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| Into the Wilderness |
Wildernesses have been part of my roleplaying experience from the start. The first gaming module I used was 'B2 - The Keep on the Borderlands' where the characters are located at the furthest edge of civilisation, the last bastion of authority before the wilderness.
I never much found wilderness treks in D&D that interesting - they seemed an exercise in rolling dice for rolling dice's sake. I was ambiguous about hex crawls; although my favourite game of all time - Traveller - is arguably built around a SF hex-crawl map!
I was impressed with the way that the Dungeon World supplement 'The Perilous Wilds' treated wildernesses, but the game that finally gave me an experience that made wildernesses unique, expansive, and terrifying was 'The One Ring'.
Between the characters, roles were shared out as to who led what activity as we crossed the wide open spaces of Middle Earth. All of a sudden, journeys became epic and challenging. The first time we crossed Mirkwood was terrifying, but that fell into insignificance compared to the journey across the wastes of Angmar where we were pursued by the enemy, and started to drop equipment as fatigue bit into our capabilities. We all began to expect the worst, but somehow pulled through with a story to tell.
I love the way montages are used to pull together aspects of journeys in modern games, something 13th Age also embraced. It no longer feels like an exercise in random numbers, but something that the party pulls together to get done.
These days journeys out into the wilderness are something unique & different. And I love it.
11th August 2021 (belatedly)
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