Tricks on the Wilderness Territory Table

I wanted to go back and revisit a passing note on the Last-Minute Wilderness system. As you may recall, there aren’t many direct rolls on the Territory Table, and in fact you can skip those rolls if you already know what the general terrain of an area should be. Mostly, the table is used as a reference scale. The current biome is prairie, a roll on the Locale Table says the vegetation thickens, so we shift the biome down one step to Light Woods.

However, I mentioned a couple optional rules when describing the process of generating a wilderness. To check if a river is present, you could look up the scale number for the current biome and roll a d10, with any result equal to or higher than the scale number meaning yes, there’s a river. Similarly, you could use a d10 check if the biome changes anytime the elevation changes by looking up the current biome scale number: equal to or higher than the scale number means the biome shifts in the same direction on the table as the elevation shifts, getting drier as the elevation rises and wettter as it drops.

What may not be obvious is that you could do many more tricks like this using the scale number on the table. All you need to do is determine which column is relevant to your check, and whether you should roll high (less likely in colder, higher, or drier areas) or low (more likely in warmer, lower, or wetter areas.)

Examples:

• Glacier or Ice Field exists on a roll lower than either Climate or Elevation rating, whichever is higher
• Fog in the Morning on a roll lower than Climate rating - Biome rating
• Mountain Pass exists on a roll higher than Elevation rating
• Lake or Sea exists on a roll higher than Elevation rating
• Digging for Water works on a roll higher than Biome rating
• Chance of Percipitation on a roll higher than Biome rating

You can also check for small local shifts in temperature, height, moisture, or vegetation using 1d6, 2d6, or 3d6, depending on how much variation you would like:

1d6	2d6	3d6	Shift
-1 or less	1 or less	3 or less	Down 3 or -3
0	2	4-5	Down 2 or -2
1	3-5	6-8	Down 1 or -1
2-5	6-8	9-12	No Shift
6	9-11	13-15	Up 1 or +1
7	12	16-17	Up 2 or +2
8+	13+	18+	Up 3 or +3

Pick the appropiate column and read down to find the dice result. The last columnn shows whether you shift the base temperature, elevation, moisture, or vegetation up one or more rows on the Territory Table, or down one or more rows. The two main examples of what you could use this for is weather: roll 3d6 at the beginning of the week for temperature (basically, Climate) and humidity (basically, Biome.) The adjusted Biome rating is the chance of percipitation each day (roll high.)

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