DO NOT cut down the trees (adventure ideas!)

[GilMan21]

I’m playing a game on Apple Arcade called Outlanders and I have to cut down a million trees to keep my village going. A million!
What if lumberjacks or miners were simply doing their job and they inadvertently let something out—something druids or whomever wanted to keep tucked away long ago.

• These could be children of the gods. Ugly, mean ones.
• An experiment gone awry and it just needed to be buried.
• Weapons that belong in the hands of no one.
• The materials for an incantation that evil cult members have been looking for for-ev-er.

I’m thinking of writing a short story about construction workers that are tearing down a building and whoops, some summoners locked something away that got out. You shouldn’t have busted through that cement, Larry. Way to go. You should run.

This is an excerpt from Burn the Tavern Down, a newsletter about good RPG ideas.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You would probably get a kick- and some ideas- from It Waits.


(The parrot is smarter than the humans, and has all the best lines. Yes, there’s a parrot.)

Also check out the link to RangerWickett’s campaign ideas link in my sig. Lots of good stuff you could use.

 

[Porkraiders]

It's Adam Adamant!

Well yeah, it could be a good or evil being, but being trapped for a few generations could change your priorities.

This might be the old Djinn in a bottle who will grant you wishes, then flay you alive afterward. It could be an evil Fey, trapped for 2000 years in a tree that some idiot villager finally dared to cut with an axe of cold iron. Maybe it's a Cloud Giant trapped since the Age of Giants, who vows to remove the inferior races (meaning anyone shorter than 5 meters) from the earth. What kind of scourge (other than the Tarrasque) menaced the land in the past and was sealed away, rather than defeated?

Either that, or it could be a portal to the future, which immediately begins spitting out cybernetic orcs with death-rays, reclaiming their homeland in the past.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Either that, or it could be a portal to the future, which immediately begins spitting out cybernetic orcs with death-rays, reclaiming their homeland in the past.

Orrrrrr...

Like Shannara, the “fantasy world” is actually a post-apocalyptic world like ours, one where magic now holds sway over technology. And what was hidden by the Druids was some kind of malevolent AI and the tech it had at its disposal.

 

[der_kluge]

I think if you wanted to cut down a million trees, it's very likely the druids, dryads and treants might want to have a word or two with you about that. At some point, the forest itself is likely to revolt.