The Ravenloft campaign originally started out as a stand-alone AD&D adventure simply called "Ravenloft". This became so popular that it began its own campaign setting in 1993. The setting for Ravenloft was based on gothic horror fantasy, being a land of darkness and evil, lands known as domains were surrounded by the mists to keep their inhabitants within. These lands were ruled by Darklords. In addition to standard AD&D rules, Ravenloft used Horror, Fear and Madness checks. TSR decided to discontinue the setting in 1999. However, the licence to produce Ravenloft was bought by White Wolf in 2001 and developed by Arthaus for use of the d20 System rules. Ravenloft is now very much alive again and has a huge fan base.

Greyhawk was the original campaign setting of Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons. The campaign has appeared and disappeared numerous times as a D&D and AD&D setting. TSR revived Greyhawk as a campaign setting only to discontinue the products a few years later. With the Wizards of the Coast acquisition of TSR, Greyhawk was announced to be the default setting for the new 3rd edition of D&D and several products were produced as well as a novel line based on old classic D&D adventures. However, Greyhawk is no longer listed for D&D or on the Wizards site.

Dragonlance was, and still is, a hugely popular campaign setting which never really ceased to have products released for it. However, TSR stopped producing role-playing products for the setting and turned Dragonlance into a novel-only product line. In 1996, TSR briefly attempted to breathe new life into Dragonlance by introducing unique new rules for the setting called the "SAGA system rules" and released a sub-series of adventures and supplements called "Dragonlance Fifth Age". Later still, was also discontinued, the new name exsisting, once again, only in novels. The setting has now been bought by a third-party company who released the campaign book in Summer 2003.

Mystara's origins began way before the AD&D campaign settings were produced. Mystara started out as the default location for the early D&D modules. It wasnt until much later into the release of AD&D 2nd edition that Mystara was eventually granted its own campaign setting. With its release, TSR launched a new addition to its product content and many Mystara products also came with an audio CD to accompany adventures and add extra atmosphere. A sub-campaign of Mystara was the Red Steel setting, detailing lands to the west of the continent. Eventually Mystara ceased being printed but products were still developed and released for download only until it finally got shelved by TSR.

Dark Sun is set on the world of Athas, a land almost devoid of greenery. Moutains, salt flats, plains and desert almost cover the whole planet. Psionics were used heavily in this campaign setting. Many standard races of the AD&D setting are different in Dark Sun, elves are dune-runners, dwarves are hairless! and a new race of "muls" (human-dwarf cross-breeds) inhabit the land. Athas is a harsh land and survival is paramount. Many campaign accessories and advenures were produced by TSR as well as a number of novels for Dark Sun. Dark Sun is set to the be Campaign book release of 2010.

Al-Qadim is a campaign featuring lands of desert and of an ancient arabic flavor, such as the voyages of Sinbad and Ali Baba. The lands where Al-Qadim is based is named Zakhara, the land furthest south on the planet of Toril - the planet for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Despite it being heavily based on an ancient earth culture, the campaign gathered many devoted fans even after it was discontinued.

Planescape has probably the strangest most alien of all the campaign settings. The campaign revolves around the city of Sigil and the other planes of existance. Adventures take place in many strange planar locations, where anything can happen, where anything can happend and the most evil and strange creatures live and rule. Factions featured heavily and formed an important part of the campaign.

The Spelljammer campaign was a strange outer-space setting, featuring Spelljamming ships which were made of wood and sails, just like sea-faring ships, and new intelligent races such as Githyanki and Githzerai. Whilst set in an outer space environment it wasnt advanced as . Magic use and swords still had a place in Spelljammer. The outer space areas of Krynn (Dragonlance), Oerth (Greyhawk) and Toril (Forgotten Realms) also feature in the Spelljammer campaign.

The Birthright campaign setting was released by TSR in 1995 and had a four year run of many products and novels until it was discontinued in 1998. This campaign setting differed from other AD&D campaigns in the way that the players were kings, rulers and high nobility commanding armies. Birthright also featured "bloodlines" as an additional rule.