[jamesh]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

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.

We're talking about two different things, Robert. You're talking about thematic differences and I'm talking about actual physical differences in the setting itself. By defining every hex on a campaign map in minute detail, a campaign sourcebook limits the number of liberties that a GM can take with a setting by design (well, short of ignoring or re-writing the material in the supplement).

Exalted, for example, is wildly popular due in part specifically to the lack of such minute detail. One Storyteller's version of Creation (the Exalted setting) will be wildly different than another's, not just thematically, but in terms of physical composition (i.e., towns, cities, creatures, geographic features, etc), as well. There is less shared commonality here than there is between campaigns run in a setting where every last detail is spelled out.

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.

You're still using the descriptions, though, which means that your campaign will have a lot in common (again, not necessarily thematically, but physically) with other camapigns that use the same descriptions. Incidentally, thematic differences are possible in any setting or game system with or without pre-scripted encounters. Detailed encounters really don't make thematic tweaking any easier in my experience.

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.

And then all of those individual works were compiled into a a product that was printed en masse and marketed commercially, thus "mass produced". No, the encounters, weren't mass produced prior to their inclusion in the boxed set or its publication, but they became mass produced. Unless, of course, you're telling me is that each Wilderlands boxed set's content is different from that found in every other boxed set.

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.

See above. By "mass produced" I literally meant "duplicated and published in large number", which again, unless the contents of each Wilderlands boxed set are entirely different from every other Wilderlands boxed set is very much the case. The Widlerlands boxed set and, therefore, everything in it was mass produced for purposes of commercial sale. Sorry for the confusion.

As for the pre-programmed if you are running a campaign then by definition much it is pre-programmed.

Not necessarily, but I'll refrain from explaining about character-driven campaigns here. There are plenty of resources online that explain, better than I can, the nature of player-driven campaigns, organic plot progression, etc. It's simply worth pointing out that planning events in advance or pre-scripting plot points isn't a necessary part of running a roleplaying campaign.

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.

Sure - which brings us back to ignoring or re-writing content in order to do your own thing. And that was my earlier point - if you buy content only to ignore and or rewrite it, was it not a waste of money? For me, I know that it certainly would be. This is why I'm not going to pick up the Wilderlands boxed set. I knwo that I'd be ignoring or re-writing a lot of it to suit my individual tastes.

Again, it sounds like a great resources for the GM in a time crunch or for the GM who likes to run thing "by the book, but for a GM who wants to create his own towns, encounters, etc - well, it seems like it would be a rather poor investment for many different reasons. And after your input, I'm 100% convinved that it woudl be a poor investment for me.

You can always feel free to comp me a boxed set for review if you feel that it might change my mind, but for the time being, I'm going to give it a pass in favor of the more open-ended nature of the Player's Guide for the reasons that I've given above.