Megarry's Copy of the Great Kingdom Map

[Zenopus]

Dave Megarry has recently located a copy of the 1971 Great Kingdom Map. This is a version of the same map that Jon Peterson gave us a glimpse of a few years ago, and is a later version of the Great Kingdom map published in Domesday Book #9.

You can see a scan of this map here and read my notes about it, vis-a-vis the published setting:

Megarry's Copy of the Great Kingdom Map

Edit: Added a picture of the map here. If you are wondering where the City of Greyhawk is on his map, it isn't shown because presumably it hadn't been created when this map was drawn - or because the map doesn't indicate most cities. It would most likely be located near the south corner of the Nyr Dyv, slightly up river.

[Deleted]

Ah, man! THANKS for posting this. Very, very interesting, especially with the comparison to Quag Keep.

[foster1941]

So we’ve all seen the Great Kingdom map of the Castle and Crusade society, which was clearly the inspiration for the later World of Greyhawk map as far as geography and kingdom names. Dave Arneson placed Blackmoor on that map, Andre Norton used it as the setting for her D&D-based novel Quag Keep, and there are references to features from it in the introduction to the Lost Caverns of Tsojconth adventure written by Gary (based on a map by Rob Kuntz) and published by the Metro Detroit Gamers at the end of 1976.

Based on all of this, you would normally assume that this was the map for the Greyhawk Campaign, but apparently that’s not the case. Instead, as initially revealed to the public in the introduction to Necropolis in 1992, that campaign was actually based in a version of North America. More info about this was later filled in - Greyhawk City corresponded to Chicago and Dyvers to Milwaukee, the area around New Orleans was the Wild Coast, the Great Kingdom was around New York and DC, the Pacific NW was a Pleistocene area, and so on. We also know that, at least in the early phase of the campaign, there was a small scale map of the area immediately surrounding Greyhawk City and Castle that characters like Robilar and Terik eventually built their castles on, but when characters would venture out beyond that area the wilderness was represented by an infinitely repeating series of Outdoor Survival game boards.

This obviously raises a bunch of questions. What was the scale of the Greyhawk area map? Was it one mile per hex like Gary recommended in the Setting Up Your D&D Campaign Europa article (and later used for the Castle Zagyg Yggsburgh area map) or did it have a larger scale? How much area was included on it - Nyr Dyv? Dyvers? Hardby? The Gnarley Forest and Cairn Hills? Was the area of Gary’s later Elemental Evil sub-campaign located on this map or beyond it? When characters wanted to travel to a defined place outside the local area map rather than just have random outdoor adventures was that handled abstractly (you travel x days and reach the Great Kingdom) or did they have to traverse a series of OS boards? How much of the later World of Greyhawk comes from this version as opposed to the C&C Society map and/or being made up for publication? Did the pre-publication continent include places like the Sea of Dust, Perrenland, Keoland, etc? How about places that weren’t on that map like Iuz, the Pomarj, the Scarlet Brotherhood, etc? At what point did the wilderness stop being OS boards and become an actual map, or did that ever happen? Note the various locations mentioned as possible locations for the Tomb of Horrors in 1978 - was that text written before or after the publication map was devised?

Does anybody with insider knowledge have answers for any of this? It’s interesting as trivia for Gygax fans, but also perhaps an instructional example for developing a campaign organically from the bottom up, about how quickly and in how much detail to expand the scope of the campaign world, and so on.

[Zenopus]

From what I've heard there is another version (not publicly shown yet) of the Great Kingdom map with the location of Greyhawk City marked on it, though perhaps that was added after the time period of play where a version of North America was used.

[Finarvyn]

I've heard that Gary's "Gord the Rogue" books were pretty darned close to his unreleased Greyhawk, but I forget where I got that info. I have heard from reliable sources that your Greyhawk-Earth city list is accurate (Greyhawk as Chicago, and so on) and that the campaign was sort of a fantasy North America.

Certainly I'd love to see an original map and it's fun to speculate.

[Zenopus]

A new blog post, taking a look at the original suggested locations for the Tomb of Horrors on the Great Kingdom map, provided by the recent printing of the original tournament version, included with the special edition of the new Art & Arcana book.

Locations for the Tomb of Horrors on the Great Kingdom Map

[rossik]

amazing! Thanks for sharing, thats a real treasure!

[scottenkainen]

Feb 3, 2017 0:12:21 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Dave Megarry has recently located a copy of the 1971 Great Kingdom Map. This is a version of the same map that Jon Peterson gave us a glimpse of a few years ago, and is a later version of the Great Kingdom map published in Domesday Book #9.

You can see a scan of this map here and read my notes about it, vis-a-vis the published setting:

Megarry's Copy of the Great Kingdom Map

Edit: Added a picture of the map here. If you are wondering where the City of Greyhawk is on his map, it isn't shown because presumably it hadn't been created when this map was drawn - or because the map doesn't indicate most cities. It would most likely be located near the south corner of the Nyr Dyv, slightly up river.

It's been two years now; has anyone got around to tracing this onto hex paper yet? (That's on my list of things to do, unless someone's already done it...)

[scottenkainen]

Since the answer was apparently no, I went ahead and did it anyway. If the scale of the Nyr Dyv is kept the same as the scale of Lake Michigan, then each hex is approximately 30 miles wide. That puts the distance from Greyhawk to Blackmoor longer than the distance between Lake Geneva and the Twin Cities, but I'm okay with that.

[aldarron]

That's cool. However, just FYI, that's not the same map as Megarry's copy. There are quite a few differences in location, landform, scale etc. Just how different they are was brought home to me when I tried to synthesize the two with Arensons Blackmoor inserted. (for the curious you can see that attempt Here)

[Zenopus]

Yes, the Megarry copy is shown in the first post of this thread. The one that Scott has placed hexes on is the original map from the Domesday book, with my annotations added based on the Megarry map. See this post: The Land of the Great Kingdom and Environs.

The Megarry map was obviously redrawn (by Gygax or Arneson, I've heard arguments for each) from the original and does not necessarily match it in all places.

The earlier map is more aesthetically pleasing as it has drawings of mountains, forests, desert on the map, but it is mostly blank as it was Gygax's original template to which the territories were added. The Megarry map is more of a political map showing all of the territories at the time.

Aldarron: nice map at that linked blog post!

[havard]

I keep coming back to this map and your excellent article about it Zenopus! Here's my latest project which is heavily influenced by this article: blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9019&p=35535#p35535

-Havard