Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Desks and Doors. That's your favorite board
game design and creation podcast that has always his shape by you. We're bringing
the best in indie tabletop gaming of Kyle Lot. I'm usually the door to
Riley's desk, but I'm running solo right now. Riley is once again a
little bit busy, so he's back at the IKEA mothership. And fortunately,
though I don't have a guest, but I do have a great, great
podcast idea for you today, our good friend Graham against You may know him
as the occasional instigator of some of the stuff that Dusks and Dorks does.
Huge fan of Graham and the weird things that he brings to us, and
he often calls his podcast ideas que pod drops, and today we have a
q pod drop that's been brought because of a typo. I have fat thumbs.
They do not do particularly well when we face them within electronic keyboard.
I missed with the days of a physical keyboard on my phone, and I
said, wow, those are some big ideas to some of his podcast suggestions.
And rather than take that in stride, Graham's like, yes, but
what if bog ideas? Because that's what my phone auto corrected too, And
so Graham actually had suggested a ton of bog themed swamp themed things, and
that really got me thinking, not just about like my favorite bogs in the
world, although I do actually, weirdly enough, have an opinion on like
my favorite bog, but it actually got me thinking about why we use certain
locations in fantasy RPGs and role playing in general. And one of the things
that I wanted to talk about today was how you can use some of these
interesting locations, ideas and concepts to maybe make your role playing games feel a
little bit more fleshed out and a little more interesting. And that's really kind
of what we're going to be trying to do today. So we are going
to start off with bogs. But as a disclaimer, all of this advice,
all of these creatures are settings agnostic. Ha interesting that we would choose
to do settings agnostic, but they are so while you might be tempted to
use them in a certain RPG that rhymes with fungen maggins, you don't necessarily
even have to, and you can use these ideas, suggestions, monsters,
characters, hazards, what have you in any role playing game that you would
like, and without further ado, we've got some bog ideas to talk about.
So, as I mentioned, we're going to be talking about some different
things and I'm very excited to talk about those right now. We're going to
start off, of course, with bogs. Why do we as RPG makers
like to start our games off in swamps or in swamp like places? And
I think the first thing that we need to talk about when we're talking about
setting your location anywhere is when we are talking all about hazards. Nobody wants
their RPG to be boring. Nobody wants their RPG to feel bland or cookie
cutter. And so one of the easiest ways that we can draw out conflict
from our games is in our setting. Is in the settings themselves. That's
really the most important thing. So we're gonna talk a little bit about why
bogs in particular. One of the first things that we happen to think about
is that bogs generally tend to feel really alien to us. And there's a
couple of reasons for this. Historically, human civilization has never wanted to set
up in bogs. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the
unfamiliarity of this territory naturally lends itself to interesting and intriguing role playing games.
And again, that unfamiliarity is often caused because of the inherent danger that goes
along with the territory itself, But because historically we've spent so little time as
a species in bogs, that's part of the reason you might want to do
that. So if you are setting yourself up in a role playing game setting
and you want a good place to have your story take place, let's talk
about some interesting ones. We talked about bogs for example, yes, alien
to us historically not a place that humans have spent a lot of time civilizing,
but there's a couple of reasons for that too. Right in bogs,
you have creatures that usually are very unique to that biome, whether those are
water dwelling reptiles or whether those are you know, insects that like to live
in the tall grass. There's a lot of creepy, crawley, unfriendly things
that generally only make their home in the swampy wetlands that lay on the fringes
of society. When we also think about that, two bogs are often a
safe and natural place where decay happens, and where decay is present, disease
is present as well. So imagine this for a moment. Your adventurers,
whether they be in the modern day setting or a fantasy setting, are traveling
through a bog. Here are a couple things that you can hit them with.
Number one, a special wasting disease that is only brought on by the
bog, and the cure to the disease can only be found from synthesizing different
plants that are found within the bog. This does two things for the players.
One, it sets them on a clock, and it gives them a
natural reason to be there and be racing against that clock. That doesn't feel
contrived, right. This disease is an actual threat to their life, their
well being, and their livelihood, and it's going to continually sort of take
its toll on your players. Now, the reason that that's such a good
thing is it's going to force your players to actually interact with the setting itself,
which is why we've set it up so that the cure to the bog,
of a cure to the disease is actually in the bog itself, which
means your players have a natural reason to be where they're at, and your
players have a natural desire to continue to interact with the setting. So that's
your conflict, that's your challenge we've given you. You know, that wasting
disease. Now, let's talk about what each other challenges your players are going
to face when they're trying to beat that goal. Right, So this is
how we're going to set this episode up. I'm going to give you a
goal, right for each of these settings. In the player's case this time,
it's a disease. I'm going to give you a challenge in each of
these settings that's something that the players have to overcome that is not directly related
to the goal. And then I'm going to give you some NPCs for your
players to interact with. And that's going to be how we do this.
So we talked about the goal, finding the cure for the disease. That
ails them huge problem for the PCs during this game of whatever, you're what
other challenge are they going to have to overcome another's play any of different challenges
that you could throw in, And there's a couple ones that I have,
you know, decided we're not cliche, but have been done enough times before.
And then I wanted to make this a little bit more unique. So
on the one hand, you could make something like a bog which, right,
you know, the legend of the old crone living in this uninhabitable,
hostile place. You could also throw in a couple of different groups of lawless
ne'er dwells, right, And we love a good bandit camp, And what
better place to stake out a bandit camp than in a location where most civilized
folks are not gonna want to go around, not gonna want to be present.
But for my money, if I'm going to throw a challenging, uh
you know, character or challenging thing for your players to over you know,
overcome almost an over encumbered, but they're hopefully and not can be carrying this
around. I want to keep it on the natural side of things. And
so we are actually going to be throwing a giant zombie crocodile your players.
Now, if you're running a more realistic setting, you could just as easily
throw in a giant crocodile that has been mutated either by natural selection or like
human chemicals. But I love the idea that there is just this giant croc
that the local necromancer or you know may have died after they had resurrected,
and it still has returned to the place where it lived. So it becomes
this silent, unseen killer roaming around in a land of decay. And what
an interesting way for the players to interact with your biome. Now, in
terms of the NPC's that your players are going to interact with, I have
come up with two one if you're running a realistic campaign, and one if
you are running a more fantastical campaign. If you're running a fantastical campaign,
something that a lot of people don't realize is that in marshes, wetlands and
things like that, there are often otters my family's namesake, and so if
you're running a fantastical campaign, I would love the idea of a talking an
otter that has either been ensourceled, so it's like an individual that has been
transformed into an otter, or if it's just an otter that is magical and
talks of its own volition, who has been living and hunting in this region
for a number of years and as such knows a great deal about the layout
and may be willing to either contribute the location of the cure or to give
your party some helpful, hopefully useful tips while they're battling that zombie gator.
If you are running a more down to earth campaign, the one thing that
I would suggest that you do, why not throw a professor of biology or
a professor of anthropology, but a professor professor of zoology into this environment to
kind of help your players navigate this unseen and often difficult territory. So we
started off with bogs. There you go, Graham, thanks for your bog
drop. Let's move on to setting number two. Our next location is going
to be just a little bit more exciting and we're gonna get fired up.
All right, I did my best as to be like a fake WatchMojo commenter,
but no, actually we're gonna be talking about sitting in one of your
games in an active volcano. Yes, that's right, an active volcano.
So what is the player's goal. Well, it's going to be something that
puts them into direct harm, but also has to be saiding that they could
plan for or take steps to address some of the danger. And so we're
going to have them, Actually we have to retrieve a rare mineral found within
the vacano itself. This means the players are going to have tons of opportunity
to creative problem solved, either with spells if you're playing a fantasy themed RPG,
or using technology or some other basic strategy if you're doing a more realistic
RPG. They're gonna have to venture into this volcano and gather some of that
magmatic mineral. Now that we have our goal on the way, we're gonna
think, I'm sorry, the next thing that we're going to be doing.
I'm actually trying to read off of the notes that I took for this episode,
so sorry, folks. One of the next thing that we're gonna be
doing is the challenge of that and the challenges that obviously, you know,
the volcano is about to erupt at some points' about to explode at some point,
so much like our previous iteration, we want the players on a time
crunch, this is going to actually cause the players to you know, not
have forever to plan, not have forever to execute on their ideas, and
they are going to have to move rather swiftly in order to get to the
mineral that they need before the volcano is actually destroyed. And in terms of
NPCs, I'm actually really excited about this one. Because my NPC's for this
game are the same, whether you're doing a fantastic fantasy sci fi ish RPG
or whether you are doing a more realistic one. We're going to be talking
about a group of tourists that have come to the volcano and are either blissfully
unaware or are trying to circumvent some of the safety regulations and some of the
dangerous aspects of the volcano in order to get a closer view to it.
So players can maybe babysit those tourist, or if they're a particularly sinister or
fed up with the tourists actions, they might want to actually throw some of
the tourists into the volcano. But I think it will lend for a little
bit more of a comedic I don't want to say slapstick necessarily, but definitely
a little bit more of a comedic bent to a game that is going to
be particularly tense and full of danger. And so I love my Volcano Tourists.
Hopefully you guys will as well. Which brings us to our final and
third entry in this list of hazardous places, interesting places, bog inspired places
that you can set your RPGs at. Now, one of the things that
I like about RPGs is the chance to explore a setting that you wouldn't necessarily
have and you wouldn't think would be interesting for role playing. Now here's the
thing, though, If there's two things I know, it's that one RPGs
are great for that, and two players love weird and funky stuff. And
what other location could be more hazardous than an antique road show style event.
That's right, folks, We're sending your players to the swap meet, the
flea market, the giant yard sale, the bargain hunting extravaganza. Now,
this is not a particularly hazardous place in terms of the danger that is present
there, but it does offer some really interesting opportunities for role playing, and
it could potentially be interesting for like social hazards. So let's talk a little
bit about what this is going to be. The goal is that the players
are contracted by a private individual who has lost an item of great value.
Whether it's personal sentimental power like actual magical power, up to you entirely as
the person running the game. But one of the things I am really interested
in is having the players attempt to go to the swap meet, where they
are told that the item is and they are going to attempt to retrieve said
item. That's what we're looking for, So becomes a little bit of a
scavenger hunt. I chose this one for a couple sass. It offers a
little bit of exploration if that scavenger hunt nature to it, and it offers
a lot of those RPG players, the role playing heavy characters a chance to
shine. So the goal is to retrieve that item. Now the particular challenge
I picked two for this one. I envisioned this to be massive, like
a massive outdoor market, a massive swap meet, something like that. So
one of the difficulties is the sheer scale of the event itself. It's going
to be a lot like the players are attempting to find a needle in a
haystack, as it were. And so that's going to be one of the
first things that I'm really interested in is the size, the scope of this
place and the people inside it. The other big difficulty is that these people
have been doing this kind of stuff for a while. And so if you're
like me and you've spent a lot of time, you know, enjoying or
being around yard sales or the yard sale, you know, world You'll know
that a lot of these people who come to these auctions and events have known
each other for a while, so it's a pretty tight knit community. Addition
to the size that the players have to contend with, they're also going to
have to contend with the social difficulties, the social norms as it were.
That's one of the big challenges now in terms of NPCs, No swat beat,
no yard sale, no auction would be complete without at least a gaggle
of old ladies. And so of course I call them the Carla's, but
they're like three old grandmas that I have been, you know, working within
this space and running a booth for a number of years, and that's going
to be your big people to interact with. These could be antagonists for the
players, particularly if a player manages to take them off early, or they
could be useful allies for the players if a player manages to show them some
respect and some courtesy, and that winds up currying favor with the Carla's and
as a result, winds up giving them a little bit of a give them
a little bit of an edge. With that being said, I hope you
guys really like this. Again shout out to I'm for giving us the event
the q pod drop as it were. If you have found this to be
interesting and formative, please make sure you give us a like, share,
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chance to back it, to get your hands on a copy. But until
next time, I'm Kyle out for Desks and Dorks. You have all been
amazing and I'll see you all next time. Piece