[jamesh]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

One thing is fact that nearly every hex has a encounter listed in it. Another is that the authors (of which I am one) tried to make each encounter relate to each other in subtle ways.

Programmed encounters versus random encounters, yes. I'm aware of the difference, but programmed encounters don't hold a lot of interest for me because...

What this does for your game is that you can start your players in any region of the Wilderland and they can pick a direction in which they want to do. You can quickly scan what they are getting into and use that as a framework to construct an adventure. In addition this allows you remain consistent if players ever choose to re-visit the area.

I can generate my own programmed encounters that do the same thing and they'll have the added bonus of being designed specifically for my players and their characters instead of being largely generic (i.e., designed to accomoodate any characters).

This is opposed to say the forgotten realms/greyhawk style that give you say a forest decribe what roughly in the forest and then leaves it to you fill out where all the encounter and locales are.

And truth be told, I much prefer this approach. It requires more work, but it makes for a individually unique campaign setting, something that mass produced preprogrammed encounters tend to limit by design.

For the wilderlands this is the role of the Player's Guide.

Which is why I think I'll be sticking to the Player's Guide.

The wilderlands take the opposite tack. We realized that the most tedious part of GMing is creating all the encounter and locales. Most GMs limit themselves to a couple of dozen at best because of time constraints. With the Wilderlands that limitation is removed.

It sounds like a great product for the GM who doesn't have time or energy to create or customize their own campaign setting, but the things that make it great for this kind of GM simultaneously make it sound like a poor investment for GMs who like to roll their own (i.e., create their unique versions of given setting).

Sure, you can always ignore the level of detail that the boxed set seems to provide, but if you're ignoring then why pay for it in the first place? I think that the Player's Guide will serve the latter group of aformentioned GMs better (I know that it will serve me better, at least) and be a more cost effective investment.