For Game Masters

  • Any of these wildland scenes can provide a challenging, memorable encounter setting for your table-top role playing game (RPG).  Drop one into your adventure module for a supplemental encounter, or use several environmentally linked landscape features as locations in a homebrew campaign!
  • Encounter maps for several of the scenes are available for download, lower on this page.  They are nothing fancy - think of them as neatened-up versions of maps hand-drawn on the tabletop - but they are inexpensive to print at poster scale.
  • As a GM thinks about non-player characters or various scenes' architectures, it’s obvious that those should be distinctive.  Barkeeps might be affable, surly, lecherous or run-off-their-feet.  Prisons vary in size, cleanliness, ethics, and security.  Our natural world provides at least as much variety as is found in our society.  But while we are exposed to different types of buildings and people every day, it’s very easy to think of every cave as a corridor, every desert as a sand sea, every mountain as a rough pyramid.  The ENVIRONMENTS and ELEVATION LEVELS menus on this website exemplify the great variety of scenes that may populate a broader landscape region, each with distinctive features that enhance story potential.
  • The Story Elements section of a scene description will suggest lots of possibilities for characters’ interactions with the natural environment.  These challenges, opportunities, and resources derive organically from the particular wilderness setting, and so are more reasonably seen, less arbitrary, and more linked to players' real-world experience than traditional dungeon traps and hidden passageways.  A distinctive wilderness scene's natural limitations on movement, perception, and PC actions can lend entirely new flavor to contacts with common types of NPCs and monsters, and allow PCs to capitalize on their own special capabilities.
  • Many distinctive landscape scenes present special conditions that can make fight scenes unique and cinematic; We highlight those aspects in entries under a Story Elements sub-heading, Combat Dynamics.
  • While much of the language above connects to traditional medieval fantasy role-playing, we have kept in mind the broad range of genres now encompassed in RPG settings that include natural landscapes, and address those as well in story elements.  We believe this range of perspectives can help enrich game mastering opportunities in any of those genres.
  • To enhance atmosphere in your game sessions, try selecting a natural setting that supports the feel of your story.  The THEMES menu helps explore your options.

Full-Scale Encounter Maps for Your Table-Top RPG

These schematic maps are expanded versions of the sample map views found in some of our scene descriptions: Notes:
Each .JPG image file prints on a 24 x 30 inch sheet in grayscale, which should make for an economical printout at your local office or copy store.  That page size gives a 1 inch (2.5 cm) square overlay grid for use with miniatures.  Keys to symbols are found in the Dimensions section of the related full scene description, accessed through ALL SCENES and other menus.
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