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<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4950770" data-attributes="member: 80487">Chaosium's Griffin Mountain (1981) is still &quot;the one to beat&quot; in my mind.Billed as &quot;a complete wilderness campaign for RuneQuest&quot;, it also includes ready-to-run situations. Like 3e and 4e, RQ has &quot;stat blocks&quot; that can take up a lot of page space; it has a more detailed, and often more time-consuming, combat sub-game than old D&amp;D; it tends to focus on smaller-scale tactical theaters than the old dungeons.In recent years, I have seen too narrow a focus on combat scenarios. There seems a tendency to treat encounters essentially as discrete war-games, with a concern for the kind of balance that naturally lends itself to a strong plot line ordering the sequence of scenarios.What's most useful for moderating a more flexible campaign naturally becomes more evident in the course of doing so. Drawing on a &quot;live&quot; process is, I think, more fruitful than sitting down to design &quot;product&quot; in isolation from play. One gets a feel for what sorts of material to include, how much is enough and how much too much, organization for improvisation ... all the subtle touches that can make such a difference.In a more dungeon-centric context, Judges Guild's OD&amp;D Caverns of Thracia by Paul Jaquays (co-author of Griffin Mountain) is at least on par with TSR's B4 The Lost City.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 4950770, member: 80487"] Chaosium's [B]Griffin Mountain[/B] (1981) is still "the one to beat" in my mind. Billed as "a complete wilderness campaign for RuneQuest", it also includes ready-to-run situations. Like 3e and 4e, RQ has "stat blocks" that can take up a lot of page space; it has a more detailed, and often more time-consuming, combat sub-game than old D&D; it tends to focus on smaller-scale tactical theaters than the old dungeons. In recent years, I have seen too narrow a focus on combat scenarios. There seems a tendency to treat encounters essentially as discrete war-games, with a concern for the kind of balance that naturally lends itself to a strong plot line ordering the sequence of scenarios. What's most useful for moderating a more flexible campaign naturally becomes more evident in the course of doing so. Drawing on a "live" process is, I think, more fruitful than sitting down to design "product" in isolation from play. One gets a feel for what sorts of material to include, how much is enough and how much too much, organization for improvisation ... all the subtle touches that can make such a difference. In a more dungeon-centric context, Judges Guild's OD&D [I]Caverns of Thracia[/I] by Paul Jaquays (co-author of [i]Griffin Mountain[/i]) is at least on par with TSR's B4 [I]The Lost City[/I]. [/QUOTE]

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