Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Wilderness Survival Guide - RPG Adventure Game Accessory for D&D 5e Campaigns, Outdoor Exploration & Fantasy World Building

Owned this 20 years ago, just re-acquired a copy this week. I play 2nd edition (2.0/2.5), and it's 100% compatible with this material. It's a great resource for the outdoors, but also for other topics related to biological things, such as holding breath under water and not under water, fatigue, temperature, food spoilage, mounted combat rules (just as useful for jousting in a tournament as for outdoor use) ... in order to know how to deal with something as simple as "my guy tries to pull this rider off of his horse," or "we look for some plants in the area that might be useful for food or healing," or "can I attack these stirges while I'm climbing?" or "we chase the wounded animal," or, "can I fight as well while wading in this swamp?" or "do all of our horses react the same way?" or "how much damage do I take falling into water, or what happens if I dive?" you find all the answers here. (If you like playing by the book; otherwise, you can totally make all this crap up as you go, which we usually do ... but without much consistency or balance, because it's hard/boring to keep track of.)Provides more terrain- and skill-based depth for playing wilderness specialists (like Rangers, Druids, etc.), but just as much for dealing with your average character who happens to be outside (the book actually makes no such distinctions). Most of what we learn about the wilderness in other resources usually comes from the descriptions of special abilities of wilderness-based characters, which we then have to deconstruct to infer (with mixed results) what normal characters could possibly do, but the Wilderness Survival Guide fleshes that out for everybody, so that you really come away knowing what it is Rangers, Druids, etc. can do AND what everyone else can do.Contains all of the rules you need for outdoor exploration, travel, survival, and combat ... including more detailed (but still concise and readable) mounted combat rules than exist even in current editions. Format is broken down into small sections with clear titles, so while there is much more here than most people would ever need (personal temperature? falling damage down slopes? missile combat in the wind?), it's super easy to find what you do need, read it quickly, and get answers in a hurry.TABLE OF CONTENTS (Major Headings):Overview of the WildernessWilderness Proficiencies (only useful for 1st edition; replaced in subsequent editions)Dressing for the WeatherEffects of the EnvironmentEncumbrance and MovementFood and WaterCamping and CampfiresMedicine and First AidVision and VisibilityNatural Hazards and the WildernessCombat Rules for Wilderness PlayFatigue and ExhaustionMounts and Beasts of BurdenMagic in the WildernessDungeon Master's Section; Starting from Scratch; Appendix: The World of WeatherCompiled TablesAlso contains 3 blank pages at the back of the book of photocopiable/scannable hex paper, in 3 different scales. The hex was replaced by the orthogonal grid (classic graph paper) in 2.5, but many groups still use the hex for overland travel, even while using the orthogonal grid for combat. The Wilderness Survival Guide also gives concrete, step-by-step help on how to create a world for the characters to be in--from the planet to the local region--in such a way that makes it dynamic, interesting, "realistic," yet manageable.In short, if you generally like to play by the book, feel like you're not making stuff up all the time, or being in boring "forest," "plains," or "grassland" blankness between dungeons, you'd probably love the Wilderness Survival Guide. If your game is more oriented toward winging it and ruling stuff on the fly, even if you know there are specific published rules and guidelines for a given situation in the books you already own, this probably won't be your style.Finally, the art is the high-level quality of other late 1st-edition greats like Unearthed Arcana, Monster Manual 2, and Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, so that alone makes it fun to flip through.