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Originally Posted by jamesh
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).
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All I can say is that ask on the Necromancer boards and you will find that everyone one of us has a different wilderlands campaign. And I am not talking subtle variations like the difference between two FR campaigns or Greyhawk. I am talking where the themes are completely different.
Like for example mine which revolves more politics, and cultural conflicts as opposed to the sword and sorcery vision that the Player's Guide present. But yet I can use the boxed set because of the way the descriptions are wrote, I don't have to present the world in a sword and sorcery fashion.
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Originally Posted by jamesh
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.
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I can tell is that those encounter were certainly not mass produced. Over a dozen authors worked on that set each writing their section (within broad guidelines) just as you describe how you write your stuff. Except of course we don't have a specific group in mind.
If you look at the player's the region around City-State contains over 500 described locations, towns, ruins, lairs, islands, etc. And none was randomly generated produced by any other type of mass production. I wrote 300+ village description from the result of GMing the Wilderland since 1983. By buying you get not only me but the benifit of the experience of a dozen other GMs that have used the wilderlands.
As for the pre-programmed if you are running a campaign then by definition much it is pre-programmed. A campaign deals with places in a specific time and place. So there is a lot of stuff like geography, cultures, structures, history, etc that are part of that time and place. The boxed set help define that to a level where you can focus on crafting a story and a plot.
It is written in such a way that you can set just about any fantasy plot in there. If a different explanation of why the dwarves of Thunderhold left the Majestic Fastness works better than the dragon burrning them out. You can easily insert it but still use the fact there is a king named Nodre Iron-Helm, they worship Rosmerta, and there the Border Warden. That goes for basically any of the stuff written in the Wilderlands.