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Wilderness Dressing: Swamps $3.75
Average Rating:4.8 / 5
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Wilderness Dressing: Swamps
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Wilderness Dressing: Swamps
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Joshua G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/17/2013 00:08:04

I am associated with Adventureaweek.com, were I operate as the main PDF monkey. My reviews are written with a desire to remain unbiased as many of the designers, writers, artists and publishers are considered friends to me. Having said that I am first and foremost a reviewer, and in respect to these people and their product I intend to evaluate this product honestly and fairly.

Wilderness Dressing: Swamps from Raging Swan Press weighs in at 13 pages, with a total of 6 pages of charts and material outside of forwards, TOC, checklist of products available and etc. Fully bookmarked, as well as the TOC linked (always makes me smile) with the typical sparse artwork within the books of this series. For those not aware, the Dressing: series is hands down one of the most useful pdf series I have ever had the pleasure of coming across. Each entire in the series covers one theme, and presents it with a couple of random d100 tables offering fast and easy descriptive tidbits for fleshing out a GMs locations. Take for instance the following taken from this product:

Minor Events D% - 5 The party comes across a wild pig stuck in a patch of quicksand. The pig is partially submerged and exhausted from its struggles.

Minor Events D% - 79 The distant boom of thunder rolls over the party, but the sky does not look stormy.

Or, moving on to the second list of options, also a D100 list:

Swamp Dressing D% - 17 The bleached, mouldering bones of some long dead animal lie partially buried in the mire.

Swamp Dressing D% - 41 A skull decorated with bird feathers hangs from a tree branch. A DC 15 knowledge (local) check reveals this to be a Deep Mire tribal marker.

Fairly basic, right? Yes, you could do this yourself, not doubt….but wouldn’t you prefer to spend your time gaming? That’s where these products excel, giving you the tools easily to use tools like this either for planning or gaming on the fly, all with the intent to bring to the table a better feel for description and immersion in your game.

And for an extra perk, how about a full page of random encounters, arranged on a D12 table just waiting for you to roll the fate of your players. Add to that a sheet detailing the effects of several common marsh features (quicksand, bogs, undergrowth etc.) putting at your fingertips the specifics for the game mechanics for these features. You know, continuing to make this product a solid useful addition to you toolbox.

So, following a dual column approach, editing solid (which is the typical from Raging Swan) and yet another book filled with solid useful material, I am stamping this one with a 5 stars and declaring it worth worth the cost of admission.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Wilderness Dressing: Swamps
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/31/2013 03:46:09

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Wilderness Dressing-series is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC/foreword, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 6 pages of content, so let's take a look!

Following the format of the wilderness-dressing series, we kick off with a massive 2-page table depicting minor events, a total of 100 different entries that include hunting sparrowhawks, deep pools cloaked by hallucinatory terrain and swarms of insects infested with filth fever. A solid table of nice entries.

After that, we'll get to the swamp dressing-table of 100 entries- including drag-marks of slithering...things...(with Survival DCs), sucking mud that impedes movement, cryptic mounds rising from the slough and weirdly decorated skull fetishes and other signs of disease and decay.

Just like Raging Swan's Dungeon Denizens-line, we also get a list of 12 random encounters that come with a rather extensive fluff-write-up each to make them relatively easy to plug and play and which include the almost to be expected lizardfolk (one of which needs help versus a witchfire...) and mosquitoswarms as well as giant slugs and an ancient black dragon.

The final page is my personal favorite, though - a superbly useful DM-cheat-sheet for the terrain, with stealth, paths, bogs, quicksand and undergrowth, all provided on one easy to navigate page for DMs to make sure that running the encounters remains a smooth experience. I really love these!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting, as I've come to expect from Raging Swan Press, is top-notch - I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to their elegant 2-column b/w-standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked and in two versions, one of which is optimized for the printer and one for screen-use.

Raging Swan Mastermind Creighton Broadhurst has taken details in RPGs and dressing up to an art form with his supplements and this pdf shows once again why these product lines are as useful. And call me odd - but I've always liked marshes - perhaps because insects don't like my nicotine-haze, but all in all, I love the smell of marshes and bogs, the sense of ancient life pulsing between decay and depths and the plentiful life beneath the murk and exemplified by the majestic trees found there. Swamps have always captured my imagination and this installment does a lot to properly convey that into words. So all well? Well, yes - though the series has me spoiled to a very high degree and I honestly missed the one weird encounter, the oddball random encounter - you know, the flail-snail, the crash-landed flumph, the vegetarian, schizoid werewolf (and yes, I had such a druid in my games as an NPC once), the weird hermit...something like that. Hence I'm "only" going to settle for a final verdict of 5 stars, omitting my seal of approval, but remaining with a heartfelt recommendation.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Wilderness Dressing: Swamps
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Megan R. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/30/2013 10:01:56

It is a while since I squelched through a good swamp... probably only a few times since I finished studying botany and was seduced to settle at a computer instead. So, if you want your characters to have that genuine swamp experience and don't have too many of your own to draw upon, this product could be a godsend.

The stated aim here is not to get too bogged down (sorry!) in detailing the swamp. Let the players' imaginations do that for them, and provide little snippets that make it all come to life. To that end, the first table is 'Minor Events' and details an hundred different things that the characters might notice, or which might notice the characters. It might be midges and gnats, or a backpack strap breaking, a flight of birds or a plume of smoke in the distance... or the characters discovering that a few leeches have decided to dine on them! (Note, this is how you spell 'leeches' - a rare spelling error for this publisher has snuck in!).

The next table is 'Swamp Dressing' and deals with the sights, sounds and smells of wherever it is your characters find themselves. Again, there's an hundred options from a great mass of mushrooms growing in the shadow of a steep bank to shallow pools of particularly fetid, muddy water beside the trail. It's all about creating the right atmosphere.

Next come 12 random marsh encounters you can run. They range from EL 2 to EL 16, so it is probably better to pick an appropriate one than to get your D12 out. Each is a little more than just a monster to have a brawl with, there are a few sentences describing what is going on to make it an actual event rather than a combat to enliven the tedium.

Finally, a section on Marsh Features talks about some of the trials and tribulations of swamp travel and discusses rule mechanics that it is well to be aware of when running a game that involves movement through a marsh. These include movement and detection ranges, and a nice sidebar about quicksand.

If you have many swampy areas in your campaign world and a reason for your characters to want to go there, this is worth a read.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks very much for taking the time to review this, Megan. I much appreciate it. Glad you didn't get bogged down in the text.
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