the Twilight zone, a DF magic land

[Devil_Dante]

Hi guys, as for title, i'm here to hear your thoughts, and tips if you please, about a particolar place i'm creating. Though, i 'm experiencing a little of "block", and maybe some brainstorm approach could help me. I am actually GMing 2 different DF adventures, same settings, but different time, with different PCs who have different tasks. Generally, i have plenty of ideas, but this time i'm bit stucked: i built the basic idea of this part of the world, but i don't know what my player could do there. My fear is to make a linear adventure where the PCs just travel as for a normal place in other part of the world, which i'd wish to avoid. Should be something peculiar and i'll write down what this setting should look like, if you don't mind the wall of text. Any thought, any tip, any seed to make this travel interesting, and not just "roll on navigation/survival" is more than pleased.
So let's go in, shall we?

This land is called "The Twilight Zone", why, you may ask, and i shall answer: because it reminds a land between night and day, where the sky is dyed with the shades of red and blue. Everything seems to be ephemeral if seen from the distance. It's the land of the magic, where the warrens of magic blow strong, one in particular is stronger, the conjuration warren.

Quick note: i dived the magic in different warrens, winds, if you prefer, who flow into the world, give the wizard the chance to use them, like the schools of magic, but there are less than 17. The conjuration warren, in particular, comands both the summoning aspect and the planar travel. This means, in this land, you can spot unhusual creatures like the ones summoned by wizards, but even entire building belonging to different planes of existence.

This is the most strange land in the world, where dreams and reality twist togheter. Someone says it was borned when an ancient war was fought, and the magic used to summon forces by both armies left its mark here; someone else says it was borned by the dream of an ancient Dragons; Someone says both are true.
Because of these, humans don't dwell here: is too dangerous. Creatures from others planes of existence appear here, from nowhere, like a creature summoned by a spell, only to lurk for a couple of days before disappearing. Alien constructions and buildings appear into the forest, and vanish after some time. Someone says is the the land of the fairy tales, where the spirits of the forest rule undisputed: the castle floating in the sky, cloacked by clouds, where the giant defendes his treasure; a dragon who lets pass whoever can answer his riddle; a woman turned into a tree millenia ago, begging for help, and so on. Legends and myths are countless and someone tried to explore this land. Few came back from the giant forest, where trees stand still, with a strange shape and strange color. After centuries (or millenias), the storyes told by bards became the only source of informations, but noone knows if those stories are even close to the truth. Everything could be both true and false here: you can found a little girl who is a wolf under cover. You can hear whispers all around you. Everything is magic, everything is blurred. Some cats have the power to talk like an human being. A tree can decide to walk, and crawling into an ancient ruin, can bring you to discover an ancient place of another era, that, only stories can guide you.
The land itself is very big: 400 miles X 250 miles, and no one had tried to explore it.

So, i think i gave you an idea. My players are tracking a man (a powerfull one) who is trying to reach a particular place into this land in order to destroy a sigil that seals a powerfull demon (one of 13 sigils, and for now he has one of these, and he's doing a test to see if he can succed). He doesn't know the players are after him, but he is the harald of a God and he knows somehow how to walk in this land, but my players have no clues. The goal is to give them a challenging journey, with different encounters, some deadly, some simply weirds, with riddles to solve, amazing views to watch and ambiguos situations.
This land is perfect to let creativity flows, but, as i said, i'm experiencing some blocks, and i'd wish to hear your thoughts about it. Thank you very much for the time you spent reading this.

[Astromancer]

I strongly suggest giving your PCs someway of holding back the randomness. Perhaps they need to focus on a story or symbol to keep things stable around them. Alternately, they could do like the Royals of Zelazny's Amber and learn to manipulate the chaos to move toward their goals.

[Devil_Dante]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I stronglt suggest giving your PCs someway of holding back the randomness. Perhaps they need to focus on a story or symbol to keep things stable around them. Alternately, they could do like the Royals of Zelazny's Amber and learn to manipulate the chaos to move toward their goals.

don't know this book.
I'd prefer using an approach where they had less chance to influence the world around them, rather to give them the power to manipulate it, but it sounds interesting.
What kind of "powers" do they need to manipulate this chaos?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Devil_Dante

don't know this book.
I'd prefer using an approach where they had less chance to influence the world around them, rather to give them the power to manipulate it, but it sounds interesting.
What kind of "powers" do they need to manipulate this chaos?

Give them some kind of tool based on Will to work with. Let them discover it slowly and let them know the tool is quirky, dangerously so when over ambious things are attempted. Never state the rules let them deduce the rules. Note: if they get something wrong but it's cooler than what you thought up, steal it! They'll never know and the game will be better.

[evileeyore]

Randomness is bad. Different, weird, misunderstood is good. But random can get to feeling like the GM is forking with the Players.

For example, if some animals talk and some don't, there should be an identifying trait that speaking animals have that marks them as different, even if they are in a herd of 'regular' animals.

Unless the speaking animal is actively seeking to hide it's uniqueness...


Taking this one step further, have rules, the way things work and always work, unless something is actively altering it. This way the Players can slowly learn the rules and come to feel they have a measure of control over their situation even when they don't actually have that control.

Only Mages, Wizards, Sorcerers*, etc should be able to [-]control[/-] shape the Twilight Woods.





* By 'Mages' I mean 'Learned', by 'WIzard' I mean 'Skilled Wielder of Magic', by 'Sorcerer' I mean 'One With Innate Talent', etc.

[Astromancer]

That's part of what I suggested. Let it seem random but give the PCs ways to understand and handle the random.

[Devil_Dante]

yes, you are right, i was thinking about it and i agree to let magic users the chance to understand and use the rules, indeed, the man they are pursuing has a mage with him. In this way i have a good point to put this wizard as big bad villain's henchman.

At this point, i think the best bet is to create a trail, instead to a random events chart, put in only the best things.

Any idea? :) I need an external opinion, cause i can't talk with anybody, the major part of friends i would talk about it plays in one of two groups

[Dustin]

You might set this up as a "point crawl", where the GM map is a constellation of encounter areas, linked to each other by possible paths. Each path from an area should be described with some meaningful distinction, so the players' choice of where to go next isn't just random. It can also be useful to foreshadow distant locations by encountering NPCs who can describe them, finding written sources, or other evidence (rivers affected by upstream magic, corpses of those who escaped an area but perished later, etc).