With the three volumes of rules for the original D&D published in 1974, supplements for the game started coming out in 1975. Looking at the supplement’s name you might think this is some kind of campaign setting for D&D, after all Greyhawk is one of the most famous settings in the game and the first one of them to exist, before better known settings like Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance came along. If you think this is that you are wrong, though.

This is very much a supplement in the real sense of the word, it’s just adding stuff to the original rules. Adding more monsters, more traps and more items above all. This also adds more classes and in this supplement you get the Thief and Paladin classes. Also added is the ever popular Half-Elf player race and the percentage number after your strength ability number if you had 18. This last one would eventually leave D&D with the third edition, but it did hit me in the nostalgic feels, as I started playing in the second edition with a barbarian with a strength score of 18 (57)… so something for us with some gray hair. 

There is little reference to Greyhawk as a setting, really, with only a couple of off handed remarks as examples about Gygax’s experience when running his game as well as a drawing of a stone face in Greyhawk castle, up to the wonderful standard of the illustrations in the original rules. Definitely worth taking a look at, but don’t go in expecting some Castle Greyhawk lore.