1977: the first campaign setting, Judges' Guild Wilderlands, and why it still Matters 

I was just recommended this video, and I’m a huge fan of Judges Guild. As a 10 year old in ‘77, my friend and I collected everything they printed, as it was released. I’ve been playing campaigns in this setting for decades, and thoroughly enjoy the granular detail, and its vague descriptions of 100’s of locations, allowing me to flesh-out what the player’s show interest in. Their module Tegel Manor is the finest haunted house ever created. Great video!

I loves me my Wilderlands. Great pitch for the setting. Arguably the best hex crawl setting of all time.

I've been having fun with a city-state versus city-state, low magic vibe combined with high fantasy races. I like when someone can play whatever fantasy race strikes their fancy, but low magic keeps the focus on characters and emerging narrative rather than gearing up.

Interesting to recall... back in my Secondary schooldays (1978, I was 13 and we were playing D&D and all these new games) I ran a game where players were exploring a hexmap I created, and reported their moves every lunchhour, they would recruit and create their own parties as they encountered/negotiated/battled/captured... and even competed against each other (as each player controlled a single party/faction) It lasted a good portion of the schoolyear and was a lot of fun "GM'ing" it and filling out their maps as they went on. We played a lot of these fantasy games a lot differently than you guys do today.

Cool, I love the Wilderlands, and there is not a lot of discussion about it here on RU-vid. Good for new gamers to be introduced to it. I have the 3.0 update, printed out into a big folder, and it is a great skeleton to fit the flesh of a game around.

Nice video. I actually linked here from Bob Bledsaw's facebook page, he was ecstatic to see this well done piece. i love seeing more of the old products being featured as well, so that newer gamers can find out about them and the depth to which the early authors went in creating game aids. Have you done one on City State of the Invincible Overlord yet? Just an FYI, WOHF was not the first RPG campaign setting, but likely the first published D&D campaign setting. MAR Barker released what likely influenced everyone else with his Empire of the Petal Throne in 1975. It was both a D&D clone and a world setting on an alien planet. It had an entire planetary map, two big fold out sheets in full color on plastified paper, along with a map of the City of Jakalla. Barker being a linguist went so far as to create languages and alphabets for his setting as well. It is also the first Sci-Fi RPG contrary to what most people believe. I would also question the idea that WOHF was played as a board wargame. BITD (1977) every group I knew played without minis, for the most part, relying more on what has come to be called Theatre of the Mind. - Griff

The best RPG City ever was Haven The scale of detail and NPC's is insane.

This is a brilliant teaser for the setting and I do hope you'll come back and follow up with it someday. I'm planning a new Wilderlands campaign now using my 2005 boxed set in conjunction with Swords & Wizardry and possibly Michael Curtis' Stonehell dungeon and there is a serious dearth of good YT content out there. That's not to say I don't get it. BB Jr. sucking is common knowledge. He didn't create the Wilderlands, however, and I would argue doesn't deserve to define them for anyone now or ever.

The Wilderlands were an awesome setting for *exploration!* I ran a campaign in which the players simply sailed a captured pirate ship to explore the myriad islands and coastal points of interest on the maps. There has never been ANYTHING published to compare to that arcane, ruined world, with all the hints of an esoteric history hidden just beneath the surface. And there was plenty of room to add home-brewed content or published modules. Might be time to dust off those old maps... =^[.]^=

Excellent start! Looking forward to more!

Actually got to introduce some fresh players to the hex crawl style. It blew their minds, not for any exceptional talent on my part, but the raw concept of freedom itself.

Carse and Jonril from Midkemia are great addition to the game

I almost have a complete collection. My current campaign is based on the Wilderlands. Actually all my campaigns are based on the Wilderlands.

Well said.

Really good video and looking forward to those to come. Definitively going to mine WoHF for my own campaign. BTW have you looked at RuneQuest 2? Lots of crunchy goodness there and lots of personality.

Will there ever be a part 2 of this video? Would love to see a deeper dive into the wilderlands.

and a set of power armor in ...

Did you ever make a follow up to this?

The First Commercial Setting was the Avalon Hill Survival Game Map.

Your videos have echoed my experiences pretty thoroughly. I know what a good modern adventure looks like, as do you, but something about the earliest expressions of fan driven creativity supersede the modern grammar checked document. Harn? Judges Guild? Tegel Manor was in many ways more revolutionary than the original Ravenloft, the Wilderlands much more free than Greyhawk would be. So much before the scripted Dragonlance™ approved pap, without the gloss of even an Advanced Player's Handbook. I didn't live it, I came in at 1984, but - EVEN THEN - I knew something had already happened.

Well RU-vid sure is good at allowing us to necropost :) But considering all the angst for all things D&D recently, it needs to be mentioned, nothing all that great has been made for D&D for decades. Aside from the internet, which allows us to find and download cool stuff from the past. The Internet archive has links to most of the content from Judges Guild. It would be nice if the materials were cleaned up and sold more legit. But as long as you have a computer and the time and interest to clean up the pdfs with a graphics program. The City State and all things connected with it can be old school crude, but it's usually better than the shiny colourful crap being shilled by Hasbro.