Hello there!
I am Antelle, goddess of Change, Mystery, Wonder, and Revelry. The tone and speaker to you throughout this work is me speaking. The notes, comments, and content that comes from me about the world is meant to be listened to. The stuff about how you should role play or make your character is a gentle suggestion, since it could have an impact on the side quests in particular, but also the main questline, since at least one of the major elements involves each character as a person and their hopes and their dreams and their fears and their terrors.
There is, however, a thing to ask you that might be surprising. Is this world an immersive VR video game for you? Is it a novel that has sucked you into the story as one of the heroes? Are you someone born in the world and of it, not drawn or summoned from other places within the prime Material Plane? Did you die and were you reincarnated on this world? These are things you should decide – either on your own for you, or as part of a team effort with your fellow players. Because these things will subtly alter the way you play your character and add to the entirety of the setting and the gaming experience.
Starting Up
When you first start to play in this Campaign, you and your party will start at 1st level. Each of you might consider filling one of the Roles in that party. The Roles are somewhat important – aside from making it easier to tell the story, they also ensure that the party can handle whatever it encounters. And I want you to be able to handle whatever you encounter, since very little of it is truly random. This campaign is not meant to kill you – but that doesn’t mean it cannot do so. A single goblin can get a lucky roll and off goes your character’s head. But, by and large, you have a fighting chance through most of the campaign, assuming you can keep your head and remember to stay true to the character.
Should, however, a character die, it is important to note that replacement characters will also start at 1st level or one half the level of the rest of the party, whichever is greater. This is to ensure that while still weaker, they can be fit into the ongoing story as it happens, and there are key points where those characters can be introduced often.
Some effort was put into making the segments of each adventure playable in a single four hour session. Assuming for overages, no single adventure should take more than three to five sessions – six sessions among the last few, and it is planned to be a full eight sessions for Well of Souls.
Sourcebooks
This book, The Wyrlde Book (TWB), is the Player’s Addendum for this setting. It contains a wealth of information developed at the same time as the setting and presented to you so that you are not flying entirely blind.
The most essential Books for a player are The Players Handbook and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. These are abbreviated using PHB and XGE. If you do not have either of them, and/or you use the Basic Rules, you can ask to use the House Copy of those sourcebooks. To look things up, or you may play using just what you have access to yourself. XGE is worth adding to your own collection for use here, as there is a lot of information pulled from it.
There is some material drawn from The Wayfarer’s Guide to Eberron and The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide sourcebooks as well. They are abbreviated as WGE and SWAG, respectively. WGE materials are predominantly drawing on ideas about the setting, while SWAG pulls in subclasses and backgrounds.
These materials as well as some which come from other sources (such as The DMs Guide or D&D Beyond) are presented herein, essentially copied and pasted over, making this a useful supplement overall and making it a Sourcebook in and of itself.
Thank You
Thank you for coming to play in Wyrlde. I hope even this little bit so far proves helpful.
Influences & Inspiration
The influences that feed into Wyrlde are many and vast. The Mythopoetic Creatrix of the setting is a Sociologist and Psychologist, and she has a broad range of interests and ideas. She draws often from pop culture and Meme Culture for some things, but also from History, from the same sources as the original D&D game, from the Sourcebooks, past adventures in previous incarnations of Wyrlde, and the usual traditional sources.
But for this incarnation of Wyrlde, she chose to not only step outside the realm of typical and comfortable and familiar, but to rely on newer, younger sources for inspiration and ideas. As a glance through this work will tell you, she has drawn heavily from Anime imagery, manga and anime works, and not merely in the sense of the Fantasy ones. She has spent time on TVTropes, trying to deconstruct and even rebuild some ideas, and she has turned to video games such as Horizon Zero Dawn. She has pulled from a host of authors, most of whom were published well after the 70s (the early 70’s being the end of the inspiration for the original Dungeons and Dragons game), including Stephen Donaldson and Stephen King, Tamora Pierce, Rebecca Roanhorse, Patricia Briggs and Kim Harrison, Kameron Hurley, Leigh Bardugo, N.K. Jemisin, Brian Vaughn, Fiona Staples, Ao Jyumoni, Glen Cook, Reki Kawahara, Tanya Huff, and Elizabeth Moon.
She herself started playing D&D in 1979. Then kids, life, and more got in the way, and she only returned to it in 2019, after having stopped for 20 years, and this is the result of her return, a massive pair of tomes and an assortment of handouts, bric a brak, and the keys to kingdom unlike many others.
I, your GM, 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?
