types of jungle

[Rolando]

Agree, a lot of poisonous and venomous stuff and less food potential than other environments.

You can get by fairly well if you know what it is all about and many communities live in that "hell", knowing how to deal with it makes them kind of paradises but it is not easy by any means.

Knowing how to move and that you should not be touching things is a big part of it. Many people touch the plants when they move through forest, it's natural to take them out of your face and path, but doing that in the jungle can be dangerous, a poisonous worm can be behind a big leaf and you just have to brush it a bit (those hairy worms that are like a natural piece of art) and you will get fever, pain and inflammation in the part brushed, not fun at all, if you are allergic to it for some reason you may die, in the best of case you will be with a painful fever for a day or two.

Mos trails for tourists and adventurers are known trails and very traveled, so less animals and the path are widened by locals so there is less risk of brushing something or stepping in a hole or other of the multiple dangers. Mangroves are usually traveled by boat or only by people that really have to do it, in many places are protected areas so there is little if any industry, fishing or farming.

Looking at videos is another good way of getting an idea of how it is done by people that know what they are doing (and many that don't) and good for inspiration for descriptions and interesting places, you can find places in the jungle that are simply magical looking and amazing and are purely natural, and if there are ruins it can be surreal.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Yeah I always get astounished by hippies worshipping "mother nature". They only do that because they dont have to live in the woods. Because in truth, those jungles are green hellholes and death traps.

A massive jungle would actually make a better hell than lava and fire.

New Zealand bush is relatively benign in many ways - no large dangerous animals (at least not until we introduced pigs), no venomous spiders and the few venomous bugs are unlikely to interact with humans.

On the other hand parts have mosquitoes in bothersome numbers and other parts have sandflies in vast numbers. Most places the temperature never gets down to freezing, yet people die of exposure every year because the weather is changeable and it doesn't have to get very cold to kill you when you're wet through. People also die each year because the rain turns small creek into raging torrents, and they try and cross them. Anywhere that's not very old rainforest is choked with vegetation, and the combination of supplejack vines (which tend to trip you up and entangle you) and bush lawyer (which has lots of thorns and grabs hold of you and won't let go) is incredibly slow to move through and painful and annoying. And then there are the tree nettles - venomous plants that have killed people, so you can't just go bashing through the bush swatting the plants out of the way, because some bite back.

Oh, and NZ bush is either on 'hills' (which here means very rugged country with knife-edge ridges and steep slopes), or if on the flat, swamp.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Mangue (swamp? Im not sure if the english world "swamp" applies to woods close to the salt water of the sea, but that's what "mangue" is for, an exclusive jungle type intersectional forest between the sea and the continent).

Yes, "swamp" covers all wetlands that have numerous trees growing in them (without trees you have "marsh", "bog", "fen", "mire" etc.) In some lects of English they are called "mangrove forest", but around here we have "mangrove swamp" that consists of intertidal mudflats with mangrove trees growing on them. Further up the estuaries and in brackish coastal wetlands we have "tea-tree swamp" and some "swamp-oak swamp".

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Yes, "swamp" covers all wetlands that have numerous trees growing in them (without trees you have "marsh", "bog", "fen", "mire" etc.) In some lects of English they are called "mangrove forest", but around here we have "mangrove swamp" that consists of intertidal mudflats with mangrove trees growing on them. Further up the estuaries and in brackish coastal wetlands we have "tea-tree swamp" and some "swamp-oak swamp".

It's because in Portuguese we have "Pantano" for "sweet" water swamps and "Mangue" for that similar vegetation closer to the coast, but in here they are very different biomes. The "Pantanos" can occur in any of the others (except in the "Pampas" to the south which is a big pradary of grass and small brushes), while the "Mangues" is actually a very big biome that extends across the majority of the coast.

Well, if that is also of interest, our "Mangues" or coastal swamps can also be included in the list of jungles, making it a total of 5 different florests in Brazil alone. And that one is probably the worse of all - althought this is one Im more than used too since there was several massive coastal swamps at walking distance from my home. I would even go to play and even swiming there - not in the middle of the woods of course because Im not stupid, you cant even walk over them due to the many sticks and roots in the middle of the water, but across the paths between those to the beach.

At the edge of my city there's also the Mata Atlantica - but it's absolutely impossible to enter it, the foliage is so intense that not even with a chainsaw can you get through. Only jaguars can manage to do it - and dont ask me how they do it.

The city where I live - Santos - is a coastal port city, just 1 hour away from São Paulo, our largest city.

São Paulo however is on top of a massive chain of mountains. So to go there, there are roads across those mountains (those are massive, going from the far south to the far north, thousands of miles of lenght across our entire coast), and the way between there and here there is absolutely nothing except the virgin woods of the Mata Atlantica, so the roads cut through the middle of the forest, the most important and used road in the country. It is a breath taking view to look that ocean of green reaching as far as the eye can see, and from up top seeing my city (which is a very big island very close to the continent) meeting the ocean.

And from down here, from my very home, I can see the mountains far away at the distance on the horizon, a massive wall of pure indistinguishable green. And it seems as an endless forest spread down there, as far away as can reach the eye, an endless green mass.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by muduri

Thanks Rolando, every part of those evocative descriptions is going into the game haha, and The Colonel I'm doing likewise with the more-dangerous-than-it-sounds rhododendron jungle. Is eastern Nepal where I should be getting rhododendron jungle inspiration?

Nepal is one of the homes of the rhododendron and is as good an example as any - it's not dangerous in most cases, you're just talking hours per mile cutting and shoving. If I recall correctly this is one of the places where the noise you make moving around drives off most of the wildlife unless you cut your way into a hive of bees or something.
If you don't fancy Nepal, you can get invasive rhododendron forest all over the place - IIRC there are parts of California overrun with the stuff and even whole islands around Ireland and the UK that are literally covered with it.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Yeah I always get astounished by hippies worshipping "mother nature". They only do that because they dont have to live in the woods. Because in truth, those jungles are green hellholes and death traps.

A massive jungle would actually make a better hell than lava and fire.

To the hippies (or at least the stereotypical ones) 'nature' is the safe campgrounds and public parks that they do not realize are quite so heavily managed to be that safe and peaceful. Druids have a more nuanced view.

[Tinman]

As for GURPS rules for all this stuff:
The Emerald Hell -Pyramid 3-95 p.04, In the Jungle -Pyramid 3-41 p.18,
DF-16 Wilderness Adventures & Technomancer: Funny New Guys p.31.

I'm sure there's a lot more but it's a start.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Tinman

As for GURPS rules for all this stuff:
The Emerald Hell -Pyramid 3-95 p.04, In the Jungle -Pyramid 3-41 p.18,
DF-16 Wilderness Adventures & Technomancer: Funny New Guys p.31.

I'm sure there's a lot more but it's a start.

"Emerald Hell".

That's a fit description. The wilderness is a VERY DANGEROUS place. I used to adventure a lot in it, but I did know what I was doing, and I would follow every possible safety procedures.

Here in Brazil we have a small island about 150 miles away from the coast, called "Cobra Island" ("ilha das cobras". PS: we call all serpents as "cobras", so dont get confused about it).

This island is the home of the "Jararaca Ilhoa" (island jararaca), the most poisonous serpent in all the americas, and they only exist there.

It's also the place on Earth with the highest concentration of serpents per square yard.

I went there with a research team; it's territory controlled by the navy and with forbidden entrance, unless for research purposes.

It is mandatory to have a doctor along, because of the high risk; we were however not managing to find one. The doctor that usually would come along was sick, and then the dates would never match so....

We end up going without a doctor... Which was technically illegal... But we had to retrieve the equipment and data that was there, it were sitting in the island for months already and it could no longer wait. So we took the risk.

In one part of the island, you have to walk over a tiny edge of about hmmm... some 30 yards high. On one side there's impenetrable bushes, on the other a cliff ending in rocks at the ocean, with enough room for one person at a time alone.

Well, in one peace of it, the first guy said "look here".

At the height of our faces, there was one of the Jararaca serpeants, sitting in the bushes. And in the middle of the only way to our destinies.

So, we all went through, facing sure death at just 30 cm away (that's what, 2 inches I guess? Less? Not sure)

Should the snake decide to jump on me, it would bit me in the nose. That gorgeous little thing was sitting at the height of my eyes - most beautiful creature I've ever seen, it's all green so most of the time it's completely invisible to us in the middle of the leafs. If she jumped on me, at least I wouldnt feel the muscular paralyses and tissue necrosis in my face for long, because I would fall head on to my quicker death in the rocks bellow. Luckly mother Gaia spared us that time.

We continued our trip, and saw another dozen of those in our way.

But, because of their camouflage, the ratio is that for each one of those we saw, there were at least 10 others we didnt see.

And before any of you start to make your vaccation plans to the island, dont do it; the island is amazing, idilic visage, but one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

You could also end up in jail (another risk we also managed to avoid... althought I was hoping our university could save us from that one).

Anyway, I love the woods (that's part of what I do!), but I dont think that it's a paradise, jungles are super dangerous places

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Mangue (swamp? Im not sure if the english world "swamp" applies to woods close to the salt water of the sea, but that's what "mangue" is for, an exclusive jungle type intersectional forest between the sea and the continent).

The English language equivalent is "mangrove," which is derived from the original Spanish/American Indian word.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

The Pampas are in the south and it"s mainly grass under temperate climate. Begins in Brazil and goes over Argentina until ending in the far south Argentiniam permafrost, so it doesnt count.

I'd lump these into Survival (Plains), along with survival on the African savanna, the North American Great Plains, and parts of Central Asia, but with Unfamiliarity penalties if you're used to warm plains vs. cold plains.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Caatinga happens in the Northeast of Brazil and it's a semi-arid forest, so I guess it doesnt count either. The closest parallel would be the african savanna nut only in terms of climate, since it's vastly different.

Survival (Woods) with Unfamiliarity penalties for warm vs. cold.

Originally Posted by KarlKost

So, you have in Brazil alone 4 vastly different tropical jungles biomes.

All lumped into Survival (Jungle).

That seems grossly unfair given the huge biological diversity, but GURPS non-combat/non-technical skills have been defined as covering many different topics (e.g., Biology, Literature, or Physics).

Optional Specialization of Survival skill for a given biome (e.g., Survival (Swamp - Mangrove)) is possible, however. That would make sense for highly specialized animal species which are adapted to just one type of terrain.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

The English language equivalent is "mangrove," which is derived from the original Spanish/American Indian word.

Good to know, thanks
.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

All lumped into Survival (Jungle).

That seems grossly unfair given the huge biological diversity, but GURPS non-combat/non-technical skills have been defined as covering many different topics (e.g., Biology, Literature, or Physics).

Optional Specialization of Survival skill for a given biome (e.g., Survival (Swamp - Mangrove)) is possible, however. That would make sense for highly specialized animal species which are adapted to just one type of terrain.

Yeah, there would probably be more than that. Like I said, in the Amazon rainforest there's actually 6 different biomes in what seems to be just one single mass of green hell, due to the forerest's recent past (in geological terms ofcourse) as a Savanna like segregated places. And there are plants and animals that simply do not bypass the invisible barriers between those (there are others that do obviously, but many do not under any circumstances).

Also, there are species of animals (or even plants) that can be find in many different places of the world - like migratory birds or sea animals such as dolphins and whales or plants like coconuts - and there are also species that are absolutely endemic and exist nowhere else but their tiny little places, usually due to some geographical barrier (like the jararaca ilhoa snake that exists solely in a tiny little island), but it can also be the case of biological barriers such as in the different biomes of the Amazon, so I'd say that it's more than just an specialization of survival skill, but some real disadvantage that doesnt allow those to move, like a dependency or something like it