Quote from: Haffrung;915528So let's turn this around. I've been making my own campaign settings - adventures, worlds, cities - since I was 11. So it's safe to say I find joy in creating. The question is how much effort the Wilderlands really saves me, as an owner. Why not just make up my own setting generated by random tables and my imagination?

In my opinion it save a lot of work. The problem is that with RPGs like Traveller random generation works really well. Traveller work well because it's terrain is empty space. The result that matter or solely the contents of a particular location.

However with anything based on a planet terrain has a huge impact on people. Now you can do random terrain generation easily enough, the people part it is a cycle of rolling stuff, see what fits, rerolling and see if that fits. And you will problem do this a handful of time for each region.

The Wilderlands has this already done and organized in a way that you can make sense of it. Yeah there is a region on the southern edge of the map where there are dozen or so dwarven settlements. So it will probably be a region dominated by dwarves in your campaign. However it up to you decide the details of why the dwarves there and what their relations are to the name.

In most areas of the Wilderlands there are a dozen plausible explanation for why things exist the way they do. The result is that there is a lot of flexibility in how you can setup a campaign in the Wilderlands. And the thing is that there 18 maps worth of details. That is a lot of work already done for what you pay. And more importantly it is the core product. Not the supplements you buy.

With Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, even Harn. What you get with the core product is an overview/travelogue. To use any of those settings for a campaign, you have to pick a region to flesh out detail what you need. Sometimes there is a supplemental product that details what you are interested in. Which is extra bucks compared to the Wilderlands. Along with the limitation that it will conform to the overall vision of the setting.

Now the above is great if you like the setting in question. But supposed you don't have a particular idea in mind for a setting, don't have the time or desire to make something completely original. You want something that you can readily modify but has a lot of the grunt work done. The Wilderlands are your ticket.

Quote from: Larsdangly;915561Which often leads to adventures where the players are, for all practical purposes, passive observers of the stuff that happens to their characters. And now you aren't really playing a table top roleplaying game - you are watching a really, really, really slow, badly acted TV show.

Very much in agreement here!

Tangent:
I am not totally enamored to some elements of the Hexagon Campaign System:  It appears that some random generation tables assign equal chances to weird as well as common outcomes. So, "Ogre Magi as moat-swimming creatures" is just as common as Frogs would be.  
To me this takes away a bit from the value of the tables.

Now, I only own the one Castle Book, so how are the random generation probability structures in the system as a whole?

That said, I recognize the truly grand intellectual and creative achievement that Judges Guilds products represent.

Quote from: GameDaddy;915242The Wilderlands existed before Greyhawk or the Known World. In fact, it was the first published campaign setting, QUOTE]

I think that you'll find Tekumel (published in 1975) predates Wilderlands by a year, so in fact it wasn't the first published campaign setting.

Shemek

One thing that distinguishes the Wilderlands (I've got the 3e boxed set) from other familiar settings is that the information provided is mostly very local in nature, while how it all fits together in the big picture is left more vague. Two DMs starting with the boxed set could end up with settings that feel very different and neither one would be contradicting or clashing with the contents of the set.

Quote from: estar;915564The Wilderlands has this already done and organized in a way that you can make sense of it. Yeah there is a region on the southern edge of the map where there are dozen or so dwarven settlements. So it will probably be a region dominated by dwarves in your campaign. However it up to you decide the details of why the dwarves there and what their relations are to the name.

But are those patterns of settlement even evident to a reader? I know my eyes start to glaze over after reading 60 or 70 settlement entries. I'll take your word that some thought was put into making these sorts of connections in regions, but I'd guess a great many DMs remain oblivious to the fact that there's a high concentration of halflings-led communities on the Western shores of the Winedark Sea.

Quote from: estar;915564In most areas of the Wilderlands there are a dozen plausible explanation for why things exist the way they do. The result is that there is a lot of flexibility in how you can setup a campaign in the Wilderlands. And the thing is that there 18 maps worth of details. That is a lot of work already done for what you pay. And more importantly it is the core product. Not the supplements you buy.

Well yes. There's flexibility because the content is so thin. An entry that says "A village of 80 gnolls that worship a statue of an elephant. The dwarf smith Spurgeon has a cache of 400 SP and a medallion of ESP." is remarkably flexible. It also offers very little practical aid to a DM who wants to run a Wilderlands campaign, IMHO.

The fact there is 18 maps also have little utility to me. I've never run campaigns of far-ranging transcontinental travel, where PCs go on month-long voyages across seas and cross deserts and mountain ranges in the span of a handful of sessions. I have a more boots on the ground style, of travelling on foot and exploring that abandoned shrine up on the hill. A campaign that spanned even a single one of the 18 maps would be epic. That means, for me, the other 17 maps have very little utility. I know some people enjoy the vast potential of those kinds of mega-settings. But that strikes me as buying to read rather than buying to play.

Quote from: estar;915564Now the above is great if you like the setting in question. But supposed you don't have a particular idea in mind for a setting, don't have the time or desire to make something completely original. You want something that you can readily modify but has a lot of the grunt work done. The Wilderlands are your ticket.

But I don't find it has a lot of the grunt work done. At the scope I play at, three short entries in the wilderlands - say a town, a village, and a geographical location - will probably be good for a half-dozen D&D sessions. The amount of material I'll need to run those half-dozen sessions (maps, setting details, NPCs, agendas, encounters) is far, far greater than the three paragraphs the Wilderlands books provide. So really, its' only cutting down on maybe 10 per cent of the work I need to do.

Quote from: Haffrung;915580But are those patterns of settlement even evident to a reader? I know my eyes start to glaze over after reading 60 or 70 settlement entries. I'll take your word that some thought was put into making these sorts of connections in regions, but I'd guess a great many DMs remain oblivious to the fact that there's a high concentration of halflings-led communities on the Western shores of the Winedark Sea.

It not necessary or important to read 60 or 70 settlement entries. If you are doing that because you think have too then I would say stop. For the Wilderlands you only need to read around two dozen entries of a quadrant of one map to get started. It will take three days of non-stop travel to get out of an area that size. Then as the players approach one edge of what you adapted, you read the entries in the next region over.

The outside of the reason, you should look at the major cities to get a sense of what you want them to be like. With the boxed set there is a small initial chapter that does that. With the original, the settlement with a population of a 1000 more stick out in the lists.

Quote from: Haffrung;915580Well yes. There's flexibility because the content is so thin. An entry that says "A village of 80 gnolls that worship a statue of an elephant. The dwarf smith Spurgeon has a cache of 400 SP and a medallion of ESP." is remarkably flexible. It also offers very little practical aid to a DM who wants to run a Wilderlands campaign, IMHO.

In my 30 years of doing this what I seen that people have about two dozen solid idea about a region. Beyond that it become a chore as they grind out entry after entry. Most just quick after around three dozen and just wing it. The number will vary but there is a cut off point where you are going say "fuck it".  I found that you can go on further if most of what you are doing is EXPLAINING why something is what it is. What is the elephant the gnolls are worshipping? Who are the Gnoll's leaders? Who fuck is Spurgeon and why does have a Medallion of ESP? Then you chop out anything you don't like or just our right those two dozen ideas floating around in your head. At the end of it you are ahead of where you would have been with less work.

Quote from: Haffrung;915580The fact there is 18 maps also have little utility to me. I've never run campaigns of far-ranging transcontinental travel, where PCs go on month-long voyages across seas and cross deserts and mountain ranges in the span of a handful of sessions. I have a more boots on the ground style, of travelling on foot and exploring that abandoned shrine up on the hill. A campaign that spanned even a single one of the 18 maps would be epic. That means, for me, the other 17 maps have very little utility. I know some people enjoy the vast potential of those kinds of mega-settings. But that strikes me as buying to read rather than buying to play.

Well first so we are in on the same page the Wilderlands do not describe a continent. It is an area the size of western Europe (France, Spain, Italy). Of all the major published RPG settings it is the smallest in land area. And it can be traversed in weeks, not months or years. And the entries focus on exactly what you are talking about; "the shrine on the hill" kind of shit. But overall an area of the size of Western Eurpoe.
 

Quote from: Haffrung;915580But I don't find it has a lot of the grunt work done. At the scope I play at, three short entries in the wilderlands - say a town, a village, and a geographical location - will probably be good for a half-dozen D&D sessions. The amount of material I'll need to run those half-dozen sessions (maps, setting details, NPCs, agendas, encounters) is far, far greater than the three paragraphs the Wilderlands books provide. So really, its' only cutting down on maybe 10 per cent of the work I need to do.

Some referees make a new setting for every campaign. Most referees I know don't stick with any setting for campaign after campaign. I do. Aside from the occasional Harn campaign, I been running the Majestic Wilderlands for 30 years. SO eventually in some campaign, I wind up using the detail. But not how everybody does there.

Which is why wrote Blackmarsh, Wild North, and the two Points of Light books. To put out hexcrawls like the Wilderlands but with a way smaller land area and a cheaper price.

Quote from: Haffrung;915580But I don't find it has a lot of the grunt work done. At the scope I play at, three short entries in the wilderlands - say a town, a village, and a geographical location - will probably be good for a half-dozen D&D sessions. The amount of material I'll need to run those half-dozen sessions (maps, setting details, NPCs, agendas, encounters) is far, far greater than the three paragraphs the Wilderlands books provide. So really, its' only cutting down on maybe 10 per cent of the work I need to do.

This is also my experience with the Wilderlands. I found the products interesting as historical artifacts and curiosities, but basically useless for any type of actual play. The work they're doing is so simplistic it borders on irrelevancy. Actual entries include:

"A simple tribe of men tend crops and hunt in the shady green vales."
"An octopus lives in a cave."

There's no value for me here. This stuff is trivial for me to come up with off the top of my head or can be generated through random tables with significantly greater utility. People refer to this as "doing the grunt work", but it's really not doing anything at all.

Even worse are the entries where you can't imagine how they would ever be used at the table. For example:

"Beside a broken skiff filled with mud is a +1 scimitar partially buried in the murky bottom."

I guess I could mention the broken skiff and then pause meaningfully until my players decide to follow the metagame hint to investigate further. But for all intents and purposes, that's an empty hex for me.

Quote from: estar;915369The Campaign Hexagon System is pretty good, it basically a letter size hex grid setup in such a way that takes a larger hex and sub divides it into 25 small hexes. This allows you to do a 5 mile regional map where each small hex is .2 miles. Or a smaller local region map where each hex is around 42.24 feet (rounded to 42.25 feet).

Also: I don't find any of those scales useful.

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;915568

Quote from: GameDaddy;915242The Wilderlands existed before Greyhawk or the Known World. In fact, it was the first published campaign setting, QUOTE]

I think that you'll find Tekumel (published in 1975) predates Wilderlands by a year, so in fact it wasn't the first published campaign setting.

Shemek

Indeed. Three things here...Tekumel was very expensive, and It was not really originally marketed as being D&D but being it's own separate game, and the print run was so small we never saw it in our friendly local game store out in Colorado. I finally heard about it after the release of AD&D in 1979 from a friend who had moved from the midwest to Colorado,  and I finally had the chance to play it for the first time in 1981 as part of a D&D game.

In the scheme of stuff for D&D it didn't rate, because it wasn't really available. Technically, yes, it was published first. We didn't see it though until about the same time as we saw the TSR campaigns (Mystara/Greyhawk).

Quote from: GameDaddy;915613

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;915568Indeed. Three things here...Tekumel was very expensive, and It was not really originally marketed as being D&D but being it's own separate game, and the print run was so small we never saw it in our friendly local game store out in Colorado. I finally heard about it after the release of AD&D in 1979 from a friend who had moved from the midwest to Colorado,  and I finally had the chance to play it for the first time in 1981 as part of a D&D game.

In the scheme of stuff for D&D it didn't rate, because it wasn't really available. Technically, yes, it was published first. We didn't see it though until about the same time as we saw the TSR campaigns (Mystara/Greyhawk).

Ok, fair enough. I see your points. It was scarcer than hen's teeth back in the day, to be sure. I remember seeing, and then it just disappeared until Different Worlds re-issued EPT. To be honest, I really didn't know what Tekumel was all about until '83 / '84.

Shemek

Yah, Tekumel was one of those things that even people seriously into the hobby didn't know existed in ~1978-1979.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;915588Also: I don't find any of those scales useful.

I would agree, some of the writeups are weak, but you know, bob did them all, for each map set, in just a couple days each... They at least have something though, to get started on making a unique encounter.

The five mile hexes though, here is why they were chosen for the campaign hexagon subsystem, and what made them special;

Keen Sighting
The range of unobstructed sighting possible should be varied according to creature type. For the purpose of this guideline, a man of normal height is assumed to be the observer. Allow 5 miles per foot of height from 1-10' and additional 2 miles per foot from 11'-50', and an additional 1 mile per foot thereafter. Probability of discernment of details is equal to 2% times the height in feet, of the detail. A bonus to the base probability is given for details under 1000' from the observer. +50%...


So a 5' man could see 25 miles on flat level ground... that would be five hexes. easy to measure. If he was on a hilltop 300' tall he would be able to see 180 miles to the horizon if the ground was flat and level. The whole thing on the five mile scale was to allow the player to have some sense of the terrain around them, and how far they could see..

That's what the five mile hexes were really for. That an a man on horse traveling daylight hours at walking speed will cover about 40 miles a day on horse.

Quote from: daniel_ream;915361I think the original mentality was that you could run multiple campaigns all set in different parts of the same world, since it's Old School that The Campaign is a larger entity than any one group of players, but in practice most groups I know of ran successive campaigns with the same people, and if the campaigns never intersect because they were on opposite sides of the continent, the fact that there were on the same world all along OMG is really just a conceit rather than a feature that you use.

I've found a good approach is to run successive campaigns in neighbouring areas. Most of my campaigns have been in the CSIO or Barbarian Altanis areas. This allows impact on subsequent campaigns and a 'living world' feel, while also keeping things fresh.

I suppose I may be 'doing 90% of the work myself' (and I use 15 mile hexes so plenty of room for expansion), much of it using additional stuff like Dyson's Delves dungeons, but Wilderlands gives me a framework to develop, and also it is possible for the PCs to go anywhere on the map, with no prior development by me, and find things to do.

Quote from: Frey;915170All classic Judges Guild D&D products (City State of the Invincible Overlord, Wilderlands of High Fantasy...) appeared before I started gaming, but now many of them are available online. Are they good? Which ones do you recommend? And what about the 3E version?

You can find them on-line as pdfs.  The very best IMHO are (1) City State of the Invincible Overlord; (2) The Caverns of Thracia; and (3) The Dark Tower.

Quote from: Haffrung;915528So let's turn this around. I've been making my own campaign settings - adventures, worlds, cities - since I was 11. So it's safe to say I find joy in creating. The question is how much effort the Wilderlands really saves me, as an owner. Why not just make up my own setting generated by random tables and my imagination?

Quote from: Haffrung;915580But I don't find it has a lot of the grunt work done. At the scope I play at, three short entries in the wilderlands - say a town, a village, and a geographical location - will probably be good for a half-dozen D&D sessions. The amount of material I'll need to run those half-dozen sessions (maps, setting details, NPCs, agendas, encounters) is far, far greater than the three paragraphs the Wilderlands books provide. So really, its' only cutting down on maybe 10 per cent of the work I need to do.

I think the confusion might be the difference between broad setting material and focused adventure material. I don't expect to get detailed NPC motivations and encounter area detail in a setting level product. Adventure modules, which can worked into that setting provide that kind of stuff. If your campaigns are largely taking place in somewhat small geographic areas then you would naturally need much less setting material and would want more adventure material.

Generally great products. Unfortunately I ran Wilderlands badly the only time I gave it a serious try.