Players Guide to the Wilderlands

[Messageboard Golem]

Similar to the Scarred Lands or Greyhawk Gazetteers, this gazeteer is planned as a 128 page introduction to the Wilderlands. It will introduce new players and reacquaint old fans with the Wilderlands and City State setting. It will provide an overview color fold out map showing the larger features of the world. It will provide historical and game details unique to the Wilderlands as well as a short summary of the City State of the Invincible Overlord-the main setting location-and the wilderness area around the City State, allowing players to begin a Wilderlands campaign right away.

 

[MonsterMash]

Players Guide to the Wilderlands

Judges Guild/Necromancer Games. 128pp pb

Understandably this review is not based on play testing as this is a sourcebook rather than a scenario.

So its finally arrived. The long awaited release of Judges Guild material updated for 3.5 has started with the Players Guide to the Wilderlands.

This source book contains an overview of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting which Judges Guild originally released back in the late 70's and early 80's. As the title says this is largely aimed at players with the full information for DM's (or to use the JG term Judges) coming in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy boxed set next year. However it would be possible to start off a campaign using the Players Guide and downloads from the Judges Guild website.

The setting
The Wilderlands of High Fantasy were originally Bob Bledsaw's homebrew setting and were the first setting to be released for D&D back in the 1970's. The feel is a mixture of Tolkien, R.E. Howard's Conan, and Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar. Unlike some settings not everything is detailed down to the last full stop allowing more creativity by the Judge and making it easy to incorporate published material from other settings.

Content
In presentation its not dissimilar to many sourcebooks being a softback book with a clear layout and a detachable colour map attached inside the back cover. There is not an index or contents page, but within the sections content is largely arranged alphabetically. For example with races Humans are dealt with first being the largest race, with the others

then covered alphabetically. The contents are:

• History of the Wilderlands
• Characters including races, classes, and languages
• Map overview
• Cities of the Wilderlands
• Geographic Features
• Traveller's guide to the City State
• Gods and Dieties of the Wilderlands
• Monsters of the Wilderlands

The sheer variety of different variations within the Humans (types) is an essential part of the Wilderlands feel, with numerous different skin shades from the red Altanian Barbarians through to the blue Avalonian northerners.

New classes are the Alchemist, Amazon Warrior, Sage and Witch. These seem reasonably balanced, but the Alchemist and Sage would be weak for adventuring characters. While the Amazon is powerful, it'd be hard to have one in a mixed party of adventurers.

All the descriptions, especially those of the Cities and Geographic features are necessarily brief as this was originally covered in about a dozen products from Judges Guild and a major city will need more than a couple of pages to do it justice. This is appropriate though as it is aimed at players not Judges.

The map is deliberately not in extreme detail and also has deliberate differences from what will be on the GM's maps in the boxed set. Its printed in full colour and nicely presented.

Price
The US list price is $23.95, which is good value for a 128 page book with a separate full colour map.

Pluses:

• Frank Frazetta cover, this really gives the feel of the Wilderlands setting.
• Nice clear layout.
• A well developed setting which has the 'first edition feel' that I associate with the feel of stories by R.E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. Lots of suggestions to use the material from the PHB, DMG, and MM in context.
• Sensible additional classes which tie into the setting and aren't overly powerful Prestige Classes.
• The fact that Judges are encouraged to use their imaginations and make it their own campaign, not what someone else tells them it should be.
• Extensive web support

Negatives:
Lack of contents page and index is not a big disadvantage, but would have been nice to have.
Some of the descriptions could have been a bit longer.
There have been comments about the map being hard to remove from the book, but personally I didn't have any difficulties.
Some typos have managed to creep through and the printing is a bit uneven in my copy making some text look bold when its meant to be normal.
Not enough Amazons in the artwork!

Downloads:
There is a substantial amount of information available in the free downloads from the www.judgesguild.com [at]Judges Guild website. This includes enough information for a Judge to start off a campaign in the region of the City State of the Invincible Overlord. There are still additional downloads being added at the moment so I won't attempt to list them.

There will also be supporting articles in EnWorld Players Journal no 4.

The Judges Guild Pegasus magazine is available online (registration required) with related articles and fan material will be made available on the net as well.

Overall
I'm giving this a five, which is unusual for me as usually I'd round down the 4.5 that I'd say this is worth, because of my love of the Wilderlands setting and the obvious care and work that has gone into this. Also the amount of support that is being given on the web and in print has lift the rating.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Sorry, for some reason my first review was deleted without any notice given to me. Hopefully it was because my previous had been double posted and they accidentally deleted both when trying to do just one.


This $23.95 softbound book of 128 pages (including OGL page) is a new (old) world setting. It is old because it is part of the first campaign world ever created for role playing games way back when. The only big compliant that I have about this product is that it does not have a Table of Contents.

Chapter 1, after the 2 page introduction, which you should also read, is the chapter covering the history of the WL (Wilder Lands). It covers the calendar system as well as the overall histories. they also give you names of the five day week and the names of the 19 months of the 365/366 day year. It also gives you a table (on page 6) telling you the average temperature of each month and the name of the major festival of that given month. The rest of it is reasonable in depth history of the world that takes up to page 15 of the book. The nicest thing i liked about this chapter is that it broke down history into a variety of DC's for your history buff to know anything about a specific period of history.

On page 16 the Characters chapter begins. There is a lot of info in this chapter. This is where most of the campaign specific game mechanics occurs, assuming you decide to use them. Essentially, this chapter breaks down the human races by region, giving them stat bonuses and minuses based on how thier culture would effect them. The are also several non-human races, but they are in the last chapter on monsters. They also give the same treatment to the other "standard" races of a D&D game, such as the varieties of Dwarves, Elves, gnomes, etc... On page 26 they give you an alternative xp system they suggest using if you want to slow down character advancement, which is something that appealed to me.

On page 28 the Character chapter gets into chracter classes in the WL that are not standard classes of D&D. They have the Alchemist, Amazon Warrior (females only), Sage, and Witch. They seem to be well balanced within the context of WL, if you do not use the WL, they will probably be over powered. This is because the checks to the powers of these classes, namely the Amazon Warrior, is the cultural limitations and barriers such a character would have to face. This also is the case with several of the human races earlier in the chapter. So do not judge the power of the classes or races solely on their specific write-ups. You need to look at how thier power is countered by the social stigmas they would face if the campaign is used in its entirety. They also have some nicely explained skills, such as poisonmaking and knowledge skill checks on pages 39-41. They also have a number of feats the reminded me of how the Forgotten Realms were done. But don't hold that in favor or against this book. Just check them out and see how they fit your style.

On page 45 there are two handy tables showing how bonus languages are available by region as well as where you would run into which of the various spoken languages and their respective alphabets.

On page 48 the Map Overview chapter begins. This is a short chapter that covers the 18 regions in a very brief manor. There is plenty of info to let you start a game in any of the regions though. The real reason this chapter is so short is because of an 18 map boxed set that should be coming out in the next 5 or 6 months. They don't want to repeat any material between the two products. I know this from visiting their (JG and Necromancer) websites. There are also some very nice downloads available on the JG website that supports this campaign setting. The map in the back of this book is available as a poster on Necromancer's website under one of their product links, I don't remember the exact name of the link, sorry.


The next chapter begins on Page 54. This chapter covers the main cities of the setting in some detail. They even have a Technology Level rating table on Page 55. It lists the city name, population, tech lvl, racial composition, overall alignment, resources, Allies, enemies, etc... A very useful chpater if you do end up using this setting, or you can use it to flesh out cities in your own campaign worlds. This chapter runs to page 65.

On page 66 the Geographic Features chapter begins. It gives you exactly what chapter title tells you. The biggest thing i got from this chapter was a couple hundred adventure ideas. Read it.

On page 82 you get a Traveler's Guide to The City State. There is a map of the City State of the Invincible Overlord on page 84. The chapter revolves around giving location descriptions within this city, much like other city supplements. It is a lite going over. Probably due to their future release based on this city. It is also a good read for ideas and campaign flavor.

On Page 90 is the chapter on Gods and Deities of The Wilderlands. I really liked their discussion about deities on pages 91-92. They even discuss the cosmology of the gods in the WL. Basically, you can have as many or as few deities you want in this world. As written they have 1000's of deities ranging from gods of specific locations or natural events up to Greater Gods. This chapter really brought home to me the desire of this books authors to take what they have written in this book and make it your own.

The last chapter of this book is on monsters and races unique, more or less, to the WL's. There are at least 22 monsters in this chapter, including templates. There is the winged ape, the hawk people, the dragon-headed ogres, and many others.

My overall feeling for this book is that I am a kid locked in a candy shop. This book is the first I have read in a long time that awakened the excitement I felt when i first started playing this game of D&D about 20 years ago. That alone was worth the price of this book. This book is full of all kinds of alternative ideas on human races, monster races, plus elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. There are similiarities to a lot of other product ideas, however, they come together very well to make the world of WL's feel unique, vivid, and just full of a lot of creative energy. Read this book from cover to cover. I hope you become infected with the same bug I have. Also check out the websites. I think this book, and the future products, are well worth buying.

I give this book a 4.5. Not a 5.0 because it is missing a Table of Contents and an Index, both of which I like my sourcebooks to have. Otherwise this book is everything I want in an introduction to a new camapign world. Plus it gave me countless ideas and loads of inspiration. Excellent job Judges Guild and Necromancer games!

 

[lwmarti]

It's back! This is the same game world that I started using back in 1977. The production quality has improved considerably (if you ever used the old Judges Guild products then you will know what I mean), but the spirit that started it all is still there.

I have to agree with the reviewer's assessment: the only problem with this book is the lack of a TOC and index. Aside from that, it's as close to perfect as you can expect a game product to be.

 

[Crothian]

Sorry about the deletion, that was my fault. I saw it was posted twice, deleted one and they both vanished. My bad.....

 

[Messageboard Golem]

That is OK. I had a saved copy and I was mystified when it posted twice. Looks like everything went right this time.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

And now the wait for City State of the Invincible Overlord, the first city I ever used for a game... I still think the rambling narrow streets were some of the best city mapping I ever saw for any game. (What Mayfair did to the place was unspeakable - wide avenues, tree line boulevards... Ack!)

The Auld Grump

 

[lwmarti]

About 28 years or so ago, the Wilderlands was the setting for the first D&D campaign that I ever played. Because of this, I have a sentimental attachment for the setting that might not be entirely rational, so I've waited a while after the publishing of the Player's Guide to the Wilderlands (PGW) and tested the material in a game before commenting on it. Even after waiting a while for my initial enthusiasm to die down, I have to say that I'm still quite impressed with this book.

The Player's Guide to the Wilderlands is a 128-page paperback that sells for $23.95, and is worth every penny of that purchase price. The PGW is an overview of the Wilderlands, the old original D&D setting that was home to the City State of the Invincible Overlord, Tegel Manor, and other places that were described in the earliest of D&D products way back in the 1970's, and it's the first in a series of products from Necromancer Games that updates the Wilderlands to the newer (revised edition) D&D rules.

What is the Wilderlands like? It's like a combination of the Conan, Middle Earth and Lankhmar stories, with the odd bit of high technology thrown in to liven things up. It's a vast unexplored wilderness waiting for players to carve out a niche for themselves. It's a place full of intrigue between powerful city-states. It's also a low-magic world. If that sounds good to you, then the PGW can help you take the first steps into that world.

What exactly do you get in the PGW? Well, there's an extensive section on the history of the Wilderlands, from the distant past to the present day, including a discussion of the calendar used in the game world. There's a section on character types that are found in the Wilderlands, including several races of men and the unusual languages that they speak. There are also new classes in this section including alchemists, amazons and sages. The concept of "play balance" was thrown out the window here, making amazons fairly tough. I was never a big fan of play balance to begin with, but there are certainly those to whom this will cause some distress. There's an overview of the Wilderlands map (attached to the book with some sort of rubbery adhesive that takes a bit of rubbing with the tip of your finger to fully remove) as well as an overview of important cities on the map and other key geographic features. There's an overview of the City State of the Invincible Overlord, and there's an overview of the gods of the Wilderlands. It has everything that you need to try the Wilderlands for the first time, or to try the Wilderlands again if you've been away from it for a while.

It's only missing two things: a table of contents and an index. Come on, guys, this is a reference work! You need to have either a table of contents or an index! That's the only fault that I can find with this book. Sure, there are a few odd typographical errors here and there, but the quality seems much higher than the typical d20 product on my shelf.

The best part is that the material in the PGW is just the tip of the iceberg. Necromancer Games will be releasing an entire book containing a detailed description of the City State of the Invincible Overlord and a boxed set containing a detailed description of what's out there on the 18 different maps that comprise the Wilderlands. So if you can tolerate the lack of a table of contents, there's no better way to either get acquainted or reacquainted with one of the true classics of gaming.

 

[Moonglum]

I read this and was completely enthused. In fact I still am. But once I started actually playing in a wilderlands campaign it became obvious that there are some rules that will definitely need some tweaking.

Amazon Warriors, for instances. They are the uber-race. They have no level adjustment, get all the abilities of a human, and then +2 wisdom and charisma, psionic dodge, +4 initiative vs. males (cool ability), and more. Yes, they don't get armor proficiencies at 1st level, but that is minor and only has a serious effect on some class choices. Really they should have a +1 level adjustment. There are some other things like this.

But even given that caveat, I would also give it a 5/5. It has a lot of great detail, and gives a good feeling for the world. Also, it is all you really need to start a wilderlands campaign!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

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