The first Wyrlde campaign was started in 1982. Each of those that came before fed into this one, and all of it was something that was pretty wild, with different experiments and efforts to try and find something that wasn’t just the run of the mill experience, while still giving you a lot of the same fun stuff there.
As a result, Wyrlde is both a complete campaign of interconnected adventures and a completely new setting, different from any other, while still being somewhat familiar.
In terms of the larger scale D&D universe, Wyrlde still lies in the Prime Material Plane, but is not closely linked to any others. In the act of creating it, there was much that was liberally used from other settings to flesh out this one – no sense in reinventing the wheel – but there is also a lot that is new, and specific, and different.
Development on the Setting and Campaign began in late May and early June of 2018. Every element of the setting was looked at, because nothing in this world is without a reason – even if that reason may sometimes be “the sheer damn foolishness of it”.
Wyrlde is intentionally designed to move away from the original inspirations for the foundations of what many think of as traditional fantasy TTRPG. It intentionally adopts a set of influences from outside the 1920’s through 1980’s and move on from there, so it takes much of what we think we know, and then starts from scratch. Instead of shoehorning them to fit the rules, I went the other way and chose to shoehorn the rules to fit the place. This is fantasy based on, inspired by, and aimed for folks like me. It combines a half a hundred other inspirations and ideas and goals. There are in-jokes and pop culture references and tiny little call backs to the sources, inspirations, and sometimes just something liked.
This site is meant for my player group, but is available to everyone, laying out the idea of the place that adventures take place in. It is the backdrop, the world around you, the politics and struggles and life of the world – or at least what your Pedant for it knows. Wyrlde is a 16+ setting.
The core purpose of this site is to contain a great deal of information about the world itself. This will show you the setting, giving you a slightly greater than average knowledge of the world, and explains things that might seem strange or peculiar to you.
In here you will find a wealth of information on the people, places, peculiarities, and perhaps stumble across the liberally sprinkled trivia and hints, hooks and baits that are put throughout it.
It does not outline every little thing of the world – it gives the framework for those things. The book has a lot of information hidden in nooks and crannies, asides, and seemingly minor details, and there are things snuck into the whole that will help give you a better picture of the world, of your character’s place in it, and of the bias inherent in the voices that speak to you from it.
What this site does is explain the world to you; opens your eyes and shows you things you are not aware of yet. It also gives you hidden little hints and tips and tricks and tales and a sense of the history of the world. Think of it as “what you learned in school”.
It is a labor of love, of devotion, and a paean to the promise of a game shown to a girl on a kitchen table in 1979.
Your Impact
As you go through this work, you will note some odds and ends that could be of use if you are a DM or someone looking for a world to turn into your own. Dates and Names are rather fluid and purposely left open. This is to enable you to add in your own moments of history, your own legends of past adventures, your own bits and pieces so that you can feel as if there is more to this than just the basics.
There are very few villages or hamlets named. Most of the population lives in or comes from villages, and the absence of them is intentional – a village can be much more flexible a place to deal with than an established City or town, and allows you to place adventures, modify published materials, and more.
There are many places where you might see a good location for a nice new kingdom or a fief for you to add in your own flavor, and perhaps even copy elements from others. Your place can fit right in there somewhere. The map of Avilon is a huge area.
Many of the tables will have extra spaces in them, and these are for you to add in your own Houses, your own derogatory terms for the different people – or to leave empty and unused – it is wholly up to you. This is the infrastructure for you to create a world of your own, a foundation on which you can build.
There are many, many small little asides in the body of the text here. You can create entire adventures just from them or wait until the campaign book is released and use it. You have enormous flexibility as this is a world that will give you a start, a place to begin, while also giving you a place where you don’t have to do it all.
Because while I created this for myself and my group, I wrote it for all of you, remembering what I have had to do over and over for years. Please, partake of it!
