Blog Carnival – February 2014 – The Icy Embrace of Winter

Babbling at the Counter #28 – Pen and Paper

Blog Carnival – February 2014 – The Icy Embrace of Winter

New month, new Carnival. This one is hosted by Nils at Enderra, and is winter related. So thank you Nils! Hope this post makes a good addition to the Carnival!

What can you do with winter? Well, let me offer you a multi-purpose, multi-genre idea: “Snowed In”. You had seen it before? Yeah, it's an oldie but a goodie, so let's disassemble it.

For those at the back of the class, the idea here is to use the inclement winter weather to trap the party at a location. This gives a few advantages; the most important one is a closed and controlled environment. Of course, this only works if the characters can't deal with the snow easily. No teleportation or such non-sense is allowed.

You may be tempted to run a murder mystery or something like that here. I'd rather you didn't. You see, that kind of things can go off the rails in a snap. My recommendation is taking advantage of the character's inability to leave the place to create tension and drama.

I'd go with either a creature on the shadows or have the building itself turn hostile. In more realistic games, an unusually tough madman can do the trick. Make it about whether or not the characters will survive the storm. Take advantage of the unknown. Where will the next attack be? What is the enemy working on?

Clever players may build fortresses or safe rooms, given enough ingenuity and resources. Just remember that whatever is stalking them can do the same. Taking out the power is a simple but effective first step, and even better with creatures of the night. This, though, is far from the only thing to do.

Water is interesting because you both need it to live, and because it can kill you. Poisoning the water supply can make the characters leave their safe place, and hallucinogen drugs can make that panic room a mortal trap. On the other hand, we have the option to flood them out of there. Combine the two if you are really nasty.

Talking of death by oxygen deprivation, smoke can work, too. Fire adds another layer of dangers, and as always, an enemy that's immune to it has home advantage. You may find this “Unstoppable Monster” idea useful to plot, so I'll just leave the link.

Now, if your group likes “Horror” more than “Adventure”, trapped + time = horrible, horrible stuff. To the usual lack of food and water you can add a bit of dementia, and some pests only make things worse. Not an expert on this kind of stuff, but I'm sure there are enough books and movies to get you started. What makes this different is the time the characters will be trapped. A good monster adventure can take only a night, or even a few hours. For more “horror” inclined games, the character may spend days if not weeks trapped.

Well, hope something here sparks your imagination. Till next time, have fun in the snow!

- The Storeman