One of my all-time favorite blog posts is at Swords of Minaria, Reavers from the Wastelands.
It is a fascinating look at the map of the Outdoor Survival game in relation to the Encounter Tables found in OD&D.
The original world, tucked away and hidden in the white box, is one of fierce nomadic bands of humans and humanoids that scour the badlands. Why should we think this, when every later edition of the game has portrayed a very different, more civilized setting? A quick look at Volume II gives us our first clues to this barbaric backdrop.
Unlike their later counterparts, original heroes could expect to meet wandering groups of several hundred men and humanoids in the wilderness. Large mobs of humans, in particular, are some of the most common outdoor encounters. This is particularly interesting, given the relatively low numbers of settled communities on the default wilderness map. As others have noted before, the three little brown booklets expected the referee to use Avalon Hill’s Outdoor Survival board game for all wilderness adventures, just as much as referee was intended to use Chainmail for combat encounters. Volume III finally gave a scale to this map (“the greatest distance across a hex is about 5 miles”, pg 17), meaning each hex represented just over 16 square miles, and the total outdoor map represented 23,740 square miles (or just about the size of West Virginia). It is perhaps surprising that such a massive country has only 9 towns and 26 castles.
The upcoming Play-by-Post domain game is going to explore some of these ideas in a little more detail, including politics & vying for favor, mass battles over resources and treasure, and more!
Stay tuned (or subscribe to the RPG Substack – Memorium) for more information!
