World of Kalibruhn, 2nd Iteration

Kalibruhn Supplement cover as imagined
by Grendlewulf.  Unpublished.

I have worked on my World of Kalibruhn™, in both forms as it now exists, since 1974.  This grew out of my conceptualization of it while DMing Castle El Raja Key and Lost City of the Elders for the LGTSA members 1973 onward, and continued into co-DMing of Greyhawk with my counterpart, E. Gary Gygax, over the same time period.

Lost City of the Elders old conceptual sketch
for Garden of the Plantmaster

I have covered most of those general histories in a greatly expanded article for the upcoming combined project of mine, the latter article entitled, "The First Living Campaign" (Parts 1-4).

This led to my first iteration of it in 1976, this in conjunction with material I'd been collecting for another OD&D Supplement, entitled, Kalibruhn.

The key features of its 1st iteration are consonant with the 2nd, as I broke with established bottom-up creative patterns and instead concentrated on making the world my own through a top-down approach as first inspired by Tolkien, Clark Ashton Smith in his "world/area cycles" fiction and the then emergent M. A. R. Barker with his glorious Tekumel.

Old first version map of World of
Kalibruhn 2nd iteration done in pencil and
 pen with old dot matrix
print out framework for mountains.

Notable key design features were:

*No central dungeon.  This was accomplished by making a re-imagined Castle El Raja Key magical in its contrivance.  Its history became very granular and attuned to the events that spawned its making.  In essence, and due to this exact history in the making, its unstable magic caused it to appear and disappear throughout time and space. Its reappearance would thereafter be considered an ominous event and lead to legends about it from among those places in which it occurred.  This allowed me to "place" the castle within the ongoing storyline wherever I wished and to extrapolate a building story as to why it was thus occurring.

World of Kalibruhn 2nd iteration.
From my original via an old paint program.

*No central city feeding said dungeon.  Instead I literally sank the namesake city, Kalibruhn, through a tidal wave, and this in its pre-game-start history, thus making it a forlorn and dangerous place to adventure in afterwards (8th level upwards, approximately, but that level was no guarantee in itself).  It had no stable range for adventuring levels.  It was meant to be high risk and the legends surrounding it were well dispersed among the populace to inform the players of such risks.
*Dispersal of adventure areas both large and small.  These comprised numerous leveled, other areas related to each indigenous area--the Elkin Copper Mines and the Temple of Reh-Pog, for example, in the 1st iteration, both having 1st-12th level range potential for adventure, but also having definite reasons beyond mere adventure for tackling same.

Wold of Kalibruhn 2nd iteration sample.
Current Phase 1 Map as rendered in Photoshop
by Andy Taylor.

*Top-Down creation of all world matter. Spells, monsters, deities (cosmology), minerals, plants, etc.
This is consonant with creating an interwoven and living world.  It included a 1/4 campaign area partial map, regional maps, village, town and small city maps as well as a map of Dimensions that linked back to the Lake Geneva Original Campaign setting (this as I note in the upcoming article referenced above). In all I'd say I've drawn well over 400 maps of all sizes, many of them coming from the need to create areas in advance of adventuring parties taking turns this way and that throughout my world's landscape.

Castle El Raja Key Cover Art.

*De-emphasis of the adventure for adventure sake only.  As noted above.  There are reasons why everything exists and a definite pre-history vibe ongoing throughout all matter relating to the world, and this manifests at all levels within it.

I will write more on Kalibruhn in the future.  This is the first time that I've felt inclined to parade forth my world.  There are many who have queried me about it in the past, and I have exchanged some rather large e-mails over the years regarding many points concerning it.  Among its champions are Allan Grohe and Scott Greg, and many others. Among its players, in its parts, or all:  Gary Gygax, Donald Kaye, Terry Kuntz, Allan Grohe, Paul Stormberg, Joe Goodfellow, James F. Goodfellow, Joe Fischer, Tim Jiardini, Tom Champeny, Bill Corey, Martin Wright, Tom Wham, Mary Dale, Tom Christiansen, Neil Christiansen, James Ward, Ernie Gygax, Dave LaForce, Mark Ratner, Bruce Fuller, Brett Fuller, and so many others I cannot now exactly recall.

Old concept cover illustration for CERK that I did in Photoshop.