The other Midkemia Press publication I was missing was Heart of the Sunken Lands (1983), which is, I think, the company’s final offering. That’s a damn shame.

This is a pretty vast wilderness setting, ripe for exploration. The earlier companion book, Jonril: Gateway to the Sunken Lands, was designed as a hub from which expeditions depart and the prosperity of the city implied a great amount of wealth that was awaiting extraction from the jungle. And it’s true — gemstones, exotic wood, animal specimens, honey and more await explorers, as do a plethora of creature and mysterious tribal groups.

The Sunken Lands are dense, magically mutable jungle and the book basically takes the random tables of Midkemia’s city projects and applies them to a jungle hex crawl. A few bespoke locations are included in the mix, including the temple complex of the antagonistic People of the Pit (who created headless zombie thralls by feeding heads to their god), but for the most part, you’re rolling on nested tables several times to find out what exactly the players have come across. There’s a frankly massive number of possible encounters. Lots involve monsters and combat. Others are more tranquil, like encountering the peculiar species of butterflies. Oh, and the four-armed, purple ogres are just called Purples, which I love.

A lot of the richness of this book is down to its author, Rudy Kraft, who notably worked on both Griffin Mountain and Snake Pipe Hollow for Chaosium (and precious little else, alas). There isn’t quite the level of mystery or social interaction as, say Griffin Mountain, but there is more to work with here than your average hexcrawl. I really like the number of commercial activities players are offered (even if they are, you know, destructively capitalistic). Logging and mining seem like fun logistical problems in this environment, instead of a slog. And those activities will inevitably put players in contact (and at odds) with the locals. From there, hijinx. It’s a good formula.