doberdevil t1_itaavf1 wrote on October 22, 2022 at 2:27 AM

Reply to comment by Zealousideal-Iron-51 in Setting a d&d game in Washington by Zealousideal-Iron-51

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.

Zealousideal-Iron-51 OP t1_itadzrs wrote on October 22, 2022 at 2:55 AM

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.