blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
There's always this lovely collection:
The 5 Most Spectacular Landscapes on Earth (That Murder You) | Cracked.com
The 5 Most Spectacular Landscapes on Earth (That Murder You) | Cracked.com
The waterfall plummets 1000 feet...
Those are nastier than the Atacama Desert, Road of Death and The Door to Hell...
Atacama Desert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yungas Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Darvaz: The Door to Hell - English Russia
FWIW, similar to the Door to Hell are the Centralia Mine Fire and the Spindletop Blowout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/...-Top-the-first-in-a-long-series-of-oil-spills
Atacama Desert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yungas Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Darvaz: The Door to Hell - English Russia
FWIW, similar to the Door to Hell are the Centralia Mine Fire and the Spindletop Blowout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/...-Top-the-first-in-a-long-series-of-oil-spills
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Li Shenron
Legend
- Great Wall of China
- Iguacu Falls
- Perito Moreno Glacier
- Great Barrier Reef
- Statue of Cristo Redentor
But I find it quite amusing that your players will criticize you for larger-than-life or improbable places! I think they are perfect for RPGing.
- Iguacu Falls
- Perito Moreno Glacier
- Great Barrier Reef
- Statue of Cristo Redentor
But I find it quite amusing that your players will criticize you for larger-than-life or improbable places! I think they are perfect for RPGing.
I think there's a couple factors going on with player disbelief:
lack of knowledge of real world examples
expectation of more common dimensions
GM frequent exageration of traits
By all means, many people have not traveled or seen the many wierd and humongous wonders the world has, myself included.
But another factor is the GM making something huge, just to make something huge. Especially if they do it a lot. Sure, the Grand Canyon is big. But it is considered big because every other canyon is "normal" sized.
I played in a recent game where the GM had us going through a puzzle dungeon and many of the rooms were ridiculously large. One room was like a 1000 yards or so.
Where the problem was, it didn't fit on a battlemat for purposes of combat. It was as if we were fighting on an open field with a wall/cliff face to one side.
While one should not limit your imagination or designs to comply with the constraints of the battlemat you own, nor is it advisable to make things large for the sake of largeness without any real benefit or purpose. If the dungeon room is mega-large, it should be so to impress us, reflect some natural element, give us a clue (this was a puzzle game) or enable something large to be present. Otherwise, it was just the GM throwing out numbers when she was writing room descriptions and thinking 1000 yards was a fine number to use for room dimensions.
lack of knowledge of real world examples
expectation of more common dimensions
GM frequent exageration of traits
By all means, many people have not traveled or seen the many wierd and humongous wonders the world has, myself included.
But another factor is the GM making something huge, just to make something huge. Especially if they do it a lot. Sure, the Grand Canyon is big. But it is considered big because every other canyon is "normal" sized.
I played in a recent game where the GM had us going through a puzzle dungeon and many of the rooms were ridiculously large. One room was like a 1000 yards or so.
Where the problem was, it didn't fit on a battlemat for purposes of combat. It was as if we were fighting on an open field with a wall/cliff face to one side.
While one should not limit your imagination or designs to comply with the constraints of the battlemat you own, nor is it advisable to make things large for the sake of largeness without any real benefit or purpose. If the dungeon room is mega-large, it should be so to impress us, reflect some natural element, give us a clue (this was a puzzle game) or enable something large to be present. Otherwise, it was just the GM throwing out numbers when she was writing room descriptions and thinking 1000 yards was a fine number to use for room dimensions.
Desdichado
Hero
The stone money of Yap.
The ruins of Nan Madol.
Victoria Falls, including the gorges and the Devil's Pool.
The cliff-face of Mount Thor on Baffin Island, or the Trango Towers.
The bodies, including "Scream Baby" found in the tomb with Chërchën Man.
The ruins of Nan Madol.
Victoria Falls, including the gorges and the Devil's Pool.
The cliff-face of Mount Thor on Baffin Island, or the Trango Towers.
The bodies, including "Scream Baby" found in the tomb with Chërchën Man.
wingsandsword
Legend
Mammoth Cave.
The only National Park in Kentucky, it's a vast cave network with around 360 miles of charted caves (and known to have more that they haven't explored yet, including some other cave networks in the area believed to tie in to the caves somewhere).
It includes
Vast chambers (the largest is 2 acres in floor size, and goes up about 30 or 40 feet, and there are about 6 chambers known only slightly smaller than that)
An underground river. (Referred to informally as the River Styx)
An abandoned city (a colony for treatment of tuberculosis in the 1800's (they thought the cave air would help, so dozens of people lived in the caves full-time with their doctor in an underground city),
Secret chapels (apparently a few old-time preachers liked to hold services in the cave, preaching from atop a cliff to a big chamber of followers),
Mummies. Mummified remains of deceased Native Americans have been found in there),
Abandoned mines (saltpeter and gypsum mining used to be big in that network 100+ years ago)
Cryptic ruins & relics. There are many sets of artifacts known to be several thousand years old, including clay pots and stone weapons.
Secret rooms. During the slavery era, apparently some slaves met in these chambers, well off the beaten path and not easily seen by lantern light, to be illicitly taught to read & write, by using charcoal and writing on the cave walls.
The "Star Chamber" (A vast chamber where shining specks of crystal peek out from the stone, so by torch or lantern-light, it creates the illusion of the ceiling sparkling like the stars in the night sky.
An underground waterfall. Water falls from some place above, draining from the surface and falling over a hundred feet before it hits the surface of a pool by the side of what is essentially an underground beach (gently sloping shore covered in very fine gravel)
My wife and myself did a lantern-light tour there a few weeks ago. It was walking through a 3 mile stretch of cave by oil lantern with a tour group.
Basically, if there was a real-world Underdark (or even just a mega-dungeon), this would be it.
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
And here I thought the question from the thread title would be "what's at the bottom of a thousand-foot waterfall?" to which my answer was: "Dinosaurs!"
How about: The Great Barrier Reef and Challenger Deep
How about: The Great Barrier Reef and Challenger Deep
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
Some cool places I've been that made me think of D&D:
- Kilauea (crater/caldera, lava tubes, etc)
- Pali Lookout (where King Kamehameha drove his enemies over a 1000 ft. cliff)
- Cave diving (Spitting Caves)
- Marvel Cave
- Cave of the Winds/Pike's Peak
- Grand Canyon
- Fujiyama
- Kyoto/Castles
- Masada/Herod's Palace Ruins
- Swimming in the Dead Sea
- Caesarea (Roman/Crusader ruins)
- Old City Jerusalem
- Banias
- Tiberias
Places I've been might seem fake if you added them to a D&D campaign:
-- New York City Public Library (why would there be a giant ornate palace with all the world's books, open to public?)
-- New York City's Times Square in the 1970s (how many rogues can one city have?)
-- London, The City (blows away the wealth in one place rules)
-- Oxford (so many scholars in one place is unrealistic, so many famous "mages" can't have attended it, looks too much like Hogwarts great hall, why are their cows in the middle of a city at Christ Church Meadows?)
-- Las Vegas (why is there a city in the desert with no resources and no industry?)
-- Singapore (how could so many cultures fit in one little well-organized place?)
Other places that spring to mind:
-- The Skeleton Coast of Namibia (all this shipwrecks on land, with a desert -- seems fake)
-- The North Slope of Alaska (why would people live there?)
-- New York City Public Library (why would there be a giant ornate palace with all the world's books, open to public?)
-- New York City's Times Square in the 1970s (how many rogues can one city have?)
-- London, The City (blows away the wealth in one place rules)
-- Oxford (so many scholars in one place is unrealistic, so many famous "mages" can't have attended it, looks too much like Hogwarts great hall, why are their cows in the middle of a city at Christ Church Meadows?)
-- Las Vegas (why is there a city in the desert with no resources and no industry?)
-- Singapore (how could so many cultures fit in one little well-organized place?)
Other places that spring to mind:
-- The Skeleton Coast of Namibia (all this shipwrecks on land, with a desert -- seems fake)
-- The North Slope of Alaska (why would people live there?)
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