Swamps and Wetlands | Adventuring Environments | D&D | Web DM
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- čas přidán 11. 05. 2021
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Swamps. Bogs. Fens. Mires. Wetlands. They're some of the most miserable environments to trudge through, and that's why you should definitely make your players explore there. Here's all of our inspiration for building D&D and TTRPG worlds and adventures in Wetlands!
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Written & Hosted by Jim Davis and Jonathan Pruitt
Produced and Directed by Emma Lambert
Edited by Brandon Fraley
Web DM was created by Travis Boles, Jonathan Pruitt, and Jim Davis
Art by Thomas Tanner www.thomastannerart.com
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We fixed the title y'all, we'll get through this.
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Dam I was here for the stamps
I was wondering what stamps had to do with TTRPG's
Hail the Bog of Eternal Stench!!!
would love to hear a full episode on natural disasters and noncombat threats: hurricanes, flash flooding, tornadoes, dust storms, mudslides, forest fires, etc. What's the damage/consequences? what's the key to survival against the wrath of mother earth in overwhelming odds?
Could you speak up or turn the mic up for the guy on the left? I'm new to the channel so idk if he's sick or something but the gravely voice is hard to hear.
somehow "ad-mire" is the one that really got me
nice
Thanks! I'm proud of this one.
I think Jim repeating Bayou self was what got me.
I'm glad Pruitt also couldn't handle it.
Even Pruitt couldn't handle his pun proficiency!
Sometimes I'm too much for me, yes.
Pruitt's opening puns are gold. Had me laughing till I couldn't take any moor.
"Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was stamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a stamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It stuck onto the stamp. So, I built a second one. That stuck onto the stamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then stuck onto the stamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands."
im sorry what
@@kaseybennett7415 I think the title used to say "stamp" instead of swamp per their pinned comment about fixing the title. He's also quoting something I've heard before, but i can't remember where it's from
@@prophetofbeans6781 I think I prefer it without context honestly
@@kaseybennett7415 It's a scene from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
Pruitt, those puns have a Jim Davis stamp of approval.
"What are you doing on my stamp?!"
Imagine Leeches the size of Snakes. Wading through the water, you feel a sharp pain on your leg, you lift up your leg to find a Leech coiled around it from your thigh to your ankle.
HP drain or HD drain, hmmm... good idea...
I had an idea for a Guild Artisan Ranger who reflavored Swamp to Sewer and was basically a member of Waterdeep's Pest Control.
That's amazing and disgusting gg
Yeah! I'm catching whiffs of Warhammer FRPG's Rat Catcher career. Did you have a small but vicious dog?
@@WebDM I did not. It was one of my many ideas for PCs that I stored away in my character folder. Originally he was going to be Hunter with Beasts as his Favored Foe. Protecting the city from rats, snakes and gators.
I can't wait to collect all the stamps in my game!
My DM was just running a Stamp and it sucked the boots right off our feet since it was so sticky
Stamp collecting D&D mashup is the hobby all nerds have been waiting for
We should have Web DM stamps now.
@@WebDM NFTs that look like stamps?
**gestures to the pull 100% completion has on a lot of people in non-tabletop RPG games**
Be careful with that wish spell.
"It's a pain in the ass to get around in"
*laughs in Fromsoft*
Ah yes. Stamps. My favorite adventuring environment. Got that free 2-day travel time with Arcanazon.
Arcanazon Prime has free same day teleportation on select items!
I got turned on to you guys during possibly the most trying time of my life, and when I couldn’t work, I was on my buddy’s couch, and I would binge watch your channel as a form of necessary escapism. Every time I hear Pruitt intro followed by the drums, I feel relief and gratitude wash over me. It’s silly but I don’t think we’re in charge of how our bodies remember or respond to things. Thanks y’all, from Ca.
Don't forget that there are coastal wetlands other than mangrove forests. Make your characters have to navigate a salt marsh and not only do they need to get through grass that can be over their head while trudging through dense mud but they need to contend with a water level that changes with the tide.
Inb4 the STAMPede of stamp jokes
I was always fascinated with the hound of the baskervilles and Sherlock traveling across the moor, very dark and gothic environment.
Stamps! My favourite terrain!
They come from the compost office.
It's a difficult terrain to lick.
Yay!!! My favorite terrain to use in DnD. Such a great selection of biodiversity and amazing monsters! So glad to hear y’all’s thoughts!
I want to highly recommend the OSR Module Fever Swamp. Full of great monsters and adventuring scenarios.
I missed the outtakes. Thanks for the video! Now I want to run an encounter with a dire fish named Big Billy Bass
Do it!!!
Call me Stamp Thing
Vash the Swampede
Its Wednesday! Another Web DM episode to put a smile on my face. :)
Daww
Ah yes, time for the campaign where the monsters defend their swamp from humans.
Shrek?
One of the things that comes to mind for me is treants. Almost every treant I've seen in a game was in your stereotypical temperate forest. But trees grow in a lot of other environments, so you could have a type of treant in swamp. I think one of the most memorable of these is when, in the Skull & Shackles AP, the party encountered a Palm Tree treant (Palm Treant? ;D ). That campaign was years ago but I still recall that moment because it was different than your bog-standard (pun intended) treant.
Good idea!!!
Love this video. My whole campaign takes place in a massive swamp/wetland that is populated by the various Dragonborn groups. and it is all on the ruins of an ancient Yuan-ti empire that dots the region itself. It has been fun thinking of travel - there are no beasts of burden in the classical sense instead it has a very venice like feeling with boats of all sizes being the form of travel almost exclusively. It has been a great challenge as a DM to do away with all the classical fantasy tropes in this case..
Awesome! Glad you like it
While most think of the warm swamps, a cold fen is one of the nastiest hazards that can be thrown at some players if you add in the cold rules as well
Great point!
Click the bell icon if you want to see more of their upload spelling mistakes in the future
In the world I’m making now there’s a large area in the middle of the game world known as the “Misty Deep” it’s technically both a swamp and marsh depending on where you are in it. The reason this place is so scary and designed to be avoided is that the mist in the swamp is so thick that along with the trees it makes the swamp so dark and humid that creatures from the deep sea often migrate into it, giving a great opportunity to incorporate the most dangerous deep sea creatures into terrestrial gameplay, I think it will be interesting. (Plus I have loads of lore around the place to be found)
Aight the "Bayou-self" line made me laugh, not gonna lie
A black dragon in a bog would make things so damn acidic within five miles. Imagine the venting steam. Just the smell and color would alert seasoned monster hunters, though, so it would make sense for the black dragons to adapt and tone it down depending on the season and surroundings.
One thing that worked for me was starting a two-shot game with seven players, each playing seven dwarves, and having them create key members of a dwarf colony in a salt marsh. It was just off to the side of a river delta. The players did make key members of that colony’s upper management, and they were instrumental in holding the stone causeway at the gate of the coal mine. They also mined for iron and copper, and traded their many resources for tin and aid from the capital city of Brindeszreen, where Moradin himself was said to rule in person.
Anyway turned out “Moradin” was a hill giant soaking up demigod powers from all the worship. But a cleric of Moradin among the players, having seen some of the world and the goodness in others, was contacted by the imprisoned Moradin somewhere else. And the real Moradin acted as that player’s Stand, while the players accidentally unleashed an awakened chunk of Arambar in the city of the Poser!Moradin... but that’s all another story for another time. Good time though.
Great episode guys! Jim I love the idea of making the natural wildlife monstrous!
Some of it already is! With regards to inspiration...Never take our natural world for granite, unless you're a geologist.
Your episodes about exploration are always my favorite. They always have tons of solid info on how to bring these places to life.
Thank you so much! We love em
One of my favorite adventure locations was a little goblin village built on a series of floating islands in a swamp. The islands weren't stable enough to support a medium creature but could hold a goblin pretty reliably. They laid some planks to create little walkways for visiting medium creatures, but the walkways also funneled creatures into kill zones so they could be peppered with arrows if they caused trouble.
I like stamps:). Love you guys! Im sure this will be a fantastic video!
Like a walk in the park...of Dagobah.
Time to make a mimic that is a boat beached along a sodden swamp road.
Im running a campaign right now where a Black dragon was killed by a group of Paladins. Once the fight was over, only 2 Paladins limped out. Now there are Necromancers slinking into the swamp to find the body to make a dracolich and the party is tasked to destroy the dragons rotting corpse.
Can you say dragon zombie?!?!? No breath weapon but still highly dangerous. I just was looking for some answers on how to travel in the swamp or some other ideas. You won my sub. Thank you guys!!!
That thumbnail got me.
Allll the stamps!!
#STAMPS4ALL
People will be so confused with these comments after they fix the title
If they wanted clarity, they should have come and hung out in the comments the literal minute the video posted.
Or ring the bell!
Surely we can stamp out any confusion if needed.
This is the most actionable goddamn terrain content I have come across since I read Stormwrack in 3.5e. Great job, WebDM crew!!!!!
That's a high compliment! Thank you!
On a note for the giant animal bit, Titanic heirons which hide their bodies in the canopies while you can pass through their legs on a boat in a swamp, anything really shiny gets targeted first with an iron like beak that hurdles from 50ft or so up and lifts the poor shy thing up before trying to get it. And while it does so it attacks with what the party thought were trees.
Swamps, bogs, and wetlands oh my. The smells of the swamp from sweet to sewage. 110% humidity you can see the tiny drops of water in the air. Predators like to hunt water holes. Hangman's tree is not evil just hungry. That's why my druidic groove is in a swamp. On the north of a ridge it drops to a karst area off a bluff. Down in the swamp the ferns grow over 6 feet tall. You wouldn't know till a creature is 30 feet away. Lots of trees that have fallen over make odd scary shapes at distance. Thimble berries grow in the lowland swamp. My swamp wasn't cut and is still old growth. My druidic groove is based on real area Seney Wildlife refuge. With mammoth and dire bear.
Am here for the stamps!
STAMP4ALL!
Swamps are probably great for agriculture. Especially given all that peat. Peat burns pretty good too.
Oh f*! I hadn't considered changing water level due to things like tides!
Really, I think a good mark of you running wetlands right is players detouring around them and/or being visibly relieved to be out of them and very much appriciate the ideas to help make my wetlands into appropriately difficult locations.
hey. hey pruitt? yeah, that intro should be illegal. That was an egregious correct misuse of puns. Im proud of the monster you created.
dm: you're traveling through an obscenely humid swamp, roll constitution checks
Rogue: 8
Bard: 1
Barbarian: 25
dm: Rogue, you're palms are sweaty (knees weak, arms are heavy), make your sleight of hand and thieve's tools checks with disadvantage for the day. Bard, sweat pours out of every pore on your body until you start crying sweat. You smell worse than a sunbathing zombie, so all seduction attempts automatically fail until you take a bath. Barbarian, the magical mud rejuvenates your skin washing way 20 years of blood-soaked wrinkles. You feel full of life and ready to adventure, gain an extra hit die for the day.
18:40 TIDBITS
This video was released at a perfect time. I was just brainstorming an adventure location and I thought "What if a whole country was a sluice box?"
A video so good that I had to hit re-peet.
Me after listening to the Swamp puns intro...
I sinker and think "For peat's sake" ;)
I couldn't help myself. But a game I'm currently playing in a friends home brew, with a lot of swampish terrain, near a coast. Great timing Web DM. You guys made my day
I live in the bayou region. I did some boat tours and I can't possibly imagine how uncanny it would be to march in, or canoe in, at night, with no GPS, and no sun screen, and no bug spray.
The Bayou has been grounds for some amazingly innovative tactics from old IRL wars as well. Demolition of vital bridges to cut supply routes, or circumventing enemy forces by naval insertions. it's a daunting thought to consider dredging thru with no other options to go around. Quite a demoralizing terrain to break the player's spirit.
So I guess the next videos will be Plains, Islands, and Mountains now. 😛
I'm an avid stamp collector, despite how fetid and monster filled they get
We need a line of swamp monster stamps now...
Ha! I literally had dire beavers in my last adventure 3weeks ago. Beavers are written 'Biber' in german. So the leader had to be called Justin.
A true evil overlord, lol!
“Bayou self.” That one took work. Well done.
i love that part in fury road too, especially since it was just a few seconds. i definitely want to more about that community
Pruitt mentioned how creepy real world swamplands etc can be, but then again transferring this environment to the fantasy realm suddenly alligators are not the scariest things you can run into. You mentioned potentially oozes and mummies - and I also think one of the chromatic dragons actually favors swamplands as is habitat (can't remember if its the black or the green dragon, but I think its one of the two) and so if you have a random encounter in a swamp you might be praying to run into something like an alligator, given the alternatives.
I live in GA, in the southeast US and in the southeast of our state we have the Okefenokee Swamp park that you can visit and they have these things called "swamp tromps" or something along those lines, and its going out with a ranger guide walking through the swamp. Ostensibly on a "trail," but you're climbing over roots and depending on the most recent precipitation you can be walking in water up to your shins in places - and again, like Pruitt said, that can be unnerving enough - but just imagining what all from the D&D world could be crawling/stalking around out there means you could really make this type of environment a major challenge for a party of even experienced PCs from a psychological point of view (giving exhaustion out if they characters don't have optimal forms of transportation or they just don't have a choice and just have to slog it). This could even tie in to the Ravenloft-esque horror focused stuff that D&D is releasing soon - seems like a perfect setting for adventures set beyond the mists.
Great topic again guys - keep up the good work!
Your reference to the new Von Richten's Guide to Ravenloft in relation to swamps and wetlands makes me want to make a Domain of Dread around the old Universal monster, "The Creature From the Black Lagoon."
Instead of a dedicated residence like most Darklords, the Creature can just stalk the wetlands within its Domain. Maybe even include a Swamp of Sadness, for... you know... reasons.
That prologue :D I cracked as well
As a DM I have run the giant pelican encounter for my table. Was one of the most memorable encounters of our campaign that just ended :)
How dare you put Artax and atreyu in the thumbnail. I can't cry anymore today.
Thank you guys so much for making this video it’s helped me tremendously with the island “aka Half sized Australia” I’m building
This is awesome, thanks!
Just in case you have a player like me...
Marshes are different from bogs and fens, as the latter are fed by precipitation and groundwater, resulting in a completely different plant assemblage.
As someone who lived in Florida swamps are one of my least favorite places to be both IRL and D&D but one of my favorite to run when DMing
Funny, but horrifying idea: a goose-hydra. The hissing, the weird serrated tongue, the poop...
I just had a terrible Idea. Put a Trapper under the surface of a swamp, make the party attracted to it's gold and boom. Instant panic.
Great vid guys!!! SO MANY IDEAS!
Thank you Paul!
Woooah nice to see you guys advertising grim hollow. Big fan of their work.
This came out just in time, taking some new players onto a swamp on Monday! Awesome advice as always
Have a good session!
I've got a post apocalyptic game planned where the world experienced a magic nuclear winter, and I cant wait to have my players trudge through a frozen, radiation laced, swamp
DM's have an odd obsession with gross locales. I've never once played in a campaign where we didnt go into the sewers or the swamp (or stamp) at least twice.
I actually haven't used a swamp yet on my players lol
Bayou self. I see what you did there. Good stuff.
Ironically, I just read a minecraft Nintendo blurb about swamps on the Switch news. Swamps must be trending.
Everyone is mucking about with swamps it seems.
In before Stamps get Swamped.
Talking about the giant crane encounter... It was definitely a terrifying encounter in Pikmin!
The bog hag in Legend, Bog of Eternal Stench in Labyrinth
I saw some wetlands and swamps on the fringes of the jungles of Panama when I was in the military in the early 90s. The black saltwater swamps near the coasts were the things of nightmares (or a good movement challenge. If you want something to look up for a terrain hazard, google "Black Palm." It has long thorns, and loves growing on muddy slopes (right were DEX checks are most necessary).
Planning on doing an Egyptian themed campaign soon, so definitely will draw on this for some river adventures. Also I'd be really interested in listening to a desert episode.
One concept that so rarely gets play is Swamp Merfolk. Why shouldn't mermaids and mermen inhabit fresh water?
In my homebrew setting, an undead warlord walked across the sea with an entire army of undead, killing everything he encountered. It got so bad, an entire undersea empire collapsed, and loads of refugees scattered to the four tides. A bunch of them swam upstream into the river systems of this one island nation (fantasy Britain).
So wherever there's water, you'll find pockets of merfolk hanging out, doing their own thing and mingling with land-dwellers. A bunch of them live in the swamps, marshes, bogs, and fens. Simply because it's a large, wet place to live with loads of food.
I imagine even freshwater merfolk consider the swamp merfolk to be a little weird. Whereas the saltwater merfolk back out in the sea consider all freshwater merfolk to be terribly uncultured. The yokels living in _literal_ backwater communities, who wallow in mud and know nothing of the great oceanic empires of old.
The mer in merfolk/ mermaid means ocean, so maybe "mirefolk" and "miremen"?
Thanks again my dudes! Happy wednesday :p
Never froget a Wednesday, my dudes!
I LIKE THIS STAMP
Does it have your stamp of approval?
@@WebDM indeed it does, as I am in fact, not a cat
Quicksand. Alligators, snakes. Non-aggressive birds, insects, what else?
Had a few sessions in a swampy marshland a few months ago and my players were expecting the usual monster fare but boy were they surprised when the giant crocodile they thought they were going to battle got snatched up by my giant re-skinned Roc, Whooping Crane.
pun power, in that intro XD
Check out Barrowmaze for a dungeon crawl set in Wetlands
This terrain type series actually ties in with a homebrew fix for ranger I've been working on.
Basically the ranger gives up hunters mark, favored foe, favored enemy, and natural explorer. In return they get to pick one of six Mana "colors" at levels 1, 6, and 14. The five colors of MtG, with just about every terrain, creature type, and background / class tied to the color of mana you'd find on a magic card version of that creature or land.
Plus colorless for constructs, massive cities, elder evils, great old ones, monks, archmages, and astral dreadnoughts.
While in terrain tied to their mana colors they get all the ribbon benefits of natural explorer, they get their int mod worth of languages spoken by creatures of each of their mana colors, when traversing the terrains or dealing with creatures tied to their colors they have advantage on dex, wis, and int ability checks, and they deal 1d6 extra damage on one attack every turn against creatures of their mana colors.
It alleviates the "you picked wrong" issues of the phb ranger by giving 6 broad catagories to pick from instead of a dozen minor categories you'll only ever get 2 or 3 of. Also, it frees up concentration and bonus actions for rangers by killing hunters mark and making a baseline equivalent.
I know this is a year old now, but do you have a link?
@@raz802 I have a rough draft written on a word doc on my PC, but I should go back over it and put it on Google docs with a public link. I'll get back to you.
@@CitanulsPumpkin Yanno, I'm actually retooling the game for my ranger player right now and that would be really useful to glance over. Thanks : )
@@raz802 Okay, here it is.
docs.google.com/document/d/1A_qpLLaX5UjNrVHPgTune_gVrLRaNv3pC8nIwTldIpg/edit?usp=sharing
I've played around with a few minor details, but the main idea has stayed the same.
That intro was righteous..
Were-crocodiles!!!
Ugh, literally a week late. Already ran my swamp session. Well, good thing they're still in it so maybe I can add some stuff for their way out of it.
We only have saltwater crocs here. Everything else is a gator
Bayou self
A+/10
Loved this video and the forests video!! Any plans for an Ocean/beneath the waves type video? I'm planning on running a nautical/aquatic campaign soon for my dnd group and would love some more ideas! Also is there anything on the web dm patreon that can help me out??
It's dangerous to go *bayou self* , take this:
Fen-tastic video.
You should do a jungle vid at some point if you have not already!
Yeah!
14:30 Nice idea but you can't see down into a bog.
I’m playing a crocodilian in a swampy campaign
I wanted to stand bayou guys but I can't believe you didn't mention the fire swamp from The Princess Bride. I'll take a R.O.U.S over a mere dire beaver any day.
I say make one about how "tamed" the land is and how that affects other parts of the setting.