The original fantasy RPG world
This was probably one of the first canned RPG worlds that I got my hands on. I won't go into too many details about how I got my hands on it, needless to say that I was a teenager and that when somebody dared me to do something and I believed I could do it, I did it. Of course I am much older now, and I have no idea where the original copy of this game world went, but the fact that it disappeared is probably for the better.
This was the world that [author:Gary Gygax] designed the Dungeons and Dragons game around, and it was set up to have as much as possible in it to give Dungeon Masters room to create their own adventures in numerous exotic locations. Of course the main city in this world, Greyhawk, was slap bang in the middle of the map, and when the Spelljammer system came out, we discover that this world also formed the centre of their particular universe. I guess the reason was to try and create as much of the medieval experience as possible (right down to making the world the centre of the universe).
Mind you, using this boxed set to try to help you create a believable game world is probably not the best tool. In a way it seemed as if Gygax didn't have much of a grasp of real world political geography, but then why should one complain since when we enter the world of Dungeons and Dragons we probably should be doing our best to suspend our imagination. On the other hand I always did like the gritty and more realistic adventure, though wondering through a dungeon to encounter a frost giant and not asking how the hell it managed to get in there was also part of the fun (not that that ever happened to us, as far as I can remember).
