Can you name these trees? They are mangroves, which create dense forests on many tropical coasts. Their branching roots create a web many feet thick above the surface of water or mud. The traveler pictured here is fortunate enough to have a boardwalk; what if your players wanted something that was in the middle of a mangrove forest, and there was no raised path? What if they had to wade through muck and pick their way slowly across the roots, anxious not to get lost? What sort of beasts might lurk in such a woods; what sort of unfriendly peoples?
It is easy to image flesh eating fish hiding beneath the roots, or a snake dropping down from a branch. The trees could be alive, their roots rising to grab a player or secreting a poison to slowly subdue and digest them. A nasty ooze lifting itself ponderously from the muck. Poison-tipped darts being blown from a pipe by an enemy skilled at climbing trees. A treasure chest dropped and abandoned in the water. A hut surrounded by shrunken heads dangling on strings.
The adventure practically writes itself, and all sparked by an image of a single ecosystem. This is what is means to let nature inspire your tabletop roleplaying games.
What Nature Brings
It is not about being more realistic. It is about being more fun.
It is about having an environment with sufficient detail to be engaging, to invite player exploration and present obstacles.
It is about providing logical consistency, allowing strategies to be made and counter-actions to be anticipated.
It is about giving nuance to a scene to evoke a sense of mystery; of wonder; of horror…
The key word is verisimilitude: the appearance of reality in fiction. Demanding less of the struts which suspend our disbelief by bracing them up with plausibility.
My name is Novina, and I am the Nature Game Master. In this blog I will share ideas and experiences from my own table, which reflect my love and knowledge of the natural world.
Readers are invited to share their own experiences in the comments. Comments are expected to be respectful, which means you are welcome to disagree as long as you are not hostile about it.
Let us explore together.
Add your thoughts