My review of Further Afield

Further Afield is the first supplement to Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, by Flatland Games. It's the largest and most ambitious supplement to date.

The collaborative sandbox campaign

Further Afield offer a very interesting and easy way to manage a collaborative sandbox campaign. In the continuity of the basic book, his objective is to allow the GM to generate with the players a campaign setting with the least possible preparation. The book therefore propose to involve players in the creation of a campaign by allowing the characters to present two major places of interest that they have heard about, and to place them approximately in the region. Each player then describes what their characters thinks they know about it, and the GM makes a secret roll to see if the information is right or inaccurate. Players can incorporate elements who interest them into the campaign, while leaving the GM in control, and it's a very good idea.

Further Afield therefore offers some tables to generate major and minor locations and to place them on the map. The major locations are generated by the players' ideas, the minor locations only by the GM.

The Hexcrawling

You can't talk about a sandbox campaign without talking about hexcrawling. Further Afield has simple rules for covering 10-miles hexes. There are rules for travel distances per day, encounter tables by type of area, and hints for managing various activities such as searching for a specific location in a hex or survival.

The Threat Packs

One of the great ideas of Further Afield are the Threat Packs. To summarize, a Threat Pack is a regional threat that the GM chooses for the region (he can choose more than one at a time). Each Threat Pack therefore describes a threat, and provides a table for characters to use when they create their characters, so that they have been in contact with the threat or one of his effects. Each Threat Pack has an imminence score that is tested each week in game time by a roll made by the GM. If the threat is triggered, another roll on a table provided in the Threat Pack will show how the threat is progressing through the campaign. You'll also find on this blog a home-made Threat Pack: The Bandit King, to give you an idea of how Threat Packs work.

I like it very much, because it gives life to the threats in the region, and especially since it's managed within the rules, it lets players know that every week it can progress. So it instills a certain sense of emergency and pressure who pushes the PC's to act.

Character Traits

In Beyond the Wall some characters have Real Names (mandatory for dwarves). Further Afield goes further (indeed) and proposes to all those who go through the True Name ritual (human or other) to select a Trait for the character. The Traits are particular advantages that allow to differentiate even more the characters. It can be a social advantage, a gift for magic, a particular way to fighting, being a half-blood, etc. They are interesting and give a little something special to the character.

And other rules for the characters

Further Afield also offers us additional rules adapted to the management of characters for the campaign game. Hints on integrate new characters, tables for using when a character is bring back to life, creation of magical items, more adapted experience management are additions to this excellent supplement.

In a nutshell

Reading Further Afield has convinced me to make Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures my game of choice. It's well thought out, evocative, rich and simple at the same time. I highly recommend it!