Make 'em ferrets and it's a deal. Everyone knows that ferrets are more vicious.

Quote from: One Horse Town;364863Make 'em ferrets and it's a deal. Everyone knows that ferrets are more vicious.

You mean they're not the same? I figured "Ferrets" was the name they called particularly vicious weasels...

Ice ferrets? Done!

Stage whisper: (Thanks, WB! I think it was the illo that really tipped him. The "ferret" thing is just to save face...)

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;364864You mean they're not the same? I figured "Ferrets" was the name they called particularly vicious weasels...

Ice ferrets? Done!

Stage whisper: (Thanks, WB! I think it was the illo that really tipped him. The "ferret" thing is just to save face...)

-clash

Aside (with a nod): "Word."

Now that i've humoured the derail, maybe there's a few more ideas out there. It'd be nice to have just one thread in a while that survived contact with the masses.

Greentongue, what system is Hellfrost?

Edit: Oops, never mind. I didn't see the little Savage Worlds logo first up.

Quote from: Lawbag;364852This thread reminds me of those Wilderness and Frostburn survival guides that do the ice environment as a careless force enables a good and even a bad GM to add great amounts of mellodrama.

Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to get the train back on the rail.  Here is a link to Amazon's record for the Frostburn supplement mentioned by Lawbag.  I don't own the product.  The negative reviews were very insightful.  But, hell, if you can pinch one for less money and save yourself time, its probably worth it.

So, getting back to the ideas that I was tossing around for you before, I thought a bit more about what sorts of conflict would emerge in your potential Ice World:

Unless you're already making a Snowball Earth, chances are that the few places not frozen over are going to the places worth invading.  Last vestiges of what humans had.

And, I gotta run.  back later.  And I'm back.

So, say you did really want to play up the apocalyptic feel a bit.  Like I mentioned earlier, fuel would become a hot (heh, I kill me) commodity.  Once wood becomes scarce you'd probably see people turn to magic, oil, fossil fuels (if available on that world).  I'm picturing that scene in just about every movie about poverty where the old lady is in the market trading for rice...except the merchant gives her much less than she expected because of inflating costs and she starts to weep.  Except on Winter World, the homemaker is trading for coal and oil so she can keep her kids warm and cook their meals.

In such a scenario, anything forged would have a huge cost.  Well-equipped PCs would probably be perceived with awe.  Or the game goes the barbarian / swashbuckler route.  Anyway, the cost of armaments feeds the need to scavenge ruins - shovel ready adventure scenarios.  Oh, and dungeons are pretty easy to pop down as various habitats are abandoned due to the encroaching ice.

Introducing magic, of course, makes it much more interesting. Maybe that cabal of firemage god-kings CAN sustain a nation in the frigid north by means of magic.  Maybe some demihumans HAVE found a way to carry on underground using lost-til-now magical or technological means.  And run into lots of monsters down there.

Freezing waters would probably mean a drop in sea level.  Consequently larger landmasses and ice bridges may be in order.  So you could introduce the complication of new cultures or beasts hitherto unknown in these parts.

Oh, and don't include a white witch.  Everyone knows they attract magic lions.

I'm tapped for now.  But Winter World sounds like fun

Poul Anderson did a novel on this, where a glaciation was threatening  to overwhelm a race of sophonts, A Stone in Heaven. Very interesting. SF rather than fantasy of course. There would be whole nations that the ice has covered, or that are abandoned. Plants and animals change - perhaps including inportant food sources - due to the change in climate. Invaders come seeking a place to live, driven by desperation. Hot springs, volcanoes, and other geothermally active areas become pockets of life in the ice.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;364884Hot springs, volcanoes, and other geothermally active areas become pockets of life in the ice.

-clash

Dude, hell yeah.  Volcanoes.  Volcanoes with cities around them!  Talk about a conundrum.

Empire Builder: Hmm.  We could set up shop here.
Adviser: A worthy consideration sire, but perhaps the volcano will erupt?
EB: So we freeze to death out there within three weeks out of fear that this thing could blow next year or next millennium?
A: When you put that way sire....

Yep, volcanoes or anywhere with geothermal activity is going to be where the people gather and fight over.

IIRC in the books, the main character apprentices in smithing under the ice in a dormant volcano.

I swear I read something once, or maybe saw it in a show (factual, not fiction) about a glacier in the middle ages or some-such that was advancing and threatening a town and that monks went out and rebuked it and it eventually retreated (not that there is a link between the two, of course, but I like the idea of religious men going out to the leading edge of a glacier and praying at it).

Quote from: Werekoala;364905I swear I read something once, or maybe saw it in a show (factual, not fiction) about a glacier in the middle ages or some-such that was advancing and threatening a town and that monks went out and rebuked it and it eventually retreated (not that there is a link between the two, of course, but I like the idea of religious men going out to the leading edge of a glacier and praying at it).

Could be this, hmmm?

Quote from: winkingbishop;364908Could be this, hmmm?

Yep, that'd be the one I think, although I don't think it was a news article where I first heard of it. I think things like that would be a perfect fit in the "wall of ice as looming protagonist" setting.

Fascinating that they now want to pray for the glacier to grow.

RPGPundit

Another exapmle of why God hates us - we're wishy-washy.

Lovecraft had something along those lines in 'Polaris'... an intellectual culture that is pushed south by encroaching ice and eventually perishes at the hands of the barbarian Inuto peoples who they come up against. The ice itself isn't the villain but the North star has a kind of malevolent personification going on... as if it wants the Northern lands for itself.