Heresy

There's been a heck of a lot of talk about dungeons around the blogosphere in recent months. Now, I like a dungeon as much as the next man, but I have to confess that I don't love them in the same way that others seem to. They're always part of my campaigns, but I tend to use them as small liars or underground areas scattered over a wide region: locations that can be explored and plundered relatively quickly. Megadungeons sound nice in theory, but I find it hard to imagine setting an entire campaign around one. Perhaps it's all the time I've spent playing roguelikes, and I'm all dungeon-ed out?

The type of campaigns that really get my pulse racing are wilderness adventures. Deep, thick, primeval forests where owlbears and manticores prowl and hidden kingdoms of myconids lurk. Massive mountain ranges, from whose peaks and glaciers dragons study from afar the affairs of men. Vast deserts dotted with hidden tombs. Mighty oceans swarming with kraken and tako. Mangrove swamps where invertebrate things slither through the mud. Volcanos and jungles and chasms and lakes, these are a few of my favourite things...

It is for this reason that I've long wanted to run a purely outdoorsman's kind of a game. A group of rangers and druids and the like protecting a huge wilderness from encroaching evildoers. A gang of egg-thieves raiding the nests of giant eagles and owlbears and selling their young at market. Intrepid bandeirantes setting off into impenetrable jungle to make their fortunes or die in the attempt. Or maybe a band of outlaws or exiles fleeing into the great empty, never to return...