{"id":7371,"date":"2021-06-12T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-12T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7371"},"modified":"2021-06-01T08:09:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T12:09:11","slug":"mikes-world-the-forsaken-wilderness-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7371","title":{"rendered":"Mike’s World – The Forsaken Wilderness Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Geoffrey McKinney\nSelf Published\nB\/X \nLevels ... 3-12? (Whatever X play is)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
MIKE’S WORLD: THE FORSAKEN WILDERNESS BEYOND expands on the fantasy world first introduced in Gary Gygax’s dungeon module B2: THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS. If you have ever wondered what perilous lands further surround the Keep, this is the book for you. MIKE’S WORLD includes 14 hand-drawn wilderness maps of war-torn lands with details of their monstrous denizens, ancient ruins, eldritch mysteries, and more. It is perfect for all levels of campaign play and for both complete novices as well as for those who have played for decades<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 32 page wilderness \u201csquare crawl\u201d contains fourteen pages of pages with four or five encounters for each, expanding on the wilderness from module B2. An absolutely fantuckingtastic collection of encounters, about the right length and level of detail, imaginative, and with some occasional themes running between them. Totally unlike the rather drab Mike\u2019d Dungeon, this may be Geoffrey\u2019s best work, and is certainly one of the best things to come out of the OSR. It\u2019s The Real Deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the keep in B2 represents the edge of the borderlands then this wilderness map represents the borderlands proper. A wilderness full of weird and interesting things to explore, as well as being well stocked with monsters ready to eat your face. And, of course, it\u2019s not all barren wilderness, there are those that were here before, elves, dwarves, gnomes and the like. Not necessarily allies of man but generally not ready to stab first and eat later, unlike a decent percentage of the humanoids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The expert level game, the X in B\/X, was never really expanded upon well, IMO, in adventure products. You got a lot of dungeons, and isle of Dread, which always seems too minimal to me. Maybe something like Tharizdun, with its wilderness travel? But I seem to recall that was on roads and paths \u2026 and they aint here. The road from the keep ends on the edge of the map at the FORMER keep that was on the borderlands \u2026 now in ruin for 20 years from a gnoll assault. Well now, that brings the borderlands home, doesn\u2019t it? In a way that never felt like it in the keep, the forces of chaos can come calling at any time \u2026 and did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s what this product does, over and over and over again. It makes you think \u201cI could do this, and this and this and I could use this in this way \u2026\u201d The entries have just about the exact amount of details, describing interesting things, using its word budget wisely, not overstaying welcomes and in some cases leaving some hooks or threads to follow up on. Just off hand comments but enough to get he DM going. Almost every runs that knife edge between underexplaining and providing enough information for the DM to bring the situation to life.  And that\u2019s GREAT!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goblins climb among the mirkwood style dark forests, dwarf heads, skins and skeletons from a recent devastating war are displayed in the branches. Fuck! Yeah! A woman suspended in a cage on the top of a rocky hill. Weathertop meats the harpies, anyone? Every plains is filled with cactus, every stand of trees a mirkwood. Geoffrey hits time and time again with his encounters, four to five per page, with one page per map. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The maps proper are interesting, with terrain features likes hills, ravines, rises and bluffs, rivers and the like. While they appear to be quickly drawn with pencil, they are clear and easy to read. The keys, proper, alphabet letters like A, B, C, and so on, do blend in a little, or rather, don\u2019t call attention to themselves. I might have twisted Geoffrey\u2019s \u201cMike\u201d backstory a bit and put them in a read circle or something, to make them stand out a bit more as features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The misses in the \u201cadventure\u201d are all generally related to the map and the nature of hex crawling, in general. As I mentioned, a little highlighting of the encounters on the map would have helped a bit. Related to this is visibility \u2026 how far can you see? Some guidelines in this area would have been helpful (is that in the Expert set?) I want to get the party moving towards things, and climbing a hill and looking around would cause me to fumble through the book looking through all the nearby encounters to see what the party can see. I always turn to the Fallout game and its ability to put something in the distance that you want to travel to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, related to this, are the interconnections between the places. You meet a fair number of monsters and humanoids that will talk to you, or at least that you can question with fire and torture. A few notes on what they know is nearby, a likely question from the party, would have been in order. Even just a simple notation like \u201cB, G, I, K\u201d, meaning they know about those places, would be a help, I think, in running it. I think the adventure needs just one more page, laying out the overall situation and how everything works together, what they know, and \u2026 how the maps fit together. [Edit: it looks like Melan did at least the maps fitting together part.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, this doesn\u2019t really detract from the creativity of the work. It\u2019s fucking magnificent! Great situations, with a kind of \u2026 I don\u2019t know, low fantasy vibe? Traditional fantasy? There\u2019s some weirdness here, but it\u2019s got a much more \u2026 folklore mashed up with the Hobbit mashed up with Clash of Titans vibe going on. I don\u2019t really know how to describe it. Maybe the darker parts of the hobbit, the Mirkwood bits, combined with the more fantastic portion of LotR? It\u2019s strongly \u201cnot the realm of man\u201d fantasy, but not gonzo. It\u2019s the fucking borderlands baby! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is easily one of the best, this year or any other, and is what the expert set should have included as an example of play.  I can\u2019t recommend it enough! I want to totally redo the Keep, bringing it up to date, and run every campaign from now on there and in this environment! IE: i\u201dm excited about this!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing. Check out the first maps keys on page 5 of the preview. Great, great encounters, terse writing, just  the right amount of detail for a hex crawl!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/355388\/Mikes-World-The-Forsaken-Wilderness-Beyond?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has been episode four of Bryce Reviews Everything on his Wishlist in Order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bonus Feature!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Random Social Interaction Hex Flower, by Goblin\u2019s Henchman<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, I AM buying\/reviewing everything on my wishlist, but, it\u2019s important to note, I don\u2019t know shit about anything other than adventures, and I don\u2019t know much about them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m fond of social connections between people in villages, and so on, where the party will interact with some group socially. I think that it makes the situations much more interesting, prone to actionable roleplay, and believable when the various people in a village have some kind of relationship with the other people. (Used in the loose term, like hating, coveting, etc. I\u2019ve often though that mind maps were one good way to depict this, and this supplement seems to do something like that, so I put it on my list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It looks like you put 4-7 NPC\u2019s in the shaded hexes and roll 3d6 for each to see how they are related to each other. One roll indicates the direction, so, ultimately, who this NPC will have a relationship with, which could be open or secret. Another indicates if its NPC A or B who is the influencer, or both. IE: I love you, you have a crush on me, we both love each other. The third is taken as a modifier to the first two. You take all three dice and then arrange them to get a modifier like \u201ca strong interaction, happened in the past, arcane influence, NPC is stronger than expected, or so on. Basically, doubles, straights, etc. Finally, you sum the first and second die and that gets you the type of relationship: love, family, admire, aids, owes, watches, dislike, etc. 10 entries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a prep tool I think this is quite interesting. I would use it to create situations that I could then riff of off. I\u2019ve always thought that a blank mind, a totally empty canvas, was the hardest to work from and that by giving the mind just a little bit to work with it will then go racing off to new heights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is begging, I think for an online\/electronic version. And, I\u2019m not quite certain of the 2d6 nature chart, with love, admire, hate, etc. These sorts of things always make me think \u201cis this the platonic version of this? Is admire a weak love relationship, for example, and could be replaced with something else more platonic to the humans condition? But, fuck it, that\u2019s my nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a great tool to prep situations to riff off of while designing dungeons\/villages\/social interactions \u2026 and would be even more useful if there was an online version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Geoffrey McKinney Self Published B\/X Levels … 3-12? (Whatever X play is) MIKE’S WORLD: THE FORSAKEN WILDERNESS BEYOND expands on the fantasy world first introduced in Gary Gygax’s dungeon module B2: THE KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS. If you have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/mike.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7372,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions\/7372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}