Neat Bits from Bill Hoyt's Old Campaign

"In 1974, Bill Hoyt, part of the original Blackmoor Bunch, started playing Dungeons & Dragons, which he'd got at Gary Gygax's house. Soon after, he began his own campaign. These are rare maps and campaign notes from the very beginning of D&D."

From here: https://smolderingdung.itch.io/bill-hoyt-my-old-campaign

• Setting's a freewheeling combination of reality, folklore, myth, existing fiction, and original material - Athens and Chaldea are on the map along with Hobbiton, Gotham, Lankhmar, Cockaigne, and Narnia. There's the fountain of youth and the river Lethe. The Forgotten Realms used to have real Egyptians in it. Might still do.
  

• Not much mention of gods or religion - there's a St. Palo mentioned, a statue of "the rhino-headed duck of Rhiannon", a temple in the underwater country of Fathon which contains the blue star stone that keeps the land submerged and the people undrowned, a cannibal cult, and the Sun Dome Templars.

• No alignment in the Law vs. Chaos sense, but there are political alignments - Constitutional monarchy, dictatorship, federation, communist - initially thought the communists might've just been on the smaller end, like the Diggers, but no they've got whole nations. Armies and castles are listed, but only sometimes with an alignment - maybe reavers or independents of another stripe. Armies make for an interesting encounter table addition - like roving settlements with all the camp followers - potentially very dangerous of course.
  

• Some armies have distinctive loadouts - there's communists who carry halberds, swords, and ride rhinos, monarchist armies of mounted knights backed up by guys with two-handed swords, the Empire of Ryka with their bowmen on elephants, and so on. Some forces are equipped with handguns. Only a few armies have siege weapons, which might explain why castle garrisons can hold out with a relative handful of guys vs. armies which typically number in the hundreds.

• No dwarves, elves, or orcs listed. There are instead: impala people, bison people, unicorn women, high llama people, sable people, "alagater" men, newtlings, dragonewts (Glorantha's a big influence), morokanth people, tusk riders, molemen, bluemen, and catans (cat people with familiars). Refreshing.
  

• There are a bunch of rock piles noted on the map. I do not know why.

• This island that looks like a tropical fish:

• Spells: They are scattered for players to find all over the map. Some of these spells are in the middle of otherwise barren and empty ocean regions - whether on a small island or on the ocean floor it's not noted. There's an island of immortals who can use green jade to scry through time and space - perhaps you're supposed to ask these guys for help finding sunken spells. Some of the spells you might find in a modern D&D game. Some defy interpretation: Werelight (maybe something like a soucouyant?), Ill of Demon, Summon Afete. There is a Super Telekinesis, but no regular Telekinesis. Of all the spells, Read Languages is the most ferociously guarded, held within an "overkill dungeon". Similar sort of idea could inspire hexcrawl - hex containing Tenser's Floating Disk might have it on stack of floating islands you have to ascend to get it.
  

• The whimsical places remind me of the manga One Piece. The 1,000 foot high walled island of Marvat - kind of like Wano - if the wall's ever broken, or made too easy to get around, then the Edenic garden within will turn to dust and Marvat's people will turn into demons. Fathon is a lot like Fishman Island. There's Dragonfly Island, which seems to be gigantic and filled with giant bugs, but actually there's a family of giants there operating an enshrinkening machine. Cockaigne and Schlaraffenland of course inspiring Whole Cake Island. The Upside Down Land. Gam, land of music, where there's invisible people and an abundance of everything.

• There's an island of women who turn into birds and an island of women who'll turn you into a bird. Like poetry.

• This menacing note:

• Lahall - home of dead heroes, deep in a mountain range, protected by giant monsters, surrounded by trees with golden leaves - more settings should have an afterlife you can walk to. Also there is a cave "that leads to Weirdworld" - connection to other setting? There are places listed as "under Suyratina" or "under Mooi Land" - can't tell if these are political affiliations or literal underground regions. I like the latter better. "Underdark" or whatever you want to call it integration would be cool to see in a setting map.

• Usian River - poisonous, but if drank from with the Death Stone will make you invisible for 10 years - interesting combination of map feature & artifact.

• "Fein Bain" - listed under Items & Other - fein can mean fine, good, hay - bain can mean a bath, direct, ready, wine, to dig up or strike -perhaps a fein bain then is hay-wine from the high llama people, or a magic bathtub, or an enchanted ointment that you put over your eyes to make you good at hitting things.
  

• Other Items & Other of interest: Paints of Zepaka, Pen of Vogy, the Never Ending Line, the Door to the Red People, Magic Horses of My - exceptional and magical creatures as treasure, eggs you can hatch & tame, don't see those enough these days.

• Cofur: I'm pretty sure this is a city in the Empire of Ryku, but the name immediately evoked the image of a "conifer gopher" in my mind - a sort of little tree-critter that lives in snowy regions, digging warrens in the earth which they pop their photosynthesizing heads in and out of, avoiding pine-munchers - like so: