'Known World' - OD&D

[Staffan]

I think several mistakes occurred in the Known World line of products. The name "Mystara" tops them all, but others were: trying to port it to AD&D (why create products for a setting that won't sell because it isn't Forgotten Realms?), and producing the Wrath of the Immortals campaign that resulted in the whole setting being hosed.

As I understand it, porting the Known World to AD&D was an attempt to save it. TSR were dropping support for "Basic"-type D&D, and so they tried to move the setting over to AD&D, as an introductory type of setting (the Kingdom of Karameikos and Kingdom of Glantri boxes are clearly written with the aim toward a less experienced gamer than, for example, the 2nd ed Forgotten Realms box).

 

[fanboy2000]

<snip>
Lots of stuff good stuff. A Mystara-phile could get lost there.

I did get lost there, I couldn't find anything that answered my questions when I first went there. Is there any sort of resource there that's like a gazeteer for the whole world? It seems I can find lots of specifics, but few overviews or the world. I found a map of the whole world on there once, but it was more useless than the Eberron map in Dungeon.

 

[der_kluge]

Richard Tongue? Dick Tongue? That's just wrong.

Not any worse than the woman I knew at a place I worked named Candy Beavers, though, I suppose.


This guy goes into the courthouse and the judge says, "I see you're here to change your name. What is your current name?" "Joe Ass" the man replies. "Ouch", says the judge, "I can certainly see what you'd want to change that." "Tell me about it", the man says. "What do you want your new name to be?" asks the judge. "I was thinking about Robert Ass." The judge, stunned says, "Robert Ass? Why that name?" "Because I'm sick of all these people saying - Whadda ya know, Joe!"

 

[rogueattorney]

Call me eternally bitter, but I'm pretty sure that the name "Mystara" arose after the folks at TSR realized that the name "Known World" didn't sound stupid enough.

I think several mistakes occurred in the Known World line of products. The name "Mystara" tops them all, but others were: trying to port it to AD&D (why create products for a setting that won't sell because it isn't Forgotten Realms?), and producing the Wrath of the Immortals campaign that resulted in the whole setting being hosed.

Agree 100%.

The terms for those who don't know:

The Known World: The SE corner of the continent of Brun and some of the islands and sub-continents to the east. The term is used the same way we might use "Western Europe". It's the portion of the world that civilized folk know about. It was the section covered by the Gazzetteer series of products.

Mystara: The name of the world TSR cooked up in about 1991, 10 years after the campaign was first published, and contrary to previous campaign information (the original name of the planet was Urt).

The Hollow World: The inside of the planet. It was a hollow sphere with folk living on both the outer crust and the interior crust.

The Savage Coast: The SW corner of the continent of Brun, originally covered in the Voyage of the Princess Ark and Known Grimoire articles in Dragon.

Red Steel: The sub-campaign setting covering the area of the Savage Coast, which is known for the substance Red Steel.

The campaign setting went through 3 distince phases. From 1981-1986, it was really only detailed sketchily in the adventure modules. From 1987-1993, it was treated subperbly in a series of Gazetteers and other products, although the quality of these really started to decline towards the end. From 1994-1996 after TSR discontinued the D&D line, they converted it to 2e, barely supported it with subpar products, and then gave it the axe.

At no time during the entire history of the line did they ever produce a product like the 1983 Greyhawk boxed set or the 1987 Forgotten Realms grey box that covered the entire region. The closest was the brief introduction to the Known World in X1 Isle of Dread, or the general overviews offered in the Almanacs.

I'd suggest that anyone interested in the setting avoid the 2e products for the campaign (except the Monstrous Compendium, which had real nice art).

There's currently a thread on the Wizzo's Other Worlds board discussing the likelihood (or lack thereof) of the Known World ever seeing print again. My view is that the only real chance is that James Mishler's Hackmaster version finally is completed and published.

R.A.

 

[Insight]

Thanks, Estlor! That's the sort of overview that I was looking for.

I'm curious where you guys would put something like Keep on the Borderlands. It's not a setting specific adventure, so I guess it's up to the DM. I was thinking maybe Darokin on the border with one of the Orc lands, or maybe the Grand Duchy on the border with the mountains and that desert (forget the name right now).

I was thinking of doing B4 next (The Lost City), so I kinda wanted B2 to be set somewhere near that big desert, so as to affect a relatively believeable transition.

 

[Nisarg]

At no time during the entire history of the line did they ever produce a product like the 1983 Greyhawk boxed set or the 1987 Forgotten Realms grey box that covered the entire region. The closest was the brief introduction to the Known World in X1 Isle of Dread, or the general overviews offered in the Almanacs.
R.A.

Actually the closest would probably be either the Almanacs or the overview with lots of nice colour hex maps that's found in the D&D Cyclopedia.

But the Gazeteer series, if you can find them all (and I recently did) are probably some of the best "nation books" for any RPG setting ever. They were amazing, especially for their time.

Mystara continues to be my very favourite D&D setting, and I'm currently running a campaign there, using the original D&D basic rules.

Nisarg

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The 2e boxed sets (the settings, not the modules) were actually extremely good, with the Glantri boxed set being perhaps the most imaginative setting TSR ever created other than Planescape. While I love the gazetteers as much as anyone, the boxed sets made a much more convenient jumping-on point for new players without sacrificing very much detail at all.

The reason you see a lot of anger directed towards the boxed sets is mostly because of two things that aren't really related: 1) The conversion to 2e felt like a betrayal to a lot of the loyalists, 2) the timeline was moved forward. Argue whether or not these design decisions were worth making, but don't impugn the Kingdom of Adventure and Kingdom of Magic boxed sets. If basic settings were produced like that today, people would laud them as some of the best things available for D20.

My only regret is that we never got the Darokin boxed set that was promised, which would have been just as different in flavor as Glantri's magocracy and canals were from Karameikos's old school flavor.

 

[frog]

Thanks, Estlor! That's the sort of overview that I was looking for.

I'm curious where you guys would put something like Keep on the Borderlands. It's not a setting specific adventure, so I guess it's up to the DM. I was thinking maybe Darokin on the border with one of the Orc lands, or maybe the Grand Duchy on the border with the mountains and that desert (forget the name right now).

I was thinking of doing B4 next (The Lost City), so I kinda wanted B2 to be set somewhere near that big desert, so as to affect a relatively believeable transition.

Castellan Keep (known in the module as the Keep on the Borderlands) was located in northern Karameikos. The Lost City is located in the deserts of Ylaruam. Our current campaign (3e) is based in The Known World (I refuse to call it Mystara) and I have run the group through both of these adventures. They had a blast!!!

I threw in the Temple of Elemental Evil as an archaeological site in Karameikos near the Black Eagle Barony. It was under the "supervision" of Bargle, who was looking for a certain set of gemstones that would complete a golden skull artifact he had aquired. Purely for research purposes of course...he would never actually use the thing to summon a horde of demons to conquer the kingdom...would he???

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Thanks, Estlor! That's the sort of overview that I was looking for.

I'm curious where you guys would put something like Keep on the Borderlands. It's not a setting specific adventure, so I guess it's up to the DM. I was thinking maybe Darokin on the border with one of the Orc lands, or maybe the Grand Duchy on the border with the mountains and that desert (forget the name right now).

I was thinking of doing B4 next (The Lost City), so I kinda wanted B2 to be set somewhere near that big desert, so as to affect a relatively believeable transition.

There's mountains ringing Ylarum (the desert country), so you could just put the Keep in those and have it be a few days away from wherever you choose to place the Lost City. Though, given how the Lost City begins, you might want to make it more than a few days.

The city of Selenica, in Eastern Darokin, is a main trade city with Ylarum and has a large Ylari quarter. Putting the Keep just to the north, and having Selnica be a waypoint between the two modules, would give a good chance for the PCs to hook up with a caravan or some other mission to get them into the desert. And lost. And stranded in the next module.

 

[Mystaros]

I'm curious where you guys would put something like Keep on the Borderlands. It's not a setting specific adventure, so I guess it's up to the DM. I was thinking maybe Darokin on the border with one of the Orc lands, or maybe the Grand Duchy on the border with the mountains and that desert (forget the name right now).

I was thinking of doing B4 next (The Lost City), so I kinda wanted B2 to be set somewhere near that big desert, so as to affect a relatively believeable transition.

The 1983 Mentzer edition of the Expert Set included the Known World map (also known then as the "D&D Wilderness") with modifications from that of the X1 map: markers for where various published adventures occured in the Known World.

(I think I've done this before in more detail ehre somewhere... hmmm... I'
ll have to look. But anyway).

Mind you, these are the official, canonical positions for the adventures. With your Known World (or Mystara, as you may prefer), you can of course put them wherever you want...

B1 "In Search of the Unknown" is set in western Karameikos, in the mountains near the headwaters of the eastermost tributary of the western river system.

B2 "Keep on the Borderlands" is placed in eastern Karameikos, in the Altan Tepes mountains, at the headwaters of the second from the east tributary of the eastern river system.

B3 "Palace of the Silver Princess" is set three hexes south of B2, on the southwestern vertices of the southernmost mountain hes.

B4 "The Lost City" is set in Ylaruam, in the desert west of the city. From the desert hex adjacent to the road south out of Rockhome, and including that hex, count four hexes south, then one hex southeast. That's where the city is buried.

Those are all the "B" modules listed in the Expert set.

X1 "The Isle of Dread" is, of course, set far to the south, in the Sea of Dread.

X2 "Castle Amber" is set in Glantri. The Expert set places it in the first hex along the river just north of the Broken Lands, however, later Gazetteers placed the lands of the Ambervilles further north, in the central valley northwest of Glantri City, where the river forks into three...

X3 "Curse of Xanathon" is places in Vestland, at the fork of the river right at the border of Rockhome.

X4 "Master of the Desert Nomads" and X5 "Temple of Death", are placed as north and west across the plateau, which was wrong even at the time, as they should have been placed directly to the west of the map, each describing an entire region the size of the Known World, first Sind and then Hule.

I'll try to dig up my post where I listed locations for other adventures...