Gm Inspiration - Tumblr Posts
Non-Boring Environments that need Fantasy Representation
Tropical Rainforests
Scrubland/Dry Forests. For extra effect make them the sort that burn very often; some native plants never germinate until after a fire, and some animals not only rely on fire to smoke out prey, but may even start them themselves.
Savannas/Tropical Grasslands
Temperate Rainforests. I almost didn’t include this bc New Zealand is covered in them, and that’s where they filmed Lord of the Rings. But tbh, no one really knows about them, so it belongs here
Taiga Forests
Barren Tundra, perfect for some extreme seasonal dichotomy
Polar Ice Sheets
Desert-Grasslands (arguably the same as Scrubland but Australia’s good at adding its own twists)
Barren Desert
If you like Cacti, look at American Deserts like the Sonoran
Salt Flats
Soda Lakes and Alkaline Lakes
Madagascar’s Karst Limestone Formations
Madagascar’s Spiny Forests
Madagascar’s Baobab Forests
Madagascar’s Subhumid Forests (Madagascar is cool as hell ok)
Danxia Landforms
Badlands/Mountainous Deserts
Steppes and Highland Prairies
Flood Basalts
Newly-Formed Islands, still rife with Volcanic activity
Now for Underwater Environments, sure Coral Reefs are cool.
But there are SO MANY other kinds of environments for aquatic settings, it’s unbelievable:
Seaside Cliffs
Archipelagos. Not just Tropical Island chains like Polynesia (Moana anyone?) but also Coldwater Archipelagos like the Aleutians.
Tidal Flats
Bayous/Cypress Swamps
Tropical River Basins, AKA Seasonally Flooded Rainforests
Mangrove Swamps/Deltas/Beaches
Kelp Forests
The Open Ocean
Coastal Seabeds
Rocky Beaches with Tidepools
And there are a LOT more I could name but this post is already obscenely long as is, if you’d like to toss in your own go right ahead, but my point is if you limit yourself to European Deciduous Forests you’re a wimp.
“I think there’s a rich ream of horror, from The Haunting of Hill House to Ghostwatch, that delves into the idea that certain places can simply go wrong – and once these bad environments have been established and ostracised by society, they can’t be exorcised. They simply keep accruing power through the individual stories that play tragically out in their shadow.
“I mention a real-life example of that kind of bad architecture in one episode; the Pope Lick Bridge in Kentucky, a place that looks and feels so sinister that it developed its own local folklore about a goat-man who attacks people who stray too close to the edge – and which has ended up resulting in deaths as visitors peer over the side trying to get a peek at the monster.
“I find this kind of stuff fascinating, because it plays into my own paranoia about environments, and my dislike of ghost stories with explicably human antagonists. Like David says in the first episode, people aren’t frightening. Places are frightening.
“If I’m sitting alone at home on a dark and stormy night, and I glance nervously up towards the bedroom doorway, my fear is not that my house is being haunted by a spirit called Mabel who died in the 19th century at the age of fourteen and is constantly seeking her favourite teddy bear… because all of these details both humanise her and make her ridiculous.
“My fear is that there will be something standing in the doorway, because the doorway is where things come to stand.
“Because unoccupied spaces, in our imaginations, must find something to fill them.”
— Jon Ware, from “The Saturday Interview: ‘I Am in Eskew’ podcast”
I have asked around and these are some of the biomes that people feel are missing from fantasy, mostly tabletop RPGs but general fantasy too. Names in the descriptions.
masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved
these are all creatures to me
Cool dungeon features to make the underworld feel even more weird and cool:
An underground lake. There's a boat moored on the shore. Should the characters get in the boat and follow the flow of the stream, they'll eventually find themselves in what seems like a wide open underground ocean, under a starlit sky. Or if those lights are not stars, what are they?
A forest of mushrooms, tall as trees. Almost like a mockery of the type of fairy tale forest one would hear about in stories from the surface. There's a babbling brook. There's a whole ecosystem of fungal creatures mimicking surface life. Flying mushrooms the size of owls hunting small mushrooms in the shape of rodents. Lumbering fungal deer roam in herds. Is this by design or accident?
An underground city, seemingly abandoned. Everything suggests that there were once people here, living in houses carved into the stone, until they suddenly just weren't there. Shadowy figures seem to stalk the streets, but always flee when a light is shined on them. There is a strange blue light shining on the top floor of a tower in the center of the city.
Idk
