Posted by Benoist on Facebook.
Fantastic article by TSR alumnus (and now Elder Scrolls lore pope) Lawrence Schick over at Black Gate, on how he and Tom Moldvay collaborated to create the Known World (a.k.a. Mystara) for their home D&D campaigns, and took it with them when they went off to work for TSR.
Link. (http://www.blackgate.com/2015/02/07/the-known-world-dd-setting-a-secret-history/)
Gotta say, I'm shocked at how little interest this has garnered.
Interesting to learn some of the mystara histroy
I've seen it hinted at here and there before but it's nice to see how much of it existed before they used it for D&D.
Not a big fan of Mystara though. Of course, others are allowed to be but it was always a bit too planet of the hats for my tastes.
I love Mystara, but have always been daunted by the voluminous amount of stuff I'd need to know to run it properly.
Quote from: cranebump;814737I love Mystara, but have always been daunted by the voluminous amount of stuff I'd need to know to run it properly.
I think the key is to focus on a section, like the Emirates of Ylaruam or the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. Tons of things to do with out leaving the area. If you need to you could also branch out very slowly.
I've run Mystara since before it was mystara. All I know are Thyatis, Alphatia, Karameikos, rock home, Wendar, and some of the jarldoms. There's more than a lifetime of material in mystara.
Like any other setting, start with one town and one dungeon and work your way out.
a pleasant read. :) Thanx!
Quote from: David Johansen;814736it was always a bit too planet of the hats for my tastes.
What do you mean Plant of the Hats?
I'm not familiar with the term.
Quote from: Spinachcat;814827What do you mean Plant of the Hats?
I'm not familiar with the term.
hthttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHatstp:// (hthttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHatstp://)
Link is really broken.
Here it is
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats)
Essentially its the idea of a nation or planet all being one thing. One idea or moral or trope.
Which I never felt was true for the Known World. Mystarra on the other hand from what little seen so far seems to have drifted that way.
Quote from: cranebump;814737I love Mystara, but have always been daunted by the voluminous amount of stuff I'd need to know to run it properly.
Forget all the canon that has been published. I ran games in the Known World with just The B/X books and X1 The Isle of Dread as source material.
Same here. I skipped BECMI and somehow never heard of the Gazeteers or just did not make the connection. And never knew Mystarra was supposedly set there.
Having evaded the IP-building, novel-publishing madness of 1990s TSR, The Known World/Mystara is as canon-light as they come.
There was a wee bit of metaplot: Wrath of the Immortals and the Poor Wizards' Almanacs. But easily ignored.
For those of you who don't have a "moral" objection to the place, there's an epic 1300+ post thread here (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?724379-Let-s-Read-The-Known-World-Mystara-ALL-of-it-from-the-beginning) on RPG.net where we go through the entire publication history of the Known World/Mystara from the OD&D Blackmoor supplement onwards in chronological order.
The big take away from that thread is that there is no such thing as The Mystara setting. The setting was re-written repeatedly and huge swathes of it were ret-conned away in the later incarnations. In fact even the name of the setting changed from incarnation to incarnation.
The basic eras are:
1975-1981 - Pre-setting Era. Schick and Moldvay have their "Known World" shared setting, and Arneson has his "Blackmoor" setting, but - other than the Temple of the Frog in OD&D's Blackmoor supplement these aren't official TSR settings.
1981-1983 - B/X Era "Sample Wilderness". Moldvay and Cook present a world (in the rulebooks and adventures) with a unique feel. It's heavily based on the Schick and Moldvay home campaign, but isn't actually called the "Known World" - just a "Sample Wilderness". The feel of the world is rather pulp: very wild and wooly with a vague past and large swathes of untamed wilderness to explore, and it has alternate dimensions rather than planes; and entities out of Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft rather than demons and devils.
1983-1985 - Early BECMI Era "Sample Wilderness". Mentzer, who is a protege of Gygax, re-does the rules. The unique feel of the world is rather watered down as Mentzer pretty much ditches the weird elements and portrays the world as a more typical "Gygaxian" cosmology with inner and outer planes and the like.
1985-1987 - Late BECMI Era "Urt". With TSR in disarray and Mentzer on his way out, he goes hog wild with the later bits of the BECMI line. The setting is now both defined as being planet Earth 150,000,000 years ago and also a giant Earth Elemental called "Urt". Mentzer comes up with a convoluted cosmology to hold both his earlier planar material and the dimensional material that came before it, and he introduces Immortals as cosmic superheroes who are nothing like gods. These Immortals and the adventures defined for them give the setting a very different feel to the earlier eras. It's also much larger, with Urt being merely one small unimportant planet in the universe.
1987-1990 - Gazetteer Era "Known World". After Mentzer leaves TSR, Heard takes over as de-facto editor of the setting with little management oversight other than that he has to merge Arneson's Blackmoor setting into it somehow. His response is to change the setting rather drastically. The rather vague past alluded to in earlier products is now pinned down with an ever more detailed timeline with actual dates for events. The Gazetteers give lots of details about various regions, ret-conning both the history and geography of much of what has gone before. The wilder elements of Mentzer's cosmology are dropped, and there is a deliberate move to change Immortals from being detached cosmic superheroes in a setting without gods to being more like the interventionist gods of other settings.
1990-1992 - Hollow World Era "Mystara". Heard adds the Hollow World to the setting, and ret-cons the cosmology to be much smaller. Instead of the planet being simple one among countless others in an ancient universe, the the planet is now central to the cosmology and its creation is synonymous with the creation of the universe. Immortals are now basically gods in all but name, and the number of them has accordingly shrunk drastically. The timeline of the world is now all about the authors' favourite Immortals and their actions rather than being about the actions of populations and civilisations.
1992-1994 - Metaplot Era "Mystara". Following the '90s trend, Heard introduces metaplot to the setting - with the usual big powerful NPCs (most of whom are Immortals) doing all the fun stuff and the PCs tagging a long to witness the actions of the Mary Sue characters, of course. The metaplot includes world-changing events like the sinking of a continent and even wipes out or irrevocably changes some of the areas that had been previously given Gazetteers, thus continuing the ongoing pattern of invalidating past adventures and supplements.
1994-1996 - AD&D Era "MYSTARA™" After the cancellation of the D&D line, there are a few AD&D products released for the setting. There weren't really enough of these to give the setting any particular feel before TSR gave up on the setting completely as it fell apart.
Quote from: The Butcher;815063Having evaded the IP-building, novel-publishing madness of 1990s TSR, The Known World/Mystara is as canon-light as they come.
There was a wee bit of metaplot: Wrath of the Immortals and the Poor Wizards' Almanacs. But easily ignored.
You mean the Known World that ended up with a dozen or so Gazeteers and two boxes sets further crowding and detailing the setting?
Novels are never cannon anyhow. I used to know some of the authors.
Quote from: Omega;815081You mean the Known World that ended up with a dozen or so Gazeteers and two boxes sets further crowding and detailing the setting?
Novels are never cannon anyhow. I used to know some of the authors.
Gazetteers are obviously "canon" in that they represent an official version of whats in the map. But gazetters, especially good ones like the Known World GAZ series, are actually useful at the game table. They tend to be descriptive, location-based, and don't really push an overarching metaplot.
Novels, on the other hand, tend feed the sort of detail-oriented fandom that interacts with the setting as readers first and gamers a distant second, and is liable to make itself a pain in the ass at the game table.
And of course, like all game materials, Gazetteers are optional. :) Novels, for whatever reason, build some sort of expectation that's trickier to divorce from fans' imaginations IME.
Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;815074The basic eras are:
1975-1981 - Pre-setting Era. Schick and Moldvay have their "Known World" shared setting, and Arneson has his "Blackmoor" setting, but - other than the Temple of the Frog in OD&D's Blackmoor supplement these aren't official TSR settings.
By 1981 I was working on my Third homebrew campaign setting, the one that came to be known as
The Crystal Kingdoms.
The first campaign setting done I want to say in late 1977 to early 1978 was an earth continent done up with Crayons. There was no oceans, only a few rivers, and lakes, ...a few mountainous highland areas and lots of forested hills. There were only three or four major feudal Kingdoms, which included no outright evil kingdoms, but the mountains and deep forests were full of orcs and hobgoblins and other fell creatures, and on could find a tower or castle with an evil warlord or wizard in out-of-the-way remote locations. Usually exotic locations like on a cliff with a waterfall, or in a high mountain valley, or deep in a dark forest. This eventually ended up being about six 8-1/2"x11" hex maps, but there were only three maps where all the games and action took place. This setting featured lots of undead and massive orc and hobgoblin armies with evil wizards that invaded human lands. The Crayon setting was quickly retired however...
Also got the Judges Guild
Wilderlands of High Fantasy about this time and would lead groups in adventures in and around the
City-State of the Imperial Overlord and in
Barbarian Altanis.
The second was done up from 78-79 and did include
Romans and
Greek Heroes and
Egyptians, and vast inland sea with maybe a dozen kingdoms, with Galleys, and Brigantines, and Pirates, and such. No one else in my gaming group was doing wilderness adventures, they were all still dungeon-delving so my wilderness sandbox game was fairly popular. This was also about six 8-1/2"x11" hex maps done in Colored Pencil & Crayon mix
The third was the best and was done from 79-81 was the
Crystal Kingdoms, it was the first setting done with markers and ended up being fifteen 8-1/2"x11" hex maps done with felt tip markers and ink pens. This included
Brandywine, a homey little valley with hobbits and good folk where the players originated from. This is the first setting with my epic
Crystalmeer Elves, Elves that used magic to forge diamond-hard ultra-sharp crystal weapons.
This setting included everything I could rip off from traditional fantasy settings and included entire maps devoted to some of the great fiction authors. For example in the North was the great Frozen Kingdoms and great Ice Ships featured in many
Michael Moorcock novels. I had a map in this setting for
The Land,
Lord Foul and the
Illearth war, with
Urviles and the enchanted creatures and peoples from
Thomas Covenants worlds... I included a map of many Dragon eyries for
Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, and included a map for various locations from Andre Nortons books as well, especially
Witchworld. There was an Islands map that were very much like
Earthsea, and you could find an entryway to
Narnia, and there was a place where the Tsurranni had invaded from
Kelewan and I had a place very much like
Midkemia...
Some of what turned out to be the best places though, came from my own imagination. A great swamp full of mysterious pyramids, forgotten cities and rock strewn caverns where barbarian amazons would kill any party without a
"female" leader...
Brandywine, ever vulnerable composed mostly of hills, and river valleys and farms, just crying out for young feudal lords to protect it...
...and all this had been featured in some way in D&D campaigns played by 1981.
I find it kind of humorous that something gets to be
Secret by virtue of the fact that only a few people knew about it. It wasn't like anyone was trying to keep any secret with the Gazeteers, just that no one much paid attention to the origins of things because it wasn't really relevant. Back then, I didn't buy any of those campaign settings books because I simply didn't need them.
Quote from: The Butcher;815082And of course, like all game materials, Gazetteers are optional. :) Novels, for whatever reason, build some sort of expectation that's trickier to divorce from fans' imaginations IME.
My experience has been different; players expect source material explicitly written for the game to be exactly reflected in the game, to the point of rules lawyering, but are willing to make allowances for dramatic license on the part of the novel. Not that I have much experience in larger published settings, so maybe it's different for settings like this; are Gazetteers more peripheral or otherwise a special case?
They are optional, but they are very good quality, and each supplement kind of focuses on one ethnic human group.
Or non-human — Rockhome, Alfheim and the brilliant Orcs of Thar.
They're fairly peripheral, I think, not to mention significantly less likely to be read by your players than the average FR supplement.
Wow, there were alot more Mystarra novels than I thought. 10. Not counting any for Thunder Rift, Hollow World, or Red Steel. I know there was at least one Thunder Rift novel. From the author was how I learned why TSR or other company books and product often dont match.
Quote from: Scott Anderson;814704Gotta say, I'm shocked at how little interest this has garnered.
Really? I couldn't care less about someone else's game world.
Mystara is awesome, and this is an awesome story.
I think its the only major RPG setting that I can say I've read EVERY setting book to. And between gazetteers and the boxed sets and the almanacs, there were quite a lot of them.
I have to agree totally.
Mystara rocks. My default starting location for D&D campaigns is always Karameikos. We have had some spectacular adventures in Mystara. It's neat to see how its genesis wasn't too different from any of the home campaigns folks brew up.