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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 1267609" data-attributes="member: 1713">Don't forget that unlike many publishers, Necromancer has their own high profile messageboards, which means most topics come up over there. The JG subforums are reasonably well populated and there is a lot of discussion on them.Yup. Much like the good Colonel, I did some work on the boxed set (village and citadel descriptions), and I have been a total fan since I heard about the world.It isn't easy to capture what makes the setting awesome, but I think its attitude has a lot to do with it. It struck me as soon as I read the old Wilderlands of High Fantasy booklet and looked at the maps: the world was developed through active Judging. It is customized for your own home campaign - heck, it reminds you about a home campaign. Most worlds are all about the big picture. History, cosmology, wide brushes. Home campaigns (classical ones, at least) are about the local village, the abandoned tower, the lair where the four dozen giant frogs live. It is what you use in your everyday DMing, the little bits that make a campaign go.Now take that and apply it meticulously to a "huge" world. Sure, the entire setting is smaller than the Mediterranean, but you have sparse descriptions about all towns, lairs, many ruins and castles. It is a humongous collection of Judging (DMing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) notes, just like what you used to do for yourself. These notes are sparse (a paragraph or two in the boxed set for each - look <a href="http://www.judgesguild.com/" target="_blank">here</a> for the Rorystone Road download to see what I mean), and it is easy to interpret them as you like. For example, an island may have an abandoned city guarded by "mutated white carnivorous apes". It is an idea you may expand or improvise on if the player characters find the city during their explorations.Which brings us to exploration. Since the world maps are very detailed in the boxed set (the one you see in the PG is broken into 18 chunks, each about eight times as large as the Rorystone Road's area), you can have your players go off on a tangent. Maybe they heard about an Ominous Idol beyond the Carnelian Plains, or maybe they just want to know what is there. Traditionally, home campaigns are all about this, and official settings gloss over it. Here it is all yours. You can insert your own mini-settings in the framework (as I have done). The Campaign Hexagon System encourages the attitude... You have this cool map with numbered hexes, and so do the players (maybe their maps will be in a free web download - I don't know, ask the Orcus <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />), except the player map only shows the coastlines and the really well known places. You have to map the rest yourself. That's cool as well.Canon. While the Wilderlands is very "classical D&D" by default (lots of untamed wilderness, sword&sorcery cities, dungeons and ruins), it is very easy to adapt. One of the designers who worked on the boxed set has a much more "mediaeval" feeling campaign there, and he uses GURPS in his games. Mine is light on demihumans and more Howardian, low level and less treasure and shinies-heavy than standard 3e. I use a light d20-OD&D variant. These are just two examples, but you can adapt it as you wish. Bob Bledsaw, the founder of JG has played very different campaigns in the very same setting. Again, it is all yours. There won't be novels, I don't think there will be a series of "regional supplements" (maybe one for the first map, but not much beyond that, and even that is optional - I certainly don't utilize the material contained in it, since I don't even own the original series).What else? I like the amazon class a lot (and have ported it into the aforementioned d20-OD&D hybrid), as well as the other bits in the Player's Guide. But, having read some material from the Boxed Set - yea, it is even better.</blockquote>

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