It should be fairly obvious at this point that I'm generally a fan of
using undead. However, the location that undead are used in is also
important for establishing the mood of a session. As I result, I'll
be talking about some key things to consider in such a case and focus
on the difference between a location that is empty and a location
that is dead.
How Is Dead Different from Empty?
The difference between these two words and their meaning is
important, particularly when dealing with a location that was hit by
a catastrophe (large undead typically result from a catastrophe). If
a place is empty, it feels like no one was there before. That sounds
obvious, but it is distinctly different from a location being dead. A
dead location was once alive and there should be evidence that
suggests what the place looked like in life. Depending on the
location (even the amount of time passed since the catastrophe
occurred), the impression and approach will be different. If the city
has been abandoned for centuries, the grandeur it once could be gone
and torn away by looters. On the other hand, an area hit by a fresh
catastrophe could look exactly the way it looked before but lacking
characters. Each of these will lead to a different mood and overall
different feeling game.
Empty
I don't have anything against the idea of a location being empty. A
small area hit by a catastrophe (giant magic accident, maybe?) could
have been abandoned by even the animals that would normally be there.
Such a situation can be very eerie for the players, especially if
they are used to bustling cities. Another example could be a mostly
empty and difficult to inhabit place (extreme desert or arctic). The
emptiness in these cases would make finding something that much more
exciting, even if the find is rather mundane by the standards of a
city (e.g. finally seeing an animal or a person).
How to Create a Dead Location?
If you want to make a location that feels like it was once alive but
then died, I feel that you have to consider what it was like in life.
The easy way in such a case is to create the location as if it was
alive and then go through the steps that lead to its death. A city
that died from disease may look completely different from a city that
died due to an undead army, a regular army or simply fell into
disuse. The process that would be applied to the city in each of
these cases would most likely be different. It will take more work
than just coming up with the final product but doing so helps me come
up with more details as well as flesh out the location. It's
important to do the same with special rooms. Is the dust even or are
there rather fresh footprints and drag lines when entering an old
room in a tomb? Are there scorch marks from torches on the wall?
What's the smell like? Are there nicks in the wall from furniture
that was moved? Scratches in the floor? Broken pieces of pottery on
the floor (broken during quick looting)? Are the people who lived
there still there (body in the corner or as skeletons)? Are there the
broken remains of 4 bunk beds but only 3 skulls on the ground?
Applies to Characters Too
The same kind of approach works for characters too. If you have an
evil character, I find I achieve better results if I start with a
character that is good or neutral and then apply a process. This way,
I'm forced to write the backstory and really think about the
character. I also like to do this for characters that are older.
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