OD&D Original 'Known World' Documents Released

The Known World (which later became Mystara) from the BECMI editions of D&D from 1983-90 started as Tom Moldvay’s and Lawrence Schick’s own campaign which ran from about 1976-1979. Bill Wilkerson, a player of those games saved the Moldvay-era OD&D house rules from then, as well as his own overview of the Imirrhosian Continent, which have been scanned and formatted into OD&D booklets by Designers & Dragons author Shannon Appelcline.

You can find them on this Google drive link in the form of 8 PDFs. There's more information about the contents in this thread at The Piazza.

These documents were in Bill Wilkerson's folder:

-Photocopies of Moldvay's & Schick's OD&D house rules. We scanned them in three batches, which I here arbitrarily designate A, B, and C.

-Tom Moldvay's character sheet for one of his PCs: Moirgighan, a human female Fighter / Magic-User. As far as I recall, this is an original (not photocopied) document, featuring Tom's own ballpoint-pen hand-writing.

-Bill Wilkerson's campaign prep notes, which provide further details on the Original Known World, such as the name of the continent: Imirrhos. These were his notes from when he prepared to DM in the Original Known World; though as far as he recalls, he didn't put them to use.

-"The Quest for the Sacred Sceptre" adventure. Bill Wilkerson's submission to one of the early Dungeon Design Contests held by DRAGON magazine. Set in the Kingdom of Talinor. The adventure was not selected, and the contest rules stipulated that the submissions become property of TSR. Bill wonders how the dating of his Spider Queen design relates to the dating and development of Lolth, and whether he based his Spider Queen on Lolth, or vice versa. (I looked up the International Dungeon Design Contest (IDDC): the first contest posted the list of winners in DRAGON #32 December 1979 (it says the judging took two months longer than planned); and the start of the second contest (IDDC II) was announced in DRAGON#36 April 1980. Any experts in Lolth are welcome to chime in.)

 

[Reynard]

Whenever someone says playing Mos Eisley cantina style D&D isn't old school, show them this, oh and Dave Hargrave Arduin stuff.

It's kind of surprising because, as a BECMI kid, the Known World was my introduction to D&D settings and it was positively vanilla fantasy at least in those core boxed sets.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Hey, @Morrus since we have a separate subforum for older D&D editions now, can we also get some tags for the Basic D&D games? Even if it's one Basic D&D tag. Because Holmes Basic, Moldvay & Cook's B/X, and Mentzer's BECMI are not OD&D. The rules are arguably more different than AD&D and AD&D2E and they have separate tags.

It's not clear what edition the Known World of Imirrhos is. Moldvay and Schick picked up OD&D c.1974, and started this shared campaign c.1976 using the OD&D ruleset, and then played up till they were both hired by TSR in 1979. The equipment lists in this document are reportedly based on the 1978 AD&D PHB (or, there's a slim chance it's the other way around!).

Which indicates the type-written document may've been put together in 1978/1979, as a sort of "job application" for TSR. We're still looking into it, but these house rules might be an AD&D variant, or a mixed OD&D/AD&D variant. But AFAIK, they're not Holmes BD&D (1977). And they certainly aren't Moldvay B/X D&D (1981), since that hadn't been written yet!

 

[overgeeked]

It's not clear what edition the Known World of Imirrhos is. Moldvay and Schick picked up OD&D c.1974, and started this shared campaign c.1976 using the OD&D ruleset, and then played up till they were both hired by TSR in 1979. The equipment lists in this document are reportedly based on the 1978 AD&D PHB (or, there's a slim chance it's the other way around!).

Which indicates the type-written document may've been put together in 1978/1979, as a sort of "job application" for TSR. We're still looking into it, but these house rules might be an AD&D variant, or a mixed OD&D/AD&D variant. But AFAIK, they're not Holmes BD&D (1977). And they certainly aren't Moldvay B/X D&D (1981), since that hadn't been written yet!

The contents of the documents above look like they are for OD&D. Whoever put them together into the PDFs clearly thought so as they gave it the OD&D typeface and three-book breakdown. The reference to only four classes suggest it’s for OD&D.

I asked for the existence of a tag for Basic D&D in this thread. I did not claim this content of the linked PDFs was for Basic D&D.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

The contents of the documents above look like they are for OD&D. Whoever put them together into the PDFs clearly thought so as they gave it the OD&D typeface and three-book breakdown. The reference to only four classes suggest it’s for OD&D.

Shannon Appelcline formatted them into OD&D-style format. Jame Mishler just discovered the AD&D equipment list therein. You're right: at this point it does appear to be primarily OD&D with at least some 1978-era AD&D aspects.

 

[Von Ether]

I am also ready for my Dragon magic user.

 

[darjr]

Maybe someone should let the OSE folks know? I wonder if they could incorporate any of this?

 

[zenopus]

So many strange and funny things like the Hawk Helm where you have a 5% chance per use that you transform into a hawk and fly away, oder the Boots of Banana Peel where you constantly slip and fall in combat. Or the strange Wrthra, an incompetent Wrait (really bad at attacking) that is immune to magical Weapons but not normal ones.

As pointed out in the Piazza thread by James Mishler, "The descriptions of the "Boots of Banana Peel," "Hawk Helm," and the "Ring of Ruthlessness" are almost word for word from" the Arduin Grimoire (1977) by Dave Hargrave.

I also noted that the Withra is a monster by Don Turnbull originally written up for White Dwarf #7 (June/July 1978). The stats are almost the same here, and while the text is not identical, it's pretty clearly derived from that earlier source; e.g., each is described as an "incompetent wraith".

I also noted that a few of the monsters that appear in a different font (Tar Golem, Daughters of Kali) were apparently photocopied from All the Worlds Monsters (1977).

As I wrote there, we need need to be careful casually attributing particular items/spells/monsters in this to Schick or Moldvay or Wilkerson because they may be incorporated from earlier sources without attribution, because they were just intending to use it for their home campaign; i.e., this material was never intended for publication.

 

[overgeeked]

As pointed out in the Piazza thread by James Mishler, "The descriptions of the "Boots of Banana Peel," "Hawk Helm," and the "Ring of Ruthlessness" are almost word for word from" the Arduin Grimoire (1977) by Dave Hargrave.

I also noted that the Withra is a monster by Don Turnbull originally written up for White Dwarf #7 (June/July 1978). The stats are almost the same here, and while the text is not identical, it's pretty clearly derived from that earlier source; e.g., each is described as an "incompetent wraith".

I also noted that a few of the monsters that appear in a different font (Tar Golem, Daughters of Kali) were apparently photocopied from All the Worlds Monsters (1977).

As I wrote there, we need need to be careful casually attributing particular items/spells/monsters in this to Schick or Moldvay or Wilkerson because they may be incorporated from earlier sources without attribution, because they were just intending to use it for their home campaign; i.e., this material was never intended for publication.

Bards and assassins are also mentioned, but the bard is not listed in the class statistics, though the assassin is. Maybe their bard was a fighter/m-u/thief.

The fighter also has mentions of things that we'd now associate with the paladin, like a bless aura and warhorse. The presence of percentages for all stats is also a bit weird looking. The psionic/superpower stuff is wild.

 

[Davies]

The setting information is quite interesting -- you can see parts that were adopted directly into the Known World of X1, and parts where they used the names and little else.

 

[Akrasia]

I found the write-ups for fictional characters especially interesting (Cugel the Clever, Kane, Conan, and the like).