The Great Mountain

When rolling up a random country, sometimes you find a wonder of the world.  These are singular places, not found anywhere else.  There are many mountains in the Northern Lands, but only one is the Mountain.

Citlaltépetl

To the humans it is Asanamaqua "noble mountain" or Nontomaqua "thunder mountain".  The giants call it Yaxokuy "ancient mother" or Yotoyasa "smoke mountain".  To the tree-goblins it is Taocabáya "the one that reaches highest".

Shiprock

The great mountain can be seen on the horizon from afar (from at least 50 miles / 80 km away), looking like a cloud at first, far higher than any mountain should be.

(If you'd like to use the great Mountain in your own game, roll everything up first before introducing it, as some of the rolls may influence how you present the mountain earlier on.)

Chimborazo

As you approach the mountain, you find three things:

Approach (d10 thrice)
1	Mountaintop is always wreathed in clouds.
2	Black smoke, ash falls within 100 miles (160 km).
3	Thriving society worships the mountain as a capricious god.
4	Ancient lava tunnels with lost relics, strange bones.
5	Lush & verdant landscape, strange plants found only here.
6	Geysers & hot mineral springs, believed to heal.
7	Locals forbid outsiders to set foot on the mountain.
8	Pilgrims from an unknown land come to holy mountain.
9	Symbol of the mountain on houses, boats, tattoos.
10	Dying people come here to ascend into heaven.

Let's roll up our own version of the great Nontomaqua.

• A thriving society lives in this land, worshiping the mountain as a capricious god.
  
• There are geysers and hot springs nearby, said to have healing patterns.
  
• Black smoke billows forth from the mountain, and ash sometimes falls on the land.
  

Climbing the mountain is an arduous task, requiring mountaineering expertise and equipment.  A climb is going to take several days at least, possibly much longer.  Use whatever mountaineering rules your system provides.

On your way up you find several things.  Roll on this table, but each time you roll, add +1 for each roll you've already done, then keep going until you hit End.  For example, your first roll is +0, then your next roll is +1, then a roll at +2, and so on until you get an entry that says End.

Ascent (d10 +1 for each roll so far)
1	Offerings left for the god of the mountain.
2	Outlaws/lepers banished to live in caves.
3	An annual climb to offer sacrifices on the mountain.
4	Caverns and tunnels, plants with very deep roots.
5	Sheer cliffs, hard to find a safe climbing route.
6	Perpetual fog, fearsome plant/animal life.
7	Cyclopean Monument of a lost kingdom.
8	A garden of Rest and Sustenance among the clouds.
9	Scrawny & gnarled trees as you reach the treeline.
10	Loose rocks, scree, prone to landslides/avalanches.
11	Signs of hidden/lost people living within the mountain.
12	Enormous birds, heart-eating condors, nests.
13	Saddle where a lesser peak meets this mountain.
14	Remnant of an ancient bridge/steps/road.
15	Perilous overhangs, chimneys, high winds.
16	The air is hard to breathe from here on up.
17	Tiny flowers that bring healing and true sight.
18	Something that fell from the Heavens (this table should be ready soon).
19	Wise teacher of unexpected age/species. (End)
20	Ancient & Terrible being beneath the ice. (End)
21+	The mountain reaches into the lower tier of the Heavens. (End)

On our example Nontomaqua, here's what we find on the way up:

• People on an annual climb to offer sacrifices on the mountain.
  
• A place of perpetual fog, with dangerous animal/plant life.
  
• Loose rocks and scree, prone to landslides.
  
• Sheer cliffs, hard to find a safe climbing route.
  
• A cyclopean monument of a lost civilization.
  
• The air is thin and hard to breathe from here on up.
  
• A saddle where a lesser peak meets this mountain.
  
• A place of perilous overhangs, chimneys, and high winds.
  
• At the peak: a wise teacher of an unexpected age and/or species.
  

But before we figure out what all this means, we need to understand the secret of the mountain.  Roll twice and combine them, even if the results feel strange together.  Maybe one caused the other, or one is the guardian of the other, or one is the true form of the other.

Secret (d6)
1	A mighty god of storms and ice inhabits the mountain, misunderstood by the people below.
2	This volcano is soon to erupt, threatening all. Religions tell of a time when the world was once destroyed in fire, many ages ago.
3	It is a petrified remnant, the stump of an ancient tree of inconceivable size. A seed of this tree remains, hidden on or beneath the earth.
4	Spirits of the ancient dead dwell on the mountaintop and bid you join them, whispering in dreams.
5	When a planetary conjunction occurs above, the peak draws near the heavens and the very stars.
6	Its heart is a fallen tool of a colossal being of myth who shaped the young land long ago: the bag where they kept soil, the axe they used to carve canyons, a ball from a great game of the gods.

For our example mountain, the secret involves:

• At the moment of a rare planetary conjunction above, the mountaintop draws near to the heavens and the very stars.
• This volcano is soon to erupt, threatening everyone.
  

Both of these are events that happen at a moment in time, so let's say they happen at the same time.  At the moment of a rare planetary conjunction directly overhead, the mountain will erupt and cause a time of great darkness, but some strange and transcendant event will occur, connecting the peak to the heavens above.

I think this would make a great end to a campaign: astronomers predicting a rare conjunction, a prophet proclaiming that the planetary alignment will end the world, divine forces of heavenly beings at work, and everything comes to a head atop the tallest mountain in the world.

Taniquetil

I'm deliberately leaving the strangest things of the mountain a little bit underspecified.  In a roleplaying game, I think it's the small things that need the most contrained guidance from the rules: how much you can carry, what happens when you try to stab someone, how often you need food.  The larger you go, the more open the guidance needs to be, until the rules are just a spark for your own imagination.  At least that's what works for me.

No random roller today (my code doesn't support an escalating sequence yet), so you'll have to grab some dice and try it for yourself.

Random Map: Inhabitants

Randomly-generated countries need people to live in them!  Last time we looked at rolling up a country, terrain was the focus.  Today, let's see who lives there.

First I'll roll up some random terrain from that table as we go through an example country:

• Ridges run northeast-southwest that can easily be walked along.
• Deep ravines run between the ridges with cascading streams.
  
• The sea is to the east, a rocky coast with waterfalls and few safe landings.
  

There are four species of people in Signs in the Wilderness: the Colonial city-people who tend to live by the sea, the roaming Giants who can eke out a living in more marginal terrain, the Humans who farm and hunt best in lightly wooded valleys with lakes, and the tree-dwelling Goblins who prefer swamps and thick forests.

Roll three times to see which peoples have the most effect on this country:

Locals (d20)
1-3	colonials
4-9	giants
10-13	goblins
14-20	humans

For our example country I got giants, humans, and humans.  If you get the same result twice, that's fine.

Terrain makes a difference to these people: goblins thrive in swamps but don't do much with island chains, for example.  For each people result you got, check to see what their modifier is in this land:

Modifier	+1 for each of	-1 for each of
colonials	warm coast, harbor, rivers near the sea	far north, inland, no easy way to sea
giants	highlands, ponds, open country	thick woods, swamps, far south
goblins	dense forests, swamps, cliffs	open country, islands, deserts
humans	lakes, wide valleys, semi-wooded	rugged mts., swamps, deserts

Looking at the modifiers for giants, I have to make some decisions about what this country is like.  I think I'd like it to be densely forested (a -1 for giants) but I'd also like the ridges to be easily walkable because they're thinly forested up near the treeline (which seems like highlands, a +1 for giants).  Net, that's a +0 for giants.

For the humans in this land, they get a -1 due to the ruggedness of the ridges and ravines, and I don't think any of their other modifiers apply.

From this point on, each of the four peoples has their own table.  If one of your results was Humans, roll on the Humans table plus their modifier, and so on for whichever other peoples you got.

Humans (2d6 + modifier)
≤2	humans once lived here, Tales of nomads skilled in folk magick, natural phenomena ascribed to human powers
3	few scattered towns warring over resources, Meager Remnant of a once-great tribe
4-5	a struggling Tribe among many Ruins
6	rival Towns on brink of war, forbidden zone
7	ancient ruin, strife with newly-arrived Tribe
8	thinly-settled Hunting grounds newly taken by a strong tribe, many burned towns
9	Tribe of neighboring country recently invaded
10-11	Trade center, many other towns, roads
12	Forbidden kingdom, outsiders put to death, trade via trusted intermediaries
13+	Nation whose Power extends to other lands, collecting tribute and tolls, raiding to seize captives and suppress enemies

Because we got humans twice up above, I'm rolling twice here on the Humans table, both times applying their -1 modifier due to the terrain.

• The first result is 5: a struggling Tribe among many Ruins.  Those ruins might be from other people about to be rolled up, or they might be from other people that used to live here.  Maybe they're from an older civilization that once inhabited this land.
• Next, an 8: thinly-settled Hunting grounds newly taken by a strong tribe, many burned towns.  There's conflict in this land already.  Not sure if the burned towns belong to the struggling tribe or if they're someone else's, maybe a tribe that was entirely driven out?
  

Colonials (2d6 + modifier)
≤1	stories of an Expedition that came through, artifacts, possibly survivors
2-4	imperial Guns & trade goods, no colonials
5	forgotten town of religious exiles, ruins of a fort/mine
6	trading post of a Company
7	Fort, abandoned settlements
8	two of: trading post, fort, mission
9-10	largely controlled by a far-off Company: resource settlements, trading posts, old fort
11-12	several settlements among many ruins
13+	one of the chief surviving Colonies and its outlying settlements/forts/&c.

Today's example country doesn't have any significant colonial presence, but as you can see from the table, colonial influence can range anywhere from mere stories of an earlier explorer to a major colonial city.

Giants (2d6 + modifier)
≤2	giants are gone, landforms said to be built by them, Tales of wanderers
3	a Mission abandoned by the colonials, now run by the descendants of its students
4-5	scattered trappers, fishers, herders, traders
6	many wandering Traders
7	perilous ruins of a dead House
8	two Rival houses, contested border
9	three houses: Weak, Strong, and Ruined
10-11	a Mighty ruling house, several smaller ones
12+	a powerful Alliance of three great houses

The giants in this country have two rival houses with a contested border between them.  I think that's enough groups here to cause plenty of interesting conflict with shifting alliances: two rival Houses, a strong Tribe, and a struggling Tribe whose towns were burned down.

Goblins (2d6 + modifier)
≤1	goblins once lived here, forbidden woods, Tales that confuse them with ghosts
2-5	one powerful village in a Secluded region
6-8	three main Villages compete for hunting grounds, prey on livestock of others
9-12	Populous, good hunting grounds, outsiders fear this land, a few giantish traders
13+	interspersed villages of three major Clans, people travel from far away to study, trade, visit renowned hermits

Each of these tables has a result for mere stories and legends, for a country that doesn't really know who those people are, but remembers bits and pieces.  Tales of goblins from long ago tend to confuse them with ghosts or other strange beings that come from forbidden woods in the night and prey on settlements.

Legends of humans tend to see them as some kind of magicians who control things like the weather.  A country that hasn't seen humans since long before the apocalypse might ascribe a cold north wind to hidden humans up in the passes.

Distorted memories of giants lead to stories of them shaping the land, saying this hill was raised by the giants, or this canyon was carved by them.

Go here to roll up some terrain, then roll to see who lives there.  (The random roller here doesn't properly take the modifiers into account.)

Click here for random inhabitants.
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Unified wilderness travel table

I've been testing out some wilderness travel rules, and I'm pretty happy with them so far.  For the GM, the goal is twofold:

1. Reduce how much you have to think about in game.
2. Force the adventurers to make decisions.

There's a single die roll that drives all this, on a single unified wilderness travel table.  The table includes so many different things, and the best part is that I don't have to think about them until the table tells me to.  Some things that can come up on the wilderness travel table:

1. Signs of a potential encounter from far off (footprints, a bird in the sky, noises, etc.).
2. Getting exhausted from travel.
3. A change in the weather.
4. Getting lost.
5. Suffering ill effects from weather, like getting lost in the fog.
6. A rare encounter without any warning signs.

Each half day of travel, you roll once on the wilderness travel table.  The die roll tells you how far you travel (in "steps") and what else happens along the way.

The length of each "step" varies by terrain, which sounds difficult, but in practice it's been very easy.  On open, level ground, I put a little tick mark for a step every 2 miles on a trail.  In rougher terrain, I put the tick marks closer together.  On steep slopes with rough terrain, I put the tick marks really close together.

And that's it.  The party sets out in the morning, so they roll a die.  That tells me how far they get, how the journey affects them, and what kind of encounter they have.  If they decide to travel further in the afternoon, they roll again and repeat the process.

I'll post more on this process soon, but for now, here's a brief travelogue using this travel table:

• Day 1.  The party sets out from the tip of Ghost Cape on a cloudy day, traveling a few miles before spotting a warship out at sea.  It starts to rain around nightfall, when they make camp on a high area overlooking the sea.
• Day 2.  It's still raining as they head west across open fields, hoping to find the river on their map.  The rain grows heavy and everyone is drenched to the bone.  They find the river and head north along its banks, straggling into the town of Goose Meadow by nightfall, drenched and exhausted.
• Day 3.  The weather has cleared up.  The party hikes north, upriver.  Around midday they notice the dark form of a blood vulture circling over the falls up ahead.  They fire a few shots and scare it away.  They spend the rest of the day clambering up the bluffs near the falls, ending up a mile or so away from the river at the top.
• Day 4.  Cloudy skies and not much progress as they hike through the forested hills, continuing roughly north and getting back to the river.  By midday they've found the settlement of Hidden Rapids.  By nightfall, they've run across a trail heading in their direction.  They make camp just off the trail.
• Day 5.  A light rain starts up.  From a hilltop, the party can see the silhouette of a fort a few miles up ahead.  They arrive at Fort Protection by midday, finding it looted and abandoned.  According to their map, the elven settlement of Refuge City is only five miles or so past the fort, so they continue onwards.  The rain grows heavy, soaking everyone thoroughly, but they arrive at Refuge City by nightfall and get some rest at the inn.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this little vignette.

Travel through the Wilderness, references

Looking for sources to run a wilderness game?

Here are some great blog posts I've been reading lately (some from better authors than me) full of procedure and inspiration for wilderness adventures:

• Over at Detect Magic, read about how Hexcrawls are Canceled (because you can treat the wilderness like a dungeon) and a guide to Describing Terrain Features.
• Monsters and Manuals has an example walk through a typical six-mile hex on the isle of Lindisfarne.
• At DIY & Dragons, read about Signs that come before Encounters.
• Read the Meager Country Manifesto over at Dreams and Fevers to get in the mood for writing up your own campaign's manifesto.
• Unlawful Games presents a set of tables for rolling up a Barrier Island.  It's a good example of how specific types of landforms make for evocative locations.
• Goblin Punch has a great article on River Crossings and how they interfere with travel. 
• You might enjoy Papers and Pencils' entire series of posts on Overland Travel and Hex Crawls.

Wilderness rules, a wishlist

I'm looking for a good set of wilderness travel rules.  The setting of Signs in the Wilderness is a wide, poorly-explored country, where settlements are rare and scattered.  Travel itself is the framework for adventure.

William Manly, Andy Thomas

So far I've been using homebrew, hacked-up versions of other games' rules.  For many years my usual group had some mix of AD&D 1e/2e rules, using whatever seemed to work well enough.  For the last game I ran, we used a homebrew set of PbtA-style moves for overland journeys, and it worked surprisingly well.  (Some rulesets, like the one from Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival, I would be less likely to recommend.)

So what would a perfect set of wilderness travel rules look like?  They would:

1. cover the most typical situations for this genre of adventure,
2. yet be flexible or general enough to apply to unexpected situations as needed,
3. and not take too much time, brainpower, or paper.

Tough Decision, Jim Killen

There's a long list of situations that I'd love to see covered.  I imagine a ruleset that handles all of them would turn out to be far too cumbersome, with page after page of tables, endless die rolls and modifiers, and no one would really know the rules that well.  But if I could have it my way, the rules would be great for:

Travel itself

Start with a day's travel:

• How far do you get?
• Do you get lost?
• Do you get hurt/cold/sick/exhausted?  Does your morale drop?
• How much food/water do you consume?

For each of those, a few conditions should matter:

• How are you traveling (on foot, by canoe, etc.)?
• What kind of terrain are you traveling through?
• What's the weather like?  (Getting lost in fog, drinking lots of water in the hot sun, etc.)
• How much are you carrying?
• How sick/injured are you?

Dealing with obstacles

I'd like rules for obstacles to be general purpose, but there's one particular obstacle that seems to show up all the time in this genre: crossing a creek.  It presents a few particular dangers:

• getting your powder wet
• losing your gear and having to search downstream
• being swept away yourself to be buffeted against rocks
• getting soaked from head to toe in winter and dying of cold

I'd like to see the party struggle with the decision to cross now, as quickly as they can, or spend hours searching for a safer place to cross while losing valuable time.

There are other kinds of obstacles (portaging canoes, climbing a cliff, spelunking) so I'd enjoy seeing a general rule for crossing an obstacle to movement, but at the same time I appreciate having some of the consequences of danger spelled out for the GM.

Doing things along the way 

• foraging for food/water
• noticing things along the way: animal activity, smoke from distant campfires 
• tracking, following a trail of footprints and other signs
• trying to cover your own tracks as you go
• setting an ambush, lying in wait
• noticing an ambush before it's sprung on you

Again, terrain and weather matter.  It's easy to follow footprints in the snow, but if it starts snowing again they'll be covered up quickly.

Making camp

• rest, recovering health/morale, based on how good the camp conditions are
• who/what notices your encampment, based on how well concealed it is, fire, noise, etc.
• keeping watch, looking out for danger at night

Lewis and Clark, Mort Kunstler

Some of what I'm looking for is rules: concrete ways to decide what happens, to give the hard decisions to the dice and the tables, not the GM.

The other part I'm looking for is inspiration: ideas and suggestions to help describe this genre of adventure.  When running a game, a list of possible results is often handy, not as a way to constrain what the GM does, but as suggestions and inspiration.

The danger of this place

If each place has its own danger, places matter.

As a GM, I like each location to have a single listed danger.  There can be other dangers, like the regiment patrolling around or the spined coyotes the party just woke up, but I like to have one danger that's about the area itself, the danger of that place.  A few examples:

• In the coal mine, air that's thick with coal dust is likely to explode on contact with flame.
• Out on the bog, legs and wheels could get stuck in the mud.
• Near the fort, there are spiked pit traps to grievously wound unwary attackers.

Having one single locational danger is very helpful for me.  If there's always a danger, I'm used to thinking of it.  And if there's always only one danger, it's easier to remember.

Dangers like these are also helpful to give the players a sense of the world.  The mine where explosive dust is a problem feels very different from the mine where all the timbers are about to collapse.  The players get to learn about a problem that they can interact with, something that reacts to their actions and can be overcome by their ingenuity.

Each danger has some kind of clue, a sign of its presence.  I don't like springing dangers on the party without any warning at all.  When my adventurers all die, they'll be able to look back and see how it was all my their fault.  (Here's a more serious take on lethality in RPGs.)

• A sign at the entrance to the mine lists the mine company's regulations, including rules about wearing helmets, obeying the foreman's instructions, and only using safety lamps.
• There's an abandoned cart halfway sunken into the mud at the edge of the bog.
• A want ad is posted (with plenty of pictures) looking for giants to help dig pits around the fort.

You might prefer more explicit clues, or perhaps none at all.

Dangers could also happen in several steps.  The old bridge across the chasm won't give way all at once (assuming no one does anything stupid).  The first time you're on it, one of the crossbeams will break.  The second time the whole thing will creak and dip (time for an agility check).  The third time it'll crack and fall into the chasm.

What about places that don't seem to have an inherent danger?  My first suggestion is to figure one out anyway, even if it's not that big of a danger.  Places with no reward and no danger don't matter very much on the map.  (And if a place doesn't matter at all, just skip over it with a "You travel for several miles, reaching your destination...".)

But if you'd like to have a certain place in the game, yet there's no immediate danger, try one of two options:

1. Show evidence of a danger that already happened.
2. Show signs of a danger that's yet to come.

Crossing the high plains, the party might stumble onto a cabin that's been burned to the ground, along with the remains of its inhabitants.  They might find many square miles where a wildfire has come through.  Unknown creatures might have stripped the leaves from every tree around.

The director's office could easily hold danger (based on the party's standing with the company) but it's also a good place to show danger that's yet to come.  The director could know about threats to the company, impending war, famine in a nearby country, and so on.

---

Signs in the Wilderness is about adventure driven by big opportunities, not looming threats.  Danger is an obstacle on the way to your fame and fortune, not the driving feature of the adventure itself.  In an upcoming post, I'll talk about how to craft dangers that relate to the particular opportunities in your game so far.

Difficult terrain: when a day's journey is just a few miles

If you're traveling through wilderness the terrain itself can be the biggest obstacle.

Cracking open my old Dungeon Master's Guide, it suggests a human can travel around 24 miles a day over easy terrain, or as little as 3 miles a day over the most difficult terrain.

So what makes terrain truly difficult?  Good places to travel are level, clear, and have a trail to follow, so let's take all that away.  The first one might come as a surprise:

Grass

You'd think grasslands would be easy crossing, and usually they are, but grass comes in many kinds.  Tallgrass of the prairies easily grows 7 feet tall (2 m) which is high enough to leave you basically blind as you're traveling through it.  (It's also the perfect place to get ambushed by a lion.)

Pampas grass is notorious for its razor-sharp blades that can cut up anyone wading through it.  Turn up the danger just a bit further and you get a grassland deadly to most things that don't normally live in it.

Jungle

Thick woods can be more than just trees, and dense undergrowth hides more than just the path.  When you can't see where you're putting your feet, fallen logs and uneven ground might result in a broken leg.  And any place that has plenty of plant life is likely to have plenty of creatures crawling about, too.

Jungles don't have to be hot places.  Wet and cool climates can have temperate rainforests that are as thick and dense as the Amazon.

Wetlands

Mud and mire can stretch for miles in the right conditions, making passage nearly impossible.  From a distance, marshes and bogs might just look like another type of grassland, but they can have mud deep enough to sink in and disappear without a trace.

Standing water is a great place to get an infection, though alligators, leeches, snakes, and mosquitos might drive you off first.

Streams

Moving water is its own kind of problem.  Coming across a stream in the wilderness, far from any trail, you'll have to search for a good crossing point.  If you're lucky, there's a ford where the water is wide and shallow and you can wade across.  If you're not, you either swim or find something that floats.

Crossing has a few dangers of its own: losing your footing, getting your powder wet, getting swept downstream, not to mention bitey things in the water.

If you have boats and are headed in the right direction, creeks and rivers are better than roads.  But if you're on foot and one is lying across your route, it's going to take some time.

Rocks

Sharp, jagged, or loose rocks can be terrible to walk across.  This is broken ankle country:

As bad as rocky terrain is for your feet, it can be even worse for most livestock.  Drive a herd of cattle through a place like this and you'll mostly end up with beef that's still crying out for a while.

Up and down

The steeper the ground gets, the more arduous of a journey it'll be (even if there's a trail).

Cliffs and escarpments can stretch hundreds of miles across the landscape, leaving no way around.

Canyons and gorges pose a similar problem, though usually with a rushing watercourse at the bottom.

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If your game has exhaustion rules, you're going to need them crossing the wilderness.  Plenty of other things can hinder your journey: deep snow, bad weather, dangerous creatures, but these are all topics for another time.

Random wild creature

The vast wilderness of the North is home to many strange creatures, some of which haven't even been described in print yet.  Here are some tables to help you roll up an unusual creature of your own.

Jackalopes are real, I tell you.  (cryptidz.wikia.com)

Start with a Base, a real-world creature to base this strange one on.  It should be something from this climate's wildlife list (a topic for a future post), but the table also has a few suggestions.  (If you roll up a plant, be ready to get really creative.)

Base (d20)		examples
1-4	large land animal	wolf, alligator, mountain lion, moose, bear, caribou
5-8	small land mammal	jackrabbit, skunk, otter, raccoon, beaver, porcupine
9-11	flying creature	vulture, heron, bat, crow, chickadee, parrot
12-13	bug / crawly thing	leech, ant, bee, lightning bug, scorpion, tarantula
14-16	reptile/amphibian	bullfrog, snapping turtle, rattlesnake, salamander, lizard, poison dart frog
17-19	water creature	orca, catfish, eel, crawdad, jellyfish, sea turtle
20	plant	poison ivy, venus flytrap, redwood tree, sunflower, spanish moss, coconut palm

Let's roll up a new creature for a rugged mountain range (oaks and chestnuts in the lower parts, aspen higher up): 7, so it's a small land mammal.  A jackrabbit sounds good.

Roll twice for its Physical Features:

Physical Features (d20)
1-3	unusual size	(d8) 1-3: half the usual size, 4-7: larger than usual, 8: far larger
4-5	drawing attention	(d8) 1-2: brightly colored, 3-4: patterned appearance, 5-6: dance, movement, threatening display, 7-8: loud call
6-8	camouflage	(d8) 1-3: color/pattern matches background, 4-5: silent/stealthy movement, 6-7: changing color seasonally, 8: changing color quickly
9-10	poison	(d8) 1-2: venomous bite, 3-4: venomous stinger/claw, 5-6: poisonous to eat, 7: toxic/dangerous to touch, 8: tends to live/nest among poisonous/dangerous plants
11-13	unusual features	(d8) 1-2: porcupine quills, 3: glow like lightning bugs, 4: rattlesnake rattles, 5-6: antlers, 7: horns, 8: skunk spray
14-16	movement	(d8) 1: very fast-moving, 2-3: better swimmer/diver, 4-5: can leap high/far, 6-7: good at climbing, 8: can glide/fly
17-19	senses	(d8) 1-2: heat vision, 3-4: echolocation, 5-6: excellent sense of smell, 7-8: excellent hearing
20	useful	(d8) 1-3: excellent fur/hide, 4-5: made of tasty meat/food, 6-7: good for medicine, 8: can be tamed

The first roll is a 19 followed by a 1: this jackrabbit-like creature has heat vision, allowing it to see predators in the dark.  Next we have a 3 and a 2: it's tiny, half the usual size.  Sounds like they'll be hard to catch.

Roll at least twice for its Behavior:

Behavior (d20)
1	impressive lair	builds structures, dams, nests, mounds, tunnels that are especially large, complex, deep
2	collects things	long-term food storage, valuable local resource, stealing parts, decorations/toys, tools
3	unexpected reach	go unexpected places: get into containers, climb trees, sneak into settlements, squeeze through tight spaces
4	understanding	recognize labels to know where food is stored, knows enough words to get some idea what people are up to
5	learning	has learned how to avoid traps, take cover from gunfire, avoid food that might be poisoned
6	deception	false lairs to confuse attackers, luring into a trap or away from their young, deceptive call
7	tool use	bait to attract prey, tools to reach food, making use of existing machinery
8	coordination	act as a team/pack, communicate information about threats to each other
9	defensive attitude	patiently waits for opportunity, pursues over long distances, holds a grudge
10	charm	cute, good at begging, can herd livestock, act like pets
11	aggressive	eager to attack, more violent than necessary, kills people for fun
12	kidnapper	steals/lures away children, carries off small livestock
13	playful	toys with its victims, steals things to play with, teases creatures for fun
14	kind	tends to the needs of lost/injured people as best it can, especially children
15	unusual food	drinks blood, chews on trees and wooden buildings, hunts/eats some even rarer special creature
16	symbiotic	points out prey for predators to get some of the reward, immune to some plant's poison so it can eat the fruit, obtains food that it can't open for a large creature that can't reach it
17	fearful	afraid of people, attacks and then runs away quickly, afraid of something particular without a clear reason
18	territorial	claims a territory as its own, attacking anyone threatening who enters it
19	mimicry (despite earlier rolls)	looks/sounds almost exactly like some other Base creature, unusual footprints look like they're leading the other way
20	strange	has a strange power, if such things exist in this world (a topic for a future post)

The first roll is an 8: these tiny rabbits coordinate their actions in some way.  Communicating information about threats sounds useful, especially for such tiny creatures.

Next is a 15: they eat some unusual food.  Blood sounds nice and creepy.  They're interesting, but let's make them a little more so and roll again.

It's a 6: they're good at deception.  They've evolved or learned some behavior that helps them deceive creatures around them.  Let's say they've learned to put shiny objects in the entrances of their lairs, or in hollows of trees, or sticking out from under rocks with hiding places.  People reach down to pick up the shiny thing, and a dozen little bloodsucking rabbits spring out to get a taste.

Blood-hares sounds like a perfect name.  Nasty little creatures.

That's no ordinary jackrabbit.  (Morag Gunson)

They're not a major threat (unless acting in large numbers) but they're definitely not friendly.  If you find little jackrabbit footprints or see a shiny coin tucked somewhere suspicious, this is a very bad place to sleep.

random creature
base
physical features
behavior

Rolling up a few more random creatures:

• Jar-rattlers are a type of rattlesnake that shed their skins a few times a year, changing color to match the season.  They're good at biting, slithering, and squeezing their way into containers you wouldn't expect.  And they've even learned how to recognize the label on a popular elven brand of food.  They say that jar-rattlers never bite children, so the local people always have kids check the pantry first.
• Water panthers are a fearsome predator.  With very little fur, you can see their skin, but the skin changes color quickly to match their surroundings.  Water panthers are very good swimmers and divers, sleeping up on high outcroppings or tree branches over water for a quick getaway.  They've been known to drag away small livestock and possibly even children.
• Five-toed turkeys thrive in these woods.  They're bright orange in color, with feathers that are greatly desired by the goblins a few valleys over.  Their call sounds nothing like a regular turkey, making a haunting, plaintive sound.  Turkeys like to eat snails, but some snails are too big and tough for them to get at the tasty meat inside.  Five-toed turkeys have learned to toss tough snails into the workings of elven machinery to crack them open.  (The elves are not amused.)  When flushed out by dogs, these turkeys have learned to scatter for cover and fly through the trees, avoiding the open sky where a hunter can get a clean shot.

(Bob Zeller)

And just for fun, let's roll up a plant, making more creative use of the results.  I'll choose a mountain fern as a starting point.  Rolling it up, these ferns: change color over the long term, are poisonous to eat, have some kind of understanding, and are in a symbiotic relationship.  Let's see...

• Copper ferns grow in shady places in mountain gullies.  They're normally a sort of coppery color, making them easy to identify.  That's good, because they're also quite poisonous.  But if their growing conditions ever become poor (usually too sunny or too dry) they use the last of their energy to turn the same green shade as the edible ferns around them, losing their poison in the process.  Creatures eat the ferns when they're green, helping propagate the species through their droppings, hopefully in shadier or wetter places.

Apparently there's already a plant called a copper fern.  (Stauden Wichmann)

Try out the tables and see what you think.  Let me know if you roll up something interesting.

The Seven Towns of Blind Lake

There's a place out in the backcountry called Blind Lake.  It's mostly woods and lakes around there, maple and beech trees with broad branches and a canopy of leaves that turn orange and red each fall.  The whole area is full of little ponds and lazy, meandering streams that flow into the lake, with a large, slow-moving river that flows out to the east.  Beavers have dammed up many of the streams, forming even more ponds; good places for fishing.

Forest (d20)		signs
1-5	hawks	circling overhead, screeching call in the distance
6-9	humans	thin columns of smoke, footpaths, distant sounds of talking, barking dogs
10-12	goblins	bones that have been chewed on, a baby's cry in the forest
13-15	beavers	dammed-up creeks, gnawed stumps and trunks, sound of slapping the water
16-17	black bear	wide tracks with claw marks in mud, scraped and clawed trees
18-19	elves	footprints, discarded paper, music/singing, gunfire, trampled ground of campsites
20	(d6) 1-3: skunk, 4-5: crows, 6: turtles

(Diego Delso)

(Ilu Tepui, by Lazsp)

Towering over the landscape are these high, rocky buttes, like islands up in the sky.  They say the tops of them are desolate and rotting, full of mosquitos, so nobody ever climbs up there.  A few thin waterfalls stream down from each butte to the forest below.

Buttes (d20)		signs
1-5	mosquitos	clouds of tiny buzzing insects that bite
6-9	turtles	sunning themselves on rocks, disturbed soil where eggs are buried
10-12	mountain lion	medium-sized tracks with four round toes, carcasses of other animals
13-15	garter snake	black snake with thin yellow stripes
16-17	beavers	dammed-up creeks, gnawed stumps and trunks, sound of slapping the water
18-19	cardinal	repetitive birdsong, bright red bird
20	(d6) 1-3: humans, 4-5: goblins, 6: wild geese

The humans have seven towns in the area, all on or near Blind Lake itself.  Further from the lake, goblins are the most common people.  A single elven lumber camp is on the river just downstream from the lake.  The rest of the area is uninhabited wilderness.

The Humans of the Seven Towns

This is a new tribe of humans, formed by the merger of two closely-related groups of survivors after the apocalypse.  The elders are ashamed of what they did to survive through the starving time.

(Warren Moorehead)

The seven towns are built on earthen mounds, both for defense and to avoid flooding.  A wooden palisade surrounds each town.  People live in wooden longhouses, growing beans and raising turkeys.  Rafts are used to get around the area.

People of the seven towns wear beaver-pelt hats in the winter and long woven grass capes.  They make pottery, hammered copper ornaments, and they do geometric carvings on their houses.

A single chief or king rules the tribe, taking food as tribute and demanding warriors for military expeditions.  In war, they tend to burn down enemy towns and take captives as slaves to do menial work.

Men's work is considered to be raising turkeys, working copper ornaments, and settling disputes.  Women's work: growing beans, deciding when/where towns move, and handling death rituals.

The Elves of the Logging Camp

It's a fairly new place, founded only a few years ago by a partnership of three investors who live in the camp.  Elves from the city come here to make some money cutting down trees, sawing them into boards, and sending the lumber downriver on rafts.

The settlement is called Shanakävthe "Sleeping Bear Camp" in the language of the elves.  (For those of you who prefer IPA: /ʃanakævθe/.)

Flooding is a perennial problem.  The roads through the settlement are often just mud, and every building has a high water stain on it.

(Osmond David Putnam)

Everyone at Shanakävthe sleeps in the dormitory.  The elves keep the place smelling like frankincense.

Last year, something went wrong during a trade deal with the humans, and now both sides refuse to talk to each other.

The three partners are deeply divided about the future of their venture.

• The first is afraid of the humans, but desperately clinging to her vision of the lumber company she founded.
• The second is older and disheartened, wanting to sell off his share in the company and return to his home city.  He used to be a friend of the king of the humans, but they haven't spoken since falling out last year.
• The third is a young protege of the first; she's nervous, worried about the settlement's future.

The King's Town

The king of the local humans lives at the town of Pahakok "Boulder Point" (/pahakok/ in IPA).  If you come near and look like trouble, they'll send a party out to chase you away with a loud and ferocious show of arms before you even see the town.

If you have a reason to be let into the town, you'll see that they have eight longhouses here, with about 140 people living in Pahakok.  Things people are doing when you arrive: cleaning a musket, airing out bedding, cooking fish over a fire.  The dogs of this town look strong enough to tear you limb from limb.

(Carel Fabritius)

The king is a troubled man who's faced a hard road so far and expects more of the same.  He feels guilty over how he mistreated his wife, who has since left him with their young daughter and returned to her home town.  He secretly sends gifts to his daughter.

The king has no close friends or advisors left, only subjects.  He's unsettled, unwilling to commit to any long-term plans.

One of the towns (where his wife and daughter live) has recently resumed trading with the elves, in defiance of the king.  They sent the king a prized necklace as a way of apologizing, but they haven't actually stopped trading.  He's trying to decide what to do next about this.

Religion

A lone elven missionary lives in Pahakok as a guest of the king.  She preaches about elven ideas of propriety and veneration of the ancestors.  People question why the king hasn't kicked her out yet.

The humans of this tribe are mostly following new teachings that guarantee prosperity and the end of hunger.  Practitioners paint little pictures of predators and animals that eat crops, then hang them up in large numbers to keep those animals away.  People sometimes go alone to the lake and toss in a handful of dry beans, believing it will bring them help.

There's an old holy site a few miles from the lake, but very few people still follow the old ways, doing so in secret. The site is a large flat rock with a small wooden building on top.  Inside is a carved wooden statue of an ancient king.  Initiates in the old ways secretly still come here to atone for their sins.

---

The future of the Blind Lake country is unclear.  A few local conflicts are going on, but big news should shake everything up.

What news would throw this region into turmoil?

Wilderness dungeons

Dungeon crawls don't have to be underground: zoom out a bit and the wilderness itself makes for great old-school crawl adventures.

(William McAusland)

These kind of adventures have been around since the very beginning of roleplaying games, and they've remained popular in all the decades since.  Dungeons usually work like this:

1. Go into a twisty network of rooms and passages, all alike.
2. Avoid/solve traps and other obstacles to movement.
3. Fight monsters.
4. Get loot.

It's a simple structure, which is both good and bad.  You probably don't want to ask too many questions (like what these monsters eat when they can't get adventurer).  But the simple format offers several clear types of fun:

1. Mapping and exploring an unknown place.
2. Thinking of clever ways to solve an obstacle.
3. Struggling against a killable adversary when death is on the line.
4. Being rewarded for your efforts.

If these sound like fun to you, try a dungeon crawl!  But even within that format, people enjoy different kinds of fun.  You might like the mapping and exploring part more than anything else.  Maybe you'd rather spend hours looking for a clever solution to a puzzle.  Maybe you're all about a good fight.  And though it might surprise you, not everyone cares about getting a reward for besting their enemies.

(Josh Burnett)

Dungeon crawls also constrain the adventure, providing both structure and challenge:

• The network of rooms and passages limits the paths you can take.
• A traditional dungeon crawler provides a gradient of difficulty, with the easier monsters at the start and the scariest ones at the end.
• Being underground in a dangerous makes limited resources a challenge of its own.

(Jim Holloway)

Wilderness

A good wilderness looks a lot like a good dungeon, but not at the ten-foot scale.  You have to zoom out a bit, both in time and space.

(Charles Jefferys)

Recapping from earlier, a good dungeon crawl provides constraints:

• limited paths
• gradient of difficulty
• limited resources

The last of these is easy: traveling through the wilderness uses up limited resources, whether it's rations you're eating or bandages you're using up.

A gradient of difficulty appears in the wilderness not because of the wilderness itself, but because of civilization.  Wandering in the woods near the big city you won't find any wolves, not because the wilderness couldn't support them, but because the city just won't allow it.  Civilizations tend to kill off threats over time.  Saber-toothed tigers don't exist in North America today because when we arrived in the continent we killed all of them.  So the most dangerous beasts tend to survive only out in the distance, far from people who would wipe them out.  Wandering deeper and deeper into the mountains you find strange creatures.

Close up, the forest doesn't seem to have limited paths.  The woods outside my house look much the same in every direction: a bit of undergrowth, trees set reasonably far apart.  You could walk any way you like.  But zoom out and the forest starts to have structure.  To the north there's a deep river canyon.  To the south there's a ridge and a bluff.  When you consider a mile at a time, there are only a few ways to travel that make any sense.

(Thomas Cole)

These criteria do seem to single out certain kinds of wilderness.  Mountains, swamps, and rivers make for good constraints on your movement.  Open plains tend more toward extended chase scenes than dungeon-style adventures.

Recapping again, dungeons provide several kinds of fun:

1. Mapping and exploring an unknown place.
2. Thinking of clever ways to solve an obstacle.
3. Struggling against a killable adversary when death is on the line.
4. Being rewarded for your efforts.

Let's see how we could find these in the wilderness:

1. Mapping and exploring?  Plenty of that in an unknown wilderness.  Toss the party a few rumors and the journal from a previous expedition and watch the exploration begin.
2. Obstacles are everywhere: rushing rivers, leech-filled swamps, avalanches, pit traps, high cliffs, etc.  Each one presents a particular danger and can be solved/traversed/avoided in various ways.
3. Plenty of killable adversaries in the wilderness.  Just about anything that can live in a dungeon can live outdoors as well.  In fact, setting your dungeon crawl in the wilderness avoids many of the problematic questions.  We know what the goblins are eating in the woods – just look at the animal bones.
4. Understandable enemies make for understandable rewards.  If the ogres live here, they might ambush caravans there, so it makes sense for them to have loads of silk that they intend to trade with the giants.

Jedediah Smith about to be severely injured.

Not that any of this is new, of course.  Wilderness adventures have been around since the early days of roleplaying too.  But for me, it's been very helpful to think of how the wilderness can look much like an old-school dungeon crawl, putting a familiar place in a new light.

So what sort of dungeon crawl would you like to see run as a wilderness adventure?