Welcome to Wyrlde.
The first Wyrlde campaign was started in 1982, The last one until now was in 1996. 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.
This is a Story
This is a long story, and your group of hardy souls will be the ones who ultimately decide how many sessions you play, so how long it takes, but it has been set up so that you can take your time, and develop your characters, and have stories afterwards about the acts of bravery and heroism and all the rest that we all like to prattle on about when we look back on old games.
Development on the Setting and Campaign began in late May and early June of 2019. 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”.
That is why there is a Player’s Guide specific to this effort. There are races, classes, backgrounds, equipment, spells, monsters, magic items, quirks, and other oddities that need to be laid you for you, all while also giving you a sense of this world, this time and place. A favorite class may not be available, or a standard race may be absent, or a kind of weapon or magic item you have grown used to may be missing.
This is not going to be a tournament permissible campaign, then. It will be a fun one, though.
This Guide will give you all the stuff that’s different. It will also give you stuff that’s useful, new, and possibly annoying, as well as all three of those things and more.
This is The Wyrlde Book. This book is meant for 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 book is to contain a great deal of information about the world itself and should help you to fill in places where the other books are useless. This volume 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 the Wyrlde Book 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”.
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 that start in the 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.
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!
Rules & Rulebooks
The Whole of Wyrlde is titled Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities.
This is The setting itself: The Wyrlde Book.
It is also The Encyclopedia Wyrldica, which details the House Rules for play, for creating a Player Character, including the unique classes and different PC races; the variant Magic System, a spell point basis; a Ritual system very different from 5e; Words of Power; as well as many of the operant rules for play.
Later is The Critteralia Wyrldica, where there are two hundred twenty-five creatures, the flora and fauna and fantastic life of Wyrlde, is described in more detail.
Lastly, the Campaign proper, running 21 adventures along with side quests, trivia, errands, and more is all within The Codex of Wyrlde.
Additions, updates, and assorted notes can be found at www.wyrlde.com.
This site does contain a lot of rules and concepts and ideas for role playing games. Wyrlde is designed to work with D&D or the House Rules — but those won’t fit the preconceptions you may have about races, classes, or professions, and uses several additions. They were described as a blend of 1st Edition AD&D and 5th Edition D&D. This book is just part of the whole and the part that says this is the world we created, and now we will see what we make of it.
Some will want just the setting, which is herein, and use different rules. You will need to make adjustments and allowances. Not to the setting – to the rules. For 5e, at the bare minimum, the Srd should be relied on. The Phb, Xge, Tce, and Dmg are all recommended if one is going to play according to normal rules, and D&D Beyond can be used in such a case.
I have taken enough of your time, and so I bid you…
Welcome to Wyrlde!
Thank You
Thank you for coming to play in Wyrlde. I hope even this little bit so far proves helpful.
I, Antelle, hope you find her hard work worthy of your time, and that it brings you happiness, even if for but a little while.
It is a lot to take in for a simple introduction, but I, your GM, think you can handle it.
After all, you want to be a Hero, don’t you?