Wilderness Campaign is the direct sequel to Robert Clardy’s Dungeon Campaign which was released a year earlier. You can read my review and experience with Dungeon Campaign HERE. The sequel takes graphical role-playing games on a very early foray to the great outdoors. In 1979 the only other computer role-playing game that introduced an outdoor map was Richard Garriot’s Akalabeth: World of Doom.
Where Garriot’s game excelled in the wireframe dungeons Clardy ‘rolls a 20’ with his outdoor campaign. Wilderness Campaign is a turn based game set in a fantasy world, starring a party of adventurers on a mission to save the once prosperous realm of Draconia from the dreaded Necromancer. This evil Necromancer has ensconced himself in a magically protected keep. This is the first computer role-playing game to stage a complete outdoor campaign and serves as a pioneer for others that would follow.
The game consists of a single outdoor map which contains castles, towns, ruins, temples, mountains, forests, deserts, swamps, and of course the dreaded keep of the evil Necromancer. The keep of the Necromancer is a fixed location however the ruins, towns, and temples are always randomly generated with each new game.
There is quite a bit of strategy and management involved with this game. You do not merely control a single character but a large party. You begin with 10 fighters but you can add to your party over the course of the campaign. You should have a party size of roughly 50-75 individuals before you decide to storm the Necromancer’s keep. Here is where the management and strategy come in to play. You can hire mercenaries in the towns that you visit; but you can only do so once per town. You will attract the number of mercenaries based upon the amount of gold or salary you’re willing to pay your mercenaries. When you visit a castle a benevolent ruler may decide to bestow some fighters and gold quadroons to you to aid in your quest.
The more mercenaries you acquire the more gold you’re going to have to accumulate in order to pay them. If you run out of gold and cannot pay them they will abandon you and leave the party; drastically reducing your numbers.
Food adds another layer of complexity to the game. Like in Akalabeth, you have to manage your food and if you run out of food you will starve and perish! The mercenaries that you hire do not eat for free. The larger the party you have the more food is subtracted from your supply as you move about the map. So you must have enough gold to not only pay the salaries of these fighters but you must have enough gold to stock up on food in each town in order to keep them fed.
You not only purchase food in each of the towns but you also have the ability to purchase supplies. The armor, weapons, and equipment that you purchase is shared by your entire party. You will also find that you will not be able to cross terrain or certain obstacles without the proper equipment. So you’ll have to spend a lot of your gold purchasing items to prepare for just about any contingency. You will find that not all of the towns you visit may have the equipment that you need. You will have to move about the map and visit the various towns in order to find items to help you traverse parts of the map. For example I found that the inflatable boats and rope ladders were not found in every town but you had to quest for them. Once you have items in your possession then your entire party can move beyond the outdoor obstacle.
Once you begin to purchase a lot of the food and equipment you need in your outdoor campaign you’re also going to have to purchase porters to help you move the equipment around the map. These porters are also purchased in each of the towns and are not as much financial upkeep as your fighters however you do need to pay their salaries on time just as you do the mercenaries. The more gold quadroons you offer in each town the more porters you’ll attract.
So where do you acquire all of the gold you’ll need to buy the proper equipment, pay your mercenaries and your porters? You acquire gold from benevolent rulers in castles and from exploring ruins and temples as well as some of the wandering encounters. Your graphic display does not switch from an outdoor map to a dungeon like it does in Akalabeth. You switch to a combat screen for wandering encounters and combat within ruins and temples.
Once you choose to enter into combat you switch to a combat screen and combat then plays out over a number of rounds. Your combat rolls are affected by your attribute scores, the amount of experience you have, any magic items you possess, and a luck factor. The luck factor is rolled for randomly by pressing the space bar to choose a number; shades of Clardy’s Dungeon Campaign. In each round if an attacker’s score is greater than a defender’s score then casualties ensue. Mathematically it is extremely important to do well the first round of combat and achieve an upper hand where sheer numbers can then bring about defeat. If you take too many casualties in the first round your best option is to then run.
When you enter a ruin or temple you can choose to keep pressing the Search key for new encounters and the chance for more gold. This is where strategy and management come in to play and you have to strive to strike some sort of balance. Each time you find yourself in combat you may lose party members. If your party number weakens you will never be able to survive an assault on the Necromancer’s keep. However if you don’t embroil yourself in enough encounters you won’t have the gold to pay your mercenaries. Once you do begin to lose mercenaries you cannot go back to previous towns to recruit more. Your only option is to travel to a town you’ve never been to and recruit more.
You ultimately want to find the Sanctuary of the Great Mage who then gives you a choice of two gifts.
You definitely want to choose the Staff of Power as one of your options. You will need it to bring down the force field surrounding the Necromancer’s keep.
Once you have located the Sanctuary of the Great Mage, secured the Staff of Power, and have 50-70 party members, you can then choose to assault the Keep of the Necromancer. You’ll need to expend shots from the Staff of Power to knock out the force field surrounding the keep but then once you do you’ll find yourself in a titanic skirmish with the forces emanating from the keep. It is an epic battle which is why you need strength in numbers. Should you prevail, you’ll be rewarded with the screen above.
I greatly enjoyed Wilderness Campaign. I thought it was much more polished than Clardy’s previous Dungeon Campaign and I felt immersed in a role-playing game. The outdoor map represented a world in which I wanted to explore and it was exciting to see just what WOULD happen when I landed on a ruin, temple, or town. You will encounter traps as you traverse the map such as avalanches, earthquakes and quick sand. You will have to make a saving throw using the space bar and your result will determine if you lost party members or not. It took me two hours to play through a campaign and defeat the Necromancer although on my first two attempts I died rather quickly until I found an optimal party size balance.
I highly recommend Robert Clardy’s Wilderness Campaign. It is the first CRPG where the entire gameplay and focus is on an outdoor map. There are enough elements in this game that makes it feel like a true RPG experience.