No blog today. New computer.

No entry today, I bought a brand new computer, and it doesn't work!

I turn it on, you get the first screen, then it acts like its going to start to load up windows only.. it never does.  It just stays there with a black background a single little flashing prompt up in the top left hand corner, and nothing else.

And the really fun part is that, like most stores in Uruguay, the place where I bought my computer is closed on weekends, so I'm stuck until monday.

A Letter To My Albion-English Players,

On the Event of Having 8 Out of 10 Members of Their Party Slaughtered by Demons

Geek Movie Makes Millions

RPGPundit

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RPGPundit Reviews: The Majestic Wilderlands

This is a review of Supplement VI: The Majestic Wilderlands by Robert S. Conley. This is a supplement for the Swords & Wizardry D&D-clone, though in fact the game would be playable with essentially any variation of D&D (but especially old D&D, RC D&D, or 1e D&D) or any clone thereof.

I have to say this: I wasn't really sure when I'd find a product of the "Old School Revolution" that I could absolutely and unequivocally endorse; I knew what I didn't like about the majority of OSR stuff (how derivative it felt), but I wasn't sure what was the precise alternative.  Well, the Majestic Wilderlands is it.

This is (at least) the third version of the Wilderlands that I know of; the original Judges Guild supplements, the Necromancer D20 remakes, and now this one.  While not nearly as detailed as the relatively recent D20 remake, I think that this sourcebook would now be the very first one I would turn to if I wanted to make a Wilderlands game happen.

And above all that, it is far from being a "clone" of the original setting material from Judges Guild. Quite the contrary, you could think of it as a "re-imagining"; the Majestic Wilderlands is completely loyal to all of the essence of the original Wilderlands products, but doesn't slavishly reproduce it, instead it is the author's own version, with his own setting details and his own house rules.

And what house rules, and what details!  The book, which comes in a small sized, well bound softcover 140 page format is not only a very easy read but has useful stuff pretty much from start to finish.

The first half of the book is essentially house rules, the second half is essentially setting.  The first part begins with new character classes; from the basic D&D classes you get subclases/variants like the Berserker, Knight, Soldier, Paladin (of Mitra), Myrmidon (of Set), Mage of the order of Thoth, Artificer, Wizard, Rune-caster, Theurgist, Clerics/priests specialized according to deity (with the 10 major deities of the Wilderlands represented), Burglars, Thugs, Mountebanks, agents of the Claws of Kalis (a relatively evil deity), and Merchant Adventurer.  Whew!

Each entry for class is only a page to page-and-a-half long; including an experience table (with hit dice, save, and relevant bonuses/abilities), and a bullet-form description of special abilities for the class, plus a basic description of what the class is.  For example, a Thug is the rank and file tough-guy of a gang, thieves' guild, or secret-society. The class requires Str 10 as a prerequisite, and any alignment is permitted. Thugs' Prime Attribute is Strength, they gain 1d6 hp per level, they fight using the Cleric combat table, they gain bonuses to damage based on their strength, can use leather armor and shield, and the basic rogue weapons.  They have bonuses for various abilities (Athletics, Area Knowledge, Intimidation, and Locution; bonuses of which are on the XP table). Finally, at 9th level a Thug can form his own gang and obtain followers.

Magic-using classes differ from one another based primarily on the type of magic they can use. Order of Thoth mages have the "shield of magic" (a magic-resistance aura), Artificers don't cast memorized spells and instead they make magic items, Wizards cast fewer spells but don't have to memorize them, rune-casters don't memorize spells and instead create magic runes, Theurgists cast rituals only and can combine their power with other Theurgists, and Clerics cast spells of different sorts and in different ways depending upon their deity of choice.

If all these new basic classes weren't enough, there are also new "Non-adventuring" classes.  These classes (Craftsmen, Hedge Mages, Priests and Scholars) cannot gain XP in the normal fashion; instead, their level is determined by the number of years they have been practicing their chosen class. These classes are generally not very suitable for "regular" adventuring, being more of an NPC class, but I could see these being classes for player classes in a more politically-oriented city-based campaign, and they're more creative than your standard NPC class.

Races in the Wilderlands do NOT have their own classes, instead you choose race and then class. There are no default class or level limits for non-human races in the book, though a DM could easily choose to add them. The races are not balanced as such, there is no effort to mechanically make non-human races unpalatable; instead the author suggests that the barrier to playing demi-humans should be social more than anything else, as the setting is heavily human-oriented.
There are a ton of races available.  Elves, Halflings, Half-elves, Dwarves, Gnomes (ugh!), Orcs, Goblins, Reptile men, Lizard men (who differ from the aforementioned Reptile men in that they're swamp-folk while the Reptile Men are desert-folk), Serpent men, Viridians (green-skinned but otherwise human-looking Demons, and were once the brutal rulers of much of the setting but are now nearly extinct), and half-viridians (humans, or sometimes goblins, with viridian blood).

The sourcebook's next act of genius is a simple but effective skill-system (termed "abilities"). An ability roll is a simple D20 roll, where 15 or more (after appropriate bonuses or mods are added or subtracted) is a success (natural 1s always fail, natural 20s always succeed, regardless of modifier).  If I have understood the system correctly, any character can attempt any ability; but each class type has certain abilities they roll with a bonus (the Rogue getting the best bonuses, specifically to all of the obvious "rogue" abilities). 
The Abilities section is a great example of true innovation within Old-School sentiment. Its something that clearly would NEVER have been written up in the old-school era, it depends on the inspiration of later concepts (mainly D20), but the way its presented is utterly and completely old-school in its aesthetic.  It is what Gygax and co. SHOULD have made skills look like, rather than crazy Thief percentile rolls and non-weapon proficiencies.

After that you get a couple of pages of optional combat rules, clearly house rules that you can take or leave; stuff like "head shots" and "mounted combat" rules.
The next section details some new magic rules. It explains how the Shield of Magic ability works (essentially its a magic resistance), and how rituals work. Here, the author is clearly inspired by no less than 4e; but the Ritual rules work perfectly for both the Old School style and the Swords & Sorcery genre aesthetic of the Wilderlands. Some new spells/rituals are provided in the book, mainly spells to create magic items (vastly simplifying the normally Byzantine item-creation rules found in old-school games); and there's even a "Disenchant" spell a la 4e/WoW. I don't know if Conley added that as a fuck-you to someone (the anti-4e crowd, perhaps?), or as a joke, or if he just thought it was a good idea. I don't think it particularly hurts the product, anyways.

There's a very short monster section with stats for the Wilderland's Dragons, the amphibious Boglings, and some contextual information (but not actual stats) for Vampires and Werewolves (as well as the "Wild Hunt"), who are creations of the blood goddess Kalis.  Then there's 5 pages of magic items, pretty much all high-level artifacts of major renown in the Wilderlands.

That finishes the "house rules" section. If these first 85 pages were all that the book consisted of, it would already be spectacular. If you have ZERO interest in the Wilderlands as a setting, all of this material (9/10ths of which are in no particular way bound to the Wilderlands setting in particular) would be more than enough to make this book a must-buy sourcebook for old-school D&D fun. But then we get to the second half of the book, which details the Wilderlands themselves.

I will reveal that I've always loved the Wilderlands. It is one of the four published settings from 1e or earlier that I absolutely love (the other three being, in no particular order, Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, the Known World of Mystara, and full-gonzo Blackmoor). Conley's own Wilderlands are the same place, but with some significant differences from the original setting.

From what I can see, Conley starts with the original Judges' Guild products as his base, pretty much ignores the stuff in the D20 sourcebook or any other later details, and advances the base JG-era timeline by three years. His wilderlands is one where the City-State of the World Emperor (Viridistan) has all but collapsed as the last of the Viridian Emperors has died; and even the City-State of the Invincible Overlord is going through major upheaval. In other words, the most powerful central states of the region have gone to shit.  And you need to remember here, the "regular" wilderlands are already a fairly chaotic and lawless place. Conley's Wilderlands are a place in a state of total madness where almost anything can happen, and the various states are fighting to see who will survive, who will pass into history, and who will end up becoming the next major ruler of the central area of the setting.

Those of you have the (also really great) D20 set of the Wilderlands will note that they had chosen to go into massive hex-by-hex detail of the setting. Conley has chosen to go almost the opposite route; no doubt in part because of time-constraints, but also in part because of different priorities of the types of games he's interested in running. The D20 Wilderlands were set up as an intricate "Sandbox" for wandering-party play. Conley's Majestic Wilderlands are set up for a group to base itself in one region and to gradually become intricately involved in the local situation. His emphasis is not in mere adventuring, but to focus on things like politics, war, trade, culture, etc.

Page 87 contains an overview map of the whole Wilderlands, and the subsequent pages break that down into different broad regions, detailing all the peripheral and central areas of the standard Wilderlands setting. The peripheral areas provide regions to play old-school adventures set in Viking realms, the mysterious orient, tundra and desert environments, dark cultures of human sacrifice, pirate-infested seas, wild "frontier" regions, barbarian plains, intrigue-heavy merchant states and more. Each of these regions are detailed only in three-to-five paragraph chunks, that focus on the overall nature and culture of the region as well as author-advice on what kind of adventuring is good to run in the region. One could argue that players with no previous knowledge of the Wilderlands might find this section too sparse to be really useful, though I think the idea is that the GM should try to fill these areas in with his own materials.

The "central" area of the wilderlands is then given a more focused level of detail.  The areas encompassing Viridistan, Tharia, Antil, and the original City State of the Invincible Overlord are then given more detail, along with another smaller-scale map, and a few city maps for the important cities of the area. These maps are relatively small in size; don't expect street-by-street information here.
The whole central "main campaign" area has about 26 pages of direct descriptive material dedicated to it, still not huge on detail but enough that you can definitely use it as the basis for a campaign; even so, DM filling-in-of-blanks is essentially required here. These Wilderlands, far from the D20 version with its hex-by-hex pre-prepared detail, are made for the DM who wants to have a lot of space to make his own version of the world.

Another six pages are dedicated to describing the major religions of the setting, and then the last seven pages are dedicated to giving more information about the major races (the significant human races, and the major demihuman races) of the setting.

There is no question that this is an old-school setting book. Half of the material is in the form of house rules; but these rules are not there so that players can "optimize" their character, they are there to create the right emulation of the spirit of the world you will play in. They are, in essence, setting detail in the form of rules. The actual setting material is set up for the GM that wants enough guidelines to easily set up a framework for his campaign, but enough space to make that campaign his own. Don't expect the 3e Forgotten Realms book here; these are the do-it-yourself Wilderlands.

My conclusion is that, without a doubt, this is the best "Old School Renaissance" product I've seen, and a guide of sorts to the kind of direction the OSR's general direction should head in. If you want to play in the Wilderlands, this book is the starting point for that, which you must then fill in with your own version of the setting or with material from the original Judges Guild (or the D20 Wilderlands set). If you don't give a damn about the Wilderlands, you can still cut and paste the first 85 pages of this book whole-hog into any D&D game and it will vastly enrich the basic structural rules of D&D (and, of course, you can just mix-and-match, cherry picking the rules, classes, races, and magic you want); and you can also cannibalize some of the best ideas from the setting section of the book.

I don't know if I'll be playing a game actually set in the Wilderlands at some point. I would like to. What I do know is that whenever I run a D&D game from here on in, and I'm bound to do that sooner or later, this book will find its use as a supplement to those rules.
And anyone who is ever thinking of running D&D in any of its pre-2e versions has a reason to buy this book.

RPGPundit

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(originally posted March 17, 2010)