Just a very small update. I collected my terrain related mini-games into a pdf before, but came up with additional challenges for the desert and planar travel since then. Also, though it isn't a challenge itself, I added the trackless wastes bit to help running ocean exploration and such. Pdf is here.
The graphics all need to be higher resolution, but I don't have the time or energy to address that right now. I'll try to work on that incrementally. I hope one of these will lead to some fun interesting wilderness expeditions for you and your players.
I'd forgotten about these cool little mini-games. I think mountain and swamp are the best ones, mechanically - will definitely try to use them in my DCC game. Forest I don't quite get - it seems to suggest that better awareness of your surroundings has a pay off of being more likely to be attacked? I can see that being true for some forests, but not all. It seems counterintuitive to the idea of dangerous deep dark woods.
ReplyDeleteThanks, yeah, the mountain and swamp are the simplest, most straightforward. I think the forest one is the least intuitive and might be revised somehow. What I was going for was the fairy-talesque feature of getting lost in the dark forest. But also thinking that it is very easy to get lost in actual forests. The things you might need to do as party- like climb a high ridge for visibility, cut trail markers in trees, or send out flanking scouts that you holler back and forth at-- would make you really easy to find by anything else in a forest. It might make more sense if a strong enemy presence were assumed ahead of time and you look at it the other way: the sneaky things you do to try to avoid contact with the forest orcs are likely to get you lost as well. But again, if you think of a cool alternative that would make off-road forest more flavorful let me know.
ReplyDeleteOn the forest: Can you move back towards the start? Like, if you decide to go with encounters for two days, can you start moving towards getting lost on the third?
ReplyDeleteYeah. The idea is to try and give players some interesting choices as they travel through what might normally be homogenous, abstract terrain. It might turn out that once the party becomes lost, little else matters. I haven't tried this in play yet. But I'm thinking a party might try several stealthy days of travel even when completely lost in hopes of running into a waterway or path. That of course assumes they aren't traveling in circles. But I'm hoping that constant tension of deciding stealthy or certain, might lead to some interesting party dynamics at least.
ReplyDeleteNice! It gave me some ideas for my Vikings & Valkyries campaign.
ReplyDeleteCool, hope your players have some exciting wilderness journeys.
ReplyDelete