I’m off work sick today, and I just watched Annihilation on Netflix (no spoilers), which got me thinking... Forbidden Zones are a great location to go adventuring. Whether those are from magical experiments, mad gods, unknown mutation, irradiated hellscapes, alchemical spills, or whatever you can imagine, the concept is a fascinating one. You get to change the normal rules: turn swamps into literal acid, have screaming trees with kittens hatching from flowers, glowing fireflies that explode when they touch things, creatures that move in eerie synchronization, and all sorts of way-out crazy monsters, which is one of the best parts of any fantasy game. D&D already has a massive gallery of freaky monsters, but you can pull out some of the super-wierd ones which might not get out much otherwise. I have a few suggestions below: * Krenshars: dog monsters that peel back their entire faces to scare you. Bonus points if they look cute and fluffy beforehand. * Allips: literally raving mad undead. * Giant Vermin: house-sized scorpions, centipedes the length of a freight train, spiders bigger than a horse. * Yrthaks: huge sonic-beam pterodactyl monsters. * Tendriculos: animated plants are scary already. These ones are terrifyingly big, and regenerate. * Phasms: Human-size amoeba shapechangers, filled with chaotic energy. * Phantom Fungus: moldy, invisible tentacle-beasts. * Grimlocks: blind, raging, cave-folk. * Gibbering Mouthers: these things are just horrifying. Use them at your own peril. * Dire Animals: especially if you flavour them as just more mutated versions of the original animals. * Digesters: acid-spraying wierd critters. * Chaos Beasts: mutable, ever-changing squiggly things that turn you less real the more they touch you. * The Pseudonatural template can turn even “regular” monsters into terrible and disgusting versions of themselves. And don’t forget to make the terrain strange, too: trees made of liquid glass, sand which squeaks when you tread on it, wood which bleeds when you cut it, grass which grows in geometric patterns. Little things can do a lot to help reinforce the dangerous, alien nature of the Forbidden Zone. Getting into, and out of again, these Forbidden Zones can be an adventure all to itself, but you can even give some more interesting reasons: * Rescuing researchers or civilians * Finding and destroying the source * Recovering some magic item in the middle of the zone Have you played an adventure in a region like this? Has this given you some interesting ideas? (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 20 March 2018) Categories All Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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