Oldest campaign setting(s)?

trancejeremy said:
Yeah, from what I've seen of them, the original Greyhawk & Blackmoor supplements just had new classes, monsters, spells, magic items, etc. Not any setting material.

Actually, Blackmoor had the first published adventure "Temple of the Frog" that, IIRC, was set in Blackmoor. So, it depends on your definition of setting material.

I'm still not clear, though, on the first published setting for D&D. Does anyone have the release dates on the following materials to compare which setting was published first: "First Fantasy Campaign" from Judges Guild (the Blackmoor setting); "Greyhawk" Folio from TSR; "City-State of the Invincible Overlord" from Judges Guild.

Glyfair of Glamis
 

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Bonehoard Taffer said:
From what I have read, I always thought that MAR Barkers Empire of the Petal Throne was the oldest published setting. For some reason, I want to think that TSR published it, before any other setting was released. I could be wrong though.
To my knowledge this is essentially accurate.

TSR did publish it and it was I believe the first ---fully described--- setting they did.

The question is...

Did the small blackmoor and greyhawk books come out first and how complete of settings where they?

As well... Does Empire count as DnD from it's similarities or as a seperate game. It's really in about the same camp as something like Wheel of Time RPG is today.
 
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Greyhawk was basically a rules booklet that introduced Paladins, Rogues, different sized HD for the different classes, 7th-9th level wizard spells and assorted monsters and magic items. There was nothing campaign-specific to it.

Blackmoor came next, and it had the Monk character class, a system for assigning different proportions of your hit points to different locations (extremely lethal, I never knew anyone that used it), the "Temple of the Frog" adventure, which was utter rubbish IMO and incorporated elements of techno-magic.

(Eldritch Wizardry was the next one, and that had Druids, psionics and demons if I recall correctly. I never owned that one though, only the first two).

All of these were really rules supplements, the "adventure" in Blackmoor was too light to be considered a proper adventure, and could be set in any old swamp.

EPT was a great campaign setting, but it wasn't D&D (Attributes were rolled on d100 for instance).

One of the big advantages that RuneQuest had when it came out was a richly detailed world which sparked off lots of thoughts and ideas for adventures - it was one of the things which originally drew me and my players away from D&D back in about 1977/78. I sometimes wondered whether the decision to publish campaign worlds (whether Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms or whatever else) by TSR came as a response to that. Maybe not directly, maybe it was just additional revenue streams :)

Just a little bit of extra info from someone who was there :)
 

arcady said:
Did the small blackmoor and greyhawk books come out first and how complete of settings where they?


I don't think the Blackmoor and Greyhawk books came out first, but I've been having a hard time finding reference materials to the exact release dates of some of these books (even just the month & year). So far I have found that "The First Fantasy Campaign" came out in 1975, as did the the Blackmoor and Greyhawk Supplements to OD&D. As did the Empire to the Petal Throne. So, no real help there.

However, it's not really relevant. Blackmoor and Greyhawk were rules expansion books for OD&D. Except for the small adventure in Blackmoor I previously mentioned ("Temple of the Frog") there is no setting material in those books. I believe the entire adventure was the temple, not even the wilderness surrounding it was detailed.

According to Bastion Press, the only ESD scheduled of any of the OD&D books is Blackmoor scheduled for 4/15/02. They are still looking for copies of the rest. Not suprising since they essentially have to destroy the books to get the scans. I imagine few people want to donate these books so that others can buy the ESDs. The only thing you get is a free copy of the ESD.

So, to summarize, here are the release dates I have now of the earlier fantasy campaign worlds.

1975: Empire of the Petal Throne (TSR), "First Fantasy Campaign" (Judges Guild)
1976: City State of the Invincible Overlord (Judges Guild)
1978: Glorantha (Chaosium)
1980: Greyhawk (campaign setting) (TSR)
1983: Mystara/Known world in D&D expert set (TSR)

Glyfair of Glamis
 
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Glyfair said:
Not suprising since they essentially have to destroy the books to get the scans. I imagine few people want to donate these books so that others can buy the ESDs. The only thing you get is a free copy of the ESD.
No kidding...
Hmm...
The old ones are soft cover so I don't know if that will destroy a beat up copy, but...
I really can't see anyone donating anything of value.
Oh, well, what are you going to do? :)
 

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