The Painted Wastelands: Agamemnon Press Takes Its Dreamworld to 5E

Agamemnon Press is bringing The Painted Wastelands to a new audience with a two-book adaptation for Dungeons & Dragons’ revised fifth edition. The original Old-School Essentials setting made a strong start with its original crowdfunding campaign and has since earned industry recognition. But this is more than a rules conversion: publisher Christopher Willett says the move is a way to reach players who might otherwise never pick up an Old-School Essentials book.

A dreamworld painted in pastels

The Painted Wastelands is a fantasy hexcrawl set in a dreamlike desert of pastel-coloured dunes, crumbling ruins, sorcerers, ghouls and unsettling oddities. The setting grew from artist Tim Molloy’s existing body of paintings, comics and writing. Willett told TTRPG Insider that he first approached Molloy after seeing one of his paintings; Molloy then explained that his work already belonged to a shared world. The game developed from there, with Willett writing in collaboration with Molloy’s established vision.

The result is deliberately strange, but it isn’t intended to be random. The setting follows what Willett calls “dream logic”: the world can feel surreal and unpredictable, while still having its own internal consistency. The original book was designed as a sandbox for exploration, with players free to wander through its settlements, dangerous locations and dungeons. The new campaign page describes the same broad appeal: players can follow the trail of competing factions and strange discoveries, or take their chances off the beaten track.

Was the original popular?

There’s no single measure of popularity, but the original has gone down well with both gamers and picked up industry awards along the way. The 2024 Kickstarter raised $55,903 from 563 backers against a $5,000 goal. That’s a very good result for an independent Old-School Essentials setting, though it doesn’t make the book a mainstream hit by the standards of the wider RPG market.

The game also received positive attention from reviewers. RPGnet’s Ed Kabara gave it a 5/5 for both style and substance, praising its art, hex crawl, monsters, spells and other resources. The product received a Silver ENNIE for Best Interior Art in 2025, while also appearing among that year’s Best Setting nominees. In 2026, the separate Painted Wastelands Player’s Guide won Silver for Best Supplement.

Why make a fifth-edition version?

Willett’s answer is practical as well as creative: he wants to meet players where they are. He told TTRPG Insider that convention visitors would ask whether The Painted Wastelands was for fifth edition. When he explained that the original used Old-School Essentials, a game based on 1980s Basic and Expert D&D, he sometimes lost their interest. Adapting the setting gives those players a familiar rules framework and, he hopes, a route into the wider world of weird fantasy and old-school games.

The rules also offer ways to connect characters more directly to the setting. Willett points to species, backgrounds, subclasses and factions as tools for helping players engage with the world. The new Adventurer’s Handbook plans to include 12 subclasses, eight species, including a playable cat, plus spells, feats, backgrounds, equipment and vehicles. The Campaign Guide contains the hexcrawl, locations, monsters, NPCs and factions, with revised material and more guidance for groups who want a clearer path through the campaign.

That guidance responds to feedback about the original’s open-ended structure. Willett explained that some players wanted more direction than “just wander around”, so the new version introduces NPC patrons and a pilgrimage that can give the party a reason to travel. The setting’s unusual creatures and ideas can also work as a side trip from a conventional D&D campaign: in Willett’s example, an ordinary dungeon trap might send the characters to sleep and wake in this strange new world.

The current crowdfunding, currently running on Backerkit, presents two full-colour hardbacks, built around the revised fifth-edition rules, and says the books are written and in editing and layout, with fulfilment expected to begin in summer 2027. For returning readers, it revisits familiar territory with revised material; for newcomers, it offers a first expedition into Molloy and Willett’s vivid, unsettling dreamworld.

The Painted Wastelands 5.5e is currently funding on Backerkit and is running until Friday 6th November 2026. It has a load of possibly rewards, including some Voidblossom tea… which considering the trippy nature of the setting is, we are assured, just a mix of hibiscus, raspberry, and green tea…