Environment and Terrain in Your Game
Combat against villains, traps and pitfalls, and the
locked door you need to get behind. These are probably some of the most common
challenges we come up against. If you’re playing a game based more on social
interaction, you will also see diplomatic challenges. What I rarely see are
environmental and terrain challenges. Surviving on a deserted island, making your
way across the perilous desert, and scaling a mountain peak are all common in
fantasy novels—and even non-fantasy novels. Oftentimes in RPGs these aspects
are glossed over or ignored altogether.
Of course this isn’t true in every game, I’m sure many of
you use environmental hazards in your campaigns. For those of you who haven’t
but are interested, today we’re gonna take a look at some ideas for adding them
to your game. There are two broad ways for you to make the environment a test
for your players, in combat and out of combat. I’ve touched on some of the out
of combat ways the environment plays a part of your story in my three part
series on using the forest in your game. We’ll look at some other things you may want to use to
affect your players.
Intense heat and intense cold come to mind first. How
often have you thought about what your PCs are wearing when they traverse the
frozen north or slog through the scorching desert? Did you players remember to
buy the cold weather gear before heading off? In Pathfinder warding off extreme
weather can be easily remedied with the endure elements spell, but what if your
caster doesn’t know it? I find that to be a quite common dilemma. Someone with
the survival skill can help mitigate the issue if no knowledgeable caster is
around, but failed fort saves add the extra effects of heat stroke or
hypothermia depending on their location.
Direction is also a common hazard when travelling in the
out of doors. Not every places has a road that leads directly to their
destination, although again I find many GMs (and I’m guilty sometimes too) will
just allow their players to make it to where they are going. When players are
on a time-sensitive mission, getting where they need to go as quickly as
possible could be the difference between life and death. If the group doesn’t
have a ranger, druid, or someone trained in survival in their group, getting
lost could be a big problem.
Piggybacking off getting lost, we have things like
starvation and thirst. Depending on the environment, food and water may be
difficult to come across. Getting lost may make things worse as their dwindling
supplies evaporate. I know a lot of people don’t keep track of the minutia of rations, but if you’re going to add these kinds of effects
to your game, you might want to keep track for a while.
Although all of these things are not directly related to
combat, they can affect it if you end up being fatigued from any of these
sources. One of the parts of the environment that makes combat more challenging
is terrain. How many times have you fought the enemy in an open room with stone
floors and little furnishings? For me it’s been way too many. So spice up your
combat with environmental hazards.
One of the easiest ways to use hazards is difficult
terrain. Whether it be scrub and roots catching your feet or uneven rocky
surfaces that you can’t get traction on, difficult terrain requires a different
strategy than just going toe-to-toe with the enemy. Abilities like freedom of
movement can make you a superstar when fighting on difficult terrain. It’s also
a great time to let guys with a high acrobatics skill keep their balance while
walking along uneven surfaces.
Higher ground is another terrain feature we don’t often
see enough of. Your archers firing down, lose a little of their oomph. Meanwhile
melee fighters can really take advantage from that rocky outcropping. You can
use this even indoors by putting tables, balconies, stages, or daises in your
room.
Cover, the bane of ranged characters, is one of the most
underused aspects of the game. Rooms tend to be square or rectangle. Alcoves,
pillars and other such obstructions are uncommon, although not unheard of. When
you’re out and about through everything from small rock formations to trees,
cacti, waterfalls, and various other obstructions can be used as cover. And in
a similar vein, concealment can also play a major role. The fight on the misty
morning moors or under the spray of a waterfall is not only epic looking but
requires more tactical thought.
When you fight monsters in a room you are usually right
on each other when combat begins. How many times has the GM started an outdoor
encounter with the combatants within forty of fifty feet of each other? What
happens when the keen-eyed elf and his band spot you overland from hundreds of
feet away? Usually feats like far shot are pointless because you usually fight
up close, but now you have a fleeing enemy firing at you from a long
range. This is also an excellent time
for range increments and mounted characters to really affect combat.
There are probably dozens of more ways environment can
help color the tone and pace of your game, but these are some of the basic
things you can think about as you weave them into your story. Have you used
environment in your games? What effect have they had on the stories you tell?
How about on combat?
Helping you explore new aspects of the game is what the
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