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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Werthead" data-source="post: 9507582" data-attributes="member: 7045643">Blackmoor was certainly created first, but then you could argue Forgotten Realms predates either (created 1966) and then get into a discussion about Lankhmar (created 1939) because it was later a D&D campaign setting (though so was Conan, for two adventures only), though obviously not the original intent.Blackmoor was never published by TSR, apart from the single booklet of the same name for the original D&D line, but both that supplement and the Greyhawk one that followed it were extra rules and information; neither had much, if any, world information (only a brief bit on Loch Gloomen as part of the included adventure). You could not really run Blackmoor with any info ever published by TSR (and the presence of Blackmoor on the Greyhawk maps was more of an Easter Egg), you needed the material Arneson published himself separately, outside TSR, for that, starting with The First Fantasy Campaign in 1977, from Judges Guild.Greyhawk was the officially first-published D&D campaign setting with the 1980 Gazetteer and then the 1983 boxed set, and the claim that all AD&D 1E material was set in Greyhawk, with Tomb of Horrors the first 1E material that specifically mentioned Greyhawk locations in 1978. The OG D&D adventure Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1976) has some allusions to Greyhawk as well, but that was before Gygax had 100% committed to putting Greyhawk out as a product line so at that point it was more of an Easter Egg.I think Gygax didn't see much point in including a campaign setting as he expected players to either borrow a famous fantasy world from literature (hence the original "sources" section talking about Howard and Vance and Tolkien) or make their own, and setting information would take up space he'd rather spend on rules. I think it was a combination of people incessantly asking him about his home campaign in Dragon, and the success of the other early RPGs with setting information (including the first version of Empire of the Petal Throne, published by TSR, and then the first versions of Traveller and RuneQuest from other parties, and clearly Stafford's worldbuilding for Glorantha in RuneQuest was incredibly detailed) that convinced him to bring Greyhawk to the masses. There was also a lot of third-party people bringing out setting material for use with D&D (if not spelled out like that), including Midkemia Press with their various supplements that would shortly be mined by one of their players, Ray Feist, for his Riftwar Saga, which sold millions of copies.Also the success of Quag Keep, a novel set in Greyhawk, though that might have been more down to the author, Andre Norton, being an SFF superstar at the time.</blockquote>

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