COMPARING GAZ 1 and GAZ 11

The Gazetteers series (published 1987-1992) for the Known D&D World (later named Mystara) is one of my favorite product lines.  These supplements each came with a handsome map, and contained a mixture of information (history, geography, politics, culture, etc) about a particular country (in some cases countries).  I find them to generally be inspiring reading for getting D&D ideas for either adventures or world-building.  Some gazetteers are more inspiring than others.  Some of the Gazetteers are much better than others.

For example:

The contrast between Gaz 1.  (Grand Duchy of Karameikos) by Aaron Allston and Gaz. 11 (Republic of Darokin) by Scott Haring.

 

Karameikos is a well-executed cliché.  It doesn't really have any major surprises to it but everything is fairly logical and satisfying.  It is a great fantasy "kingdom".  It has tension and it has interesting plot ideas.  It is the quintessential good "kingdom" with the typical problems of such a place.  Orcs in one corner, an evil duke in another, some predictable monsters here, some surprising monsters there.  Reading about it makes you want to adventure there.  It strikes a good balance of providing material for the DM to use with room to adapt that material to fit the DM’s own campaign.

In contrast...

Darokin is very bland.  This blandness comes from being a poorly executed cliché. It is supposed to resemble the merchant-prince cities of Venice or Genoa (according to published materials preceding it).  The blandness is most apparent in the 9 leading merchant families.  If Venice or Genoa (the Italian city-states) is your model, these merchant families (or their cities) are the heart of the setting.  In the hands of a good writer, these families would be very intriguing.  At least one of the families would be scheming to make a greater fortune through some illegal enterprise (or at least repressing the local peasants with usurious loans), another family would plotting something else, another family would secretly be conspiring with the Orcs of Thar (a major neighbor to the North and the subject of Gaz. 10 "The Orcs of Thar"), another family is actually all werewolves, and two or three families are actually "good guys" who embody the virtues of capitalism, etc.  However as written the 9 families are very dull and there is almost no information about them except where they are headquartered and approximately what their trade portfolio is comprised of.  (Similarly there are no great rivalries between different cities as there was and is in Italy among the city-states).  With this sort of dullness and lack of detail permeating the product- there ends up being a real shortage of adventure ideas.  Too much is left for the DM.

Both of these gazetteers had a cliché idea as their starting point.  The much better execution of that idea in Gaz. 1 makes it stand out from Gaz 11.

Gaz 1: 4 out of 5 stars
Gaz 11: 2 out of 5 stars