Setting Nomenclature II, or, More Dumb Names for Campaign Worlds

Previously, I mentioned the name change of one of my more recent settings (wherein The Sundered Land became Some Dread Land). Now I would like to describe the folly of my earliest campaign worlds.

Murdundia (q.v.) was, I believe, my first original setting for Dungeons & Dragons. Unlike most role-playing fantasy settings, it reflected a monotheistic culture to make better use of paladins, clerics, demons, and devils. I think the name itself might have been inspired by "Mundania," the nonmagical land in the Xanth novels by Piers Anthony, but there the similiarity ended. "It's the world of... uh... Murdundia."

Cyclica was a setting dominated by a vast, circular megalopolis reminiscent of Constantinople and Lankhmar, but far more orderly. It was the only significant city in the known world, and the rest of civilization was feudal. I created the world of Cyclica as a setting for the adventures of a player character who was a saint, which was a class that appeared in DRAGON Magazine and was strictly intended for non-player characters. (Ludicrous, I know. We were junior high school students at the time, so that's our excuse.) "Cyclica" was meant to evoke the idea of a circular structure expanding gradually, but it always sounded contrived.

The World of Greyauk was my most detailed setting, a parody of a certain popular campaign world complete with sophomoric puns. I even ran an adventure at Gen Con set in Greyauk when I was a high school student. And I still have the world map and the adventure and the pregens! Greyauk is just, well, silly.

[Edit: Greyauk was originally called something else, and something else again.]

Murdundia and Monotheism

I think the first campaign setting I ever created for a role-playing game was the World of Murdundia for Dungeons & Dragons. It was a fantasy world loosely inspired by medieval Europe (as is typical), and it was dominated by a monotheistic religion strongly based on Christianity (which was atypical for fantasy games that were not Arthurian). It wasn't that I had any aversion to polytheistic settings—I was a big fan of the World of Greyhawk—but the desire of one of my players to play a paladin, coupled with the strong presence of infernal monsters in the Monster Manual, led me to envision a world closer to the historical Middle Ages than Middle Earth, the Young Kingdoms, or the Hyborian Age. (The fact that I once had the sun blotted out by a swarm of byakhee is beside the point.) The monotheistic religion was called Veritas (Latin for "Truth") or, less-believably (and less pronounceable), Veritasism. Its antithesis was diabolism (the worship of devils) and demonolatry (the worship of demons, primarily Orcus), both of which were at odds with one another. FrDave's Blood of Prokopius has caused me to seriously consider resurrecting this campaign setting. Polytheistic settings are great, especially when the pantheons are fascinating, but there is so much to be mined from all the history, literature, art, architecture, folklore, and cultural traditions of monotheistic medieval Europe that it would be a pity not to use it for at least one setting where paladins, clerics, demons, and devils are important. Murdundia might have to be one of my OSR projects. A better name for the religion might be in order, though.