Wilderlands

Why it hasn't made a comeback?

Literally who?

Okay, I own the boxed set for 3E, and it's totally-cool, but there's like zero people in my city of 3+ million who have even heard of it, let alone want to play it.

Obscure means dead.

I've owned the original city state by JG since it came out and have used it extensively (at least in parts) in campaigns for years.. I think if anyone would re-re-release it they'd prob muck it up.

It's so old-school but still good for random campaign stuff.

Judges Guild did try to make a come-back, but Bob B. was slow about re-releasing things, and after he passed away I'm not sure who was really manning the helm after that.

I've been looking for pdfs of Wilderlands 3e.

Lots of people play in it though?

I'd love to find a copy just to peruse and look at. A pdf would work too, but I can't find any. Old school stuff is fascinating to look through; totally different atmosphere and such.

Here's the D20 stuff I have on hand and some recent-ish releases they've made as well:
volafile org/r/epzr2440
snip/JGuild has some of the older stuff, and I know there's more floating around. (I have some of it saved away somewhere)
I should probably get around to making a more complete trove of old Wilderlands stuff, it's not as easy to find right now as it used to be.

I think the /osrg/ Trove has it all?

A significant portion of it is lists of random encounters and two-line descriptions of villages. Most people want a bit more than that from a pregen setting.

I think that's actually a strength. It's a skeleton from which to develop on.

>I think that's actually a strength
You must understand that you are in the extreme minority.

Untrue, take a look around online and you'll find similar opinions lauding the rather minimalistic amount of information for being a great jumping off point for DM creativity.

Because people who think like that are the only ones who care about it. Everybody who wants more than that promptly forgets about it.

Two reasons.
1) Only old school D&D players know about it and they're fairly likely to run their own setting or cannibalize it rather than playing it straight.
2) The Judges Guild are fairly slow at getting out releases of their new stuff and were for a long time print-only. (some still aren't available in PDF like the City State of the Sea Kings)
It's really in the last year or so that they're on drivethru and getting some good reprints out through Goodman Games.

Isn't there a condensed hex list of the Wilderlands out there somewhere?

If I'm buying a pregen setting, I want most of the hard yards done for me. Wilderlands is a great set of prompts for building your own setting, but as a full pregen setting it's kind of shit.

It looks like a cool setting, but I'm not sure what you're actually supposed to do in it. Does everyone just wander around?

It's designed for OD&D and shit, so you're meant to do some dungeon crawls ad amass money until you're strong enough to go fuck about in the wilderness and eventually clear out and take over some territory of your own.

Or do whatever your characters would want to do.

>Why it hasn't made a comeback?

The needs and tastes of roleplayers changed.

Look at the comments in this thread; "It's too skimpy", "It doesn't list enough things", etc. When it came out, we couldn't wait to use it because there had been nothing else really like it before. We took the admittedly skimpy and gleefully fleshed it out for our purposes.

Fast forward a few decades and the 100s or 1000s of products published since and we're used to more detail & info being handed to us. Today I wouldn't use it. I'd either create my own sandbox from square one OR tweak a more detailed product for my own use. City State falls into a limbo state of sorts. It requires so much additional work on my part that I might as well do that work on my own setting.

Folks just don't have as much time and prefer to spend what time they have more usefully.

City State isn't "bad". It's just not what many of us want or need anymore.

;_;

Wilderlands is still by far the most detailed hexcrawl in the market as far as I'm aware. It's less that better things have come since then and more the narrativist bend in modern roleplaying, which doesn't have much use for a product like wilderlands

bump for interest

I guess the closest would be the D20 Wilderlands of High Fantasy book since that is mainly hex descriptions.
I've added most of the available Wilderlands material out on the net to the "snip li/EPT" trove in case anyone wants it.

His son Bob Bledsaw II.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Last time I looked at their site - it seemed all be deserted.

Neato, thanks!