AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Yeah, so, in 1975 or so I scribbled a map onto some sort of big sheet of graph paper I got someplace and that became the 'world map'. Instead of wandering around from commercial D&D setting to other commercial D&D setting, I just plopped different areas onto this map to do different things with, and then kind of invented a few stories to make it all a bit coherent (IE there was an ancient empire, and then a not so ancient empire, and then a big crash, and over in this other area there was a magical catastrophe, etc.). The main conflict generator was something called the 'Elder Gods', which were described as 'elemental beings' (there's a fire guy, an ocean guy, and a nature god who defected to the other side). They claim to have created the 'Younger Gods', but that might be PR... Anyway, the Younger Gods are more like the 4e gods, pretty much just bog standard D&D gods, Gruumsh, Moradin, and Correlon even got in there as sponsors of their respective races, though the others I apparently made up (I forget, it was 40+ years ago).I think a lot of 4e's value is in the way it integrates its cosmic conflicts into the broader game. I have not always used the Nentir Vale with 4e, but I always used the Dawn War.
The best game I ran doubled down on those things. I set it at the height of the Nerath Empire with Bane and Kord as basic stand ins for Romulus and Remus.
The upshot being this was a LOT like 4e's layout! I even had a 'land of fairy' where the 'eldar' (high elves back in the day) lived,
and a 'land of death', which in that cosmology was the 'first world' which the Elder Gods built, but then smashed up when they decided to exterminate the Younger Gods. So, the current world is the SECOND world, and the first one is kind of shadowfell-like.
Kinda strange how different people can pretty much invent the same solutions, lol. I didn't really explicitly make an 'elemental chaos' I guess, never really thought too much about it, so I will give WotC credit for polishing the ideas more than I ever bothered to. I still use my god names, so instead of Pelor there is Lir, who is usually depicted as female (since the first person to run a cleric of Lir so decreed, lol).
Oh, and the primary time frame was 'after the big empire crashed' and the world is just a lot of little towns and castles with maybe a few barbarians claiming they run things, when they aren't getting their butts kicked by whatever remnants of orc hordes are still roving around... lol.