Campaign Settings: The Known World

While the first real campaign setting supplement I ever bought for a roleplaying game was the World of Greyhawk boxed set that was released in 1983, and Greyhawk is one of my favorite settings for D&D, I have to say that my favorite setting is still after all this time Mystara, or as it was originally called, the Known World.  From that first wilderness map in the Mentzer Expert set showing the nations, to include the Isle of Dread far south, it had such a great mix of locations to make your own.  As a setting, it always felt like it was yours to do with as you wanted.  That said, they did provide a great amount of setting detail in the form of the wonderful Gazetteer series, eventually 14 of them in all, all set in the same moment in time.  On top of that there were boxed sets, trail maps and a wonderful travel log in the form of the Voyage of the Princess Ark series in Dragon magazine.  Given the BECMI rules around which it was designed which supported characters up to 36th level, this setting really supports play of all levels from your basic dungeon crawls near Threshold in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, to claiming your own territory in Norwold, to fighting a war with the Master of the Desert Nomads.  I'll try to go into more details on the various parts of this world and the campaign products themselves in future installments.