Wilderness Survival Guide

Wilderness Survival Guide is a 1-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons accessory

""...the scope of the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS&reg; game is much larger than the most expansive dungeon."

This book, for new players and Dungeon Masters as well as more experienced campaigners, presents rules for adventuring in the outdoors. Opportunities and challenges await characters brave enough and hardy enough to take on the biggest "monster" of all &mdash; the wilderness!"

Description
Wilderness Survival Guide features cover art by Jeff Easley with interior illustrations by Mark Nelson, Jim Holloway, Jeff Easley, Larry Elmore, and Valerie Valusek It was published by TSR in 1986 as a 128-page hardcover. Kim Mohan began working on the Wilderness Survival Guide in early April 1986, and he spent his time researching the wilderness and figuring how to translate this knowledge into rules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The Wilderness Survival Guide covers adventures in the wilderness, including rules and guidelines for weather and its effects, encumbrance and movement, hunting, camping, first aid, natural hazards, fatigue, beasts of burden, and handling combat and magic in the wilderness. The book also details new equipment and skills, called proficiencies, pertaining to the wilderness. The book provides an overview of the types of wilderness, including desert, forest, hills, mountains, plains, coastal areas, and swamps.

Much of the material in the book details the environment, about terrains, major wilderness hazards, and weather. The book also covers PC resources, such as: adding to the proficiency system introduced in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide; appropriate clothing for different climates; clarifying normal vision, infravision and ultravision; details on mounts; and rules on encumbrance and movement rates in the wilderness. The book also details how the environment affects PC activities, and includes new information on survival techniques, air and waterborne travel, combat in unusual circumstances, and magic.

In addition to new abilities, the Wilderness Survival Guide introduces difficulties and handicaps that players will have to cope with, such as the effects of sleeping in armor and the ease with which a fire can get out of hand. The book includes a short section entitled Starting from Scratch that shows how to design a bit of topography using a step-by-step method of creating a viable environment. It includes tables dealing with encumbrance (for characters and animals), effects of wind on missile fire and waterborne vehicle characteristics, including modifiers for a thief's climbing rates, climbing for non-thieves, temperature effects and damage, reactions of animals, and effects of lack of sleep. Most of the tables are reprinted at the back of the book, where there are also three pages containing different sizes of hex.

The "Limited Edition" of this sourcebook was released in 1990 with identical content to the original, but was bundled with the supplement Wild Things.

Contents

 * Wilderness Survival Guide: What Is It?
 * Overview of the Wilderness
 * Wilderness Proficiencies
 * Dressing for the Weather
 * Effects of the Environment
 * Encumbrance and Movement
 * Food and Water
 * Camping and Campfires
 * Medicine and First Aid
 * Vision and Visibility
 * Natural Hazards in the Wilderness
 * Combat Rules for Wilderness Play
 * Fatigue and Exhaustion
 * Mounts and Beasts of Burden
 * Magic in the Wilderness
 * Dungeon Master's Section
 * Compiled Tables
 * Index

Credits

 * Wilderness Survival Guide Design: Kim Mohan
 * Editing: Kim Mohan, Harold Johnson, Frank Mentzer
 * Proofreading and tinkering: Mike Breault
 * Cover Art: Jeff Easley
 * Interior Illustrations: Mark Nelson, Jim Holloway, Jeff Eadey, Larry Elmore, Valerie Valusek
 * Typography: Kim Mohan, Carolyn Vanderbilt
 * Graphics and keylining: Gloria Szopinski, Dave Sutherland, Roger Raupp, Colleen O’Malley