Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8350541" data-attributes="member: 6670763">While my setting idea has a fairly small scale human civilization, ancient dams sound like a really cool landscape feature to add to the environment. The ancient builders were magic, so their dams could last a thousand years.Until they don't, threatening huge disasters downstream. Great alternative adventure to the regular treasure hunting.Someone also suggested to me dire beaver damns. Carrying some canoes past them could be a neat little side adventure to gain access to completely unmapped and unexplored waterways.I'm also quite giddy about the idea of having hippos being an iconic river terror like bulletes or owlbears.Instead of merchant caravans, there would be river merchants. And equally river pirates, hiding their lairs in small side branches just big enough for their dhows, but too large for big cargo junks.I did a little bit of research on the speeds of traveling by kayak or canoe. And it seems like you get something reasonably plausible by going downstream at 4 or 5 miles per hour, and upstream by 2 or 1 miles per hour, depending on the current. (Rowing at 3 mph with 1 or 2 mph current.) Of course you can have even faster currents that make going downstream even faster, but you'd not be able to row upstream by much more than a snail's pace.Based on this, the river map could be done in three colors, indicating slow current (2/4), fast current (1/5), and currents too fast to go against (0/6+).As the party becomes wealthier, they could upgrade to a dhow or a junk, and basically have a mobile base with unlimited capacity to haul treasure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8350541, member: 6670763"] While my setting idea has a fairly small scale human civilization, ancient dams sound like a really cool landscape feature to add to the environment. The ancient builders were magic, so their dams could last a thousand years. Until they don't, threatening huge disasters downstream. Great alternative adventure to the regular treasure hunting. Someone also suggested to me dire beaver damns. Carrying some canoes past them could be a neat little side adventure to gain access to completely unmapped and unexplored waterways. I'm also quite giddy about the idea of having hippos being an iconic river terror like bulletes or owlbears. Instead of merchant caravans, there would be river merchants. And equally river pirates, hiding their lairs in small side branches just big enough for their dhows, but too large for big cargo junks. I did a little bit of research on the speeds of traveling by kayak or canoe. And it seems like you get something reasonably plausible by going downstream at 4 or 5 miles per hour, and upstream by 2 or 1 miles per hour, depending on the current. (Rowing at 3 mph with 1 or 2 mph current.) Of course you can have even faster currents that make going downstream even faster, but you'd not be able to row upstream by much more than a snail's pace. Based on this, the river map could be done in three colors, indicating slow current (2/4), fast current (1/5), and currents too fast to go against (0/6+). As the party becomes wealthier, they could upgrade to a dhow or a junk, and basically have a mobile base with unlimited capacity to haul treasure. [/QUOTE]

Verification