The Brontes created their own pseudo-historical RPG setting called Gondal, making them early practitioners of collaborative setting creation. Also, they wrote their Actual Play reports up in poetic form, so they're basically shaming us all.
First para of that Wiki link: "Gondal is an imaginary world or paracosm created by Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë in their youth. Gondal is an island in the North Pacific, just north of the island Gaaldine. It included at least four kingdoms: Gondal, Angora, Exina and Alcona. The earliest surviving reference comes from a diary entry in 1834. None of the prose fiction now survives but poetry still exists, mostly in the form of a manuscript donated to the British Museum in 1933; as do diary entries and scraps of lists. The poems are characterised by war, romance and intrigue. The Gondal setting, along with the similar Angria setting created by the other Brontë siblings, has been described as an early form of speculative fiction."
They were probably better DMs than you are to boot.
And don't even get me started on how Robert Louis Stevenson made better campaign maps than you do. I mean, come on, dude didn't wring his hands over how big the hexes were even once.
