November 22, 2024

AD&D - Designing For Unique Wilderness Encounters

8 minutes

The article "Designing for Unique Wilderness Encounters" provides Dungeon Masters with tables and instructions to generate unique terrains and features for wilderness encounters. It focuses on integrating environmental diversity into gameplay by considering terrain types, grades, slopes, and features like streams, ponds, and vegetation. The goal is to create realistic and strategic battlefield setups, enhancing immersion in outdoor adventures.

Highlights

🎲 Random Tables: Provides comprehensive tables for generating terrain types such as clear, rough, marshy, wooded, and mountainous environments.

🗺️ Terrain Segments: Encourages dividing terrain into four-square-foot areas to determine distinct features in each segment.

🌊 Water Features: Includes streams, rivers, and ponds with guidelines for determining their location and course.

🏞️ Slopes and Grades: Tables account for terrain grades (gentle, steep, sheer) and slope directions, adding verticality and challenge to encounters.

🌳 Vegetation Types: Introduces vegetation levels from featureless areas to dense woods, affecting visibility and movement.

🛡️ Strategic Design: Terrain features impact battlefields, sightlines, and surprise chances, offering tactical depth.

🗓️ Adaptability: Designed for modular use, allowing DMs to blend features or shrink/enlarge them based on specific needs.

Key Insights

🌐 Diverse Terrains: Terrain categories include Clear, Rough, Marshy, Wooded, and Mountainous, each with its own table of features and additional elements.

🧮 Probability Distribution: Rolling percentages ensure random yet balanced terrain generation, with most rolls leaning toward common features like hills or light woods.

🚶 Movement Impact: Features like marshes and steep grades reduce movement speed, while slopes and rough ground add positional complexity.

🌲 Visibility and Surprise: Dense woods and featureless areas alter visibility, increasing or decreasing the chances of surprise and combat engagement ranges.

💧 Dynamic Rivers and Streams: Specific rules for placing rivers and determining their direction, crossings, and fords add realism and functional design.

↕️ Elevation and Facing: Tables for slope direction and facing influence player strategy and the placement of enemies or hazards.

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By The Evil Dungeon Master

4.8

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