The Nature of Adventure

Most of my inspiration comes from every day activity, believe it or not. Adventures, adventure-sites, and even the design of cities is generally compounded from various experiences I have throughout my day. I tend to pay close attention to little things in nature, like what the ground looks like as it cants, or how the stone face of a hill emerges from the soft earth.

I don't know why, but standing out amongst the trees and the rivers in nature inevitably gives me ideas. Even if it is just how to better run a random encounter, I find myself perpetually thinking of things that could go on in that environment: from an attack by orcs (how long would I have till they were upon me? What distance would I be able to see them at) to a raid on a backcountry still that turns out to be more than it seems (a CoC conceit I've been holding in reserve for a long time).

Wilderness encounters are all over the OSR of late, which is strange since I've been meaning to write this particular article for several weeks. Had I followed my own schedule of what to post when, I would have written it around the time of the highest wilderness-encounter hubub due to an idea that had been fomenting since I was in San Francisco. That, of course, is the notion of wilderness encounters, particularly ones that aren't simply violent shake-ups with bands of roving orcs. One of the things the now-defunct Grognard was supposed to provide was a section on encounters with various complex entries that could be added to encounter charts.