Wilderness DM Screen

General
#1

I’m making an online wilderness DM screen. Encounters for different terrain types, people you’d meet on the way, roadside shrines, events by the campfire… what other things would be useful? Links appreciated. It would be a lot like this one, but with more content from blogs etc.

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#2

Maybe some lists of trees, herbs, plants? To help with more diverse descriptions. I personally can name about 3 types of tree off the top of my head, more would be better.

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#3

Real or fantasy? Or perhaps a mix of the two?

#4

I have a few generators that I made and use for Wilderness Exploration pretty frequently:

I think adding a little botanical flavor goes a long way to dress up Wilderness Settings, and like using new “fantasy common names” with them.

You may also find my Wilderness Hexes document handy (more under the hexes label) for generating interesting situations, landmarks, and inspiring encounters.

Once you’ve whipped up some Encounter Tables for various regions (I like to customize these by night and day, but you can always use the ones that come with your system of choice) and have some idea of the more common Monsters in a region, then another project I’m almost finished with might come in handy: OSE Encounter Activities (a d100 table of “What The Monsters are Doing” for every monster in B/X or OSE).

The most important advice I can offer is to avoid over prepping when it comes to Wilderness Exploration, because it tends to force players into situations. Let them run free, in true Sandbox style. Focus on interesting situations rather than hard-coded plots and let them decide on destinations. This is where random tables can really come in handy to strike up the sparks of creativity necessary to keep things dynamic and interesting to not just the players, but also the DM. :slight_smile:

The Wilderness Exploration Tier is one of my favorite tiers of play, so a lot of my tools/generators tend to focus on it a bit…but there’s a few other things up on my blog as well that could come in handy:

Hope you find something useful and they bring your table fun! Love to hear how these things work out for other groups :slight_smile:

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#5

Many thanks friend! That’s very much what I’m aiming for here, I’m hoping to have a set of generators that can fill in the gaps wherever the players decide to go.

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