The Borderland Provinces “campaign” is designed for characters who like to travel across wide regions, and Game Masters who like to run such “sandbox” campaigns. There are upsides and downsides to running a sandbox campaign rather than one where the characters are presented with a series of clear objectives, all of them roughly designed for the character’s current level of experience. A sandbox campaign like the Borderland Provinces requires that the players are able to identify objectives for themselves, or else they may become paralyzed with indecision, looking for the “right” place to go. So, on the Game Master’s side of the GM screen, it’s very important that the characters are presented with lots of choices wherever they go. This—as any experienced Game Master will immediately note—makes a lot of work for the Game Master. How do you generate those choices? Do you need to prepare five or six different adventures for each time the characters enter a tavern and start asking questions?
This book is a resource for generating journeys, but in doing so it allows you to fill the world with a realistic jumble of objectives, possibilities, opportunities, and motivations for the characters, keeping them from asking, “Well, what are we supposed to do?” It might take them a bit of practice to switch into the “sandbox” mentality, but soon they will be asking, “Which opportunity do we want to take?” And that brings us to the reason for this book, because at that point they’re going to need lots of options, and it’s your job to produce those options.
So we get to the well-known fact about running a sandbox campaign. It’s not necessarily more work for the Game Master, but it requires much more improvisation and thinking on your feet than a programmed adventure path does. It’s a method used more by experienced Game Masters for this reason, and there are actually some groups of players who feel like it’s too unfocused. However, for those who like the feeling of forging their own destinies in a living world, the sandbox style of play in unparalleled. The Lost Lands: Borderland Provinces is designed for that difficult but highly-rewarding type of Game Mastery, and this book is a tool for handling the “journeying” part of a sandbox.
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One central component of any sandbox campaign worth its salt is the component of the journey - whether because wine and wenches await in a far-off place or because something needs to be delivered - whether a secret missive, a caravan or something altogether different. The problem that a GM does have here is that it is hard to come up with meaning full journeys - enter this book and its 2 different types of journey generation: Number one creates journeys focused on getting to the adventure, whereas the second generator creates journeys that represent the main meat of the adventuring experience in question. It should be noted that this book, obviously, focuses on the Borderland Provinces - hence, we get a total of 12 tables, one for each of the respective provinces and a table that features a variety of patrons and supplemental motivations for the patrons. The patron tables could have been a little more versatile, though: A lot of diplomatic missions, tasks for churches, etc.
The pdf goes on to provide a table of 10 simple journey details; for more complex journeys, 10 objectives, 20 locations, 10 groups and 10 immediate threats can be quickly rolled and combines. 14 general monster themes, 20 related objects and 5 possible complications allow for flexible modifications. The journey completed, 5 entries for the final wrap-up of the journey can add a final sense of unpredictability to the proceedings.
Beyond these basic setups, a quick price change table for quick trading makes for a fun and smooth trading rules array. Of course, the pdf also has a massive table to generate roadside inns, with name patterns, creature and item adjectives, creatures and items, etc. Basic descriptions of inns, religious hostels and a neat what's for dinner table. The book also sports 10 conditions and events to further add to the journey and the book concludes with 31 fully detailed sample journeys.
Conclusions:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to Frog God Games' elegant 2-column b/w-standard and the pdf has neither artworks, nor bookmarks, but needs none at this length. The pdf is fully bookmarked and the hardcopy is of the usual high quality for Frog God Games print books.
I *really* like Matthew J. Finch's Journey generator and the tables to quickly generate locations to precise locations in the Borderland Provinces makes this a pretty useful book. But at the same time, it feels like it does fall a bit short - I am pretty spoiled by Raging Swan Press' absolutely legendary GM's Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing and regarding the details of the journey, I'd very much suggest taking this legendary book (#1 of my Top Ten 2014, just fyi...) to add all the evocative dressing you require to the basic journey generated herein, since this booklet simply doesn't have that level of detail. I was also pretty disappointed, for a journey-book depicting a specific region, to get no handy table of distances between places and projected number f traveling days by foot, horse or cart. This does not mean that this book is bad, mind you - it just means that it falls short of its own potential. While useful for the Borderland Provinces, the pdf could have been significantly more useful with a bit more room to shine and the lack of travel-distances decrease the usefulness of this one for me. A solid book slightly on the positive side, my final verdict for this one will clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the purposes of this platform.
