TRPG General Chat

1:34 AM

I got a bit of a problem.
In my next session I need my players to travel to a Roadhouse in a swamp, or at the very least travel to a roadhouse then travel through an underground tunnel into a swamp.
The problem is my players are nowhere near a swamp according the map I gave them (though there is a swap a mouths travel south).
How can I get them into a swampy area that doesn't exist?

Axoren

@Youjay Why does it need to be a swamp?

@Youjay How good's the map?

In my most recent campaign I deliberately give them maps that have gross similarity, but minor differences. (I.e. I draw them by hand and don't go nuts measuring anything.)

Unless your maps are made by 19th-C. level or better surveyors, I'd imagine plenty of areas are just "eh, there's forest over there" covering up plenty of interesting variation.

@nitsua60 A number of magic-heavy games provide reasonably accurate magical maps, though.

1. I have encounters prepared for lizardfolk and bullywogs, and its meant to be a secret hideout that no one wants top go to (and i want to avoid magical methods for that), such as a filthy swamp.
2. I've mention before to my players that there are a few small, isolated forests about the size of a football field that aren't on the map. it would take a year to travel from the southern border to the northern border at its about as detailed as the map of the sword coast found at the start of 'Horde of the Dragon Queen'.

If it's not a magically updated map, though, yeah, inaccuracy works well. Maybe it's just old.

Or somebody really ticked off a druid recently.

1:42 AM

Yeah, there's a big alpine meadow near me teeming with wildflowers that was a bog four years ago. Something about flow-networks changed and <POOF>! there it went.

There's also regions which look totally different at different times of the year.

(I also live in an area that would be marked as "forested hills" on any scale of map, but can take you to acre-or-more bogs and swamps within a few miles in any direction.)

I went to college in an area where the water table was inches below groundlevel; during the dry months there were forests and grasslands, during the wet months it was swaaaaaamp.

I'ts kinda through the path of a major trade way, I don't think I can say "its old" or "the maps inaccurate" because many people would pass through there pretty regularly. (also the town is aware of the swamp and so merchants high guards which is how I intend on get my places there in the first place, as hired guards.)

I do like the idea of a pissed of Archdruid.

@BESW I'm thinking of heading there in February--what's the weather like then?

1:44 AM

@nitsua60 Cold and rather wet.

@Youjay I do think the bigger question's "why is the roadhouse in a swamp?"

("The three rules of fantasy real estate: 'saturation, saturation, saturation.'")

Maybe the lizardfolk have a druid circle which brings their swamp with them.

Maybe they have a bunch of druid stones which they carry with them, and when they set up the stones as a henge around their camp it slowly turns the local area into swamp over the next few days.

originally it was a hostelry before it fell into disuse when the trade stopped due to a road diversion (big fight, road went boom, though that hasn't been mentioned yet and so is subject to change), now that the road is being rebuilt the roadhouse has become a supply deport for the construction efforts.

now that i mention this stuff out loud, the pissed of druid starts to make more sense.

I like the druid stone idea.

You can also, of course, just not explain it.

Thanks a bunch guys!

1:50 AM

The D&D world is full of Weird Stuff, most of it people just accept and get on with their lives.

Oh yeah, If they don't mention anything about a swamp just appearing then I wont try to explain.

@nitsua60 Feb is usually one of the coldest months of the year. If it's going to snow, it'll snow in Jan or Feb.

@Youjay Figuring out why there's a swamp could be a side-quest, or dovetail into the main questline somehow.

@BESW that's a brilliant idea

2:06 AM

@BESW I mean, up here if it's Feb there's been ice/snow on the ground for three months and we haven't seen a sunny day in two... so what you're describing sounds like a nice break. (Not as nice as, say, Florida, but there's only 1 bell tower there and there are 4 in your (former) fair town.)

Oh, I should check and see how those're doing, what with a hurricane coming through....

@nitsua60 I think technically my college campus has a belltower? But I don't think it'll impress.

2:35 AM

@BESW I believe those bells are hung stationary, with chiming hammers that actuate to sound the bells. (The types of towers I ring in are those where the bell can rotate on its headstock a full 360 degrees and as it rotates through "normal" orientation the free-swinging clapper sounds once.)

(Readers can check out the second and third pictures in the right margin of this article if I'm not describing it well.)

That sounds right? They built it just as I was leaving and I had other things to pay attention to than an obvious attempt to be more like "real" universities while staying within budget and not challenging any of their established paradigm assumptions.

@BESW Chiming towers like that--"carillons"--are much more common. And they have the benefit of being able to play something obviously identifiable as "musical," where we're... not.