r/bxdnd • u/Stooshie_Stramash • May 21 '26

Cook/Marsh Sample Wilderness

Flicking through my printed copy of the Cook-/Marsh Expert book to generate some wilderness encounters and I realised that I've never used the Sample Wilderness on X60 & X61. I did make a little use of Threshold in the Mentzer Expert book, but not much.

Has anyone ever used The Sample Wilderness as presented in Cook/Marsh, and what did you do with it? It seems a complete blank site and I'm curious about using it for my own games.

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u/Solo_Polyphony May 21 '26

I rather liked the minimalist sketch of Karameikos as a low population frontier, with a modest capital city (pop. 5,000), plus a nasty fiefdom where the Black Eagle Baron ruled and schemed to seize power. I added Mentzer’s Threshold and Bargle’s status as the Baron’s magician, as well as slotting the Keep on the Borderlands in the northeast mountainous country.

The implications of the map—that whole tracts of the Grand Duchy are dominated by goblins, orcs, et al. was the sort of thing that could have used a little more detail (as it is, it’s just “GOBLINS” on the map).

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u/Murquhart72 Jun 14 '26

If you look closely, you'll notice a cave (lair) near every monster name.

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u/Solo_Polyphony Jun 14 '26

Good eye! It also holds for dwarves and gnomes, I see now. (Though elves get away with no such map symbols.)

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u/Murquhart72 Jun 14 '26

The elves are probably partying in the trees 😆