City State of the Invincible Overlord - Old School Revisited

[Melan]

All very good points, Colonel. I'll ad one more thing I forgot, which isn't about the world per se, but rather the way it is presented: the Campaign Hexagon System of numbered hexes and associated key is a very inventive and user-friendly method of measuring and partitioning imaginary space. You can move around the world like you would on a game board. That's very good game design, and I am surprised no other publisher has done anything like this since JG.

 

[rogueattorney]

Hârn as "old school"? :\

I think Hârn's emphasis on socio-economics and politics, and de-emphasis of monster-slaying and loot-grabbing, make it very decidedly not "old school" ( and I suspect that was exactly the intent of the designers). (And of course it was never a TSR product ... nor was Arduin, for that matter.)

I was just pointing out that my general definition of "old school" was temporal rather than stylistic and listing some examples. I'm well aware that it wasn't produced by TSR, and I never claimed otherwise.

 

[Treebore]

Wilderlands


Has hints of "old" technology. What is that technology? Whatever you want it to be.

They have a large variety of races, including hawk people, and many others, that you can use, totally ignore, or decide to use later on.

There are a lot of "hidden" history and elements to the Wilderlands. Such as ancient ruins of a god, with these ruins beings its last link to the Wilderlands. So PC's can finally destroy said deity, or work to bring the religion back to prominence.


There are thousands of gods, from world spanning religions, to a single settlement, or the aforementioned "lost ruins".

Basically, I see the Wilderlands as a very fluid world with whatever I want to be there be able to be inserted. Greyhawk, FR, and many other worlds have to fixed, and too detailed, of a history.

Wilderlands give me enough structure to run as it is, but to "homebrew" whatever I want, whenever I feel the need. After all, the "official" mapped area are the size of the mediteranean region of the real Earth. So I have a huge unknown world surrounding a not so well known area, to do whatever I want with.

 

[MonsterMash]

Not sure that I can add much to what the other posters have said, see my reviews for what I think about most of the products in detail.

I love the classic sword and sorcery feel, the fact that the setting is much more of a framework than the usual ones so you can use it as it stands or make it the basis for your imagination.

 

[haakon1]

Hârn as "old school"? :\

I think Hârn's emphasis on socio-economics and politics, and de-emphasis of monster-slaying and loot-grabbing, make it very decidedly not "old school" ( and I suspect that was exactly the intent of the designers). (And of course it was never a TSR product ... nor was Arduin, for that matter.)

It's old school to me, because old school means "stuff I like".

Why do I like Greyhawk, Harn, and now City State and Blackmoor? Because they don't have "high magic", they don't have good drow, they don't have people with spikey armor, etc. It's "real" Tolkienesque D&Dland, not some twist on it.

Loud classic rock, not self-consciously "modern" whiny rap-metal . . . the difference between singing "the hammer of the gods/will drive our ships to new lands/Valhalla I'm coming for you" and singing something about how your parents don't understand you.

 

[loki44]

I think what makes the Wilderlands "old school" is that it was created so early on in the history of RPGs that it doesn't have any influences from what are now very familiar RPG campaign setting tropes. The tropes it uses are familiar from fantasy and scifi, but are combined in such a...I guess haphazard is the word to use, though I don't mean it in a negative sense...way that they evoke an unfamiliar feel within the setting.
It also seems to have been designed more for gaming fun than for coherent world creation.

Excellent points. "Haphazard" is a great word to describe the feel, or maybe even "random". You really get a sense of wonderment in the Wilderlands since just about anything can happen anywhere. The world is really one huge dungeon crawl (doesn't get more old-school than that). Just today I was glancing through the teaser chapter (Lenap) from the upcoming Wilderlands boxed set on the Judges Guild website. Where else can you just randomly stumble upon a small well with a chain hanging down to the bottom. Attached to the chain is a bucket containing a clock with zircon numbers worth 1,600 gp. Oh yeah, there are 50 monstrous spiders attached to the chain. Hex after hex of this stuff, not to mention wandering monsters. The names also give it an old-school feel. Screaming Jalka, Hazhgon Glow-Eye, Undret Thousand-Head, Meedenhur Vuyt (those are just the first 4 I see here). The names and places do not correspond with any Earth or fantasy equivalents IMO. The Wilderlands are unique in that way.

 

[BWP]

Why do I like Greyhawk, Harn, and now City State and Blackmoor? ... It's "real" Tolkienesque D&Dland, not some twist on it.

Well, I suppose it's possible to be less "Tolkienesque" than Greyhawk, but dropping Hârn in the middle of that list strikes me as ... bizarre. The designers of Hârn went to extreme efforts to make their world as unlike "traditional" "high fantasy" worlds like Greyhawk and the others you list as they could. (They also made an effort ... not entirely successful, IMO, but certainly an effort ... to make Hârn actually "Tolkienesque" in tone.)

I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with any of these worlds. They pretty much constitute my favourite sort of gaming world. But Hârn is quite different to the others, and those others are very much "high fantasy" worlds, both in their own right and particularly in comparison to Hârn.