braxian
Cardboard Collector
Posts: 5
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Post by braxian on May 30, 2013 13:08:27 GMT -5
So I am starting a campaign where the players search for the gods who have all mysteriously left this plane. They were once (very Greco-Roman) very involved in human kind's life. I need ideas for terrain. What are some things that I could look into making for major combats/puzzle rooms. I love when players use terrain, or it has an effect on them. Fallen god's temples, alters, things like that. Thanks!
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Post by althalusredeemed on May 30, 2013 15:22:18 GMT -5
Have an interactive area - pillars that can be knocked down, brush that can be set on fire, and so on and so forth. Also have interesting terrain like rubble to slow down movement and a layer of slime around the altar to force balance checks.
If your players don't take the hint and use them, then demonstrate the possibilities using the enemies. Players generally won't remember awesome scenery for years, but everyone will remember the time that the rogue toppled a broken wall onto some goblins, only to slip and land in a pit full of horrible-smelling black gunk.
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slurpy
Room Planner
Posts: 283
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Post by slurpy on May 30, 2013 20:26:21 GMT -5
You HAVE to have a temple on top of Mt. Olympus. Bull-rushing PCs off the edge would be hilarious.
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AJ
Room Planner
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Post by AJ on May 30, 2013 21:38:28 GMT -5
Lets see.. Classic Greek themed.. Well, first, go watch the original Jason and the Argonauts, and the original Clash of the Titans. The scene where they go into a room under a giant metal golem which activates and attacks if they remove any piece of the fabulous treasure hoard in the room.. thats a good one. Greek columns and statues.. you could have things that have to be shifted with feats of strength ("The test of Hercules!"), a boulder that has to be rolled to the top of a hill, a man rescued from a cliff face, where he keeps getting his liver ripped out by giant eagles (he has a ring of regeneration on), the maze and the Minotaur, the golden fleece guarded by a Hydra, a village terrorized by a Manticore, someone pouring water from the river Styx into a village well (causing everyone who drinks from it to forget everything that happened to them in the last 24 hours), a pack of Harpies who attack everyone with a rod that shoots blinding light, then lord it over the blinded villagers in the area, a grove of poisonous, cursed olive trees, that move around and sneak into olive groves to poison the hapless villagers. Some general themes for Greek myth terrain.. Statues quite often come to life in Greek legend, they animate to represent the gods speaking through them, or people get turned into statues, the Greeks were big on statues.. Buildings were generally rectangular, or round, and very open plan, the Romans and Greeks had a fairly uncluttered furniture ethic, they likes vases, painted wall murals, lots of seats, but not many tables, and they liked their columns.. roofing was mostly clay tiles, oh and don't forget, the Romans invented cement, so you could have fun with brickless walls and concrete foot paths. Romans were famous for their glass artwork, and also for the graffiti on the walls of their town and cities, featuring words from many different languages, representing all the diverse people who were part of the sprawling Roman Empire, legionnaires were drawn from Africa, Germany, France, Britain, all over the place, and they all brought a bit of their culture with them.
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caveman
Paint Manipulator
Posts: 107
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Post by caveman on May 31, 2013 11:42:46 GMT -5
The thing that comes to my mind when you mention a Greek campaign is the word "archipelago," and from there… hoo boy…
First would be rocks half submerged in turquoise water and ringed with golden sand. Or simply ringed by some deep danged water -- like for instance some kind of micro scale, columnar seamount that sticks up above the water, but plunges straight down a thousand feet before it hits the seabed. Obviously I'm just talking about the colors that you'd use to paint chunks of terrain that were exactly the same size in reality, and took up exactly the same amount of table space, but their border colors would suggest a whole different scale of depth in your players' minds without you even saying a word. There's the famous Scylla and Charybdis scene in the Odyssey where the ship is sailing between a high rock wall (from which Scylla emerged to gobble up sailors) and a whirlpool (Charybdis), and from what I remember, the water is like eight hundred miles deep no matter where they looked.
Second would then have to be different kind of coastal terrain. Seaside cliffs, lava reefs, coral reefs, rocky beaches, boulder-strewn beaches, gravel beaches, sandy beaches, bays with narrow necks and strong surges between them (some narrow enough only for a kayak), reefs that stick out into the ocean for a mile or more but are only submerged in five, ten, twenty or thirty feet of water (google map "olowalu"). This last would be a fantastic site for an adventure because the water is crystal clear and not absurdly deep, so there could be earthquake-sunken ruins that would be easily accessible to your party (and sharks, sahuagin, grindylows, trapped undead, etc.).
Third would be ships and boats. Bireme, or a trireme. Double-hulled canoes. Punts. Shallow drafted Viking knorrs. Roman galleys with the swan prows. I suspect those wouldn't be too hard to craft. In the Illiad, the Achaens pulled their ships up onto the shore and sheltered behind (and even in) them. If I remember right, I think they used them as a kind of rampart at one really desperate point in the battle. But the point is those ships were light enough for the crews to be able to beach them at will. Obviously you couldn't do that with a bireme, but with a knorr / longboat? You bet.
Next for me would be forts. The biggie would be a roman fort with its wooden stockade and its layout that was so uniform, soldiers could have entered any fort between Parthia and Hispania and been able to walk directly to the quartermaster's tent without asking directions. But also would be domestic forts. The Chinese had awesome "domestic forts" during the warring states period and even, I think, very recently. I can't find google images of them, but the idea is that you connect your house, barn, stables, and granaries around a courtyard, and make the outer walls tough enough to withstand small parties of roving bandits. The reason I bring up forts in answer to your question is because I always think of the classical Greek landscape as being extremely balkanized. I'm thinking you could find source material for a "domestic fort" pretty easily from pretty much any frontier setting (Texans vs. Apaches, that kind of thing). Anyway, the idea is that any farmer with half a brain would build himself a domestic fort, and then pass it down to his sons, and their sons, etc, until the thing was pretty well developed in terms of defense. And then the whole countryside along any kind of border would be filled up with these really sturdy but really small scale "domestic forts."
On a small scale, I'd suggest lots of roadside shrines, especially at crossroads and on bridges. I remember reading about some Thracian rivers that had statues erected in midstream of especially important or dangerous rivers.
Also, maybe caves, earth-fissures, and an underground grotto or two. Read the myth where Hades comes up to snatch Persephone -- it's pretty short and there's several cool bits in it that directly apply to your question.
Sorry to ramble on so long, but my group is playing the Skull and Shackles AP and this kind of thing is figuring pretty large in my gaming mind anyway. Hope it helps.
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Post by atomicpenguin on Jun 7, 2013 11:43:43 GMT -5
A lot of ideas have already been thrown out here, but if you wanted to do a neat naval encounter, you could do Scylla and Charybdis. Essentially, Odysseus needed to navigate between two monsters by boat. One was Scylla, one of Zeus's paramours that was cursed to become a giant sea monster who constantly drinks the sea, creating a giant whirlpool which could be made as scenery. The other was Charybdis, whose backstory i forget but was a giant, many headed monster. You could have her poised on a craggy cliff.
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slurpy
Room Planner
Posts: 283
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Post by slurpy on Jun 7, 2013 12:46:55 GMT -5
Ooh, don't forget the Sirens! Assuming you don't mind a TPK.
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Post by omegadm0357 on Jun 10, 2013 11:09:11 GMT -5
Bronze statues that animate and don't take damage but instead must be frozen by the Medusa's gaze.
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Post by agsupernaturalfe on Aug 6, 2013 13:46:02 GMT -5
You can always ues the 12 labors of Hercules as reference make them quests for the PCs to take on, then there's Hades tons of stuff you can do there Cerberus, Tartarus, helping people escape death, etc. (the benifit of doing hades themed stuff is it can almost always double for Underdark terrain) Oh yah you could also borrow from reality based fare like the Spartan seige of the 300 and build terrain on a narrow bottle-necked pass always fun to push enemies off the side of a cliff & everyone loves good seige warfare
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robur
Cardboard Collector
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Post by robur on Aug 18, 2013 10:07:24 GMT -5
Have a big sea battle with shark-riding troglodytes that revere some king of sea-god (referring to Poseidon/Neptune) let them have a temple undserwater that the PCs need to get to by somehow obtaining water-breathing potions
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robur
Cardboard Collector
Posts: 7
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Post by robur on Aug 18, 2013 10:10:34 GMT -5
You could also have a batlle with angels that die when they flie to high up (from the Greek myth of Icarus)
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robur
Cardboard Collector
Posts: 7
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Post by robur on Aug 18, 2013 10:11:00 GMT -5
Have a big sea battle with shark-riding troglodytes that revere some king of sea-god (referring to Poseidon/Neptune) let them have a temple undserwater that the PCs need to get to by somehow obtaining water-breathing potions
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