Into the Green: A Guide to Forests, Jungles, Woods and Plains

Rating:
Summary: It Isn't Easy Being Green
Review: With Into the Green, Bastion Press attempts to move the adventure from the dungeon to the wilderness, providing a, you should pardon the pun, forest of information on the world beyond the underground realm. The book is divided into six chapters, with three appendices. Each of the first four chapters deals with a specific terrain (forest, jungle, woods, and plains), while the remaining two chapters offer some new equipment and some new spells, respectively. Appendix A has poison tables for the various new poisons mentioned throughout the book, appendix B contains some very useful encounter tables, and appendix C provides rules for generating random weather patterns for each environment.

Each of the four terrain chapters is richly detailed, beginning with an overview of the terrain being examined, then moving on to climate, flora, fauna, environmental hazards, and monsters. The first two sections provide a fairly detailed look at the terrain in question, including ecosystems, the interaction of humanoids, and weather patterns. There's a lot of great information there that can really bring the experience to life for anyone who has never actually visited one of these locales. For instance, though I've lived around both all my life, I never really realized the vast differences between woods and forests until I read this book.

In the second section, the plant life of the area is detailed, including both the fantastic and the mundane. The text is hardly exhaustive, breezing past some of the more common or uninteresting plants, but the information that is provided can add a lot to an adventure set in a particular area. In the flora section of jungles, for example, we learn that ropes created from coconut fibers are stronger than hemp. It makes sense that creatures or peoples from that region would make use of this natural resource.

The section on animals discusses some of the more mundane inhabitants of the region. Though none of the creatures talked about in this section could be considered monsters, nor are all of them real-world animals. Alongside the likes of the bear and the jaguar may be found the clikkit (a relative of the cricket that is sensitive to magical energy) and the harmel (a most unusual horse). As with plant life, the inclusion of these mundane creatures in a scene can go a ways towards bringing the imagery to life.

Environmental Hazards is the topic that will cause DMs to smile with wicked glee and players to cringe. Wilderness areas offer plenty of unusual diseases, most of which are based on real-world equivalents. If you've ever had the desire to inflict upon your players the ravages of malaria or spotted fever, you need look no further than Into the Green for playable details of these (and six other) interesting viruses. Of course, diseases aren't the only natural hazards to be found in wildlands. You'll also get game mechanics for handling fire, sinkholes, blizzards, thunderstorms, traps and pits, hurricanes, allergens, quicksand, flash floods, and the all-too-common problems associated with trying to move too quickly through the undergrowth.

While there are plenty of normal animals that abound in these regions, there are also some creatures that can only be termed "monsters." All of these beings seem to be drawn from the fertile imagination of Thomas Knauss. At least, I don't recognize any as being based on mythological creatures. They run the gamut from the truly monstrous arboreal nemesis to the typically benign zephataur, 37 new creatures in all. Each monster also includes an adventure hook for introducing them into the campaign.

As mentioned previously, Into the Green also offers up some new equipment and spells. There are a few new mundane pieces of gear and a handful of magical items, but by far the most addition to the equipment chapter are the new materials and alchemical substances. Whether it's making rope from coconut fibers, or manufacturing an itching smoke from the poison ivy plant, there is something here to suit any campaign. In the Spells chapter, 22 new spells, both arcane and divine, are fully described and ready to be added to any wilderness-based campaign.

There is really little more to the three appendices than was already stated. Appendix A is a brief compilation of the eight new poisons that are described throughout the work. Appendix B offers encounter tables for both day and night in each of the four terrain types focused on. Appendix C is a very simplified system for determining the weather for any of the four seasons. It won't win any awards for meteorological accuracy, but it should suffice in most cases.

On the one hand, Into the Green has a lot to offer any DM seeking to move his campaign out of the dark underdepths. There's a lot of good stuff in here that can enhance a wilderness adventure, and a the focus is as much on the fantastic as the "real-world." It's good to finally see some game mechanics for diseases like jungle rot and malaria. D&D tends to concentrate on fantasy diseases over real ones, and it's good that some third-party companies are starting to break that trend.

The other high point of Into the Green is that, while it is a great reference for wilderness adventures, it also makes for a darn good read. One of the reasons that I love Steve Jackson Games' GURPS so much is that many of their books are just as entertaining to read as to actually use in-game. Into the Green is that kind of book. Anyone interested in hiking or camping will find this work thoroughly enjoyable.

I don't like the formatting, however. I think it's great that the editors decided to try to save some space and reduce the page count by not separating the chapters, but it gives the book a "squished-together" feel. As one chapter ends, the next paragraph begins the next chapter, with only a header to set them apart. The result is a tangled mess (much like the regions described) when you're trying to find a reference simply by flipping through the book.

As far as it goes, Into the Green is a great work and it will see plenty of use in my campaign, but the trouble is that it doesn't go far enough. The section on forests, for example, is limited to deciduous forests, mentioning nothing of evergreens. Likewise, while I wouldn't expect to see a section on deserts or tundra in a book called Into the Green, I had expected a section on swamps. As someone who lives in Mississippi, I can tell you that swamps are every bit as "green" as forests, and with their own unique ecosystem.

One other thing I would like to have seen is a compiled chart of the diseases introduced here. We're given a chart of the new poisons, but not one for the new diseases. That strikes me as an oversight that someone should have caught and corrected, even if it meant dropping a monster somewhere.

The bottom line is that Into the Green is a worthwhile effort, but could have been that much better with a little extra. That isn't to say that it's bad; quite the opposite, in fact. It's fine as far as it goes, but I think that it could have gone a little further.