Another Year Later

Reclaim the Wild has now been out for two years! Holy cow. And with a new year dawning, it’s a good time to look back and reflect on what’s happened in the past year.

This year, we dramatically scaled back our update pace, but increased the sheer number of changes per update. While 2019 saw more than half a dozen revisions of the core rulebook, 2020 saw only two. However, that included the truly massive Version 2.00, and the still-surprisingly-huge 2.01. Each of those updates saw the rules get tweaked and refined in a wide variety of ways, with changes ranging from small typos to significant reworkings. There were so many changes, we had to worry about how many we could list on a single page of the Core Rulebook!

With fewer new versions of the rulebooks, you’d think our download numbers would decline. That hasn’t really been the case, though! It’s been good to see that the PDFs of the rules have been downloaded at least another 10,000 or so times – again, not including people sending the books to one another privately, or downloads from the GDocs mirror.

Last year at this time, I had said that we might not publish as many articles as we’d done in 2019. We did cut back some, but not as much as I had thought we would’ve. On average, we were still able to put out almost two articles a month! Perhaps 2021 will see us slow down some more… or perhaps not. (After all, I was wrong about that last year.)

A lot of the new Homebrew Additions were driven by Milly, who really stepped up to the task of keeping the game’s development moving forward. He collated the feedback and questions people had, and his encouragement helped keep me engaged and working on improving the system. Sometimes that meant batting an idea back and forth with him over many hours; sometimes it just meant one of us having a good idea, and the other nodding in agreement. It’s thanks to him, and to everyone’s feedback, that we have a proper Version 2 of the system.

I also have the pleasure of seeing him interact with the community in the Discord chat, answering rules questions alongside other long-time community members. The Discord has grown even stronger and more vibrant than before, as highlighted by our recent Wild Homebrew Jam. It really is a treat to see y’all in there, talking about the game, sharing stories about your campaigns, posting memes, and enjoying each other’s company.

Speaking of the Homebrew Jam, it was incredible to see how many people participated, and it was a joy to read through all the submitted homebrew. Maybe we’ll do it again this year? Let us know what you think of us holding another Jam, or if there are other community events you might like to see occur.

2020 has truly been the longest and craziest year we’ve ever faced. I sincerely hope 2021 treats everyone better. But I can rest easy, knowing that this little corner of the internet is a welcoming place for people who love The Legend of Zelda, and want to have their own adventures in that world.