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Wilderness & Wastelands: Scarred Lands Encounters
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<blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009230" data-attributes="member: 9860"><p>Beware! This review contains major spoilers.</p><p>This is not a playtest review.</p><p></p><p>Wilderness & Wasteland is an accessory for Sword & Sorcery's Scarred Lands setting. Though it includes some short encounters designed for levels 5-10, it is really a tollkit for designing encounters in challenging environments for PCs of any level.</p><p></p><p>At $12.95 for 64 pages this is fairly good value for money in terms of volume of content. There is very little wasted space, with good margins and font size, and very few chunks of white space and only 3 pages holding credits, contents and OGL.The front cover art (showing adventurers readying themselves for battle with creatures resembing a cross between dire wolves and bats) is very atmospheric though slightly lacking texture. The slightly cartoony internal mono art is average at best. The encounters are accompanied by maps, which are scaled and keyed but have no compass directions - they are fairly basic in design but clear enough. The writing style is superb, very atmospheric environmental descriptions and clear rules explanations. Editing is also good.</p><p></p><p>The short preface that begins the book introduces the major concept of Wilderness & Wasteland - a toolkit to design encounters with a focus on challenging terrain - specifically environmental hazards, plants, and creatures of badlands, deserts, forest, mountains and swamps. When discussing plants and creatures in the book, advice is given on how these opponents use the terrain to their advantage, making the most of their adaptation to these environments.</p><p></p><p>The three-page introduction is essentially a guide to building random encounter tables for different terrains or general locations with an example plus a quick guide on how to use the book.</p><p></p><p>Each chapter introduces one of the five terrains - badlands, deserts, forest, mountains and swamps. There are sections on plants, weather (with random weather generation chart), hazards (with CRs used in a similar manner to traps), survival information (including Wilderness Lore DCs, some alternate uses for the Wilderness Lore skill, and a random 'hunting and foraging' chart), creatures (including animals, monsters and humanoids) and a short encounter (with advice on scaling the encounter for parties of lesser or greater power).</p><p></p><p>The encounters cover: </p><p>* A race down a ravine from a flash flood in the badlands </p><p>* Sand traps in a desert leading to an underground lair and a hidden resource</p><p>* An insane fire elemental in a forest</p><p>* A hag's mutated offspring attacking in a storm on the side of a mountain</p><p>* A swamp hag and her awakened crocodile</p><p>Needless to say, these are all set in the Scarred Lands, but are adaptable for use in other campaign settings.</p><p></p><p>Throughout the text there are sidebars on such issues as vermin swarms, bog mummies, and examples of terrain-related diseases. The Appendix gives various random encounter tables for locations within the Scarred Lands that comprise large areas of the terrain covered in the accessory including the Bleak Savannah, the Ukrudan Desert, the Bloodrain Woods, the Khelder Mountains, and the Swamps of Kan-Thet.</p><p></p><p>Conclusion:</p><p>This is much more than just an accessory for the Scarred Lands. It is a useful toolkit for designing encounters for challenging wilderness terrain in any campaign setting. It has the added use of a decent set of rules for determining random encounter tables, new diseases, new uses for the Wilderness Lore skill, and some useful weather generation charts.</p><p></p><p>It will be of particular interest to those running adventures in the Scarred Lands campaign setting, since the encounters and random encounter tables in the appendix are designed for Ghelspad. However, the encounters should be relatively easy to adapt to other campaign settings.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Simon Collins, post: 2009230, member: 9860"] Beware! This review contains major spoilers. This is not a playtest review. Wilderness & Wasteland is an accessory for Sword & Sorcery's Scarred Lands setting. Though it includes some short encounters designed for levels 5-10, it is really a tollkit for designing encounters in challenging environments for PCs of any level. At $12.95 for 64 pages this is fairly good value for money in terms of volume of content. There is very little wasted space, with good margins and font size, and very few chunks of white space and only 3 pages holding credits, contents and OGL.The front cover art (showing adventurers readying themselves for battle with creatures resembing a cross between dire wolves and bats) is very atmospheric though slightly lacking texture. The slightly cartoony internal mono art is average at best. The encounters are accompanied by maps, which are scaled and keyed but have no compass directions - they are fairly basic in design but clear enough. The writing style is superb, very atmospheric environmental descriptions and clear rules explanations. Editing is also good. The short preface that begins the book introduces the major concept of Wilderness & Wasteland - a toolkit to design encounters with a focus on challenging terrain - specifically environmental hazards, plants, and creatures of badlands, deserts, forest, mountains and swamps. When discussing plants and creatures in the book, advice is given on how these opponents use the terrain to their advantage, making the most of their adaptation to these environments. The three-page introduction is essentially a guide to building random encounter tables for different terrains or general locations with an example plus a quick guide on how to use the book. Each chapter introduces one of the five terrains - badlands, deserts, forest, mountains and swamps. There are sections on plants, weather (with random weather generation chart), hazards (with CRs used in a similar manner to traps), survival information (including Wilderness Lore DCs, some alternate uses for the Wilderness Lore skill, and a random 'hunting and foraging' chart), creatures (including animals, monsters and humanoids) and a short encounter (with advice on scaling the encounter for parties of lesser or greater power). The encounters cover: * A race down a ravine from a flash flood in the badlands * Sand traps in a desert leading to an underground lair and a hidden resource * An insane fire elemental in a forest * A hag's mutated offspring attacking in a storm on the side of a mountain * A swamp hag and her awakened crocodile Needless to say, these are all set in the Scarred Lands, but are adaptable for use in other campaign settings. Throughout the text there are sidebars on such issues as vermin swarms, bog mummies, and examples of terrain-related diseases. The Appendix gives various random encounter tables for locations within the Scarred Lands that comprise large areas of the terrain covered in the accessory including the Bleak Savannah, the Ukrudan Desert, the Bloodrain Woods, the Khelder Mountains, and the Swamps of Kan-Thet. Conclusion: This is much more than just an accessory for the Scarred Lands. It is a useful toolkit for designing encounters for challenging wilderness terrain in any campaign setting. It has the added use of a decent set of rules for determining random encounter tables, new diseases, new uses for the Wilderness Lore skill, and some useful weather generation charts. It will be of particular interest to those running adventures in the Scarred Lands campaign setting, since the encounters and random encounter tables in the appendix are designed for Ghelspad. However, the encounters should be relatively easy to adapt to other campaign settings. [/QUOTE]
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