Bone Marshes Flooding
We’re about a month and a half away from The Bone Marshes kickstarter, and it’s time to continue jabbering about my stuff.
Last time I talked about the rotation of the marshes and how that provides a unique mapping challenge for your players.
The second part of The Bone Marshes leans more heavily on the scheduling side of things. Witness the Four Chambers of the Marshes, and the flooding therin:
Flooding
While the timekeeping above ground is kept in 4 hour chunks, the time underground is recorded in 2-hour chunks. This not only makes time underground feel different, but it also maps nicely to the flooding schedule.
The chambers flood with the tides, following a 12 hour cycle. So it floods completely twice a day, and is dry twice a day.
Here’s the schedule:
- 2 O’clock: All 4 chambers are flooded.
- 4 O’clock: Bottom 3 are flooded.
- 6 O’clock: Bottom chamber is flooded.
- 8 O’clock: All chambers are dry.
- 10 O’clock: Bottom chamber is flooded.
- 12 O’clock: Bottom 3 are flooded.
Interconnections
Notice the three tunnels leading to the surface. Those tie in directly to the Overland map, encouraging players to find other paths into the tunnels, and rewards them with shortcuts and access to special areas.
The main quest of the adventure will have the PCs visiting each chamber, and searching for the hidden Wardgems. To drive home the importance of mapping the flooding schedule the Wardgems can easily be found while the chamber is flooded, but are difficult to locate when dry.
The intent is that PCs will learn when the chambers are flooded and visit them multiple times to discover the wardgem while flooded, and later to retrieve it when dry.
Conclusion
This part of the adventure hasn’t been as heavily playtested….yet! Hopefully I can really polish things up over the holidays in time for the KS.
What do you think? Does this make sense? What would you change about this setup?
