The Veil of Voices

The first trader said "In my youth there was song popular in the wine houses about such a veil.  The Lover laments being unable to express love to the Beloved because a Beautiful One in a haik, nodded and stole the Lover's voice."

"No," said the second trader.  "My grandfather wore the Veil of Voices, it was a ragged tagelmust that an old wise woman gave him. She told him when he wore it, two voices would whisper in his ear-- one beckoning him to treasure, the other warning of danger.  One voice would be a liar.  He would have to find out which.  He found out which, and only because of that did he survive the Great Plague."

"Perhaps, perhaps," said the third trader.  "But are you sure you are not mis-hearing Vale of Voices, for I heard once that, far west, near the Living Sea, there is a valley with strange, wind-carved stones and if you listen you can hear the voices of the dead speaking to you."

Geographic Wonders Compilation

Years ago I made a series of posts about geographic wonders players exploring a fantasy world might find.  I promised to make a compiled list of these when I got to 100.  And I did, it was ready to post, sitting on my desktop when my hard drive crashed.  It has taken me a while to try and recover, get my files back in order, but little by little I've been working on it.  So, here is the promised compilation in editable form or pdf.  There are more than 100 wonders so that if you don't like some, or they don't fit your campaign world, you can cross them off and substitute one of the extras.  Have fun.

More Thoughts on Hexless Random Wilderness Generation

First, sorry if the last post was a bit scattered (I did spend several hours composing it).  Second, a close read of Chris Kutalik's pointcrawling posts is in order because much of my thoughts on connections and such, he'd already covered 2 years ago.  Third, check out these links Talysman shared in the comments of our discussion:

A method of terrain generation from Central Casting Dungeons product.
And his own Last Minute Hex Crawl Tables

Fourth, while this wouldn't be of help to the sightless, check out this post as a method of generating pointcrawls using routes.

Fifth, I think the biggest issue for a blind person with generating a pointcrawl is not going to be the generation but keeping track of what they generate, which is basically what a map is, an efficient way to store positional data in 2-d.  The method that might work is to treat points like the locations in a choose-your-own-adventure book.  Number all of them, and number the exits from each location with the number of the location that route is leading to.  Then you could store these numbered points anyway that was convenient to you, text file list, database.

Sixth, some fresh thoughts:

All that jazz about biomes is probably not very important in randomly generating terrain for a pointcrawl.  Minecraft is an infinite flat plain, so gradients of temperature and moisture matter more.  In fantasy worlds even slightly like our own, terrain will be relatively similar unless the distance between the points is huge.   What I mean is, temperature is mostly tied to latitude, so the farther north you go the colder it will be.  But that takes miles and miles of travel to really manifest itself. 

It seems like most terrain generated will be like that you just left, maybe the only variation is in the surface features.  Is there a lake here?  Is there a forest?

So, elevation might matter much more as the variation you would see in local features.  Is there a hill here?  A canyon, a pass through these mountains?

Another thought, the problem with randomly generated anything is that information about the generated place is very local, it's difficult to make more big picture patterns or connections until you've already finished generating a big area, look at it and then do so.  What I mean is, if there's a pass through the mountains, is it the only pass?  If it is it might be very important and have different encounters.  Is this bit of forest a small grove or just a point hidden in a vast swath of forest?  Most random generating systems are not going to help with that.

With that in mind, the best bet for blind players or DMs, would probably be to take something like Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms and convert it into a point crawl and record the points in the numbered location method I mentioned above.  That way all the "big picture" knowledge could be captured for the points.  Then point 54 can let you know that it is a small grove far from civilization but near trade route heavily used in summer.

Of course, that requires someone to make a whole world which is the creative work a random system is trying to replace.  But maybe someone could use a random system as a work aid, generate a ton of points, look over them and apply logical, big-feature information to the points, and then share them with folks.

Thoughts on Hexless Random Wilderness Generation

The Hill Cantons blog has a very interesting question about how to randomly generate wilderness for a hexless pointcrawl.  I think an unspoken requirement is that the terrain makes some kind of sense as well.  Here are some thoughts on the problem.

Pseudo-Realistic Terrain
First, how do you randomly generate terrain and not have deserts next to swamps?  If you think of terrain as fitting into hot-cold and wet-dry continuums, with a chart like this:

You can generate terrain that will always be one step away from the temperature and moisture of the terrain you were in.  Imagine a position on the graph which represents the features of the area you are in.  Like this:

The black square is pretty temperate, roll a 1 and things get colder and dryer

If you roll a d10, 1-8 will show you what heat and moisture the new area will have.  Rolling a 9 or 10 could mean you stay in the same box, or if you wanted to 10 could mean you hop two boxes to indicate a larger shift.  But this might just be introducing a difficult visual record keeping in lieu of a hex map.  Maybe we could just track it abstractly by using the letter/number code and this little chart:

Roll to check the next chunk:

1. colder / wetter
2. colder / dryer
3. hotter / wetter
4. hotter / dryer

This won't tell you what kind of features are on the new terrain, though.  Two possible solutions come quickly to mind.  First, you could define certain biomes for certain combinations of temperature/moisture the way Minecraft does:

This graph has the axes opposite of mine

So, for example, J1 (and clusters of letters/numbers near it) would correspond to tundra and whatever features you pre-define tundra to have.

The second possible way to handle this is to generate features on the fly with some component charts.  For example:

Natural Features

Roll for each:

• Elevation
• Vegetation
• Rocks
• Water

1. Lack
2. Great lack
3. Abundance
4. Great Abundance

This requires some interpretation but would result in a greater variety.  A location with a lack of water but abundance of vegetation could mean cactus or maybe tumbleweed.  A great lack of rocks could be interpreted to mean sand dunes or mud flats, depending on moisture.

Size
If we aren't keeping track of strict units like hexes, we could more loosely determine the size of the piece of land we are in, like this:

Size of this chunk of terrain:

1. tiny
2. small
3. big
4. huge

Or just use d10 or d100 as a scale, depending on your preference.

Keeping Track of Points
But, none of this gets at how you would keep track of points in a pointcrawl without using something like hexpaper.  I think the answer is in the connections.  This topic made me think of my long time project of trying to randomly generate catacombs with hexes.  You can see some examples if you scroll through my hexes label.  Doing generating based on connections is easy with hexes because you can roll 1 d6 to tell you how many exits a hex has and 1d6 for each to find the position of that exit.  That still requires hex paper for easy record keeping, though.

Some of these combinations of exits have shapes like a "T" or a "K."  And that might be a possible approach to keeping track of things.  For example: You come to a large forest with several roadways, they take the shape of a "K" and you have entered at the bottom straight leg of the "K."  So, just using the letters of the alphabet or the shapes of numbers to evoke connections to new areas might be a way to generate and record connections.

Another idea that comes to mind, is to record the connections in relation to a clock face.  Kind of the way fighter pilots talk about incoming bogies.  So, for example, You come to a grassy plain with roadways continuing into the distance in the direction of 2 and 10.  A d12 would tell you a direction and maybe a d4 or d6 could tell you how many connections.

Distance between Points
Without a regular grid of some sort another issue will be determining which points are farther away than others.  Are simple sizes above could help here.  If the terrain you're in is huge it could add a certain amount of travel to get to any point.  And if you determine the size of the terrain you're moving into it would tell you how much longer until you reached the point of interest.

Encounters and locations I leave for someone else, but hopefully the ideas here will be interesting to folks.

Sandbox Wonders 15

These might look familiar.  Go here to see me come up with the ideas.

106. Valley of Graves - It's easy to miss that the low, woody shrubs here hide thousands of graves.  Each has a flat stone marked with simple runes, indicating how the dead were noteworthy.  Eat leaves from above a grave to attain similar attributes for a week.  (treat searching the graves as a library).
107. Carved Towers -There are twelve of these huge, natural boulders carved into simple temples.  The temples vary but have windows, benches, and a fountain.  Each month of the year the fountain flows and a warm lights appear in a different temple. Drinking from the waters will cause hostiles to always target you last, for as long as the water flows in that temple.
108. The Great Graven Tusk - A huge tusk emerges from the muck of a swamp.  It's scrimshawed with an ancient story.  At a particular hour of day the sun falls on a part of the story that causes flowers to blossom all around the tusk.  Wear the flowers in your hair and enemy blows will always do the least harm possible.
109. The Black Tears - At random times this volcano rains down perfectly smooth, tear-shaped bits of obsidian the size of a human head.  This makes travel here treacherous, but the tears are highly sought as scrying devices.
110. Carved Grove - This remote section of forest has crude figures carved in the trunks of the trees.  Visiting the grove will cause your own crude likeness to appear the next day.  Then, strangers will treat you as long-lost friends until someone else visits the grove and their likeness is carved.

Public Domain Wilderness Map Symbols

If nothing else, these might serve as models for your hand-drawn maps:

Here is a page from the book I got some of these from:

It seems you have to go back to the 1600s to get this kind of representational topography we like in our fantasy maps.

As you can see, I'm going for the old, hand-drawn look but you might find these two books interesting for more modern campaigns:
German Military Symbols (1943)
Soviet Topographic Map Symbols (1958)

Sandbox Wonders 14

I mentioned I wanted to go past 100 so I could replace some earlier entries I thought weaker, so here we go:

101. Waterfall Tree - A huge tree with water cascading from its crown.  Drinking this water sharpens the mind (2x experience for a session).
102. Stunted Forest - An ancient forest of twisted and stunted trees, few as tall as a person.  Burning the wood properly in an athanor refills items with magical power.
103. Fainting Forest - A vast aspen grove with trees that fall away from living things walking close.  Each morning the trees raise themselves again.  Their wood is the best for making detection wands.
104. World Trees - Huge trees, hundreds of feet across and tall enough to disappear into the clouds.  Their bases partially hollowed away by fire and ancient carvings, a person sleeping inside one will wake in another time.
105. Mica Fields - The flat earth glitters golden for as far as the eye can see.  Sheets of this mineral can be pried up to make windows ghosts cannot pass through.

Sandbox Wonders 13

Back from camping with a few more ideas for sandbox or geographic wonders.  This get's us to 100 but I won't stop here because some of the earlier entries were pretty weak and I want replacements.

96. Ghost Creek - The loud sound of water flowing in a creek is heard here, but no water.  Containers left out overnight will fill slowly.  Drinking the water in them will allow a person to rest without sleeping - like an elf- for a week.
97. Honeyed Cliffs - Tall cliffs so covered in wild beehives that honey drips down along the length of them.  This honey is said to preserve things indefinitely and locals place the bodies of revered dead all along the bottom of the cliffs.
98. Root Cavern - A vast cavern with roots in place of stalagmites and stalactites.  They drip thick sap which will trap the unwary.  If thinned with alcohol and drunk, it is said to make the skin bark-hard for a day.
99. Stalking Creek - Travellers through dry hills will sometimes encounter a creek that they cannot shake.  Hiking directly away from it reveals that it curves around the hill you just hiked over.  Once the creek is seen parties lose their sense of direction and will remain lost.  It is said hiking up the creek will reveal the last party lost to the creek around the source and free travellers from its hold.
100. The Barrens - Huge swath of forest that appears devastated by a recent fire.  Walking into it will drain strength from a person (drain 1 hp per turn of hiking) while revitalizing the small area around their path.

The D&D Campsite

People gathered around a fire is as old as us.  To cook and eat, to talk and rest and keep the night at bay until the sun returns again.  But, traditionally, the campsite in D&D only exists to give Vancian spellcasters a chance to reload their magazines.  With no mechanics for fatigue or hunger or comfort, players might just push on and travel all night if it didn't feel so fundamentally off for us humans.

Actually, one other mechanic has made the campsite more real in the game, the three watches and the chance of attack.  But this is just the wilderness impinging on the campsite.  And with how abstract wilderness travel in the game tends to be, camp turns out to be just another set of encounter rolls; a single choice about who will be up when the attack in the night comes.

I want campsites to be more than that.  To me they are the extension of the hearth into the wilderness and only if they feel that way, a bit safe, a bit like what we've left behind, will attacks in the night be jarring.  But even if we decide to never roll for attacks in the night again, I think the comfort of camp can be a contrast that helps bring out the work and danger of traveling through the mountains and swamps, and dark forests.  And really, down into the mythic underworld.

Around the campfire is where characters share what they've heard of the dread place they're traveling to and what they miss about home.  But for this to happen in our shared, imagined world, I think we have to provide some mechanics that try to make it feel like a campfire and hopefully give players a few interesting choices as well.
So what mechanics?  As usual, I'm aiming for brutal simplicity; the least bookkeeping and calculating possible that still gets the job done.  Here are a few houserules that might make a campsite feel more real in an adventure game:

Food & Drink
Most characters have rations, or hardtack, or trailbread.  Cooking fresh food would make a fire important and camping for the night more of an event.  I say +1 hp per level per night in camp when you are eating freshly prepared food.  This really works if you have a simple hunting and gathering system.  Which in turns makes different landscapes feel more tangible because they have more or less game available.  (I'm still hammering out the kinks in my own.  See here for it's origins )  But, even without hunting it means stopping in villages and buying or raiding for livestock becomes a reality.  On long expeditions players may even want to take livestock with them.

Music
Music in the wilderness means you are not afraid of being attacked and what reminds characters of home more than the songs of home.  +1hp per level per night in camp where music is played.  The idea came for having bards as hirelings, but I've allowed characters to buy and play their own instrument.  This costs some money and takes up encumbrance space.  And how about the noise?  I wouldn't want to penalize too much, or players would never play music in camp, maybe just a +1 to encounter rolls.

Gear
If you have a system of wear and tear for armor and weapons, camp becomes a place to hone and oil blades, tighten grips, and polish armor.  See this post  for Brendan's simple equipment deterioration system and here for how I would tie it to the campsite. 

Stories
I think one aspect of campfires that makes them what they are is the stories told around them.  One approximation of stories could be rumors.  We could use camp as an opportunity to introduce rumors from hirelings "My gran all used to say . . .?"  But I also like the idea of giving players a chance to make up stories of their own.  The problem is some players will be more comfortable doing so than others, but as long as one person can manage a goofy or spooky tale maybe it would be fun enough to implement.  How about story responsibility rotates through the players, one each camp night (it is an abstraction meant to stand in for lots of talk) and if the player pulls off one then everyone will receive a +2 to saves made in the location the story was told about.  So, for multi-day travels through the wilderness it might not be a big loss to skip the story, but the night before reaching the dungeon or the dread location, it would be worth an effort to come up with something.  Rotating through the players allows shy or reluctant players time to think up something or get suggestions from other players.

The Hearth
If the campfire is the extension of the hearth, maybe it should offer some protection against the dark.  I'll repost an idea here:

A cleric, or anyone versed in the Old Ways, can take a stone weighing a half-stone or more from the night's fire.  By incorporating it into the next night's fire ring they make that fire a hearth.  Each night of doing so makes the hearth magic stronger.  Undead and shape changers can not enter the light of a true hearth.

Half-stone is ~7 pounds which is one of my simple encumbrance slots.  I'm not interested in the bookkeeping part now.  Maybe just, using the hearth a second time on gives the protection, but skipping a use in a fire will mean you have to break the stone in again.  Particularly old stones taken from ruins or abandoned cottages might function as magic items that give extra bonuses.

Stars & Weather
This is an idea that just occurred to me.  It seems that when we camp is when we notice the sky.  I'm sure this is more because we live in post-industrial places with tons of light pollution, but then we are the players of this game.  So, what would looking at the stars do?  Maybe a chance of auguries, like comets or supernovas.  Maybe some kind of weather mini-game that would determine or allow affecting the weather of the next days travel.  Maybe a place for the DM to parcel out little bits of campaign world lore "That constellation is called the Hag because . . ."  I don't know, something to think about.

In General
Once you introduce the campsite and these mechanics, they become things you can leverage as class knowledge or feats gained by level.  Here is a post where I do some of that for fighters.  Undamaged gear shown attention might get bonuses.  Special recipes are something characters can learn and can give bonuses above general food gathered or hunted.  Bonuses for well chosen sites, and even time to reorganize packed gear can become tasks with meaning in the game.

Collaborative World Building

I've had my players in this little sandbox for a while and needed a larger world outside of it.  I am not good at this because of indecisiveness and wanting to keep the infinite possibilities of an unwritten world as long as possible.  So finally I just asked my players to help.  I took a big piece of paper, cut it in four and asked them to draw some land.

They asked me about scale.  I told them ,"yeah, I don't know, don't worry about it."

After each of them had drawn some territory I had them pass their maps to another person and draw places people might want to live.  They were adding more features than I had intended.  I just needed help with some geography and where cities would be located but they were putting strange portals, ghosts, cave entrances, etc.

So I took there maps home and treated them as if they were folk maps, I mean that I made the scale much larger than their images seemed to show, because I wanted more than just four little sandboxes. 

I traced the major features and tried to interpret some of them.  Nicely enough, they had included some swamp, coastal marshes, mountains, forests and deserts, so there was geographic variety.  There was also ocean on a few of the maps that I interpreted as a central sea.  Here is what is what my interpretation looks like:

 

The scale is about 30 miles to the inch.  Don't know how realistic or game efficient that is but it seems good enough.

Putting it into Play
That took me about 2 weeks to get around to doing.  Then this Friday was one of my players birthday.  He asked if we could play using the map they had drawn parts of.  So I wracked my brain for a way to try and have a session that might tie into this newly made landscape.  I finally decided it might be fun to just give the some free mobility like I talked about in this post.  So I basically gave them a hot air balloon.  It is called the Wicker Tower, has an encumbrance limit and a magical stove that uses meat as fuel (so they have to land every now and then to hunt).

I used the elephant encumbrance sheet I had lying around.  It is 20' tall and 15' in diameter.  The boxes along the edge are hit points.  The six boxes in the middle represent the weight of one person and all their gear or the equivalent.  My players thought I did this explicitly to strip them of their hirelings (no, just trying to make them have to make choices, I'd actually forgotten how many total hirelings this party had).

Geographic Wonders in the World
On the wicker tower they found a corpse with some pages from a book and the map above.  I've been wanting to try Beedo's awesome idea of the Library of de la Torre for a long time.  Unfortunately I don't have all the cool rumors, dungeon locations, etc. that it requires, but I did have a bunch of wonders written up that hopefully might seem interesting enough to visit.  So that's what was on the pages, a selection of my wonders that worked well with some of the features my players had included.

I always have fun making physical game props.  For this I used the cool font mentioned in this post.  I printed them on heavy paper, folded them, soaked them in coffee and then dried them in the oven.  Each entry has a symbol next to it that corresponds to a place on the map.  Though some share the same symbol, so it can be unclear which wonder is at one of a few locations.  Some also have question marks because the location may be uncertain.

Cities and their Rulers
Okay, so I brought those things but I also asked them to do a bit more collaborative work on game night.  I had picked 6 locations from their maps to represent big cities and had them roll up stats for the cities as in this post of Zak's.  I still have to interpret all the results, there was actually an 18 for trade for the city nearest the party, so they were excited about that and are heading there next.  Then I had them all roll up characteristics of the leaders of each of these cities using my hireling trait chart.  Again, I need to digest that a bit but there were some promising results.

Balloon Flying Mini-game
One other thing I did, was try to see if it were fun or interesting to try a mini-game that you don't know the rules to.  I was trying to mimic the process of learning a skill in real life.  The balloon the players wanted to fly had four sets of pullies.  I gave four players a d4, d6, and d8.  They had to secretly roll the three and choose one as their result.  Then I would look at all those and tell them which direction the balloon was going.  Then they would roll again and try to direct it where they wanted, but they could only say "higher" or "lower" to each other.  The idea was that they had to figure out which pattern made the balloon go in a particular direction, then manage that pattern without communicating to much.  It was okay, nothing spectacular.  I intend to forget about it once they get a hang of flying in a wind, then we'll all assume they've learned to work it reliably.

In the end, it was a pretty fun way to make a fantasy landscape and then put it into play.  Now I need to go look at Vornheim again and come up with a map for this city they are going to.

Sandbox Wonders 12

91. Dark Ice Caves - The ice these caves are found in is a dark, purplish hue.  It melts to water of the same color.  This water freezes in darkness regardless of temperature.  Treasured by desert castellans.
92. The Great Stillwater - This lake in the center of a northern bog is deathly still.  In fact no ripples move on the water when it is disturbed.  If some of this is poured in another body, that water will still for an hour.
93. Ghost Road - Parties traveling on this ancient road see no one behind them and a party far in front of them that looks identical to theirs.  All parties see this.  Two parties traveling at the same time will not see each other until close enough to be mingling horses.
94. The Old Teeth - A line of obsidian plugs jutting from a rocky landscape.  Fires set next to them produce no smoke, as if the plugs breathe it all in.
95. The Round Pools - A flat, stone plain dotted with small, circular pools.  The fresh water never dries up and bathing in one will speed healing of small wounds.  Bathing in several in the proper intervals will heal completely and even restore limbs.

Sandbox Wonders 11

86. Grey Hills - These low rolling hills are a sickly grey and made almost entirely of clay.  They are treacherous in wet weather but folks say bricks made from the clay cannot be broken by siege engines.
87. Keep Tree - From a distance it looks like a stand but it's actually one huge, ring-like tree.  With one entrance and a clearing inside some thirty feet across, many tribes, patrols, and pilgrims have sought shelter here over the years.  Oaths made inside bind like a geas.
88. The Honeycomb - Red sandstone with tight, twisting passages and holes of different sizes worn by wind and ancient water ways.  The best shelter for miles in the badlands, it's said you can hear the conversations of all those that have camped there before in the wind moaning through the crannies. 
89. God's Bowl - In the floor of a rocky mountain valley a massive vein of white quartz holds a pool of water.  This water will never freeze even if taken from the pool.
90. Wight Woods - Evergreen trees that do not move in the wind but move as if by wind if the dead are moving near them.

Sandbox Wonders 10

81. Sand Falls - A plateau in a desert with dunes on and around it.  Every third day sand falls from above.  The sand is so pure and fine it's said a person with cursed weapons or armor can remove them while standing under the fall.
82. The Roots - Acres of twisted roots with no soil.  Very difficult to travel through.  These roots consume soil around them and cuttings are feared by farmers and desired by sappers.
83. Dark Water - Somewhere in the ocean a patch of dark water exists.  It is oily and stinks like-rotting fruit.  Bathe in it and animals will ignore you for a day.
84. God's Breath - These rocky flats are blasted by a continuous downward wind.  So loud that speech is impossible.  It is said someone cannot be scryed for as long as God breathes on them.
85. The Shells - Deep in a desert a vast area of pinkish dunes.  These are actually made up of millions of tiny shells.  Placing the shells in water causes them to revivify as tiny molluscs and crustaceans that are voracious and consume any meat nearby.

Sandbox Wonders 9

76. Moth Fogs - Marshy lands where any movement causes millions of tiny, white moths to rise up and flutter about.  They are drawn to faces.
77. Rushlight Berries - Inedible berries that glow as bright as a candle when ripe.  Dim as they overipen.
78. Lichen Field - Above the treeline, a valley filled with yellow-orange lichen.  Eating a handfull allows a person to go a week without food.
79. Balancing Bole - The trunk of what was once a huge fir balances precariously on a point jutting out from a high cliff.  It is said that if you say a name as you push on the trunk it will rotate so the small end points toward where that thing is in the world.
80. Balancing Rocks - Above the treeline, a whole valley filled with piles of balanced stones.  Make your own pile and gain luck for as long as it stands.  The higher the pile, the more luck but the more likely it will tumble once you leave.

Sandbox Wonders 8

I've been fighting a cold for a week now.  It isn't bad, but I feel too tired to be very creative.  Here are a few wonders just to keep the blog active:

73. Wandering Grove - Within a large area of plains, a particular grove of trees is never seen moving but often found in different locations.  Some say it hides a ancient shrine and moves to keep it safe.
74. Cypress Stands - These low, rolling hills are peppered with lines and stands of Italian Cypress.  Close inspection reveals they outline former lanes and villas.  Somehow, the trees survived the complete destruction of the rest.  Reading a map here will cause ancient dwellings, cities, and roads that no longer exist, to appear on the map.
75. Winter Boulders - Above the tree line there is a area that looks clear, but in winter fallen snow reveals the shapes of invisible boulders.  The boulders have centuries of graffiti and recesses carved into them.  Placing objects into recesses will make them invisible too.

Sandbox Wonders 7

More sandbox locations meant to evoke a sense of wonder in your players:

63. Sculpted Forest - Old oak forest carved in marble.  Each leaf and acorn detailed realistically.  It's said each acorn if planted and watered, will grow a 20 x 20 x 3 section of stone wall.
64. Rust Beach - Run of beach made of rust.  Rumored that a god corrodes under the water nearby.  Eat the rust to immunize your body to magic.
65. Glass Fumaroles - Natural glass extrudes in strange spindles from these steaming, sulfurous holes.  Glass so pure and fine that, if struck, the noise made is only heard by elves.
66. Leaves with No Trees - These grassy plains are covered in colorful leaves in the fall, though there are no trees for miles.
67. Hidden Valley - A small, fertile valley with a creek that no one knows about, but you.  Maps don't show it.  Travelers will route around it and not realize the extra time their journey took. 
68. Beast Amphitheaters - Natural, rocky concavities where, at midnight, all the animals from miles around gather in, to sit in silent circles until dawn.
69. Twin Valley - Every tree here is next to an identical tree, every flower, an identical flower.  Each squirrel you see, each deer is a pair.
70. Punctured Lands - These grassy, foggy flatlands are treacherous because the ground is full of holes.  Fist-sized to horse-sized, the holes plunge hundreds of feet into darkness.  Listening at the holes, will let you here the voices of the dead, different hole, different voice.
71. Bright Hills - Everything here seems normal, except there are no shadows.
72. Coral Road - A sinuous, bright-red road that might be aeons old, it curves to miss mountains no longer there, bridges over rivers now dry, before disappearing under the sea.

Wilderness Travel Challenges Update

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.

Sandbox Wonders 6

Continuing to try and come up with places a player could encounter in an rpg sandbox that might evoke a sense of wonder.  But first a couple of ideas:

Scale Again
I started this series of posts thinking scale doesn't work for evoking wonder and used the Grand Canyon as an example of something that wouldn't seem very wondrous explained verbally. But the more of these I do the more I realize that I had it wrong-- scale is an important part of pulling wonder off, it was the visual sense that wasn't translating verbally.  And, in fact, all the senses- strange sounds, overwhelming smells - are hard to pull off just through description.

Familiarity
I was talking with a co-worker and she told me that wonder for her, would always be tied to some variation of something she had encountered before, otherwise her reaction would instead be shock.  Her example was if she saw a unicorn she'd be more "WTF!?" than full of wonder.  And I think that's right.  And I think I've been unconsciously aiming for that all along, the whole conceptual wonder I mentioned posts ago is about taking something you are already familiar with, like a waterfall, and then doing something unexpected with it, like making it fall up.

Related to this idea of familiarity is that I realize now I've been trying to keep things from being too weird.  And I think what was going on in the back of my head was if I stick to fundamental, elemental things like earth and water, these results would be more likely to fit in your campaign without messing with your tone, or level of magic too much.  Even a low magic campaign might have room for one shy forest.

In other words, not only would "rubbery pods the size of a house that float in a certain direction based on your emotion" be more likely to trigger your "WTF!?" reaction than wonder, it also presumes a lot more about your campaign world, how weird it is, and how players might travel around in it.  So if some of these entries seem a little mundane, that's one reason.

53. Where the Light Falls - Imagine a shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds on a cloudy day.  In this place there are many of these sunny rays of light, of various sizes and falling at various angles, even when there are no clouds.  If a living thing walks through the one of these, the light will fallow them until they leave the region.  Follow them even at night.
54. Twilight Vale - This secluded valley is always in the gloaming.  It is a peaceful dusk, with crickets and fireflies.  But the sun never shines here.
55. Root Forest - This grove of trees grows upside down.  Nothing is seen but roots.  Digging in the earth around the trunks reveals leaves and mango-like fruit.  Eating one of these fruit will give you all the benefits of a good nights sleep without having to sleep.
56. Fertile Earth - This patch of land is so fertile that anything planted in the ground here will grow into a tree.  These trees look just like oaks, and are just as slow to grow, but bear fruit that is the young of the planted "seed."  Bury a bird and the tree bears eggs.  Bury a fruit and the tree bear seeds.  Bury the dead and . . .
57. Impenetrable Forest - After walking for half an hour into this stand of trees you will find yourself walking back out.  Always.
58. Down Showers - In this area, in the winter, small downy feathers fall instead of snow.  These blacken and decay eventually.  Gathered fresh into sacks, the down can be used for bedding and clothing that provides excellent warmth while virtually weightless.
59. Salt Forest - Seen from a distance it looks like a snow-covered forest.  Closer inspection reveals trees, shrubs, stumps, everything made entirely from salt.  Rain causes the whole to melt away.  Later, the salt then pushes up from the ground to slowly reform the forest.  This salt is said to be useful for leaving trails in labyrinths that remain undisturbed.
60. Cold Springs - A series of ponds and geysers in a rocky badland that have, not hot, but freezing cold waters.  This water is said to keep it's cold far longer than normal when transported elsewhere.
61. The Great Shells - This forgotten bay holds oysters the size of ox carts.  Pried open, candlesticks, crowns, and other objects can be placed inside to be covered by mother-of-pearl.
62. The Horned Rocks - A rocky mountainside out of which grows sets of horns.  There are various spirals, curvatures, and length.  If a horn is cut, another will begin slowly growing from the same spot.  These horns, when carved properly, can be heard farther than should be possible when sounded.

Sandbox Wonders 5

Phew, it is getting hard to come up with new ones, and that's assuming any of the ones I am coming up with evoke a sense of wonder.  I'm not giving up yet, though.  Onward:

43. Auburn Hills - Hills covered with fine, red-brown grass but oddly little wildlife.  Closer inspection reveals the "grass" is human hair.  Can be used to make rope and cloth like silk.  Do not burn.
44. Ember Showers - These blasted lands have barely any plant growth, and the few weeds and scraggly bushes are singed and blackened.  Each day a shower of embers falls here.  Legend says, if you can catch one in holy water the ember will cool and "grow" back into what it was before, and that each of these embers are the pages from some great library.
45. Well of Coals - This tavern-sized crater is filled with smoldering coals.  Removed coals are replaced by more coals that seem to push up from inside the earth.  These coals will never burn out and are tempting for merchants to take, but there is a small chance each day they will begin reproducing and filling the area they are in completely with coals.
46. The Thick Airs - In a small, hidden valley the air is so thick that moving through it is more like moving through water, or snow.  It is so thick that small items, like apples and daggers, can be placed in it and will not fall.  It is said it is so thick it can be scooped into bags and carried away.
47. The Thick Waters - The waters in this small, forgotten pool look normal in every way, but feel more like a thick mud.  A boat will sit on the surface and not sink into it.  They cannot be drunk.  It is said if they are warmed the thick water will thin itself, becoming normal and expanding in volume by 10 or 100 times.
48. The Splintered Ridges - A set of several long straight ridges.  Under the thin layer of soil and grass these hills are made entirely of wood.  And this wood is said to heal itself, prized for shields.
49. Breathing Mountain - The canyons at the base of this mountain are beset by winds every few hours.  These blow down and away and then in a few minutes and toward the mountain again.  The winds are of such force they can blow mules down the canyons and suck small children up and away.
50. Dewdrop Flowers - The petals of these small flowers are made of water droplets.  The slightest brush will release the droplets and cause the flower next to it to release its, sending glistening waves through the fields.  Greatly sought be rulers or arid realms.
51. The Smoking Lands -  Lands much like ours except that the living things are a bit paler, a bit grayer, and where our life has hair they have smoke rising off of them. Women with smoky tresses, wolves that have fur of smoky tendrils.
52. The Great Green - A vast swath of green grass that reaches heights of 12 feet.  Travel through it is risky because so many have gotten lost, or never returned.  Who knows what wonder it hides.

Sandbox Wonders 4

33. Ice Flats - These areas look as if a great lake was covered in ice and then the water disappeared.  Sailing ice boats is a quick but dangerous way to cross them.  At night, fires and lights are often seen flickering below the ice, as if whole cities live beneath.
34. Fire Pools - An area of natural pools that smells faintly of stale oil and looks oily.  At night a pale fire flickers across the surface giving an eery glow to the whole area.  Water collected here will also burn in the dark.  Drinking the water is not advised.
35. Green Canyon - A small, winding canyon unrecognizable as such because its ground-level opening is filled with greenery.  Clambering down a trail into the canyon reveals that the greenery is from trees growing in mid-air, their roots bare.  The heartwood of these trees is buoyant.
36. The Weeping Stones - In an otherwise dry badlands, these pinkish, hard rocks trickle moisture.  Mosses and lush grasses grow around their bases.  Oval and each close to the size of a person, the rocks show signs of having been chipped at over the centuries.  A fist-sized chip will trickle a waterskin full in a day.
37. Summer Mountain - This mountain range is seasonal.  It slowly recedes into winter and pushes up in spring.  Tallest at the summer solstice, its behavior shapes the trade and ecology of the entire region.
38. The Speckled Shoals - These rocky shoals are dangerous to ships, but beautiful.  Made up of small rocks the many colors of fall leaves, these have actually fallen from the small trees that crown the shoals and grow leaves of stone.  Cuttings can be taken.
39. The Child of the Sun - Hidden in an underground cavern is a tiny sun.  Just like our sun but the size of an apple, it floats above the cavern floor.  Here warm breezes blow, green mosses spread across the cavern floor and mouse-sized cattle graze in the glow.
40. The Rotten Rocks - Actually two hills of greenish stone crumbling to powder.  The hills can be seen from quite a distance.  The powder decays metal as a rust monster.
41. Amber Beach - This long, sweeping beach hidden in a cove is made entirely of bits of amber smoothed by the sea.  The amber holds fragments of ancient trees, bugs, and some even tiny fairies.  It's said warming those over a fire will release the fairy which might perform a service.
42. Bower Village - Seen from nearby hills this looks like a thriving riverside village.  On closer inspection it's all made of straw, mud, and found objects.  A single male bower bird lives here.  If caught and moved elsewhere he will construct a similar village in approximately 1 month.