List of OD&D Campaign Worlds

[benoist]

You can add the Hobby Shop Dungeon campaign created in 1977/78 by Ernie Gygax, with some early maps of Terry Kuntz, and others his own, run in the Dungeon Hobby Shop of Lake Geneva, WI. It was its own campaign world, dissociated from Greyhawk.

[Falconer]

Aug 13, 2013 14:51:06 GMT -6 tec97 said:

Actually I think it was that they'd been playing a campaign set in Greyhawk, but wanted a more Middle-Earth feel, without it being exactly Middle-Earth. I think The Iron Wind, should properly be included in a definitive list of OD&D campaign worlds, as this was its roots, and it was arguably as well as, or better known nationally than Blackmoor.

Then we might as well add In Search of the Unknown, The Keep on the Borderlands, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, White Plume Mountain, Verbosh, Thracia, Mitra’s Fist, etc. etc. To me, a module is just that — it’s modular, meaning, it can be added to any campaign. The Iron Wind is a module, and an AD&D/Rolemaster one at that.

By the way, “a campaign set in Greyhawk” couldn’t really have started prior to 1980, when The World of Greyhawk was published (for AD&D).

[tec97]

Falconer, I think your analogy is completely out to lunch. The Iron Wind is about as similar to ISotU or KotB as World of Greyhawk is similar to them. It's a rpg world that developed from a house-ruled OD&D base. Though it will be somewhat tiresome, I'll do some digging and try to find more detailed information of what I'm obviously mis-remembering.

[Falconer]

It’s alright, you’re not the only one that’s confused. It’s not clear to me whether we are listing published OD&D worlds or cataloging home campaigns, and if the latter, do they have to be “full” worlds or not — and what exactly is a full world? Or are these distinctions all phony? To me, a “world” requires an outdoor map of an area at least as large as the FFC map.

Greyhawk (Gary Gygax) — was a home OD&D campaign but it wasn’t ever a published OD&D world.

Wilderlands (Bob Bledsaw) — is a published OD&D world — really the only published OD&D world per se — but it wasn’t ever a home campaign (he actually ran Middle-earth).

The Iron Wind (Pete Fenlon) — is a published module that is neither a world nor for OD&D, and we do not know if it was ever part of a home campaign (he actually ran Middle-earth).

Like I said, maybe the distinction is phony, because after Bledsaw published Wilderlands, of course many people DID use it in their home campaigns.

[scottenkainen]

Okay, let's see if we can define terms better.

What I was initially interested in was a list of named campaign worlds. So it has to have a name. I've been very hesitant to include campaign worlds called simply x's World.

Next, there has to have been some effort to map out, if not a whole world, at least a section of a continent large enough to leave plenty of room for exploration. A self-contained dungeon setting does not constitute a world to my way of thinking, which was why I had added and then removed the Dungeon Hobby Shop world from my list.

Lastly, there should be some significance to the world. It should either be a published game setting, a game setting designed by a published game designer, a game setting that a published game designed played in, or a game setting referenced in a game publication (like a mention in Dragon magazine).

[makofan]

My copy of Judges Guild's Verbosh is dated 1979. It is a complete setting with no relation to the Wilderlands. It incorporates 2.4 million square kilometres of terrain, has cities, towns, villages, lairs, politics, adventure sites, adventure rumours. I think we should add it in

[calithena]

I kind of hate the 'fixed your typo' posting meme, but regardless...

Aug 7, 2013 16:16:14 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I'd say the Wilderlands are OD&D is a combination of swords & sorcery and The Hobbit.

[geoffrey]

Aug 13, 2013 21:57:13 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Wilderlands (Bob Bledsaw) — is a published OD&D world — really the only published OD&D world per se — but it wasn’t ever a home campaign (he actually ran Middle-earth).

I know that Bledsaw's D&D campaign started in Middle-earth, but I was under the impression that after a few years the PCs in his campaign walked through a magical gate from Middle-earth to the Wilderlands and henceforth adventured in the latter.

Am I mistaken? Was the Wilderlands purely a commercial offering and not the setting of Bledsaw's home campaign?

[calithena]

The Wilderlands is his home campaign. I believe though that the wonderful maps we bought were originally developed from Middle Earth maps, that the whole thing evolved over time from one map to the other. If you look at a map of the entirety of Tolkien's world, with the two continents on either side and the islands in the middle, it is not hard to imagine that evolving into the Wilderlands during play.

[Zenopus]

Bill Owen wrote about this recently in this other thread. It doesn't sound like the Wilderlands per se were used by Bob until a relatively late date (~1978) after the the setting was developed and published.

Bill Owen wrote:

My perception was that Bob's "world" was that it WAS Middle Earth and D&D was the mere ruleset (that we constantly changed!) Indeed 3 from the beginning had taken names from the trilogy. We would get teleported (or whatever) into offbeat spots like Mars and probably others. It's significant though that I do not remember any other dimension/orb besides our familiar Mirkwood/Lonely Mountain region or Mars. I never thought of Tegel Manor as being out of place but cannot say where it was in Middle Earth! Tegel was the only JG product that was reprinted from Bob's campaign!

As I said already, there were no games run in the Wilderlands (that I know of and it would be a pretty strange thing to keep secret) beforehand and perhaps not until two years after publication.*

[scottenkainen]

So, Verbosh is its own setting unconnected to the Wilderlands?

[Deleted]

Aug 18, 2013 22:49:31 GMT -6 scottenkainen said:

So, Verbosh is its own setting unconnected to the Wilderlands?

Yes. I don't know a good citation for this, but I used to own Verbosh and can confirm this is the case.

Here are a couple reviews:

Melan @ Dragonsfoot

Jeff's Gameblog

[scalydemon]

I acquired a copy of Verbosh a year or so ago based off another thread with positive comments. It has sat on my bookshelf ever since. I should give it a gander

[makofan]

I bought Verbosh way back in the 1980's as I thought it was a Wilderlands extension. When I found it wasn't, I was disappointed and put it on the shelf. 5 years ago, when I decided to set up a pBp campaign, I decided to give it a try. It is tongue-in-cheek; I adjusted some of the sophomoric humor (but not all)

For those wanting to give it a gander, it has a starting city that has noted all the things adventurers need - many taverns, lots of rumors, etc. It has a starting dungeon underneath the city. It then has a poorly organized wilderness that experienced DM's will have noi problem with, but is quite bare for those wanting a bit more direction. It is also severely under-treasured (is that a word) but I just use their examples as starting points

As an example, there is a Lawful temple in Verbosh - the Spider God. It lists the main NPC's, with no characterization, and its components of guards. I had to decide - how does the temple get along with the city? I chose to make it a sinister force with a good front, fighting a secret war to undermine the government, but I had to think of that myself.

[snorri]

François Marcella-Froideval's Black Moon Chronicles probably originated in the late 70's. The first issue of Casus Belli was prepared in late 79 and published beginning of 1980 - and the first unofficial Holmes translation dates from that time too.

Some discussions here about it www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=9660

[Finarvyn]

Some great points have been raised about camapigns. Do we count only published campaigns or maybe "home" campaigns only if they also saw print. This really tends to skew the data toward all of the game designers of the era, since each one probably had his own campaign and since we've heard of the person that adds a layer of "credibility" to the campaign.

For example, Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms supposedly was created well before 2E, but to me it's always going to be a 2E game. I'm going to be skeptical of any OD&D list that has Forgotten Realms on it. Not to pick on Ed, but I had never heard of him or his world. I have the same issue with Barker's EPT world; maybe it existed for decades, but for me it started around 1975 or 1976 or whatever year my friend bought a copy.

And if we go the "any moron with a home campaign" route I'd like to throw in for consideration my own "Secondearth" campaign which none of you have heard of but was started by me in 1975 and ran at least into the mid-1980's. Heck, I'm a moron and I had a home game back in the day as well.

On the other hand, while Gary's Greyhawk game was first released as an AD&D setting, there are clearly elements of OD&D Greyhawk out there and I hate not to include this in a list. G,DG&H had a whole bunch of Greyhawk artifacts in it. The G-series and D-series of "AD&D" modules were run as pre-AD&D GenCon tournament dungeons with OD&D rules, and they are clearly Greyhawk.

To me, the "legit" list is actually really short. Blackmoor, Wilderlands, and Greyhawk. Then we can argue about Tekumel.

I think we have descended into a gigantic grey area on this topic, and maybe can't work our way out. We almost need a do-over thread where we can clearly define a goal from the onset and stick to it.

[snorri]

Aug 20, 2013 5:10:10 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

And if we go the "any moron with a home campaign" route I'd like to throw in for consideration my own "Secondearth" campaign which none of you have heard of but was started by me in 1975 and ran at least into the mid-1980's. Heck, I'm a moron and I had a home game back in the day as well.

You should definitely publish your Secondearth campaign

[Finarvyn]

But what would be the point? What it would end up being is spiral notebook pages of boring NPC stats, place names swiped from other sources (Greyhawk, Rohan, Rivendell, Aquilonia, and so on) and cheezy hand-drawn maps. What character sheets I still have were hand-written on lined paper or on 3x5 notecards. I did have a lengthy history of the campaign written out, if I can find it, but many of the names were ripped off from history or literature and it would be a lot of work to try to rename everything just to publish. (And then it wouldn't be the "same thing" anyway.)

I think that most home games were like this back in the day, and I assume many are like that today. (At least, most of mine are.) The big difference now is that I tend to type things instead of hand-write them, and there are better mapping tools or prettier maps I can swipe.

The fun was in the experience of the campaign, and I doubt that we had enough "original" ideas to really warrent publication.

No, if I ever decide to publish a home campaign it wouldn't be my original one from the 1970's (assuming I still have the stuff anyway somewhere). I would be more inclined to publish something from just a few years ago, my "D.S.S. Endeavor" campaign. At least that was more creative.

[Deleted]

Aug 20, 2013 5:41:12 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

But what would be the point?

I think the point would lie somewhere between FFC and PlaGMaDA. As someone interested in the early history of D&D, I'm more interested in learning about what someone was doing with D&D in the 70s than what they've done with it lately. I suspect that interest is not uncommon among fans drawn to an "ODD74" forum.

[Deleted]

Aug 20, 2013 5:41:12 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

But what would be the point? What it would end up being is spiral notebook pages of boring NPC stats, place names swiped from other sources (Greyhawk, Rohan, Rivendell, Aquilonia, and so on) and cheezy hand-drawn maps. What character sheets I still have were hand-written on lined paper or on 3x5 notecards. I did have a lengthy history of the campaign written out, if I can find it, but many of the names were ripped off from history or literature and it would be a lot of work to try to rename everything just to publish. (And then it wouldn't be the "same thing" anyway.)

I dunno, to me, that sounds a lot like what Gary did with the published Greyhawk setting...

Here is the OP question presented: "How comprehensive a list of named campaign worlds do we have from the pre-1980 gaming period?"

From there the questions of criteria, who qualified and how, and (in my case) ranking of the importance of the campaigns to further, later campaign developments took the question further.

The question of ranking the campaigns in the three tiers I proposed was simply a method of organizing them and showing how campaigns influenced subsequent campaigns and the idea and nature of the campaign evolved over time. Sort of like geveloping a family tree or genealogy of campaigns, much as has been done with bands in the music world. Some may ask why; I say, why not? I find it of interest, even if others might not...

[Deleted]

Aug 20, 2013 11:32:56 GMT -6 jamesmishler said:

Sort of like geveloping a family tree or genealogy of campaigns, much as has been done with bands in the music world. Some may ask why; I say, why not? I find it of interest, even if others might not...

I'd find such a tree of interest, much more so than a discussion of criteria for inclusion. Particularly if it did include a genealogy of influence. Apologies if I've overlooked it in this discussion, but do we have much information about influence? Or would tracing genealogy be mostly speculative?

[kent]

Aug 20, 2013 11:32:56 GMT -6 jamesmishler said:

From there the questions of criteria, who qualified and how, and (in my case) ranking of the importance of the campaigns to further, later campaign developments took the question further.

The question of ranking the campaigns in the three tiers I proposed was simply a method of organizing them and showing how campaigns influenced subsequent campaigns and the idea and nature of the campaign evolved over time. Sort of like geveloping a family tree or genealogy of campaigns, much as has been done with bands in the music world. Some may ask why; I say, why not? I find it of interest, even if others might not...

This shows no understanding of the importance of creativity in D&D. The only useful hierarchy would be one indicating degrees of originality and imagination. The notion that there is any interest in hand me down campaigns lazily imitating previous ones down a hierarchy of generations, is stultifying pedantry. There are only two kinds of campaign, original ones and derivative ones and the latter are worthless to third parties.

[Deleted]

www.youtube.com/v/3rpY-7ndlqI&start=30&end=40&autoplay=1&version=3

[Falconer]

This keeps happening, where Kent can’t make his case without insulting other posters, then other posters must address Kent’s problem, and pretty soon Kent has become the subject of the thread. Again. I know, I’m doing it right now, but it just needs to be called out.

[Deleted]

Aug 20, 2013 13:13:57 GMT -6 Falconer said:

This keeps happening, where Kent can’t make his case without insulting other posters, then other posters must address Kent’s problem, and pretty soon Kent has become the subject of the thread. Again. I know, I’m doing it right now, but it just needs to be called out.

And I too have been avoiding calling out Kent. I decided long ago to just ignore him. But you know what, it is just not worth bothering with this site anymore, thanks to him. If I wanted to be insulted by elitist wankers and misanthropes, I'd go hang out on RPGnet or the RPGsite. I guess now if I want both in one shot, I can hang out on the OD&D Discussion board.

Which, in order to stop wasting my time, I shan't any more.

Farewell.

[kent]

Aug 20, 2013 13:13:57 GMT -6 Falconer said:

This keeps happening, where Kent can’t make his case without insulting other posters, then other posters must address Kent’s problem, and pretty soon Kent has become the subject of the thread. Again. I know, I’m doing it right now, but it just needs to be called out.

That is class A dishonest trolling. You should mind your own business I wasn't addressing you.

[kent]

Aug 20, 2013 14:51:38 GMT -6 jamesmishler said:

Aug 20, 2013 13:13:57 GMT -6 Falconer said:

This keeps happening, where Kent can’t make his case without insulting other posters, then other posters must address Kent’s problem, and pretty soon Kent has become the subject of the thread. Again. I know, I’m doing it right now, but it just needs to be called out.

And I too have been avoiding calling out Kent. I decided long ago to just ignore him. But you know what, it is just not worth bothering with this site anymore, thanks to him. If I wanted to be insulted by elitist wankers and misanthropes, I'd go hang out on RPGnet or the RPGsite. I guess now if I want both in one shot, I can hang out on the OD&D Discussion board.

Which, in order to stop wasting my time, I shan't any more.

Farewell.

And Im fed up of grown men expecting that endless blather should go unchallenged or that their expertise should always be acknowledged. What was the insult? 'Stultifying pedantry'? I believe that. You call me an 'elitist wanker' and then leave on your high horse. Act like a man.

[scottenkainen]

I'm going to side with Kent on this one. What I saw was someone who was not recently active on the message board swooped in, tried to hijack the thread I started by making it all about him and the hierarchy he was developing, and when he was called out on the practicality of it, got huffy, picked up his toys, and went back home.

[Falconer]

I don’t think we want a board where people get “called out” and then snickered at when they leave.

[barrataria]

Aug 20, 2013 5:41:12 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

But what would be the point? What it would end up being is spiral notebook pages of boring NPC stats, place names swiped from other sources (Greyhawk, Rohan, Rivendell, Aquilonia, and so on) and cheezy hand-drawn maps. What character sheets I still have were hand-written on lined paper or on 3x5 notecards. I did have a lengthy history of the campaign written out, if I can find it, but many of the names were ripped off from history or literature and it would be a lot of work to try to rename everything just to publish. (And then it wouldn't be the "same thing" anyway.)

Wait, I'd think you were describing my "Greyhawk" but I used legal pads and file folders. So my world is way totally cooler than yours I think I did much more copying from world cultures/places though, but to be fair GH and the Known World did too, seemed to be what to do.

Mostly it's dreck I need to put in the recycling bin but never seem to get to.