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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing $13.99
Average Rating:4.8 / 5
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by 5E S. G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/05/2019 18:28:04

These books are an incredible resource. I use these in conjunction with The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox and Mythic Game Master Emulator to create solo (DM-less) adventures for myself in 5e D&D. HOURS of fun. Useful for solo, an absolute MUST for any DM.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for this review! I'm delighted you enjoy Wilderness Dressing so much! Good luck with your game!
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Gareth H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/11/2017 12:29:26

A really fantastic resource for any GM running a wilderness adventure or campaign! Chock full of ideas of everything from caves to castles and bandits. The tables are detailed and easy to use. I think the finest compliment i can give this is that i will be using this frequently at my table.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Mike F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/22/2015 17:20:25

Excellent GM Resource!

This 159-page book is chock-full of ideas to bring your descriptions of wilderness locations to life. The book is organized by location type (e.g. campsites, roads, farmlands, woodlands, deserts). Each section has a set of random descriptive tables for descriptions, odd events, and other things that may happen to the PCs to make thier journey more interesting.

Other sections include NPC stats for bandits they may encounter, generic area-based random encounters, haunts, ship name generators, and other tools to help the GM answer the question, "What does it look like?" or "What happens?"

Additionally, these descriptions can help spawn ideas for GMs who wish to prepare such encounters ahead of time. Still, having tables with pre-cooked descriptions can be a real time-saver if the creative juices aren't flowing, but you want to say more than, "Your journey through the forest was uneventful."

Five stars!

[Note: In the name of full disclosure, the publisher provided me a copy of this PDF for free in exchange for writing a review.]



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Keith E. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/09/2015 12:13:26

A fantastic addition to my other dungeon building books. At least now, wilderness encounters won't be so generic. Great book for anyone who wants to make flavourful journeys.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you Keith. I much appreciate your comments and I\'m delighted you found the book so useful.
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Andres B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/27/2015 23:47:30

Disclaimer: I received this product for free in exchange of an honest review.

From the other people in deep reviews you know the book is full of tables filled with ideas and details that help to flesh out your wilderness based campaign. As a DM with a lack of descriptive prowess I found this book and it's campaign dungeon dressing to be invaluable tools, even a minor description like "The snow falls in heavy flakes, which make a whispering sound as they fall to the ground." is way better than "it is snowing".

Now, examples like the above are really great but what really blow my mind are the for adventures a single entry can inspire, in every section there was entries that could be expanded into hooks for new adventures.

In that regard the chapter about Folks is a personal favourite, tons of interesting ideas for NPC, roll a dice and suddenly an encounter with a random traveler is now an interesting event.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Claus O. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/14/2015 14:01:23

This encompassing collection of tables, plots, haunts, pirate ships and NPCs is quite useful for both beginning and experienced GMs. It can be used on a whim when the party does something unexpected, if they suddenly start asking questions about their surroundings or if you like to run your games more free form. They can also be very useful when preparing your adventures, either to give you a handy description of the landscape, buildings, NPCs etc. your PCs will encounter or even as an inspiration for your new campaign, for a side-trek adventure or if you're just stuck for ideas mid-way through a campaign. Just be prepared for your PCs to want to hear more about the interesting NPC they just encountered or if they want to investigate that winged shadow that crossed the moon during the night! Many of the terrain or weather features also include rules for movement, vision/detection and so on in those environments (without double-checking all these rules, they seem to conform to the standard Pathfinder rules for such situations). If you're not used to incorporating these kinds of descriptions into your games be aware that too many of them, while certainly entertaining and interesting, can easily act as red herrings or derailments of your already planned adventures. Some of the tables are replicates of earlier tables in the book and could be omitted in further editing passes (if any such are forthcoming). Granted, this is a minor nitpick and is probably indicative of the compilation process of many previous publications. A quick rundown of the sections in the book reads as follows (other reviews have already gone into further detail about what each section contains, so I'll just give a briev overview):

  • Features & Events (contains chapters about campsite, castles, ruins, haunts, extreme weather etc.)
  • Folk (bandits and various travellers)
  • By Land (contains chapters about desert, farmland, forests, frozen lands, hills etc.)
  • By Sea (contains chapters about coasts, sea voyages, shipwrecks and pirate ships) In closing I would say that this is a massive reservoir of useful tidbits, many of which can easily be used as the starting point of interesting adventures, big and small. So even if you don't plan on using it to put minor events or interesting camp sites into your adventures, it's a good investment just for the many, many adventure ideas - you could run entire campaigns just by using this book.

This product was provided for me for the purposes of doing this review.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by William B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/02/2015 20:27:51

One if by Land, Two if by Sea.

First off, I was given a copy for the express purpose of providing a review, so let’s see what we can turn up. The PDF is 159 pages long, 8 of which are front cover, an introduction, OGL , table of contents and section headers for the four major sections of the material, leaving 151 pages of usable content. What I find interesting about Raging Swan is that Creighton and his stable of freelancers have taken over a niche in the campaign world that others have not taken the time to exploit, giving material to DM’s to make their worlds come alive around the PC’s.

This book is a compilation of a number of or all of the Wilderness Dressing line that has been previously published, all recompiled and clearly reorganized into the four sections of the book. In addition, according to the blurb on the web page, additional material has been made available in the product and integrated with the rest of the line. The additional material, per the website is comprised of: Farmlands, Small Caves, Borderlands, Shipwrecks, Coast and Campsites. So for those folks that may have purchased the individual files, there is also new material and to have it all compiled, reorganized and integrated should still be a possible reason for picking this compilation up.

The four sections are Events and Features, Folk, Land and Sea. First and foremost the Events and Features contains ideas/tables and tables of things that adventurers might find wandering around the wilderness, mostly manmade features, like old castles of various sizes, how a campfire might look and things that go bump in the night. The one section I really like in this grouping is the Extreme Weather tables and suggestions for running storms and adverse weather conditions. Weather always seems to be one of the things that get overlooked in campaigns. Not always but it has seldom played a part in many of the ones that I have been involved with over the years.

For the Folk section, again lots of tables to add verisimilitude to inter town/city travel, from Bandits and fellow travelers, tinkers’, tailors, soldiers and spies, bards, troubadours and minstrels. I’ve already found several ideas I can loot for my home campaign, just perusing these through.

The Land section covers all sorts of ground, in this case literally. It gives several d100’s worth of features and encounters to build the environment around the PC’s for deserts, forests of various kinds from normal woodlands to woods with a more primal element. Some of the forest encounters and descriptions I think would blend wonderfully with other products that touch on the forest from other publishers, particularly Tales of the Old Margreve from Kobold Press and the newly released 101 Forest Spells from Rite Publishing or really any product where the characters are traveling through forested lands. The product also covers other terrains, including deserts, from sand to tundra. For each terrain feature the product also gives a short blurb on perception and how each terrain affects the characters ability to see what is coming through the terrain towards them.

The product concludes with a long section on things one might encounter related to sea travel, including what the ship looks like, with descriptions of various parts of the ship that one might see on a sea going vessel, and again how they can all play a part in a shipboard encounter. Finally, want some more pirates and ship descriptions, for your Skull and Shackles campaign, look no further. My personal favorite section of this part is all about the sea voyage omens. Ever since Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I’ve always been intrigued by what other events/occurrences would make a sea voyager think about delaying setting sail or those things that might encourage them to leave sooner. The other one I really like in this section is what the carved figurehead is on the ship.

One quick little quibble that I noticed in this section is that the page number appear to reference the original standalone product some of this was taken from. Flags and Figureheads (page 10), Captain’s Names (page7). With the bookmarks it isn’t hard to find the relevant section, just a nit about some text that didn’t get cleaned up in the compilation.

Final thoughts on the product. Again a compilation of mostly previously released material, a couple of which I already have, but again reorganized and grouped in one fantastic collection of material, that gives any DM experienced or no, the opportunity to make your outdoor adventures memorable for your players. Like the Dungeon Dressing compilation, well worth its weight in gold. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. For all the fantastic material, I again have to give this one five stars.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Johnson L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/31/2015 16:23:52

Disclaimer: I received this product for free in order to write a review. I have done my best to remain unbiased but felt you should know. Also, this is my first review, so be patient with me.

Counting the covers, OGL, TOC, etc., this book comes to 159 pages. Except for the occasional art piece (mainly do separate sections), this is taken up with superb random tables. By using them, it’s possible to greatly flesh out your campaign world. The book is divided into four major sections, and I’ll detail each of them below.

First, we have “Features and Events.” This covers Campsites, Castles, Ruins (both small and large), Haunts, Small Caves, and Extreme Weather. Essentially, each of these topics has two random tables. The first covers minor events that could happen. The second covers terrain features. While I could go into detail, it’ll probably be clearer and more fun to just give an example or two.

Let’s say your party’s been traveling all day and is looking for a place to rest for the night. You roll a few dice and tell them that they find a small cave. That’s where most descriptions would stop, but because you have this book, you can also tell them that cave crickets’ songs echo throughout this small chamber and a slow-moving freshwater spring inside is home to a multitude of crayfish. Interestingly enough, a ring of tiny mushrooms extends around the entire campsite. During the night, one of the party members has a nightmare and wakes up screaming. Total amount of GM prep: roll 4d100 and check the “Small Caves” and “Campsites” tables.

The “Castles” topic is larger than the others in this section. It has tables for both small and large castles, extra fluff features, name generators for both the castle itself and the local Lord/Lady, and twelve possible adventure hooks. Very nice!

“Extreme Weather” was particular stand-out for me. It has tables for rainstorms, snowstorms, and windstorms. Each comes with 20 possible descriptions, 20 minor events (trees falling, temperature changes, and the like), and 20 adventure hooks. In addition, relevant environmental rules are included in case you can’t remember how to modify Perception checks in heavy snowfall, or what happens if a flying mount in caught in a tornado.

I’d already got my money’s worth at this point, but the book’s only 1/3 done! The second major section is titled “Folk” and details people your party may meet on their travels. Bandits, Merchants, Mercenaries, Troubadours, and the like. Aside from the bandits, nobody has a statblock, although names, classes, and personalities are included for each entry. For the bandits, there are a total of eight statblocks: four for rank-and-file, and four for leader-types. These are all low CR, so they’re great for new PCs to encounter. They’re definitely more interesting than your standard Goblin/Kobold enemies. The majority of these people are human, but the other major races are all represented. There’s even a Tiefling bandit leader! Overall, “Folk” was the weakest section for me, but it’s still very nice. As I run a lot of Adventure Paths and premade modules, I won’t be getting a lot of use out of it, but if you’re running a homebrew adventure and need some inspiration, this is a good section to peruse.

The third section is titled “By Land” and gives ways to flesh out various terrain types. These terrain types are: Borderlands, Desert, Farmland, Forests/Woodlands, Primal Forests, Frozen Lands, Hills, Mountains, Plains, and Swamps/Marshes. It’s very similar to (and meshes nicely with) the first major section of this book. Each terrain type has three tables. The first gives 100 minor events, the second gives 100 pieces of fluff, and the third gives 12 random encounters. The random encounter tables are particularly nice. Each entry includes personalities/motivations of the creature/s and sometimes ties in to an entry in the corresponding minor event table. I should also mention that not all random encounters have to be combat-related. For example, PCs traveling through a forest may encounter a pair of recently-orphaned grizzly bears. They’re scared, hungry, and just want something to eat. In fact, if the party is nice to them, they could become replacement Animal Companions for the Ranger/Druid/etc.

This section was amazing, and I’m not going to waste more words trying to convince you of that fact. I GM Paizo Adventure Paths, and both my “Kingmaker” and “Reign of Winter” campaigns have only benefited from this material. If your adventure includes overland travel in any capacity, you need this book.

I thought this book couldn’t be improved, and then I started reading the final section: “By Sea.” It covers everything you might need to run a ship-based adventure. There are tables for Coastline encounters/dressing, Shipwrecks, Shipboard Events, and strange Omens. However, the reason this is my favorite section (and should be mandatory for anyone GMing Paizo’s “Skull and Shackles” Adventure Path) is yet to come. The book closes with a large unit on generating pirate ships. It gives you crew statblocks, ship names, flags, figureheads, and Captain names (both male and female). As if this wasn’t enough, it gives you lore. Roll a few dice, and you can generate an entire backstory for your randomly-generated ship – including the Captain’s personality, prominent crew members, past exploits, and the ship’s general condition. With this section and a few minutes of thought, any competent GM can create a pirate ship that is (in my opinion) indistinguishable from a premade published encounter.

To wrap things up, I’ll mention that you will find the occasional grammatical error, but nothing that significantly effects readability. In addition, the “Campsites” topic from the first part of the book is partially duplicated in the “By Land” section. It threw me for a loop the first time I read through. Other than that, I didn’t notice any major issues. Despite these problems, “Wilderness Dressing” is still one of the best RPG supplements I’ve ever read and should be required GM material for every campaign. I know my games have improved dramatically because of it. If you have the money for this, buy it. If you don’t have the money for this, figure out a way to get it. If you’re not a GM, gift it to your GM. He’ll love you forever. In short, if you play Pathfinder, buy this book. I promise it’s worth it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by john-paul f. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/28/2015 11:49:05

Raging Swan Press Review for GM’S MISCELLANY: WILDERNESS DRESSING

Firstly I asked to review this did get a free PDF copy, and I will give an unbiased review, having said that this is my first review so bear with me! I’ve played RPG’s for over 34 years, mainly D&D in all its many incarnations and am currently running a Pathfinder campaign consisting of 56 adventures. I do have a few other Ranging Swans Press products, including the free Lonely Coast and the Wererats of Roach Run Sewer. Ok so firstly I like the look of the PDF, it is a large 159 page document consisting of the Front Cover 2pgs, GM’s Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing intro and that 1pg, Contents Page 1pg, Section Heading page 4pgs, so on page 6 you get your tables and guts of the book is 140ish pages, Events and Features pg, Folk pgs, By Land pgs, By Sea pgs, then Reading Stat Blocks 1pg, About the Designers an Stat Blocks by CR 2pgs, Big Pictures 5pg, the legal bit 1pg, Advert for The Lonely Coast 1pg, Back Cover 1 pg. So you do get a lot of PDF for your, it is a dear PDF, and I do have a few moans, would of been nicer if they did that about the book, but that said I do think it’s worth the price. The PDF it’s self is well set out and looks good, I can’t see any spelling mistakes, but the again my spelling sucks. I like the feel of it and as it’s been said before with many of Raging Swan Press material has that 1st ED feel, without turning it into a Role Master Rule Book. It’s in keeping with Creighton Broadhurst KISS philosophy, so the headings are clear, sections and tables you want are easy to find and therefor it’s easy to use, theirs not of lot of phaff that take pages of the document away so there’s and lot of information in each section. From what I’ve seen the book can be easily used on the fly while running a game session or as tool to roll up whole regions of wilderness, castles, caves etc. and with the descriptions and events in it could give you sights for many adventures and mayhem.

Events and Features Section Campfire Minor Events & Campfire Features The first section of this is Campfire Minor Events, this has a d100 table of great little events, they cover things that aren’t combat, but a few could lead to fights and could kick off small encounters or sidetrek adventure so be warn, could end up making more work, but most are simple little things that happen overnight, animal noises, fire going out etc. Overall they add colour and a sense of the place actually being more real and alive. Then there is Campfire Features, this table consists of brief 3 or 4 line descriptions and features that the campsite has, might be stones plied in a wind break, fresh water source or even graves or tunnel nearby. This section is detailed just enough, simple to use, and very helpful, but may end up kicking off more work for as PC’s go haring off after a rustle in the bushes or down a small dungeon, really liked this chapter.

Castles This section is made up of Small Castle, Large Castle, Castle Dressings, Castle Names, Castle Complications and Opportunities and Lord of the Castle.

Small and Large Castle The Small and Large Castle section gives small brief descriptions of a number of different strongholds and castles ranging from fortified chapel, underground maze to fiery towers. This section is good, I like the descriptions, only found a few silly one, but does require work to fit it in the game, better off using it as a planned encounter or prerolled overnight stay encounter. Castle Dressing are again the standard format of 3 line plus features of said castle, they are nice and quirky can help bring life to the GM’s descriptions of the place, but can be conflicting with what you already rolled for the castle, but with work, and note taking can be useful and enhance your game, but would just pick and choose the features I wanted, if I used this part. Then their Castle Names, this is a simple section of castle names, does what it says on the tin, could be useful if naming ruins, castles or forts that are not detailed on your maps. Next there is Castle Complications and Opportunities is a d12 table of events that are happening near or at the castle when you arrive, these could too small to mid-sized adventures, i.e. taking out bandits, monsters or humanoid tribe or theirs building work or you’re invited to dinner. These events are interesting but not sure how useful they would be, and need to be handled with care or they could end up derailing your game, but then again it could be just what you need.

Then there is Lord of the Castle this d20 table Lords and Ladies names, race and class, again could be useful but not sure it was needed. Overall I do like this section, but needs more work by GM’s to get maximum potentially out of it, and is more useful as mapping, region detailer, then while you’re running game, as you might have to make more stuff up on the fly and could be a lot of hassle.

Small Ruins, Large Ruins and Ruin Dressings
This chapter is the same as the castle chapter, but describes ruins of all shapes and sizes, both the small and large ruin tables are d100 tables of three to five line discriptions of different types of ruins, these include ruined farm houses, sunken barns, broken stone killers, broken aquaducct for small ruins, then broken bronze lion that roars either the wind, three pyramids, cathedrals. The ruins dressing table is another d100 table, that is helpful and interesting, really liked this chapter more than the castle one before it, and I think it's more useful for a GM.

Haunts This chapter is only a 3/4 of a page that describes six haunts, ranging from CR2 to CR8, liked this page just a shame it's so short.

Small Caves, Small Caves Dressings and Small Cave Features Again this chapter covers small caves and caverns, and therefore can be extended to dungeons, it covers d100 descriptions of small caves and rocky shelters, again the descriptions are good, colourful and will be helpful again liked this section. Cave dressings are another d100 table of dressings and features that help describe the cave and what's in it, again a very good table really useful. Small Cave Features covers a things like floors, obstructions, like pits, stalactites, pillars, rubble, each have descriptions with DC's for climbing, fighting and other relevant information, again this is a good chapter, it's nice to have all the relevant information in one place without having to trawl through lots of different sections of the main rule book and is very useful.

Campfire Minor Events & Campfire Features Then again which I carn't understand this chapter is repeated, to me this a waste of 4 pages, which could of been used for something else, such as bigger encounter tables or even a River Events chapter, this section is my major gripe with this product.

Extreme Weather Next is the Extreme Weather, I like this section, it covers Rain, Wind and Snow Storms, the first part of it is made up of three tables for each type of weather, firstly Weather Discriptions this a d20table that's describes what sort of storm, rain etc, including any modifiers and DC's, they are interesting and helpful, then their is the table for weather events again this is d20 table that describes minor events that could happen while suffering in what ever weather your in, this could being blinded wind or a lightning strike hitting a near by tree, found these sections of the weather chapter very helpful and useful, really liked this section a lot. Then their is Hooks and Complications this another collection of d20 tables for each type of weather, these again are interesting and well written, and better for the fact they are on a d20 table and not a d12 one like in the castles hooks. I think they are helpful and could be a lot of fun, but may need some work on the part of the GM. Then finally in this chapter is a section on how to run Rain, Snow and Wind Storms, this is rules snow, dust storms, wind, tornados, hurricanes, it very useful section has some good insights and all the effects and rules needed to handle them.

Folk This chapter covers Bandits, Merchants and Peddlers, Bards and Minstrels, Mercenaries and Sellswords.

Bandits The bandit chapter lists Rank and File bandits it's gives a d10 table of random human bandits, but the descriptions feel like they belong to leader types and not rank and file bandits, then gives stats for basic human bandit CR 1/2 and a then a veteran bandit who is also CR 1/2 which doesn't make any sense and should of been at least CR 1-2. Then it list Half-Elf and Half-Orc bandits, these are a little under whellming the elf table describing the half elves is small only four enteries long and then gives stats for CR1adept/expert could be used for any of the NPC descriptions but just didn't seem to fit them either, then theirs the half orcs, says it's a d10 table but it's not, as one NPC is 1-2, then another 3-4 etc so their is only five NPC's listed and only one set of stats for a CR1 warroir/expert (soldier), this again is an interesting class combo, but I always thought warrior covered the soldier profession, not expert. Next is Bandit Leaders this section has a d8 of leader descriptions, and stats for a human bandit leader CR3, half elf leader CR4, half orc leader CR3 and finally a tielfling bandit leader CR1, which is to low a CR I think. Then are bandit hooks and complications, this is a d12 table of adventure hooks and pesky events that could lead to some nice role play. Then it list some examples bandit parties and who they would made up of I liked this section, but thought they should of given just the stat blocks Fortran and file bandits, left the descriptions for the leaders, orc and elf bandits listing were to small, with half elves hardly evening worth at only 4 descriptions and veteran bandit needed to be tougher.

Travellers: Peddlers, Merchants & Traders This chapter gives a d100 table of various merchants and traders, each discerption is 6-9 lines long and describes the merchant, gives the standard stat block of alignment, sex, race, class and level, their motivation and what they are offering, looking for or up to. They are well written and informative, I like this section are useful and can be easily popped into an on running game, with little or no effort.

Travellers: Bards, Minstrels & Troubadours Again it is the same as Peddlers and merchants, but details bards, spies, rogues and performers; again this chapter is easy to use and well written.

Travellers: Mercenaries and Sellswords This section again is as with merchants and bards, the descriptions look about 8-10 lines long look well written and easy to use.

By Land This chapter is split into Minor Events, Dressings, Encounters and Terrain Features, all of which are d100 tables, apart from the Encounter tables which are d12. The terrain it covers is Borderlands, Deserts, Farmland, Forest and Woodland, Frozenlands, Primal Forest, Hills, Mountains, Marsh and Swamps.

Minor Events The minor events are again a collection ofd100 tables, which are interesting, creative and is well written and fun. Many could lead to sidetrek adventures so be warned, especially if your group is anything like the one I run for and have a habit of finding to do stuff when their isn’t.

Dressings Again a fun and informative selection of d100 tables, which describe small elements that bring fun and a sense of life to the areas you, are in.

Terrain Features The Terrain Features section is great and very informative, detailing rules for travelling in these regions including modifiers to stealth, perception, saves, cover bonuses, how much movement it takes up when in that terrain etc.

Encounters The encounters are an only d12 table which is a shame; I would have liked them to be a bit bigger say a d20 table instead. This is a brilliant section of the book and very helpful and easy to use, the only niggles I have with it are I think encounter tables are a bit on the small side, which is a shame and the fact I would have liked to have seen a River/Lake section and a Jungle section, which I think this book is missing, apart from that that, this section is good and I liked it a lot; there’s a lot of information in it and it’s well written and fun.

By Sea This is one of my favourite chapters, as I’ve always struggled to make sea journeys interesting, partially due to their not being any good encounter tables and events for sea voyages. I found this chapter a great help and very useful, but was a bit disappointed by only two things. Anyway, this chapter is like By Land and split into Coastal Minor Events, Coastal Dressings, and Coastal Encounters, Sea Voyages; Ship Board Events, Omens, Minor Encounters, Random Encounters, Ship board Features, Shipwrecks, Shipwreck Dressings, Shipwreck Encounters, Pirate Ship Design, Pirate Ship Crew, Pirate Ships Names, Ships Captain Example, Ships Knowledge, and finally Pirate Ship Figureheads and Flags.

Coastal Minor Events It follows the standard format of a d100 table describing events that can happen along a coastline, as with all of these tables they are 2 to 6 line descriptions, which are informative, interesting and easy to use.

Coastal Dressings Again this follows the standard format of a d100 table describing terrain features and oddities, which are 2 to 7 lines in length and are again interesting and fun.

Coastal Encounters This table is another d12 table of encounters, with a brief description of the monster/monsters and their motivations. Again it’s a shame that the encounter tables aren’t a little larger.

Sea Voyages; Ship Board Events This is another d100 table of events, personalities, crew and passengers that lend a little bit of life aboard ship, they are 1 to 4 line descriptions and again are well written and interesting, and will definitely help bring any voyage to life.

Omens This is a d100 table of good and bad omens, that happen either on board ship or while at sea, loved this section, thought it was very good, the only niggle I have with it is that even though they have told you whether the it’s a good or ill luck, they haven’t given any consequences of what that is, would of liked to seen either a moral modifier to go either saves or skill checks.

Minor Encounters These are a d100 table of encounters and events that can happen at sea, include freak waves, ships, whale/monster sightings etc., again all are 2 to four lines long, well written and interesting, although like with some of the d100 tables each description is a two number roll so there are only 50 encounters really.

Random Encounters This is a d12 table of monster encounters at sea, they include a brief description of the monster its motivations and a bit about what’s it doing, as I’ve stated before is a shame it’s not longer.

Shipboard Features This is a section describing the effects of being on ship and how they effect, combat, skill checks etc., its split into Deck, Hatches, Hull, Mast, Sails & Rigging and Steep Steps, this is a great and very helpful section, with most of the rules you need, there are three omissions however that I can see, these are modifiers for fighting on ship (-2 to hit), below decks (-2 to hit for medium weapons, 2-handed weapons cannot be used) and fighting in rigging!!! (Climb check DC15 to hang on, can only use standard action, -2 Dex I think), disappointed that they weren’t included.

Shipwrecks and Shipwreck Dressings This section is a d100 table with each description being 3 to 5 lines long, describing a number of different ship wrecks, really good section, some very interesting and cool descriptions of the wrecks. Got a bit confused as to whether the wrecks were sunken or not or beached. The shipwreck dressings is again a d100 table 1 to 4 lines big, describing odd things about the wrecks again very good table.

Shipwreck Encounters This again like all the other encounter tables is a d12 table, describing a number of aquatic monsters, motivation and what their up to, with minimum stat block.

Pirate Ship Design, section consists of Pirate Ship Crew, Pirate Ships Names, Ship’s Captain Example, Ships Knowledge and Pirate Ship Figureheads and Flags. It tells how to use these sections to roll up random ships names or pregenerated names, random pirate captain names and pregenerated captain’s name, history of a pirate ship in ships knowledge, and finally how to use the figurehead and flag tables.

Pirate Ship Crew, Pirate Ships Names, Ship’s Captain Example, Ships Knowledge and Pirate Ship Figureheads and Flags This section lists stat blocks for a Pirate Crew members CR 1/2, First Mates/Veteran Man-at-Arms CR1, and Pirate Captain CR3, then there are 3 d100 tables for ship names, one for Subject, one for Descriptor and finally for pregenerated ship names. Then there are two d20 tables one for pirate male and one for female pirate names. Then there is Knowledge these are six d10 tables, two each for the Ship, Captain & Crew, and Exploits, the first table is for DC15 information and second one is for DC20 information. Then finally their ship figureheads, flags and pirate Epithets, these are all d100 tables. All this section has some great information in, well handy for when PC’s ask so what ship is it, or what ships are in dock?

Reading Stat Blocks This section details who to use and read the stat blocks contained within the book.

About the Designers and Stat Blocks by CR 2pgs This section gives a nice bit of information about all the designer’s and contributors to the book, which is nice, to actually know a bit about ‘em. Some very experienced people!!!

Overall Overall this is a great book, packed full of information; it’s well set out, and easy to use. Most of it you can use as is and requires only a little work. Other sections will need a bit more work by the GM to make it work, and can it can also be used to help fill out the local wilderness and give opportunities for players to explore the setting, dungeons and ruins. The by sea section of the book is great and very easy to use and informative and useful. The only niggles I have with the book are the fact that camp fire events and dressings are repeated and didn’t need to be, the encounters are a bit small, would of liked them bigger, would of have been good if there was a jungle and rivers section, and could of done with stealth modifiers for being in the various terrains, and for fighting aboard ships. But these are outweighed by the book as a whole and would recommend it.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Aaron T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/26/2015 21:12:58

Disclosure: I was given a pdf copy of this book in order to write a review. However, I strive to be dispassionate in my reviews of all products. GM’s Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing is a compilation of multiple GM-aid products that Raging Swam Press has released in the past. These products center around an outdoors theme. Please note that this product is most useful to a GM designing her own campaign, or dressing up parts of a published campaign. Players will find little of use here. Although this book is sold as Pathfinder RPG compatible, the majority of it is system free and could be used in any role playing game. What is in this book? The book is 159 pages long. 8 pages are taken up with the covers, OGL, an advertisement, information about the authors and the title page. The entire book is black and white in two columns. This makes the book easy on your printer. There is occasional artwork throughout the book. All the art is black and white either line drawings or woodcut style pictures. It is all of good quality and helps to illustrate the theme of the section you are reading. The majority of the book consists of tables that GM’s can use to either randomly determine campaign elements, or read through to mine for ideas for spicing up their campaigns.
This book has four major sections: Features and Events; Folk; By Land; and By Sea. -Features and Events: This section provides tables to inspire GM’s to create more interesting sites for PC’s to interact with. Some of the ideas are quite simple, like describing features or animals visible from the campsite. A Minor Events table provides ideas for things to happen during the night; things of no consequence, but that will keep players on their toes. Similar sets of tables are provided for Castles, Ruins, and Caves. This section also has a page of PFRPG haunts that you can inflict upon your players, and 8 pages of ways to insert weather into your campaign. -Folk: This section contains 13 pages of NPC’s to insert into your campaign. These can be bandits met along the road, or just fellow travelers who may or may not have needs that the PC’s can meet. Most of these NPC’s are not fully fleshed out, rather they each have a paragraph of motivations/ background to get a GM’s creative juices going for a fun random encounter/ side-quest. -By Land: This section provides Minor Events, Dressing and Random Encounters for 10 land terrains. GM’s can mine these tables for ways to make the PC’s journey from dungeon to dungeon or city to city more interesting. Minor Events are small things that can happen/ be seen along the trip. Dressing is descriptive bites that a GM can use to flesh out what the PC’s see. Random Encounters provide small adventure seeds that PC’s can investigate or ignore. -By Sea: This section provides Minor Events, Dressing and Random Encounters for 3 oceanic terrains, then spends 7 pages on tables to help create more interesting Pirate Ships (or any ships, really). One page has statblocks for pirate crew members (Captains are left up to the GM to flesh out). Two pages consist of tables for naming ships along with sample ship names and sample pirate captain names.One page provides table for pirate flags, ship figureheads, and even a table of Pirate Epithets! Overall, this is a highly useful product for GM’s running an outdoor campaign. Formatting and Editing were excellent; I noticed only a few errors in the whole book. I enjoy flipping through this book finding interesting ideas to inflict upon my players. If you are unsure if this book might be for you, check out one or two of the products that make up the book. There is nothing game breaking here, it is almost all ideas that will help to create a more immersive experience for your players by filling some of the quiet moments with mundane occurrences. Overall, I love this book and award it 5 out of 5 stars.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Stipe K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/22/2015 05:47:45

Like its counterpart Dungeon Dressing, this is a massive tome of details and ideas for fantasy adventures, this one dealing with outdoors rather than indoors. This one includes castles, ruins, caves; people like bandits and travelers, features from borderlands, plains, hills, forests, mountains and frozen lands and special chapter dedicated to sea adventures. This one is, for me, even more useful than Dungeon Dressing since I have even harder time of developing outdoor details than indoor ones. One thing I haven’t mentioned is the layout and graphic design of Raging Swan books. They are beautiful in their simplicity. Clean white pages, small print, simple layout and small amounts art that suggest rather than locks you in an image. And this one has better bookmarks. And seriously, you could use Dungeon & Wilderness Dressing, Tribes Most Foul compilation and one of the Village Backdrop compilations and run a whole sandbox campaign out of those four books.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Lisa K. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/19/2015 11:46:50

Ok so your players wander off into the local forest totally against what you had planned for them. So what do you do? If your like me you whip out your GM's Miscellany:Wilderness Dressing and you create a cool forest on the fly.

I just got this cool book in my mailbox and dived right in and it has literally thousands of descriptions for all sorts of outdoor possibilities not just forests, or other terrains but farmland, ruins and even pirate ships.

so how does this work simple really this book has tables that you roll on to get random interesting things that the characters encounter. such as weird trees or animals or not so weird just interesting.

Their is even different types of what you might consider the same terrain such as comparing a local forest near a town to a great primal forest untouched by humans. Ok so your players wander off into the local forest totally against what you had planned for them. So what do you do? If your like me you whip out your GM's Miscellany:Wilderness Dressing and you create a cool forest on the fly.

If you run a sandbox campaign or you just sometimes have players that do their own thing then this book is a must have.

It is also very useful just for helping the time poor GM build really great outdoor locations planned or unplanned for their next adventure.

The book has 156 pages and is well worth the price. I didn't notice any glitches but I am not an expert on grammar. a

This is a 5 star book all the way. I highly recommend it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by William S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/18/2015 17:15:18

The pdf, weighing in at 159 pages is divided into 4 main sections, not including the introduction/TOC and a few short appendices. Features and Events, which details items about campsites, castles, caves, ruins, haunts, and severe weather. Folk, a variety of bandits and travelers. By Land, details divided up by and concerning various terrains. By Sea, which includes coastal, sea voyages, shipwrecks, and pirate ships.

The Good: The PDF presents a wide variety of items to dress up wilderness encounters/areas. One part I particularly liked was the NPC bio thumbnails, short (approximately 2-3 sentences) descriptions of the motivations/background/reactions of the various NPCs.

The Bad: A minor quibble, but there are a couple of places where an entry is broken up over two columns or two pages.

The Ugly: Formatting is a clean, readable 2 columns. The art consists of a few pieces in black and white, all of it quite nice, and invocative in its own right.

Final Verdict: I quite like this, and it will see quite a bit of use at my table. I highly recommend picking it up, as I consider the sheer volume of information in the book well worth the price. (I also plan on purchasing a print copy in the not so distant future.)



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Jay C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/15/2015 22:15:42

I'm really happy that I have this item. It's organized well and is easy to find what you're looking for by subject. I found the content great for adding that extra something to an encounter or mundane event. I also found lots of inspiration for adventures! This is a great buy.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by john s. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/11/2015 11:14:58

If your PC's said "hey let's go check out these woods" instead of going down your set corse to the Dungeon of danger, what are you going to do? You going to force them back on your rails or have fun and come up with a mini wilderness adventure? Well Creighton Broadhurst and the folks at Raging Swan Press have your answer and so much more. From bandits, deserts, to swamps and even castles. They have your back. Great options for anything you could think of throwing at them to make life in the wilderness colorful and fun. Such great randomized charts and even better is, you can use these to build your own adventure that never has to see the darkness of a cave or dungeon and yet have all fun. Go for it, stop just have in your adventures traveling of into the deep, throw them at mother nature herself and let them have a breath of fresh air.

John

P.S. save some cash, get great resources and support Raging Swan Press writers by joining their Patreon campaign.

https://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=2399569



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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