Wilderlands of High Fantasy

[Yora]

I once had the opportunity to flip through the d20 version (which is about 20 times the size of the original one), and when you start looking up information on it, you usually find nothing but praise for it.
But from what I remember it was walls and walls of text giving three to twelve sentence summaries of adventure sites, and that frankly doesn't seem interesting at all.

Can anyone tell me more about this setting?

[Raum]

I bought it (because of the praise) a few years ago and ended up giving it away. In short, I'm not a big fan.

It's a boxed set with several maps covering some portion of the world. The maps are covered by numbered hex grids. Each numbered area had a corresponding paragraph or two on what was interesting about that area - monsters, cities, towers, etc. There is also a book covering broader history and political factions.

Judging by the reviews it works well for some people. I found it too much a compromise. Too little detail to use "as is" and too much detail to simply let my own creativity take over.

[ken-do-nim]

I bought it (because of the praise) a few years ago and ended up giving it away. In short, I'm not a big fan.


Me too, and we're both idiots, given the money it's going for now :smallbiggrin:

(well, I bought for $30, sold for $60, could probably get $300 now)

[obryn]

I once had the opportunity to flip through the d20 version (which is about 20 times the size of the original one), and when you start looking up information on it, you usually find nothing but praise for it.
But from what I remember it was walls and walls of text giving three to twelve sentence summaries of adventure sites, and that frankly doesn't seem interesting at all.

Can anyone tell me more about this setting?
I have the boxed set, the Player's Guide, City-State of the Invincible Overlords, and Caverns of Thracia. So most or all of the set. (I'm hoping they're still valuable on ebay.)

Back in my late-era 3.5 days, I tried to run a sandbox campaign in it. It didn't go well; my players want to be led around by the nose a little bit.

It's got its good points and bad points. I had a big ranty list about the parts I disliked a few years back, but the big one for me is this...

Let's say I have a village. A few hexes over, there's a monster's lair. The people should know something about this, but there's no connection between the two; in order to seed any rumors about it, I needed to read up on 20-30 hexes per village in the hope there was something there.

Related, the book isn't all that helpful. It might tell you the various regional capitals of the viridian empire, but doesn't give you a single hint where they actually are. The book is really only good for looking up a hex number once you step in it. It feels very disjointed as a world.

It doesn't help that the way the thing was written - as I understand it - was that each map was given to a different freelancer. Each one, thus, varies in quality.

I like the wazoo sci-fantasy history of it; it's perfectly gonzo in an early 70's sort of way. But the hints of that ancient past are few and far between; it fades into a kind of generic fantasy pastiche even in the places which should be terrifying relics of that pre-history.

But like I said, I hope to sell mine sometime. So it's WONDERFUL! :smallbiggrin:

-O