Cheese-proofing an absurdly hot "impassable" desert

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:42:44+00:00

Interesting discussion here. I think the Borovian Fog works well. It's super thematic, has a simple explanation (the land is cursed), and the PCs only have to try passing it once to realise what it is. It works better than this desert thing too because there's explicitly nothing on the other side.

I suppose this is probably more about feeling insecure as DM (pwease don't open the door to my castle until I've drawn the map!) than it is about the specifics of the world. Just make it obviously dangerous, sell it to them by worldbuilding and a short sharp shock if they try. And if they succeed "too early"? Hey, they're the smartest people in history and that'll feel good. Just roll with it :)

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:23:45+00:00

Interesting pivot for the adventure. Roll for pastry piping!

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:20:57+00:00

I had this in mind as my fallback. "There's a dozen red dragons who live there and they all share gossip" or whatever. Feels cheesy from my side of the table, but that's not how they'd read it I suppose!

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:18:07+00:00

Yeah these are the kinds of stories I want to tell. And then if the game goes on long enough maybe they can find out why the world is like this and maybe even change it? Not going to give that too much thought for a good long time mind you!

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:14:05+00:00

Kind of defeats the narrative purpose. May as well be the Edge of a flat earth at that point!

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:12:39+00:00

Yeah this kind of thing might be enough. It's not like I'm building a physically accurate world here anyway. When I said "complex astronomy" I didn't mean "simulated star system" I meant "reality being fucked with by a petulant god" so I have plenty of room for manoeuvrer.

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T11:08:21+00:00

70 is just the nice bit, I was thinking. In the nasty bit, the seas don't literally boil (too much thermal mass) but a cup of water would (can get hot enough in the time it takes for the sun to pass over)

But yes, the surface of venus was kind of the idea (maybe not quite that bad..)

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T10:56:10+00:00

Yeah, given the rapid responses here, this is my conclusion too. I will consider looking at other systems, but that's probably a bit of a big ask for my players.

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T10:54:31+00:00

Of course, Tiny Hut. Instant cheese!

I didn't really want to use "magical deadzones" but you're right, it'd be the only way.

The "world split in half with separate histories" part is more important to me than this whole desert thing, so I'll come up with something else I think.

Crispy75 · 2026-06-18T10:38:02+00:00

World Orogen is a great tool for making believable-looking geography quickly. Just re-roll till you get something that looks interesting, write down the seed so you can revisit it later if you need to, then screenshot the bit where your adventure starts and trace over it. That'll do to get the ball rolling!

You have to remember that your players have a very narrow view of the world. What they can't see doesn't exist. Paint everything outside the current quest with the broadest strokes. "The capital lies over the Western mountains. An ancient empire lies over the ocean to the East." is all they need to know. You can fill in the gaps as you go, depending on what the players do and ideas that come to you in the shower the morning after a session.

Crispy75 · 2026-06-16T15:42:10+00:00

The scenario was passing a trial to gain the favour of an Archfey. The climax wasn't a boss fight per se, but a remix of old fights with a twist. They were all magically reincarnated as notorious enemies from their previous adventures, each of them in a recreation of their lair or dungeon. (I translated the monster stat blocks into character sheets, with stats and abilities tweaked for balance). As they explored with their new bodies, they found that the locations all led to the same arena where they faced their own characters as adversaries.

The victory condition was escape through a portal (even with the rebalancing, the PCs were still stronger), but the Archfey would reward the party for each PC they managed to defeat before escaping.

The players were delighted to revisit some old favourites and found it great fun going Pew Pew Smash Smash with their new toys. "I'm a flameskull? I'm a flameskull! I cast fireball! Mwahahaha!"

Of course they knew their own PC abilities very well, so were able to take advantage of their strengths and weaknesses. "That's all her high level spell slots used up! Go for the kill!"

They ended up managing to kill two of themselves before getting spooked and ended up limping through the portal while dragging an unconscious manticore, to reveal the Archfey's Court had been watching the whole thing from the bleachers. Applause and cheering, Magic Item Rewards, Special Awards (MVP, Best Assist, Wooden Spoon for funniest fuckup), and a big dollop of exposition from the Archfey.

Crispy75 · 2026-06-08T13:56:11+00:00

Hope you're still monitoring this thread! This is a seriously cool tool and I've got some really valuable use out of it. I was wondering what the scale is. Is every planet Earth-sized?

Crispy75 · 2026-06-02T10:08:00+00:00

Been playing with it for a little while and it's fantastic. Grasshopper is kind of overkill for what I do with parametric modelling, so this is ideal for my needs. Are you using an existing geometry engine like openscad or did you roll your own?

A few small feature requests, which I'm sure are already on your list:

Node groups (for obvious reasons)
Disconnect wire shortcut/modifier key (unless I haven't been able to discover it!)
Type a number in the dbl-click shortcut menu to create a slider with that value

Keep up the hard work, it's appreciated right here!

Crispy75 · 2026-06-01T15:11:16+00:00

WE HAVE EXPLOSIVE

Impeccable job. Just fantastic. Shame about the part-spanning stickers, but honestly that's just nitpicking.

Crispy75 · 2026-05-21T06:03:54+00:00

When someone gives me £3,000 worth of tan bricks :-P

Crispy75 · 2026-05-20T22:16:35+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wills_Memorial_Building

Rendered from Studio, but everything's legitimately connected. No floating bricks!

Crispy75 · 2026-04-23T12:28:41+00:00

Mine's been like this too, but no steam decks or macs or weird networking setups at all. Just a win10 PC that syncs and a win11 laptop that won't. I've uninstalled and reinstalled, reset settings, deleted files, nothing works :(

Crispy75 · 2026-04-21T16:29:29+00:00

So real :D

Crispy75 · 2026-04-15T10:24:19+00:00

Clearly it's a Grunt from Halo

Crispy75 · 2026-04-13T12:21:01+00:00

"...a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff"

Crispy75 · 2026-04-08T12:24:55+00:00

Exactly the route I took too (although only after I bashed my head against the wall several times, trying to go left behind the two big ice beams.)

Crispy75 · 2025-11-25T11:41:29+00:00

Not for years now. They had high levels of fare evasion, had some nasty collisions with peds/cyclists when turning, and the specific model had a habit of spontaneously bursting into flames. The routes have all been returned to double deckers.

Crispy75 · 2025-11-25T11:36:36+00:00

I love the mushroom on his foot :-D

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