Over on the Fearsome Games Discord channel , a patron asked if we could put the Olde School Wizardry campaign world map up as a pdf for reference. Josh jumped right on it and added the map to our growing list of online player resources.
Truthfully, however, the request left me a little puzzled. The campaign world of Olde School Wizardry is *implied* through the text of the book ... not exhaustively detailed. The Collegium Mysterium can be dropped into any fantasy world (and indeed, establishing satellite campuses across far flung continents or worlds has made up a lot of the action at my table these past eight years or so).
Likewise, The Estates Arcanum, student houses, and secret societies are all intended to be quite modular. Use the bits that inspire you; ignore the rest!
This approach to modularity and light sketches of an implied world (vs any sort of heavy-handed "canon") really came over into the short sections of the book devoted to The Grand Duchy of Walvia, The Marklands, Bhatvia, etc.
In developing these brief (but hopefully evocative) descriptions, I leaned heavily on the example provided by David "Zeb" Cook and Tom Moldvay in the X1: The Isle of Dread.
There the brief sketches of the regions of "The Known World" functioned just as intended: to give the GM a springboard into developing her own histories, peoples, conflicts, and adventures.
I know there's a LOT of love for the much more detailed "World of Mystara" that would be developed into thousands of pages, published, and sold to eager fans who yearned for a "completest" expose of their favorite fantasy world .... but for my money, the single paragraph blurbs that serve to inspire rather than saddle the GM under "official lore" are far superior.
I hope that Olde School Wizardry's light treatment of the campaign world can walk in those same footsteps!
