This falls under my interest in WWII tanks, and my tendency to make my gamers put their PCs into nasty, miserable marshes:
The Salvagers Who Raise World War Two Tanks From the Dead
How are the places they look?
Awful.
"“It is easy to hunt when you are shown a definite point,” says Mikalutski. “But to get to the point you may have to go five kilometres through marshes or snow. You reach the place and then you have to crawl back...”
For the sake of their own safety, the tank hunters never go into the marshes alone."
Winter, it's been -33 C.
Summer? "“What a buzz it is at night. It seems mosquitoes will overturn the van.”
Insect repellents do not help in marshes. The conditions are extremely difficult in hot weather: they have to work in thick jackets and hats even when it is 30C because of clouds of insects."
And that's in a normal, Earth marsh. No monsters, no mutants, not even an enemy army. Add those and you get ADVENTURE!
For loot, note how well-preserved some of these things are - still-edible chocolate, untouched textbooks, etc. It's not unreasonable for PCs to have to unearth something from a nasty marsh in either the peak of summer or the depths of winter, dealing with natural hazards on top of whatever threats surround the long-buried and lost loot . . . it need not even be a tank. If you insist.
I live in Florida. I can attest to how hellish a swamp can be in the summer. When I used to do boffer LARP I'd sometimes skip a months during the late summer when the heat and rain made everything wet and sticky and covered in mosquitoes.
ReplyDeleteBut then I'm not a bling crazed dungeoneering fool.
Heh. Something I just remembered thinking back a few years (almost a decade). We used to set up this pavilion, a huge 'carport' pavilion for our camp. We'd just gotten one of those butane powered bug-killer pesticide things and used it. We were out 'hacking and slashing' for like 8 hours, never went to camp the entire time. When we got back and opened the pavilion we could smell the chemical stink of the pesticide.
ReplyDeleteThe entire floor of the pavilion (we laid out tarps and rugs for flooring) was covered in like a half an inch of dead bugs. Mosquitoes, some flies, a few hornets and bees, but mostly mosquitoes. It was like some mosquito holocaust in there.
Suffice to say we aired it out and then decided to pitch our tents inside. It was the first time I think we went a night without getting chewed alive.
That sounds horrible. (As I take notes for next game . . . )
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