11-27-2016, 08:07 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
__________________
My Twitter My w23 Stuff My Blog Latest GURPS Book: Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves Latest TFT Book: The Sunken Library Become a Patron! |
|
11-27-2016, 09:13 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
As for the rest of your post, sounds like a good setup for a Horror (or LT monster hunting) campaign/scenario. I think you're overselling the difficulty of lighting a fire, however - you don't avoid doing so because it's incredibly difficult, you avoid doing so because it's annoying, and sometimes exhausting. Any effect that is going to cause fires to suddenly die and go completely cold, despite having fuel available, is going to make lighting new fires impossible, however, so that can be the issue. It's a sure sign there's something spooky going on if you can't light a fire, then the torch you're carrying from the next village over suddenly dies out when you bring it into town. Alternatively, it could be a sort of really strange effect, where it acts on individual fires and needs time to adapt to new ones - you can't relight your hearth with traditional methods, but you can bring fire in from elsewhere to do so... shame it'll die in a week, though. Last edited by Varyon; 11-27-2016 at 09:16 AM. |
|
11-27-2016, 09:19 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Yeah, there are rules for fire bundles in Pyramid #3/90: After the End (p. 32)
__________________
My Twitter My w23 Stuff My Blog Latest GURPS Book: Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves Latest TFT Book: The Sunken Library Become a Patron! |
11-27-2016, 10:07 AM | #14 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
Quote:
I was just rather responding to the notion that it's faster to walk for half a day (or more) to the next town/manor lord's residence for fire than to try to start your own. I'd imagine that even in a medieval town/hamlet/farm area at least one residence would try to restart their own fire rather than admit to a neighbor they let their fire go out*. * Which ranks right up there with losing your hat or not knowing where your towel is. |
||
11-27-2016, 10:11 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
__________________
My Twitter My w23 Stuff My Blog Latest GURPS Book: Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves Latest TFT Book: The Sunken Library Become a Patron! |
|
11-27-2016, 11:22 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Firestarters are Low Tech page 35. You can use any appropriate container (pp. 33-34?) to hold a few coals and avoid having to roll to start a fire ... I think a Pyramid article discussed it briefly. Anything from birch-bark to baked clay can work, with some ashes for insulation and to control the flow of air so that the coals don't go out or burn up.
Deformed births also tend to be omens, and a community with lots of stock and no scientific vets or synthetic medicines will have a lot of those. Many cultures had hearth gods or goddesses like Vesta. If they are offended/driven away/killed by the squid-things from another dimension, problems with the fire should be an early sign. Quote:
On the other hand, in agrarian societies you can list everything that most people own on one side of a piece of paper, and changes to buy a broad range of goods are infrequent. So if you pawned your firesteel to pay for your wedding, and never learned to make a firebow and stocked some good tinder to dry in the rafters, you may be out of luck as far as tools go. And remember that the FP cost of friction-based methods are calories in a world where most people don't have enough to eat and you have already lost FP to cold or hunger.
__________________
"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 11-27-2016 at 11:32 AM. |
|
11-27-2016, 02:16 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
|
|
11-27-2016, 03:22 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
An even subtler change, such as dramatically different stars, or some new stars, or even simply rotating the entire star-field, could also work. |
|
11-27-2016, 03:53 PM | #19 | |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
Quote:
Unusual bouts of sleepwalking would probably be spooky especially to those not experienced with such disorders. Classic sleep paralysis and accompanying hallucinations/delusions are the most likely real reason for night hags, alien abductions, etc. Even without the visions, it's scary enough to make one a bit phobic about going to bed at night.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
|
11-27-2016, 04:36 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
|
Re: [Horror] [Low-Tech] Hearthfires going cold and other Low-Tech spookiness
|
Tags |
horror, low-tech |
|
|