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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. There are high tech elements from the distant past scattered around, but this is a part of the setting that a Judge can either ignore or expand to fit their approach.
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. These all have variations in skills, favoured classes and languages to give variety.
New classes are the Alchemist, Amazon Warrior, Sage and Witch. These seem reasonably balanced, except for the Amazon, 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 due to hostility to them from other races and to males.
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 history section for players does not have a complete and accurate history of the past instead including what would be commonly known by people in the cities of the Wilderlands.
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. It is glued inside the back cover, but I had no problems removing it from my copy.
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 stories of 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 Privilege Classes.
- 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 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 were supporting articles in EnWorld Players Journal no 4 which is available on the internet. 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 four for both content and design, it came close to getting a five for content 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 is impressive
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