Wilderlands too old?

[Akrasia]

I think it's a great setting and a great product. It's the first campaign setting I've encountered in ages that makes me want to run it instead of running some homebrew. I love the 'fallen empires' and 'strange technology' feel to it. The setting is as close to a 'Hyboria' and 'Nehwon' in terms of character that I've ever encountered in a 'D&D' setting.

Does/can it appeal to new players? I honestly don't know. Perhaps its obvious literary sources don't resonate with younger players. So maybe you're right. (God knows I can't figure out why Eberron appeals to 'the kids'.) But for players in the 30-40 range who feel nostalgic for the early days of D&D, and/or those who love good old 'swords and sorcery' action (the Frazetta cover sums up the setting really well), the Wilderlands really rocks.

 

[Turjan]

Is the Wilderlands setting too old and standard to be of interest to newer generations of players and game masters or are many people just settinged out so to speak?

In a certain sense, everybody of us is "settinged out" . I've got the FR, my homebrew and lots of other settings. Quite a few of those have an overarching plot. This one doesn't. It's more like we are used to play in the Iliad with its plot-heavy story. This one is the Odyssey .

While I'm still reading through it, it seems more a collection of locations in some ways than a solid setting. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. For example, in the boxed set, we don't get a lot of breakdowns on say, religion. Gods pop up here and there as well as a ton of old names that in the 70s must've sounded cool, but now... "Slayer's Citadel... formerly run by a warrior called Slayer!" or grids with nothing but an encounter "xxxx Frogs! We have giant frogs man! They're like 15 of them! Wow nostalgia!"

I got most of the background from the "Player's Guide". Of course, I agree completely with the nostalgia part. Well, the main city of the setting is called "City State of the Invincible Overlord". This makes me think of Flash Gordon, not of standard fantasy. A campaign would look like "Find the fabled city of Rallu!", not "Save the world from the evil Overlord!". The former is an adventure into the unknown, whereas the latter doesn't really come to mind. So, the Overlord is evil; who cares?

The art is good and the layout is simple but so far, I'm not seeing a lot of why NEW players would be flocking to this over say Iron Kingdoms.

No idea. Are the Iron Kingdoms plot-heavy? On a different note, I noticed that many players experience written adventures in a pretty similar way as a mostly unrelated chain of events, quite opposite from what reading the adventure would suggest. Just think of the introductory adventure "The Burning Plague". That's a nice and tragic adventure, with the last cleric of an extinguished orc clan planning his revenge. But do the players see anything from that back story?

 

[JoeGKushner]

1 - This is a setting that is easily played as is. It gives all the locations you'd need to run a traveling adventuring party's explorations (when we started RPGs, we weren't looking for huge backgrounds with plots and subplots - we wanted to get things rolling and discover a fantasy world - Wilderlands allow this).

I completely disagree with this. Without putting a ton of effort into it or buying several other older products, it's a starting point for the GM to highly customize. Unless things change as I'm reading it, but so far, even the cities have a paragraph or two of detail, with no maps of said cities, and no game details outside of a few abbreviations "Kewl Hand Luke, C4, Human, Male"

Is there a ton of potential? Yes. But once again, I'm thinking for the amount of effort to polish it, homebrew would appeal to some.

I can see how many would be inspiried by the material, but it's far from complete.

2 - This is an inclusive setting, in the sense the DM can come up with new materials and make the Wilderlands his own. That's the key in my opinion.

This I agree with.

One thing to clearly remember is that there isn't such a thing as an evolution of products for someone that would start roleplaying games, because there isn't any prior experience of what products have been compared to how they are now. So they'd take a first product for itself and appreciate it for its own qualities, not in comparison to other products they don't know.

I don't know about that. If you grew up reading Robert Jordan and his detailed empires, characters, backgrounds, city maps and other goods in Wheel of Time, you're going to be vastly disappointed with the vagueness of the setting. If you grew up reading Robert E. Howard, it'll feel very natural.

I bet you anything that's not what you'd have thought first when you were a newbie.

You'd have lost that bet. I would have wanted some maps, full combat statistics and tactics that tie the giant frogs into something else that was nearby. Very similiar as a matter of fact, to how Wizards of the Coast has been doing mapped lairs in their books.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Speaking as a semi-oldtimer here. I took a look at the Wilderlands set. I liked it, but based on my current gaming genre loves (steampunk, sci-fantasy, and super-hero), there wasn't a whole lot to offer me beyond yet another base for me to build a homebrew setting on. Between, IK, AE, WoW, FR, Spirosblaak, and SL, there's nothing else that I really need to build the world that I want to run.

Maybe sometime in the future, I'll pick it up, but not right now.

 

[Shemeska]

I is a n00b. Apparently.

I wasn't aware that it was based on any previously product. I thought it was just some new setting that, for whatever reason, had a bunch of folks praising it. Well, I learned something today

Honestly though, unless someone had mentioned it, like here in this thread, I wouldn't have had any idea -at all- that it was based on an older product and hit on the nostalgia buttons of folks.

 

[Mystery Man]

I like the wide open, put anything into the setting you want feel of the Wilderlands. I don't need to be spoon-fed every detail of a town, kingdom etc. The freedom to add details, pull in virtually anything I find from any other source book without having to rewrite an entire region is one of its strengths. There are some really good innovative ideas that aren't exactly "old school" with the Wilderlands as well.

For example, in the boxed set, we don't get a lot of breakdowns on say, religion.

The Players Guide answers some of that, detailing some of the Wilderlands only gods. You don't have a quackzillion gods in a huge pantheon. You can add whatever god you like. Again, wide open.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I like the wide open, put anything into the setting you want feel of the Wilderlands. I don't need to be spoon-fed every detail of a town, kingdom etc. The freedom to add details, pull in virtually anything I find from any other source book without having to rewrite an entire region is one of its strengths. There are some really good innovative ideas that aren't exactly "old school" with the Wilderlands as well.

Could you give me an example of that? Maybe I've just read too much (and it's ruined a few other things for me before) but I don't see a lot of innovation. Heck, even the magic vs science thing is hit on a little in some od the D&D gazateer books. I'd be interesting to hear what someone else considers innovative.

The Players Guide answers some of that, detailing some of the Wilderlands only gods. You don't have a quackzillion gods in a huge pantheon. You can add whatever god you like. Again, wide open.

Ah, but now you're getting into supplementists. And they do have a huge pantheon if you've got some of the older books like.. it's either Lost Gods or Forgotten Gods. And once you start getting into supplements, Wilderlands quickly loses it's boast of most detailed campaign setting ever as the Iron Kingdom core is two books (plus a nifty monster book and a tech book), while even smaller settings that are new like Dragonmech probably outpage this setting.

 

[Shadowslayer]

Is the Wilderlands setting too old and standard to be of interest to newer generations of players and game masters or are many people just settinged out so to speak?

(I have the Wilderlands box and use it for my campaign. I didn't play the old Wilderlands, so its not nostalgia for me...except for maybe the old school feel of it. I cut my teeth on homebrew and 1e FR. Aside from hearing the odd reference to it, didn't even know much about Judge's Guild until this new stuff started cropping up.)

With regards to the question, I'm going to say yes...and no.

I believe the setting suffers more from the way its presented than what's actually in it, with regards to new players.

Using the hex with the giant frogs as an example...An inexperienced DM, or one weaned on later settings may look at the entry and just take it as "if the PCs pass through this hex, they will be attacked by giant frogs" End of story.

An experienced DM knows that there may be more to it than just giant frogs. There will be stories told about the giant frogs in taverns. There may be a legend about them, such as X people were turned into giant frogs eons ago by some amphibious god worshiping evil person, or maybe that the giant frogs are the pets of a current amphibious god worshiping evil person, who lairs in a ruin thet the DM generated from the Random Ruins table. OR perhaps its just that a lot of giant frogs live there. It could be anything, really...but its not presented that way.

I think the Box set really suffers from not containing a small "DM's guide to running the Wilderlands" or some such. This would've given newer people some guidance on how to apply the imagination and actually use all the scads of information you get with the set.

As far as the content and style, thats a matter of taste I suppose. I'd guess that someone who's only known the 3e Realms and Eberron and their products may find the Wilderlands wanting for a hook of some type. Later campaign settings spelled things out a lot more fiction/storytelling wise, and made the setting more integral to the stories being told. If that's what you're used to, well....Wilderlands may not be your cup of tea.

I love it though. And I have a few younger (weaned on Everquest) players who are having an awesome time with it too. Now if only one of them would step up and DM.

My 2 cents

 

[Mystery Man]

Ah, but now you're getting into supplementists. And they do have a huge pantheon if you've got some of the older books like.. it's either Lost Gods or Forgotten Gods. And once you start getting into supplements, Wilderlands quickly loses it's boast of most detailed campaign setting ever as the Iron Kingdom core is two books (plus a nifty monster book and a tech book), while even smaller settings that are new like Dragonmech probably outpage this setting.

Actually you point out a rather huge flaw in the billing of this product. It is by no stretch of the imagaination the "most detailed campaign setting ever". I've always wondered how they can say that being a long time FR user it just makes me kinda giggle.

As far as innovation goes, perhaps I used the wrong word. Whatever I didn't think of myself to me, is innovation. Which is a lot.

 

[JoeGKushner]

When looking at other settings, most of them ahve a Hook if you will.

Dragonmech has lunar monsters, mechs, and a moon falling!

Iron Kingdoms uses some fantastic art and steam tech to really get the full metal mentallity started.

Scarred Lands, in it's time, had the whole gods and titans and blood sea and other bits that made it stand out from other settings.

What would you say are the hooks that Wilderlands has that other settings don't or don't do as well? A Conan feel? Well, we've got the Conan game for that. A wide open expansive area that the GM can customize? Well, the details are so light in some cases, that homebrew may be the answer, or if the person has the old Greyhawk books or even the original boxed set of the Forgotten Realms where everything isn't detailed...

Some of the races are nice touches, but unless I havne't seen them yet, they don't actually show up in the boxed set, but rather in En World's print mag (and I think reprinted on the web site), and the Player's Guide. Demi-Giants are still cool!