AD&D DMG Random Wilderness Terrain

[NeonKnight]

Actually the random terrain is logical for what it was intended to be.

But what was it intended to be? Certainly not a "Lets design a campaign area" (though I am sure some folks out there did

It was a: "Oh-NO! My players went somewhere I don;t have mapped! Damn them and this open concept game!"

So a DM could turn to a random terrain generator to 'whip up a couple of hexes of terrain' as a stop gap for the game.

At least, that was how I always looked at it

[isomage]

Yeah, you're right. I was just curious about how well it would generalize.

[bartmoss]

Actually the random terrain is logical for what it was intended to be.

But what was it intended to be? Certainly not a "Lets design a campaign area" (though I am sure some folks out there did

It was a: "Oh-NO! My players went somewhere I don;t have mapped! Damn them and this open concept game!"

So a DM could turn to a random terrain generator to 'whip up a couple of hexes of terrain' as a stop gap for the game.

At least, that was how I always looked at it

Naturally I am aware of that.

It's still useless filler material - Roll-playing vs. Role-playing. If a GM can't simply make up their mind on what the terrain the next hex over is, he fails at game mastering. Of course the whole hex-based approach betrays the game's origin in tactics/strategy games, where the world presumably ends in a fiery death if a situation isn't covered by SOME sort of rule.