Saturday, August 10, 2013

The Original D&D Campaign Worlds

My discussion of this topic was hijacked by Mishler on the OD&D Discussion boards, so I thought I'd just save my results over here.  With the help of others, I've been compiling a "master list"* of known, invented campaign settings that existed before 1980 that gamers in the 1970s either did or could have** played in and that, in some way, became significant*** later on.  I've even numbered the list so it could be used as a random campaign setting generator!

1. Aquaria (Mentzer)
2. Arduin (Hargraves)
3. Baldemar (alternate Middle Earth used in the GenCon IX Dungeons)
4. Barsoom (as part of the Greyhawk campaign; not for Warriors of Mars, which was not a RPG)
5. Blackmoor (Arneson)(Temple of the Frog and the First Fantasy Campaign)
6. Edwyr - (Blacow) (co editor of TWH, author of the fourfold way classification of gamers)
7. Forgotten Realms (Greenwood)
8. Fred's World (Funk)
9. Glorantha (Stafford)(initially more D&D-like?)
10. Gorree - Mark Swanson (co editor of TWH)
11.Greenlands - Don Turnbull (frequent White Dwarf and Dragon contributor)
12. Greyhawk (Gygax)(quasi-published as part of C&C's Great Kingdom uber-setting, as well as referred to and partially described in modules, magazines, and the core D&D rules themselves)
13. Holmes Original Campaign (World of Caladan?) (Holmes)
14. Kalibruhn (Kuntz)
15. Known World (Mentzer & Shick)
16. Lendore Isles (Lakofka)
17. Middle Earth (often imitated, obliquely referenced in the original core rulebooks, and originally used by Bledsaw before Wilderlands)
18. Midkemia (Feist)
19. Minaria (a board game, but with its own campaign setting easily used in D&D)
20. "mythic Earth" (the real world with magic added to it, which many people essentially did and Chivalry & Sorcery officially did)
21. Perilous Lands (Snider)
22. Qualishar (Kask)
23. Rythlondar (VanDeGraaf and Scensny)
24. Tekumel (Barker)(not D&D, but its rules are heavily influenced by D&D)
25. Toricandra (Jeff Grubb)
26. Trollworld (St. Andre)(not D&D, but its rules are heavily influenced by D&D)
27. Verbosh (Nevin and Faust)(separate setting published by JG)
28. Warden (Ward)(not D&D, but it had cross-overs with D&D characters)
29. Wilderlands (Bledsaw)(all Judges Guild products)

*Inclusion required some work to have gone into actually creating a world.  Just saying your dungeon was in its own world doesn't count and generic names like "Fred's World" or "Allen's World" doesn't count.

**Given the geographic limitations of most campaign settings.

***With significance admittedly highly subjective.