Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

[tunglashr]

So I asked earlier with some help on running my WHFRP world FH game. So far its going ok. One thing I like to do is make travel treacherous, make the world a dangerous place not just some normal happy setting with all the monsters and dangers concentrated in dungeons or other contrived environments. That doesnt strike me as realistic or believable.

 

So the WHFRP world is Europe, and the players are travelling the Black Mountains between the Empire and the Border Princes. Its early fall, but I figure as they get higher up the pass it will be quite cold and snowy. There was a minor, really easy ambush from some goblins last session, so they know its full of mean creatures. I want to hit them with something else, something unexpected. I want to make them really think and fear for their lives.

 

I am thinking of an avalanche that kills their guide.

 

Problem is I know next to nothing about winter travel, snow and avalanches. One of the chars has an amulet that gives Danger Sense. It will start to glow moments before it happens, but what else? What will it sound like? How should I adjudicate it? How much damage should they take?

 

I was thinking of splitting them up and having them resort to yelling or whatever to find each other. I was also thinking of possibly burying their supply cart, so they would have to look around for it. Then when they do find it, they cant very well carry all those supplies. Some of their horses will die.

 

One of the characters is from Kislev, so snow will be natural to him, but he is from the steppes, so the mountains are unfamiliar. One is a dwarf, so he should be fine too. I dont think this will kill them, but it should test their mettle considerably. Im thinking as a reward the snowdrift will reveal a dungeon crawl that will have a piece or two of decent treasure.

 

Any ideas on this are greatly appreciated. My game is sunday and Im gonna spend as much time as I can to make it good. Thanks in advance.

[Trencher]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

First off don't let the guide be taken by an avalanche, if there is one thing any guide or any other local knows it is how to avoid them. Let a monster take him instead.

After the guide is disposed of then you can lead them into an avalanche. But remember! Avalanches are deadly atleast 6d6 normal for the outskirts maybe ten to twelve for in the middle. And unless they are really lucky they will be buried in the snow and then you die if not someone dig you out. I suggest that you let them have plenty of warning and that you let them see the enormous avalanche coming down the mountain miles away so they have a chance to run. Let them make con rolls to see if they can keep up the tempo. Maybe the avalanche is triggered by one ogre and his henchgoblins? So they can attack anyone who did not get taken by the avalanche and dig up and eat the rest later. When it comes to the cold you are right that most of the adventurers should be capable of surviving in the wintermontain let them have some survival rolls, give those who does not make them a couple of minuses to cv. Putting this together you have the Kislevite get up from the avalanche, he sees his sword lying a couple of meters from him, he reaches for it the same second he hears the screams of the approaching goblins, he is frozen and can barley move and just as he has crawled close enough to reach for the sword an huge shadow block's out the sun while an furclad foot the size of an mans torso descends on the sword.

So he has to get the sword kill the ogre, kill/chase off the goblins and find and dig up his friends before they suffocate. While frozen. And hurt.

All in a days work for a heroic son of Kiselev.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

If the avalanche is triggered intentionally, the guide is just as likely to die in it as anyone else. His experience will largely be how to not cause an avalanche, moreso than escaping one.

 

Page 298 of FREd has the temperature levels table, with the effects of exposure to cold temperatures. I would expect that the temperatures would be around -2 or -3 on the table, but I would also expect that the characters are properly prepared for this. Once the avalanche goes off, though, and their clothes are soaked with the snow, they will suffer the full consequences.

 

If you want to keep up the pressure on them, make that dungeon crawl a wet drippy mess. They'll keep on suffering the effects of the environment in there (maybe a little less, though, since it's out of the wind). Maybe part of that treasure you mentioned would be a dry place where they could build a fire....

[tunglashr]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

Ok, I like these suggestions. I think Ill have them come upon an Ogre or mountain giant after 4-5 more days of travel with increasing snow and wind and such each day. The ogre will smack his stick on the ground throughout the battle and eventually cause the avalanche. The players will see it coming but wont be able to fully prepare because they will be fighting the ogre. Then the snow will drift them away.

 

What I really need help with is adjudicating the actual avalanche. How will the mounted characters fare? How far should they be spread out?

 

I want to give the characters a chance to affect their fate, I dont want to just tell a story about what happens when they fall down a mountain in a snow drift.

[BlackSword]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

Well, depending on the severity, in a real avanlanche their chances to survive are pretty low. Anyone who moves around the mountains is very aware of the danger of avalanches. That being said, killing them all in an avalanche probably won't make for a good story.

 

Avalanches tend to move down large open areas. On a montain you may be walking through some trees and enter a large open slope. This is an avalanche flow. The snow really does need to flow so trees and such will anchor it. A player might be able to jump into a forested area and minimize how far he will fall. A player in the trees (such as a mage trying to stay out of the mess of battle) might be able to throw a rope for someone to grab onto. A more cinematic feel would be someone makeing a DEX roll to get a rope around a tree or get into a tree branch. For survival one might try to swim up the avalanche to stay on top of the flow.

 

Those who get buried will need to be found. This would be done by shoving rods into the snow and feeling until you poke a person. Equipment would be spread along the entire length of the flow, some of it buried under concrete hard snow/ice mix.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

You could go with a semi-railroad. Let the characters make some rolls, but basically decide in advance what's going to happen. The rolls just determine who it happens to.

 

Decide ahead of time what areas, if any, will be safe from the avalanche (the ogre will likely remain within sprinting distance of any safe area, like the edge of the forest as mentioned by Blacksword, unless of course, he is tough enough to withstand the avalanche). Any character that stays in the trees for whatever reason, or stays close enough and makes a Dive for Cover roll, will be unaffected by the avalanche. Let all the other guys make a DEX roll. The guy or two with the best roll takes a little damage, but is close enough to the surface of the flow to get out on his own. The guy with the worst roll is beat the hell up, unconscious, and buried pretty well. The other guys are somewhere in between, needing some help, but not incapacitated. The guys who are out and about first will need to find the others, and the most wounded guy should take a dramatically long time to find, and should need some sort of immediate medical attention when they do find him.

 

After that, they need to find as much of their equipment as they can (some will surely be lost or broken), and get on their way before they freeze.

 

Oooh! Nightfall! Gets pretty chilly after nightfall...

[PoorWandering 1]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

Or you could have the avalanche miss the party entirely. It just cuts them off. Think Donner party. When things start to get nasty you can let the weather clear for a few clear bitterly cold days. At that point the guide/dwarf/person who knows snow can notice an odd depression in the snowfield above them. A little digging will reveal the dungeon entrance. The treasure will be of secondary importance. The real reward will be the tunnel that opens up on the other side of the pass.

[Jhereg]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

The guide could sense something’s amiss and refuse to go further. Since the PCs have to go on, they’d have to continue without the guide. Then when they get hit by the avalanche, there’s that delightful sense of “We should have listened to the guideâ€.

[The Mad GM]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

Large avalanches can travel up to 150 mph, according to a PDF I just saw. They mention skiing and loud noises as setting them off. Perhaps the ogre and his cronies have specially tuned horns they use near susceptible areas (the PDF also lists the perfect conditions). Apparently wind piled drifts on top of several layers of snow and remelt are key, as well as angle of the ground. Anything over 35-40 degrees from horizontal is suspect. Trouble areas can be hundreds of feet across, so dive for cover might be out of the question if the ogre knows what he's doing.

The guide might sniff the air, tell them "be quiet, this is avalanche territory", moments before the horns sound.

If they are on the slab of moving snow, they'll feel the snow suddenly move under their feet, then the surface breaks up and it's like standing in cotton, and the snow really hits the fan. Trying to 'ride' it is a near superhuman feat, more luck than anything else.

If they are below it, they will see a crown of rapidly moving snow descending like white death at unimaginable speeds (Remember that before cars, the only way a medieval person went over 40mph was jumping off a cliff). One main problem is being carried off of cliffs and into crevasses and such. A few seconds at a hundred miles an hour can sweep you hundreds of feet. Disorientation isa big problem for those who stay on top (and by on top, I'm talking within a couple of feet of the air and able to wriggle free.

From my own (very limited) experience of the European Alps, the things you should stress are the enormous expanses of uninhabited areas (and this was modern Europe). It was a shock to me, who always thought of mountains as being covered by trees and apple cider stands. There were snow covered areas in July, so by fall you could easily be talking about potential avalanche conditions.

[BlackSword]

Re: Help GMing travel through a mountain pass...

 

A great excuse to share some pictures. Here are some pictures from when I was climbing in the Cascades in WA. As Mad said, there is nothing to speak of for miles.

MC001 you can see two climbers walking under a large rock outcropping, yes those two little dots are people.

MC002 is a windswept snow field. The wind can brutal. Its early morning, but you can already see what a nice reflector the snow can be. A huge concern in mountain regions is snow blindness. You are a at a higher altitude and have light reflecting from a near perfect reflector, without eye protection you will quickly go blind. I believe older techniques were to cut a thin slit in leather and put that over the eyes so the field of view is reduced.

MC003 is the first two people on my ropeteam and looking up towards the peak. Notice how we are completely supported by the snow. We are actually wearing Crampons, metal spikes on our boots which give us purchase in hard snow. On the trip back the sun had begun to soften the snow, which gave us a second problem. We were breaking through the thin layer of hard frozen snow and 'post holing' which takes about twice as much energy to move. The rope team of ladies were light enough that they didn't have any problem with post-holing.

ED001 is two climbers in my group starting to head across a glacier (we were bad, we didn't tie up).

ED002 is looking across the range, and above the clouds. Its a bit surreal to actuall be above clouds.