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.)

 

[R_Chance]

It's a really fun peek into a homebrew setting. Very cool. Also cool that a lot of the ideas (if not all) made it into a later published setting. Excluding material borrowed from other sources would be required before publication of course. The nice thing about home games is you don't have to worry about what you borrowed from other sources

 

[Akrasia]

I looked back at some older issues of Dragon: Tom Moldvay and Lawrence Schick were the original authors of the "Giants in the Earth: Classic Heroes From Fiction and Literature" column (issues 26-30, then sporadically afterwards).

ETA: They clearly drew upon these notes for those articles (for Kane, the Gray Mouser, Iucounu, and so forth).

 

[TrainedMunkee]

The Known World has always been my favorite setting. I have always found the creativity to be amazing. Haven't played in the setting since the '80s and doubt I would want to go back to that ruleset. With all the modern rule sets that are easier and less time consuming for a busy old man. I have been considering adopting Forbidden Lands to the Known World. Then again it's not like we actually used the rules back in the '80s. We were in our tweens.

 

[Jer]

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.

The introduction in the Expert set sure - Karameikos was designed to be the most generic of generic fantasy settings so that you could plop whatever you wanted there.

However - the Moldvay-written B/X adventures definitely showed a bit more of the wa-hoo nature that was in Moldvay's mind. Especially Castle Amber (X2). That adventure definitely laid the groundwork for a world that was wilder than what was published in the Expert set.

By the time of the Gazetteers you had books like Bruce Heard's Gaz3, which built on X2 and turned the wa-hoo dial up further. And then Gaz10- where you got rules for playing humanoids, followed up by the PC series of books which outlined more monster classes.

And it all builds on Moldvay's initial zaniness that he included in that two-page map and one-paragraph-per-country write-up for the world in X1. That map is actually nuts and by implication suggests a gonzo world.

(To see more of Moldvay's commitment to wa-hoo, find a copy of Lords of Creation some time. He was doing mash-up before there was a word for mash-up.)

 

[Reynard]

However - the Moldvay-written B/X adventures definitely showed a bit more of the wa-hoo nature that was in Moldvay's mind. Especially Castle Amber (X2). That adventure definitely laid the groundwork for a world that was wilder than what was published in the Expert set.

The only adventure we ever played was X1 because it came with the Expert set. otherwise we were 100% home brew. That stayed with me, too. I ran maybe 3 adventures my entire gaming life up until I started running games on Fantasy grounds maybe 5 years ago, and only because I discovered that my improvisational (ie make everything up as you go along) style did not mesh with VTT play very well.

 

[Jer]

because I discovered that my improvisational (ie make everything up as you go along) style did not mesh with VTT play very well.

Tell me about it - playing on Roll20 has been a balance between doing more prep work to predict everything they might do so I have things ready and telling my players "that orc figure is actually the princess - I'm not going to stop the game to find a good image so just go with it".

My players at least have gotten used to me just throwing up a whiteboard when an unexpected combat happens, so that's good...

 

[Reynard]

Tell me about it - playing on Roll20 has been a balance between doing more prep work to predict everything they might do so I have things ready and telling my players "that orc figure is actually the princess - I'm not going to stop the game to find a good image so just go with it".

My players at least have gotten used to me just throwing up a whiteboard when an unexpected combat happens, so that's good...

I just want a VTT with white board capability, tokens and a dice roller. That's it. I want the experience to be as close to being at the table as possible. It's worse when a VTT is only sort of implemented for a game.

 

[darjr]

I wish we’d get a chance to see Modvay’s and Schicks’s version of Expert.

I’ve heard that it was very much more along the lines of these shared documents.

I guess in a way we did get part of it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I wish we’d get a chance to see Modvay’s and Schicks’s version of Expert.

I’ve heard that it was very much more along the lines of these shared documents.

I guess in a way we did get part of it.

We did see it- Cook's Expert was developed at the same time as Moldvay's Basic. B/X is Moldvay/Cook.

On the other hand, we never got to see what a true Companion set for that B/X would look like. Just like how 1e and 2e people fight it out over the small difference, the differences between B/X and BECMI could be both small and profound; if nothing else, Mentzer went full Gygax on the poor Thief.

 

[darjr]

We did see it- Cook's Expert was developed at the same time as Moldvay's Basic. B/X is Moldvay/Cook.

On the other hand, we never got to see what a true Companion set for that B/X would look like. Just like how 1e and 2e people fight it out over the small difference, the differences between B/X and BECMI could be both small and profound; if nothing else, Mentzer went full Gygax on the poor Thief.

Moldvay and Schick were working on an expert that was to push the gonzo. But then TSR saw how well the basic set did and decided to go a different route. It’s purportedly one of the reasons Schick left and Moldvay did Lords of Creation.

I’ll see if I can dig up the source when I get a chance.

Please note I reserve the right to be absolutely wrong.