Real World Geography and D&D Setting Themes

The above image is a rough collage (this you can see, I guess) of D&D, D&D like or fantasy RPG settings, placed into the same position as their closest analogues in the real world, and roughly at the same size.

Some things:

- I’ve gone with the idea that Greyhawk is North America, with the somewhat cheap fringe benefit of putting the chillier Blackmoor above it as Canada and the module Shrine of Tomoachan (which is already Greyhawk) as South America

- That little blob representing the UK is Pendragon. Though WFRP is spiritually very English, the setting itself is much more Germany, so there it goes.

- Beneath another module, Castle Amber as France, is an RPG called Zenobia, set in ancient Rome. The game looks interesting, but I was surprised to find so few Italy/Rome based RPGS. Same goes for Spain, represented here by the “who-knew?” Captain Alatriste RPG.

- The Cluster of WFRP, Ravenloft and Vornheim I find rather pleasing. Above Vornheim is a generic Google Image Search result for “Chaos Wastes” which seems to be the most widely used Deep-Russia/Poles setting. Just across is another module, the Baba-Yaga one for AD&D, which is another canonical Greyhawk adventure. I believe there was a 3.5 Russia-like setting too, Red-Sails maybe?

- Here I’m drawing the distinction between Oriental Adventures as China and Bushido as Japan. I considered Mu-Pan, Weapons of the Gods and Qin here, but these seemed less core/OSRy/well-known.

- Australian is the cover to The Dragon Volume III, Issue 5, which had an article on Australian mythos in D&D, closest I could find to an Australasia setting.