions of sorcery alive. In our region for Living Greyhawk, we were in the Duchy of Urnst and it had a huge Suel plotline. It's kind of sad to see modern WotC trying to do away with this. It makes everything bland and generic. One of the great things about Greyhawk is that the races weren't real. You could use real world things in your mind, but only to a point. Racial plots, conflicts, or differences were always fictional and often highly situational as alignment, country, low/high class, religion, geography, etc. were often as (if not more) important.

[@EarlRumburg]

I have always been fascinated by Gygax's humans. Like you, I see the Flan as more Celtic than Amerind. I have used some of the "'flavor" of the dress and appearance for NPCs and encounter descriptions as well as characterizations of my own PCs. I think, overall, it adds a subtle realism to the campaign. Being able to visualize a character or npc as having certain characteristics helps define their image in my mind as a DM and also helps flesh out my characters when I am lucky enough to play in a Greyhawk campaign. Thanks for reminding me that I need to use this material a little more often

[@RonW4684]

Except the Rovers of the Barrens. I've always seen them as American Indian stand ins.

[@RonW4684]

I been following you since your blog. Ive been in love with Greyhawk since 1980!! I now use the Folio for BX Greyhawk.

[@scottgregg7994]

I agree that there is no perfect conversions, but over the years I’ve kind of settled on set inspirations. For the Flann it’s Picts, including RE Howard’s Pict history. The Baklunish are either ancient Baghdad/Iraqi arabic types or Mongol, Turkic steppe rovers. The Oeridians are Franks, and in my campaign history Heironeous was a kind of Charlemagne type figure. The ancient Suel are based on ancient Persians migrating into a more Aryan flavor.

[@bearthegenxgm]

Literally my favourite topic about Greyhawk! Thank you for this 😀

[@bromossunstarranger8706]

Very interesting video on the unique fantasy human races and migration in Greyhawk, inspired by real world peoples migrations. Very advanced topic you covered it very well. Knowing the different races and cultures definitely helps in designing encounters with the different Greyhawk people trying to play them differently is difficult writing down some significant cultural differences can help in trying to keep the cultures feeling slightly different having an artists rendition of each culture can help with the emerson of the encounter as well. Thank you for the insight and inspiration to think on this topic and how to build an encounter to spotlight a fun cultural Greyhawk experience just like trying to make a forest feel different than a grassland role-playing context.

[@seanschraidt3985]

Its so weird that your turning pages has a freaky satisfying ASMR vibe to me.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

Haha! New channel idea!

[@ricardowilson6714]

In my campaign, the Baklunish are pre-Islam middle eastern and persians. For the Oeridians, I use the germanic tribes as a model, with the Great Kingdom being reminiscent of the Charlmagne empire. The nomads are similar to Turkic tribes and the Flan are Amerindian types. The Suel are hard to define, except for the barbarian tribes.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

When I did my Baklunish pantheon (available as a free download on my website), I used pre-Islamic pagan deities as an inspiration.

[@ostarusa3856]

I had my players chose their racial group in my Greyhawk campaign. One choose pure Suel and I had him be descended from the Suel family of (my) Castle Amber. As the "Heir of Amber" it had long term effects on the storyline and NPCs.

[@garyledford2901]

Im belive Gary stated the Suel were analogous the Melniboneans, and the nearest "real" world analogy would be the people who fled Atlantis before it sank.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

I'd love to see that reference. It's new to me.

[@garyledford2901]

@@GreyhawkGrognard I can't source it, but someone else here mentioned the melnibonean connection. My Atleantean assertion is probably just conjecture on my part :-P , but I know I've read the Elric footnote before.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

@@garyledford2901 It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, inasmuch as only Elric was albino; it wasn't exactly a distinguishing trait of the Melnibonean race in general. Fair skin and hair, to the point of near-albinism, is one of the distinguishing features of the Suel, however.

[@autisticallyaccurate]

9:55 Black Cat!!!

[@Thomas.R.Howell]

Love your channel glad I found it. I've been DMing for 6 years now within 5e. Mainly doing home-brew with mishmash of forgotten realms. I recently viewed the new player handbook and I just could not handle the new art. Didn't feel like a gritty world filled with REAL adventurers. Then I heard the new DMs guide is featuring Greyhawk. So now I have fallen down a rabbit hole of Greyhawk. Yearning for that Old school style of dnd and where its all began. So I have a question do you have any advice on really where to start with Greyhawk and any supplements or guide that can paint a simple straight forward picture of this dense complex world of Greyhawk? I just don't know where to begin. Thank you in advance!

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

It just so happens that I just published a 5E Greyhawk Campaign Guide and a Player's Guide over on DMs Guild. You might want to check them out.

[@benstormrider7173]

Fun-fact: In germany the direct translation for "race" is a no-go and would have the books banned for having Nazi ideas. That's why in germany races in the rulebooks are translated with the word "Völker" , which just means "people" or "folk".

[@RBloom0566]

Can you publish this as a timeline? Further, can you do a video about Zagyg’s God Trap, where it was and who was held there?

[@maecenus778]

This is such an interesting mysterious part of Greyhawk to me. One of these days I need to find a DM that can run through all the vast cultural and historical lore of this setting.

[@James-qi3tb]

I likethe idea of the races. In my game they show up more in the Theocracy of the Pale and the Duchy of Tenh where the Oeridians are a bit of an overclass in the Pale. Elsewhere it has not shown up. But it is something the players tend to ignore no matter how much as GM you try to make it show. My players seem to treat people more on their 'profession' - peasant farmers (ratehr than Flan farmers) or Mongel equivalent horse people rather than Baklunish horse people. Sometimes you are limited by what your players pay attention to.

[@Squirrel-Hermit]

Really enjoy your stuff...Races are used in game...

[@user-Brian_Gregory]

Culturally, I depict the ancient Suel as the "Atlanteans" of Oerth: an evil, advanced civilization destroyed by their own hubris.

[@ChapterGrim]

Olman too! I don't think the shift to species is necessarily bad, "half" species could be handled better but shouldn't be abandoned, but I'd say ethnicities makes more sense in the context of Humans, and of course subspecies for more deviated examples like types of Elf etc... 🤔

[@ChapterGrim]

I've always thought of Flannae (and Ur-Flannae to some degree) as a mix of specifically Haudenosaunee and "Brythonic" Celtic cultures - for the most part. Though there are also examples of groups that seem similar to Plains Indians blended with Mongol-esque groups. Hell, Oeridians are very Celtic in presentation, but also very Frankish/Norman in others! The Sueloise are also quite interesting, with very Norse features, Norman (of the Sicilian variety) and Varangian cultural traits meshed with Egyptian/Phoenician traits... 🤔

[@ryanmatthews5882]

I always enjoyed the different subgroups of humans in the setting, I always thought it gave it more flavor and divorces it from the real world to a degree. Sadly, I've never gotten anyone onboard to run a protracted campaign in Greyhawk, but I am doing something of the type with my own homebrew setting which has distinctive human and non human ethnic groups.

[@xXArtemis5Xx]

In regards to the Oeridians and the Suloise, I thought the reverse of the Oeridians being Germanics (The Great Kingdom being more of the Frankish Empire than the Roman Empire) and with the Sueloise being similar to the Romans, the Suel Imperium being akin to the Roman Empire. The Sueloise are also generally found in the southern Flanaess much like how modern speakers of Romance languages are found in southern Europe generally. Of course there is a big interplay between the two races, neither fits neatly into either parallel and it's cool to see how different DMs can all interpret the races of Greyhawk differently.

[@diegoborges3716]

By the descriptions, I imagine the Flan much like polinesian people, maybe like the maori of New Zealand. The bakluni are more like a mix between middle-eastern and monguls (they even have khans), since they have straight hair.

[@johnedgar7956]

Hi Joe, thank you for this! I always loved the fact that Gary divided humanity into different races that are similar, if not fully analogous, to real-world counterparts...just enough to make them semi-relatable to us. I liked to picture the Great Kingdom as having Roman style gladiatorial coliseums. I also tend to tell my players that the vast majority of the peoples of the Old Faith, perhaps 99% of them, are Flannae, whether actual druid priests or just faithful followers. I'm getting off on a tangent here...I hate the way modern D&D over-fetishizes druids; making them look like bizarre "earth mother flower-children" in the 5e rulebooks' artwork, and prefer to depict them the way Julius Caesar might have seen them (perhaps without his biases); and explain that they're simply the spiritual leaders of an agrarian, pre-iron age society. If you happen to meet a druid priest in my GH games, they're almost always a Flannae.

[@RageMagikarp]

Are there stat differences or only roleplay/culture/aesthetic ones?

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

Not in the 1E or 2E material. I believe there were race-specific feats in Dragon magazine for Greyhawk, though. I included racial stat differences in my 5E Greyhawk material on the website.

[@pentegarn1]

Wizards of the Coast have totally lost my business. Especially after this Pinkerton incident. Good Goddess Loth can you imagine Pinkertons showing up at your house to rough you up on Wizard's orders? And yes we use races and half races....it spices up the story. We even have like half mixtures of like Halflings and Humans, Drow and pixies. Its just a love fest over here. lol You haven't run a campaign until you've gone up against the Pixie Drow.

[@jamesonstalanthasyu]

That's what wotc did, they took out the human+whatever which is in the books and made it whatever+whatever.

[@benstormrider7173]

Greyhawk gets a lot of bad press online for being generic (as in not creative nor distuingishable from other settings) and I get why, because there's no easy way to assess Greyhawk at all. For me the human races are a great way to give the world a unique feel and atmosphere and I try to make them part of the playing experience as much as I can. But I'm not sure if the actually published modules go into the races much

[@robertshulman1659]

Hey are you selling greyhawk grognard tshirts?

[@sststr]

The Middle East today may be monotheistic, but pre-Islam, it was highly polytheistic. So the Baklunish being polytheistic is perfectly in line with them being Arab inspired, just ancient Arabs, not modern ones. Flan always struck me as more African than American Indian. I mean, as you say, none of the Oerth races are a perfect match to Earth races, but if I had to pick something to suggest they were based on or inspired by, sub-Saharan Africans of some sort or another would be more my go to for the Flan. Probably west African in most cases. Oeridian I always thought of as Slavic, especially Russian. Now the Russians do claim to be the inheritors of the Roman Empire, hence they used the word czar, which is Russian for caesar, so in that round-about sense you could call them Roman, although nobody does, or ever did. Given that the Greyhawk races do not map perfectly onto real Earth races, it is interesting to see how different the mappings of one to the other can be according to what any given person chooses to emphasize when doing their mapping.

[@diegoborges3716]

For me, I imagine the flan more like polinesian people, like the maori of New Zealand. Jason Momoa as Conan looks much like a Flan barbarian.

[@KhanTrav]

Good video, I know very little about Greyhawk except of course that the Barrier Peaks is where the space ship is....

[@h.s.lafever3277]

as far as im concerned, 'D&D' doesnt exist outside of AD&D 2nd ed. d20 is cringe, and the fanbase cringe woke, and wholly lacking in traditional societal norms and hygiene. post gen-x... avoid.

[@johnstuartkeller5244]

There is a distinct difference between species and culture. When the two are conflated, as in a time when a world's people are more separate and less global, then race is the most complete way of saying "us and them." The idea of race has prevalence in a setting like Greyhawk because of where they are in their world timeline. Personally, I hold no stock in race as worth anything in identification of a person or a culture, but I do acknowledge how it has been precieved and used in the past. It wasn't that long ago that Scots, Irish, and English were all considered separate races; now, they're all just "white." In the context of my Greyhawk setting, race is less an issue for individuals than culture, although large scale elements (communities) may use it as a go-to because it is easy to comprehend. The conflict comes not so much with race as racism. Elves, dwarves, etc, are different species, but when you add in cultural considerations, they would be considered races, in this context. I hope that makes sense.

[@FarmerRiddick]

I'm European with a smattering of Neanderthal. At least until the genetic sciences can dial things in better.👽

[@dndshorts2750]

5E is not getting rid of half races, they are just changing the name. They are actually opening up more half races. You choose the species of one of the two species of your parents for the mechanics and then you can flavour your character to look however 'half' you want to look.

[@arcanescroll]

Nobody ever said they were getting rid of half elves and such, only some KZbiner that was trying to stir up anger to get views. All they are doing is the same thing many of us have been doing since the 80's, opening it up to more options. The fact that there are tons of 3rd party books that were already exploring this topic means WOTC is actually looking at how people are playing, finally.