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In Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, they hint that Iuz is planning another war.  Let's keep the war in the background but use it as an excuse to bring in a few more races.

- Tieflings - Iuz summoned an army of devils/demons.  When he suffered several reverses, the demons just lost interest in his orders and started doing their own thing.  The areas where those demon armies happened to be became tiefling homelands.

- Devas - Looking for powerful allies, Furyondy decided to summon some up, too.  The Devas took Iuz in flank and conquered some territory.  When the war was over, they still held it.  And to this day, they still do.

- Dragonborn - A Christopher Columbus like event happened along the eastern shorelands, not properly noticed because of the distractions caused by Iuz.  Today there are several islands colonized by dragonborn from an unknown land overseas.  Other islands are under their governance without need of conquest.  Merchant colonies of dragonborn cautiously explore the lands, seeking future opportunity.  As suggested above, maybe the Great Empire would be a good place for them to start looking around.

Per the module, Iuz attacked when he was not really ready.  His carefully-laid plans were cast aside in a fit of pride and rash anger.  Some of his attacks went well, some did not.  His enemies had successes of their own, as well.  While the war should not be detailed in full, the broad themes can be brushstroked in, and this war used as the catalyst to move Greyhawk into a new day.  I'm thinking like how the Second World War changed so much, even in areas that never saw a soldier or felt an explosion.  Greyhawk 5.0 should still be visibly Gary's creation, but things invented in the meanwhile can be added into the tapestry without having to rip all the threads apart to do it.

Jun 22, 2012 -- 10:08PM, Ivid_IV wrote:

Tieflings are easy after all the demonic creatures running around in From the Ashes.

Dragonborn would have to come from off the map I think, unless you wanted to have only a tiny community nestled in the Sulhaut or Crystalmist mountains.

Change Eladrin to Grey Elves.

Warforged get curb-stomped in Greyhawk. Sentient golems are a once in a lifetime player chance. Not the NPC running the corner store.

Love your avatar (Humongous).

And agree (I know technically you're not supposed to start a sentence with "and"}. 

If we go back to Greyhawk I am good with that.  I would not change the world other than how it changed in RPGA.  But I would not move it forward.

Each homeland can have a dominant race, but clearly other races should exist there.  This is the real world and can easily be the D & D world.

I would limit the races to the original and traditional races for PC's:  humans, elves, dwarves, 1/2 orcs, halflings, gnomes and 1/2 elves.  I do not want to see undead (revenents), insects, cows (minotaurs), robots (warforged), immortals (divas) and other weird races.  It is not necessary to have the weird non non human races become part of the game.  It is also harder to manage as a DM.

I would limit the classes to the primary original classes, plenty of variety and many options:  Fighter, Paladin (holy warrior), Ranger, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Thief, Assasin, Wizard, Sorceror, Monk and Bard.  You can have sub classes of these groups, although fighter already has those, but we have toooooooo many classes right now.  As a DM it is hard to manage. 

I like the changes to death, starting con plus your level.  It takes away the biggest fear a high level character had, being at less than 10 hp and about to be hit by a high level monster.

The regions need to be either very important or just a flavor.  In RPGA the regions were vitally important and they added a great flavor.  In LFR it seemed every wizard either came from Thay or had an auspicious birth, because the hit point advantages were toooooooo great not to do so.

Continuing with regions.  I would go back to the RPGA model giving great strength and flavor to the regions, but I would allow characters to venture in other regions with time unit penalties.

Spealing of time units, I loved them.  It did not make sense that a character would venture 50 times all over the world in a year and reach 15th level or higher.  I liked how this allowed character to develop over time.

Modules, we should be able to play them at least more than once.  I don't have a problem playing the same module with a different character because it may fit my second or third character better.  I also found that DMing the module first and then playing it later did not make the enjoyment of the module any less.  Make regional mods one TU for a normal adventure, core mods 2 TU's and other regional mods 3 TU's reflecting the time it takes to travel.  And I like 52 TU's per year. 

Limit the number of actions or attacks a high level character can take.  I watched druids with summoned animals take 30 minutes to finish a turn.  And fighters getting 4 or more swings because of haste, cleave, etc.  While the wizard cast one powerful spell but gets only one action.

By the same token 4th edition did balance the classes a lot more, which I liked, but it made the classes a lot more mechanical.  Let all the spell chasters shoose from a similar list of spells with a few speicality spells for each class.

I would love to see spell points for casters.  This would make lower level casters stronger and higher level casters weaker, which would bring the 4th edition balance to the game.

This are my basic comments.  Hope they help.

Jun 20, 2012 -- 9:22AM, tbok1992 wrote:

By the way, does anybody familiar with Greyhawk lore know of any good plot threads they could pull to introduce the newer 4e races without a radical Spellplague-style overhaul? Surely there must be some powerful NPC who would have the motive to make a servitor race of dragon men or some place where the Living Gate could be justified to have existed.

I would prefer the 4th edition races be largely extince.  I don't like robots, undead elves, immortals and insects as characters. 

Jun 23, 2012 -- 8:52PM, Cosmic wrote:

But if we are going to add races I would love to have a near human size flying feraie creature.  That would give us a flying PC and that would be lot's of fun, expecially to mess with DM's who are two demensional.

Aaracockra (from Dark Sun) might be up your alley.  They can originate from up in the Forbidden Mountains, or migrate onto the map via the Sea of Dust.  Nobody talked about them before because they pretended to be animals, scouting things out and getting the lay of the land.  ("Look, mama, what a BIG bird!")

P.S. I am not aware of any rules set that makes for easy and intuitive 3-D combat.  And do I really want to mount my mini on an extendible pipe-cleaner?  Hmmmm...