The Wilderlands, as I saw it.
Jan 18, 2015 10:24:38 GMT -5
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 18, 2015 10:24:38 GMT -5
I had a subscription to Judges Guild back in the 1970's, which meant that I got a new product (plus magazine) every month. Since I saw the Wilderlands in smaller chunks (compared to folks today who might buy the boxed set and see it as a complete whole) I thought I would make a few comments on what the Wilderlands was like for me "back in the day."
The initial package was called "Installment I" (for initial) and they were alphabetical from there. I bought my subscription with J or K and back-ordered what I had missed so I got this hefty envelope with stuff in it and I'm not entirely sure which thiungs went with which installments, but what I got blew me away. This must have been 1976 or so, so I had been playing OD&D for maybe a year and a half. We had run a zillion dungeon crawl adventures, of course, and a number of wilderness adventures, and I had even diagrammed out a little village for my players to use as a home base. But this was a whole freakin' city. Totally amazing.
As the products piled up I get a sense of "The Wilderlands", but for me it was mostly map #1. Nowadays you can piece together all 18 or so maps into one giganto world, but map #1 was the first and it had all of the cool stuff in it (CSIO, Thunderhold and Sunstone Caverns, Modron, and so forth). All of the early products were set in that one map area, so for our group that one map was "the world."
One thing that made the Wilderlands maps so cool is that they took the time to name everything. If you read Sword of Shannara, for example, you notice that many authors name things which happen to follow the path of their heroes but leave the rest of the map pretty much barren. The Wilderlands maps didn't do that. You could visit the Howling Hils or the Troll Fens and they didn't tell you what was there but you could fill in details by using your imagination. That's part of why we spent so much time on map #1, as there wasn't much reason to go anywhere else!
Once the CSWE came out we had a few adventures there, and once we realized that JG's FFC map was set up to attach to the Valley of the Ancients we had to explore there a bit, but honestly I've never even used more than half of the Wilderlands maps in all my years of play.
Anyway, that's my story. What's yours?
The initial package was called "Installment I" (for initial) and they were alphabetical from there. I bought my subscription with J or K and back-ordered what I had missed so I got this hefty envelope with stuff in it and I'm not entirely sure which thiungs went with which installments, but what I got blew me away. This must have been 1976 or so, so I had been playing OD&D for maybe a year and a half. We had run a zillion dungeon crawl adventures, of course, and a number of wilderness adventures, and I had even diagrammed out a little village for my players to use as a home base. But this was a whole freakin' city. Totally amazing.
As the products piled up I get a sense of "The Wilderlands", but for me it was mostly map #1. Nowadays you can piece together all 18 or so maps into one giganto world, but map #1 was the first and it had all of the cool stuff in it (CSIO, Thunderhold and Sunstone Caverns, Modron, and so forth). All of the early products were set in that one map area, so for our group that one map was "the world."
One thing that made the Wilderlands maps so cool is that they took the time to name everything. If you read Sword of Shannara, for example, you notice that many authors name things which happen to follow the path of their heroes but leave the rest of the map pretty much barren. The Wilderlands maps didn't do that. You could visit the Howling Hils or the Troll Fens and they didn't tell you what was there but you could fill in details by using your imagination. That's part of why we spent so much time on map #1, as there wasn't much reason to go anywhere else!
Once the CSWE came out we had a few adventures there, and once we realized that JG's FFC map was set up to attach to the Valley of the Ancients we had to explore there a bit, but honestly I've never even used more than half of the Wilderlands maps in all my years of play.
Anyway, that's my story. What's yours?
