D&D General A Chart of D&D Campaign Worlds (v 3.0)

[Paul Farquhar]

I strongly suspect you are misremembering. The earliest mention of Waterdeep anywhere in a D&D source appears to be in Dragon #62 (June 1982) in Ed Greenwood's Pages from the Mages article.

I'm not suggesting it was before 82, that's the year I got my core rulebooks, but it couldn't have been Dragon and it couldn't have been later than 83. I don't see why it would be mentioned in White Dwarf.

 

[Nikosandros]

I could be misremembering, or it could be a different print run. Where there any ads in the back of your copies? I remember thinking "What's this Waterdeep?" and it wasn't from Dragon (not easily available in the UK) and it was long before the FR setting was published.

I had advertisements, but they were for older stuff.

 

[Echohawk]

I'm not suggesting it was before 82, that's the year I got my core rulebooks, but it couldn't have been Dragon and it couldn't have been later than 83. I don't see why it would be mentioned in White Dwarf.

FR1: Waterdeep and the North was release in October 1987, so there would not have been marketing for that before mid-1986 at the earliest. A planned but cancelled Forgotten Realms product being mentioned in 1983 or before is not consistent with what we know of the timeline for TSR's development of the setting, so it seems extremely unlikely.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A couple comments.

For one, I a struck by how some settings that loom large in our collective minds have actually had relatively short-lived, or sparse, support. Birthright stands out - just four years. And even Dark Sun, Eberron, and Planescape - they were really only significantly supported for five (Planescape), six (Eberron), and seven (Dark Sun) years at a time, with bits and pieces after.

One of the reasons I decided to include Golarion and Midgard was as a counterpoint to the recent decades of WotC. Paizo and Kobold/Open Design have covered those two settings far more consistently than WotC has of any setting over that similar fifteen years or so - especially Paizo (although it looks similar).

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if more words have been about Golarion than any other setting, for any game.

Speaking of Midgard, that was one setting that I struggled with designating colors. I gave dark squares for the two Midgard setting books, but also the Southlands books - but that isn't really consistent with how I covered Golarion - I mean, if Southlands is considered a "full setting product," then Absalom and Mwangi probably should be, as well. And I also called City of Greyhawk and various Mystara and FR products "full setting products," even though they were just expansions of the original setting.

So all that is pending revision.

This is all high-effort and I am impressed, thank you for making it!

And yeah, I think it's natural that setting that hit so hard when they first appeared are well-remembered. I was thinking they "lived fast, died young and left a pretty corpse", but that's not actually really true*, so it's got to be the initial impact, and their uniqueness. Planescape is obviously the most disproportionate but Birthright isn't far off given how extremely brief and specific it was.

* = In particular, Dark Sun got the 2nd box set which had no art by Brom (or even Baxa, who style I hated but got the aesthetic really well), and which just generally trashed up the setting by, IIRC canonising the Prism Pentad (which is one of the worst bits of D&D fiction ever, and that's saying something - it's so bad that we knew it was bad, and were mid-teens with very very low standards), and adding in all sorts of more generic junk (including some seriously green areas which weren't "basically myth"). And the 4E version of DS was only okay. Planescape got Monte Cook's special "let's ruin this setting before I leave" adventure, I'd say it was the adventure-writing equivalent of trashing a hotel room, but it's almost the opposite, it's more like if you changed history so Nirvana (or whoever, Pink Floyd if you want) didn't break up, but just decided to do godawful Middle-of-the-Road pop-rock instead, but luckily few people read it (though the 4E DMG2 did follow it, for which I will forever curse whoever wrote that bit of the DMG2, you had a chance to save Sigil you jerk! You've failed this city!).

 

[Mercurius]

This is all high-effort and I am impressed, thank you for making it!

And yeah, I think it's natural that setting that hit so hard when they first appeared are well-remembered. I was thinking they "lived fast, died young and left a pretty corpse", but that's not actually really true*, so it's got to be the initial impact, and their uniqueness. Planescape is obviously the most disproportionate but Birthright isn't far off given how extremely brief and specific it was.

* = In particular, Dark Sun got the 2nd box set which had no art by Brom (or even Baxa, who style I hated but got the aesthetic really well), and which just generally trashed up the setting by, IIRC canonising the Prism Pentad (which is one of the worst bits of D&D fiction ever, and that's saying something - it's so bad that we knew it was bad, and were mid-teens with very very low standards), and adding in all sorts of more generic junk (including some seriously green areas which weren't "basically myth"). And the 4E version of DS was only okay. Planescape got Monte Cook's special "let's ruin this setting before I leave" adventure, I'd say it was the adventure-writing equivalent of trashing a hotel room, but it's almost the opposite, it's more like if you changed history so Nirvana (or whoever, Pink Floyd if you want) didn't break up, but just decided to do godawful Middle-of-the-Road pop-rock instead, but luckily few people read it (though the 4E DMG2 did follow it, for which I will forever curse whoever wrote that bit of the DMG2, you had a chance to save Sigil you jerk! You've failed this city!).

Funny stuff. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of Baxa either - especially compared to Brom, who while a bit "colder" than I prefer, had an incredible style and technique.

I erred towards calling Birthright a "major setting" because it had a lot of material published for it, but also because it takes up significant real estate in the hivemind of long-term players. Plus, it filled a distinct niche. But I do think there's some disconnect between us old farts and what we envision WotC might or might not do based upon our memory and nostalgia, and what they're actually likely to do. Still, if I'm WotC I'm looking a lot at the huge wealth of material published during 2E in particular, and considering all options. I doubt they'd simply adapt Birthright as-is to 5E, but the kingdom building element could be part of future products, perhaps after 2024.

This has also got me thinking that Planescape-as-Planescape is less likely than some reformulation of Sigil and the Outlands as a planar hub. They might even incorporate factions, but I could see them re-working it towards a more contemporary aesthetic. I kind of see Planescape as, among other things, TSR's answer to White Wolf. Now obviously it wasn't full goth or overly dark, but it had "White Wolfian" tones - the factions, the Lady of Pain, some aesthetic elements. Maybe a bit of Mage meets Changeling, in a planar venue. Some of that might work in today's context, but I think it more likely that they overhaul it with today's audience in mind.