Pleh
2019-07-07, 12:27 PM
I was browsing some fantasy landscapes for inspiration and I wanted to ask some other gamers.
What are some of your favorite otherworldy environments? Ones you've used, ones you've created, ones you've experienced in other people's games, ones you've seen in other media?
And what do you love about them?
Some examples from me, I've always loved the environments in Pitch Black (first Riddick movie) with a world ravaged by constant daylight from two suns and plagued with powerful nocturnal predators that only come out during the periodic total eclipse. It's kind of the perfect setup for an adventure going from bad to worse at every turn. First they crash in the desert, then they learn the suns never set, then they learn that the fauna didn't die to the desert, but to the hunters and the eclipse is coming faster than the adventurers can fully prepare for.
There's also a planet in the Mass Effect series (don't remember which) where the sunlight itself is deadly if exposed too long and shepherd must run from cover to cover during live gunfights (the third Riddick movie did something similar, but I feel it may have been a little too dangerous for a good TTRPG). It really adds a new spin on the combat system that makes the player change their habits.
In one of my games, I've created an arctic region that generates natural undeath. Explorers who get lost and die up there naturally continue wandering the snow and ice even after death. Being harrassed by skeletons and zombies through the last days of their life naturally transitions to mindlessly attacking other creatures they come across in undeath.
I've also created (never had the chance to use) of a man eating forest. The entire forest is a ginormous predators, with assassin vines that strangle and drag creatures into acid pits to be digested and flowers and berries designed to paralyze creatures that interact with them. Some natural tree often grow interspersed within the man eating woods as they don't compete for food and help make the predator's extensions harder to detect. At the center of the woods, underground in caves, are the forest's core roots, the only place to kill the predator permanently, which will defend themselves by acting like thorned assassin vines of unusually large size. The forest additionally contains a virulent mushroom spore parasite that is containef while the forest is alive. If the forest is killed, the entire forest turns to a mushroom spore cloud nightmare within a few months.
What are some of your favorite otherworldy environments? Ones you've used, ones you've created, ones you've experienced in other people's games, ones you've seen in other media?
And what do you love about them?
Some examples from me, I've always loved the environments in Pitch Black (first Riddick movie) with a world ravaged by constant daylight from two suns and plagued with powerful nocturnal predators that only come out during the periodic total eclipse. It's kind of the perfect setup for an adventure going from bad to worse at every turn. First they crash in the desert, then they learn the suns never set, then they learn that the fauna didn't die to the desert, but to the hunters and the eclipse is coming faster than the adventurers can fully prepare for.
There's also a planet in the Mass Effect series (don't remember which) where the sunlight itself is deadly if exposed too long and shepherd must run from cover to cover during live gunfights (the third Riddick movie did something similar, but I feel it may have been a little too dangerous for a good TTRPG). It really adds a new spin on the combat system that makes the player change their habits.
In one of my games, I've created an arctic region that generates natural undeath. Explorers who get lost and die up there naturally continue wandering the snow and ice even after death. Being harrassed by skeletons and zombies through the last days of their life naturally transitions to mindlessly attacking other creatures they come across in undeath.
I've also created (never had the chance to use) of a man eating forest. The entire forest is a ginormous predators, with assassin vines that strangle and drag creatures into acid pits to be digested and flowers and berries designed to paralyze creatures that interact with them. Some natural tree often grow interspersed within the man eating woods as they don't compete for food and help make the predator's extensions harder to detect. At the center of the woods, underground in caves, are the forest's core roots, the only place to kill the predator permanently, which will defend themselves by acting like thorned assassin vines of unusually large size. The forest additionally contains a virulent mushroom spore parasite that is containef while the forest is alive. If the forest is killed, the entire forest turns to a mushroom spore cloud nightmare within a few months.