Natural Disasters

[Storm Raven]

Seeing Hurricane Katrina and the devestation it has wrought has made me think about natural disasters. Has anyone here used a natural disaster as a plot point in one of their campaigns? Say, an earthquake, or hurricane, volcano eruption, or even something exotic like a meteor strike, or a hiccup in the flow of magic?

I'm not talking about villainously driven disasters where the BBEG uses a massive spell to whip up foul weather, but instead, perfectly natural, random occurences that hammer an area, resulting in destruction, and attendant refugees and rescues.

 

[diaglo]

death of a god.

the deity's remains rain down on the world.

where they strike untold number of disasters occur.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Seeing as how Fett's family is ok and that -- to my knowledge -- all ENWorlders and their loved ones are not in any physical danger....

I'm not talking about villainously driven disasters where the BBEG uses a massive spell to whip up foul weather, but instead, perfectly natural, random occurences that hammer an area, resulting in destruction, and attendant refugees and rescues.

There lies the rub. I think this might be a great way to start off a campaign, but you toss in something like this at level 10 and the PCs might think it's part of the overall plot instead of a plot device.

What could be cool is to have the PCs trigger the event. The Evil Overlord's army is coming close to the Good Kingdom and the PCs kick off a storm to swell the river, preventing the army from coming closer and forcing the Overlord to turn back due to lack of supplies. That might be perfect for a level 7 adventure, where you want the PCs to face the Evil Overlord, but not directly because they'd lose. The Good Kingdom can't send their army to Storm Shrine (or whatever) because they need the army as a backup in case the PCs fail. So once the storm is kicked off and does it's job, the PCs then have to deal with a refugee crisis that they caused.

 

[Ghostwind]

I've dropped an asteroid into my campaign at the same time as a Cat 5 hurricane was approaching the PCs (who were on a sailing ship at the time). It was pretty and the solution the PCs came up with was quite smart.

 

[Tonguez]

I used a Hurricaine that devestated the land and then had the BBEG army quickly follow behind it and hunt down the refugees

I've also had a volcano that had become active again, threatening the release of a magma paraelemental Ogre that had been trapped there a thousand years earlier (the PCs had to find a way to stop it erupting)

I also used a mnor meteor once - the PCs saw it went to investigate and the ranger had a silver coloured 'ooze' attach itself to her arm. The Ooze gave her powers of eletromagnetism (but stuffed up her spellcasting) so she had to find away to get it off (leading to the adventure to discover what it was and what it wanted)

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Yeah, I've used the following:

Earthquake: The fault line "dips" and exposes a vein of mitheral. This leads to tension between humans, elves, and dwarves, that the PCs had to diffuse before a war started.

Tornado: The characters were caught in one, and nearly died.

Hurricane: While trying to avoid the storm, the heroes take refuge in a tavern with some NPCs. Soon, people start dying...

Those aren't really what you're getting at though, I don't think. What's going on in LA is most similar to a game I once ran call "Aftermath" where a dragon attacks the PCs village. They survive the attack, but must help the villagers deal with the aftermath of the attack.

edit: DOH! I totally forgot the best one ever...
I also used a hurricane once in a game where the heroes had been captured, enslaved on a galley, diseased, starved, beaten, and worked to exhaustion... all in the first 15 minutes of the game. Then, the hurricane came. The ship captain who had them enslaved ordered them to be whipped even more and urged them to row frantically to escape the storm. But it was not to be. The storm overtook them and smashed their boat on a reef. So the captain and his crew jumped into a lifeboat and rowed away, leaving the PCs and other slaves chained to the sinking ship.

You should have seen my players faces when I finally got done with the introduction to the new campaign and said, "Ok, so you've got about 2 hit points, no gear, no clothes, you're exhausted, you're diseased, and you're chained to the deck of a sinking ship in the middle of a hurricane... What do you do?"

 

[Hand of Evil]

Yes, it started a migration of the displaced.

I will leave it at that for now.

 

[diaglo]

wasn't one of the joint ENWurld adventures done on a volcano going active?

 

[tensen]

I've dropped an asteroid into my campaign at the same time as a Cat 5 hurricane was approaching the PCs (who were on a sailing ship at the time). It was pretty and the solution the PCs came up with was quite smart.

I admit.. I'm a network/computer geek. I read Cat 5, and though why is there a network cable running there. *sigh*

Which product has the best rules for handling navigation in a storm of that size?

 

[diaglo]

Which product has the best rules for handling navigation in a storm of that size?

Wooden Ships and Iron Men