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doberdevil t1_it9wpvm wrote

Good comments here.

Are you looking for general ideas to make the story realistic based on the setting or some very specific details?

General - you may be able to weave some of this into the story just to provide some feeling of the area:

  • As stated, trees and moss. It's very green here, year round. Then you also have real mountains, so you'll have higher altitudes with lots of snow.
  • Wet. Not much hard rain like in the midwest, mostly drizzle and always damp (Generally. This will depend on the season)
  • The evergreen trees and moss and dampness combine to give a pretty distinct forest smell if you want to add that into your story. Sorry, not good at describing it, maybe someone else can help here. It's pleasant though.
  • In the summer, we have very long daylight hours. In the fall and winter, we have very few daylight hours.
  • The light here is different. Yes, when it's cloudy it's gray, but we have times where it looks like you're wearing blue tinted glasses. Best captured in photos, but when you see it, it's pretty striking.
  • Visuals that give that PNW feeling is neon lights reflected in puddles at night. So, maybe if we're talking about magic or magical items, they could look the same way as neon light reflections.
  • Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Drive through espresso stands, even in the middle of nowhere.
  • The forests are very quiet, it can be spooky.
  • King county is huge. Not sure how precise you're looking for regarding location, but there are plenty of very isolated places in King County.

Maybe if you give some prompts about the story we can help with some details. Or, if you see a specific location on google earth and point it out, maybe someone is familiar with it.

It's before your timeline, but check out some episodes of the old show Twin Peaks to get an idea of the rainy season and some of the gloominess.

Edit: Check out the Dumb and the Restless podcast. I haven't listened to them, but the description says they discuss strange and apocalyptic things in Washington State. Last episode was a few years ago, but the episode descriptions look like they may interest you.

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doberdevil t1_it9xruc wrote

And lots of crows. I'm more in the Seattle area, but where I live we have 10s of thousands of crows living nearby. Crows are magical, right? ;)

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Zealousideal-Iron-51 OP t1_ita1g29 wrote

Really appreciate these details. Especially the environmental/visual descriptions. And yeah I was thinking this morning about checking out twin peaks.

To give specifics on the game I’m running, I’ve taken the starter set adventure module (Lost Mine of Phandelver) and rewrote parts of it to make sense in a relatively modern day world.

If for some reason one of my players is hear stop reading lol. But some of the important areas include: a cave in the wilderness that a branch of a goblin gang is operating out of.

a small town abandoned in the late 1800s (after an earthquake that I might have slightly changed the epicenter of to make it work for the story) that people have just started to reuse in recent years, so it’s a small unincorporated town.

A human gang’s HQ in the cellar/connecting cave of an abandoned manor in said town from its original inhabitants.

An abandoned very small town (technically a village) that was abandoned shortly after the eruption of Mt St Helens in 1980. The ash that covered much of the village was infused with some sort of dark magic, causing a small infestation of zombies that led to the town being abandoned and a government cover up with only some knowing of the incident as a vague biological contaminant in the area. Since then other dangerous creatures (invasive plant monsters, invasive giant spiders, a young dragon + cultists that tracked it there) have claimed the fenced off area as their own

An old forgotten dilapidated British fort in the forest from the early 1800s that the goblin gang uses as their main HQ

An old 1800s mine that was lost after said earthquake (a large scale magical battle in the mine actually caused said earthquake)

Also if you’d like to know the characters the players are playing as:

Dirk Hoffman, Hobgoblin Fighter: he’s an agent of CMOB (Chicago Magical Observance Board) which keeps magic from becoming public knowledge in the Midwest. He’s tracked a wizard from the Midwest to this area and is after him for selling illegal and dangerous magical items to humans who are unaware of magic. Is also doing a job for a dwarf friend in the area (Gregory Rockseeker) which brings him into the story

Raven Brawen, Fairy Druid: she’s a fairy that used to live in an old Irish forest before moving to the new world. Nowadays she runs a sort of oculty bookstore in Seattle but also works as a witch for hire (was hired by Rockseeker)

Soleil, Changeling Bard: a twitch streamer that goes hiking in their free time. Was planning a hiking/camping trip at Mt Rainier when they came across a Craigslist ad for this aforementioned job, so decided to take it since it’s on their way there

Cheese, Warforged Ranger: (was unnamed until the first session when Soleil named him Cheese). A highly secretive early prototype of Amazon’s Alexa. Their original design was a full on humanoid robot, but they used a power source that, unbeknownst to them, was drawing on powerful nature magic. Because of a magical glitch in the robot’s reasoning, he broke out of the Amazon building he was in and escaped to the forest, where his power source got him to full charge. Afterwards he stumbled across Rockseeker, and mistook him for one of his creators, and with his first priority being to assist, he ended up on the same job as the other player characters

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doberdevil t1_itaavf1 wrote

Wow, I don't do D&D, but if this was a book or series of books I wouldn't be able to give you money fast enough. Absolutely love what you've got going on here!

If you can be hand-wavy about location there should be some good places to riff on. As far as I know, caves aren't a big thing here. They exist, but aren't as common as they are in places like Missouri where I grew up.

However, check out the Ape Caves near Mt. St. Helens for a good example of the types of caves we have. I think it's a pretty popular hiking destination, but I think it's called Ape Caves because a tribe of Sasquatch used to live there.

You could also check out the Big Four Ice Caves. But that's a pretty popular hike and having been there, doesn't lend itself very well to anything spooky or magical, especially circa 2014.

But there are plenty of old mines and towns that grew and died around them. Check out Monte Cristo Ghost Town for an example. Mines leave behind toxic waste - this is documented on government geological surveys (or whatever official documents track this kind of thing). But who's to say these government documents haven't been falsified to cover up something more sinister?

The Snoqualmie Tunnel is a 2.3 mile tunnel through a mountain. It was used by the railroad in the old days, but now it's on a popular "Rails to Trails" type of hike. The tunnel is completely dark. Pretty easy to hide a secret portal that leads somewhere else.

I don't know about British Forts, but I'd bet they existed based on some other things I know about like the Pig War - which reminds me about something else - huge bodies of water and islands, and big things that live in large bodies of water.

Check out Highway 2 in google maps/earth. There are a few smaller towns along it, and I'm sure you could find something that could fit. I'm more familiar with that area than south King County, but there are quite a few smaller logging towns all over.

The aforementioned Sasquatch is the most popular cryptid around these parts, but the lesser known Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus shouldn't be forgotten. They're pretty tame though, and relatively harmless. They are a favorite snack for Sasquatch.

Finally, you could check out Native American legends for ideas about other types of animals and stories about them. Speaking of which, the true name for the big volcano near Seattle is Tahoma. Some people call it Mt. Rainier, but IMO that's just the name of a local beer.

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Zealousideal-Iron-51 OP t1_itadzrs wrote

Oh wow thank you. There’s a lot to work with here so I appreciate it.

I especially love the idea of a Tree Octopus. Might end up using that if I need to come up with something strange for them to encounter while they’re in the woods

And yeah I saw that about Mt Tahoma while I was looking up info about it as well as indigenous history of the area (since even though it’s just a game amongst friends I wanted to avoid being somehow accidentally insensitive or otherwise dumb about using the areas they’re from/live in for the game). But yeah after finding out about the the name and the push from natives to get the name changed I thought I might as well just retcon all that so that it’s always been known as Tahoma in-game, but used Rainier here just in case it wouldn’t be clear.

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doberdevil t1_it9zdwi wrote

Depending on how far down this rabbit hole you want to go: /r/DumbRestlessPod

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Zealousideal-Iron-51 OP t1_ita3li7 wrote

Ooh this sounds cool. Even if I wasn’t running this game I listen to a lot of podcasts while at work so will definitely be giving this a listen

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