When a book has my brain bursting with ideas and a profound wish to get it to the table right now, I think that speaks volumes.  Into the Wyrd and Wild by Charles Ferguson-Avery is just such a tome.  Not only is the book filled with creativity and wonderful twists on expectations, but it is full of inspirational nuggets for a GM or storyteller to run with and explore.

The book is system agnostic, though clearly aimed at the many variations on D&D, be that the various OSR games or stuff like Dungeon Crawl Classics or Pathfinder, not that it would take a lot of effort to shift many of its ideas into a wider variety of game mechanics.  Most of what is in here is not based around stats or numbers.  It’s about ideas and how to use them.

The whole point of this book is to make the wilderness into a real force of danger and power.  It’s not about getting lost in the woods and running across a band of brigands.  These woods are a deep, primal, terrifying force of nature.  If it’s not exactly malevolent, it’s anything but benevolent.  “The woods do not care for you.  Never forget that.”  This is a wilderness that stands opposed to the right angles and wheels of civilization.  It is a wood that corrupts and drives people mad.  It is an inhuman place, a force of nature, an almost eldritch thing.

A big chunk of the book is a bestiary, filled with strange and monstrous critters.  Many could serve as a big boss to fight, if not a campaign level villain.  Some might be helpful or friendly.  Most are the stuff of nightmares.  Each creature has a good description, including lore and story threads.  Many also have special items that might be found or harvested with them.  There’s no need to use them all, nor any need to exclude your favorite from whatever system you might be using.  These are nice additions to the roster, and many have the capability of inspiring their own stories.

One possibility I hit on fairly quickly was culling through various creature descriptions and writing some bits and pieces of them as rumors that can be picked up by your players.  Maybe someone talks about the importance of being kind and generous to beggars in the woods (relating to the False Beggar) or someone might mention coming across a particularly lush and beautiful patch of ground (hints of a slavern).  Or, you might have a patron who requests or demands that you bring them the golden antlers of a devil stag.  If you have a magic user, they might hear a rumor about an arcanis arachnid and be driven to find their webs and learn their secrets.  So much potential.

There are also a handful of factions described, which could lend not only color, but drive to a greater campaign.  Could you make an ally of the Lady of Broken Branches?  Would you want to?  Will you stand against The Ruin?  Though there are only a handful of factions, each one has enough to build on for a GM to do some pretty awesome stuff.

After that, there are magic items, spells, illnesses, and hazards, among other things.  There are several random tables, including a nice section of a hundred weird places, each with a short description.  There is also a system for creating “wilderness dungeons,” that works out to being sort of like laying out a “points of light” setting, but more “points of interest.”  

As I’m beginning to dabble in solo RPGs, I saw a lot in this book that would be very useful.  The charts, obviously, but some of the other stuff is good.  And the monsters are wonderful and rich with potential stories.  

Into the Wyrd and Wild is a pretty awesome book that will prove very useful for GMs and solo gamers.  The physical copy is a nice hardcover with great art, and two ribbons.  Nice.  We’ll see if Into the Cess & Citadel is as useful.  I sure hope so, as urban-set games are more my bag.

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