a long forgotten land.....

[deathray]

hi i am having quite a bit of trouble coming up for a background story for a game i am organising, basically as the title says about a long forgotten land :: the land or island will basically contain prehistoric creature and angry natives smiliar to skull island. but i cant really seem to think of an original idea about how/why the adventures are here. the first one that came to mind was exploration, but since its a long forgotten island i need to come up with a way of making its discovery believable, rather than the group just stumbling upon it :: got any ideas?

[Plynkes]

Steal from Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

16th Century Portugeuse explorer found it originally. Nobody believed him. He left a journal and a map promising vast treasures. One brother comes by these items (which could be an adventure in itself) and goes off at half-cock to find the place. Doesn't come back.

Brothers had previously quarrelled over money. It was the poor brother that went treasure-seeking. Other, wealthier, brother, now wracked with guilt over the bad words they had goes off to find and save him with something approaching a proper expedition. Hires famous big-game hunter Alan Water Main to help him. If movie version, then damsel in distress also accompanies party, just to get them into scrapes.

Or a lost U-Boat just fetches up there for no particular reason, that's good too.


Edit: Oh sorry, you said an original idea. I don't have any of those, I'm afraid.  :oops:

[Lowtardog]

hi i am having quite a bit of trouble coming up for a background story for a game i am organising, basically as the title says about a long forgotten land :: the land or island will basically contain prehistoric creature and angry natives smiliar to skull island. but i cant really seem to think of an original idea about how/why the adventures are here. the first one that came to mind was exploration, but since its a long forgotten island i need to come up with a way of making its discovery believable, rather than the group just stumbling upon it :: got any ideas?

Plane crash, shipwreck?

[deathray]

Steal from Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

16th Century Portugeuse explorer found it originally. Nobody believed him. He left a journal and a map promising vast treasures. One brother comes by these items (which could be an adventure in itself) and goes off at half-cock to find the place. Doesn't come back.

Brothers had previously quarrelled over money. It was the poor brother that went treasure-seeking. Other, wealthier, brother, now wracked with guilt over the bad words they had goes off to find and save him with something approaching a proper expedition. Hires famous big-game hunter Alan Water Main to help him. If movie version, then damsel in distress also accompanies party, just to get them into scrapes.

Or a lost U-Boat just fetches up there for no particular reason, that's good too.


Edit: Oh sorry, you said an original idea. I don't have any of those, I'm afraid.  :oops:

sounds like quite a good idea i may add and take bits and peices from it :wink: as for the plane crash shipwrekc idea, its been done to death but it alwaywas seems to work for a convincing story line i may find use for it

[Operator5]

You could also go with the ship-wrecked survivor found floating at sea on a make-shift log raft. He spins a tale of a land piled high with gold and deadly guardians. The tramp steamer crew decides to make for the island based on the man's description of getting there...

[Rhoderic]

Depending on how much leeway there is regarding factions and such; how about having there be a secret evil society or cult that has existed since time immemorial and known about the land/island all along. In fact, something in that place is their source of power. The heroes get tangled up with these bad guys for some reason or another, and long story short, they end up pursuing them to this forgotten land of yours.

While you're at it, you could go for an Atlantis connection or something. The forgotten land is in fact [insert mythical land of choice], and the secret society makes up the final, corrupted descendants of that civilization.

[deathray]

yes to be honest i was thinking of a similar idea, a man found by a ship far out at see tells of a strange land filled with giant monster forgoten by time the ship just happens to be transporting animals back to the usa to be used in zoos, a large collection of big game hunters and experts on large animals are already on board, intrigued by the idea of a island filled with prehistoric creatures, they inform the person who funed the original expediton to reretive animals for captivity possible she has a european heritage, maybe a countess or somone high in society, she sees money  and a life of fame ahead if she can bring proof back, using the man as a guide they finally reach the shore of the island but a sea dwelling creature ravages the boat, and they have to swim aboard, even though many of the crew die the countess orders the expedtion to continue, her attitude is a life of fame and fortune is worth the deaths of a few people she hardly knows, what follows is confrontations with prehistoric creatures maybe even some angry natives and basically trying to find a way of the island. could connect a few games together with the results of each game determining the conditions of the next might be alot of fun  :mrgreen: rhoderic that is a very intresting idea  :mrgreen:  maybe the reason that the island was never discoverd was because the society/cult used some sort of technology/ magic to make the island undectable from radar and maybe even invisible until you get within a few hundred metres, similar to the televison porgramme lost an interseting concept that i might use

[meninobesta]

another idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Island

you can easily adapt this to any period!
 

[deathray]

i love that film   tis a classic

[Rhoderic]

maybe the reason that the island was never discoverd was because the society/cult used some sort of technology/ magic to make the island undectable from radar and maybe even invisible until you get within a few hundred metres

Or maybe they just killed anyone that came too close. This way, the area near the island could be a Bermuda Triangle-like place where ships have a tendency to mysteriously disappear. If you go with the "rescued castaway" story seed, you could have him tell a tale of how his ship, upon coming within sight of the island, was attacked by mysterious people with strange weapons or magic. Maybe they patrol the waters with submarines, or something?

These ideas of mine are kind of drawing inspiration from an old anime I saw, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia), which is an extreme reimagining of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, where Nemo is a surviving Atlantean fighting an evil society led by his kinsmen. The Mysterious Island also shows up in the story (although it makes for the dullest episodes of the show).

[deathray]

your starting to convince me that an island guarded by a group of people is the way to go  

[PeteMurray]

Edit: Oh sorry, you said an original idea. I don't have any of those, I'm afraid.  :oops:

Pulp, in its own way, is as circumscribed a genre as an opera. Play to the tropes, the story will follow.

[deathray]

ive been thinking of a few ideas, one of them being set around skull island (king kong) set quite some before the venture voyage . a ship transporting prisoners to australia gets hit by a freak storm and goes off course. on wikipedia it sates skull island is far west of samatra this will tie in perfectly with the boat goin off course. basically the boat crahses against the rock surrounding skull island and the survivors swim ashore, just an idea probably wont use it   but its still a fun concept and would make for an interesting game

[Malamute]

ive been thinking of a few ideas, one of them being set around skull island (king kong) set quite some before the venture voyage . a ship transporting prisoners to australia gets hit by a freak storm and goes off course. on wikipedia it sates skull island is far west of samatra this will tie in perfectly with the boat goin off course. basically the boat crahses against the rock surrounding skull island and the survivors swim ashore, just an idea probably wont use it   but its still a fun concept and would make for an interesting game

Sounds good enough to me

[TadPortly]

You could go the Cthulu/R'lyeh route where the island periodically reappears and disappears either by volcanic/tectonic plate activity or something more sinister.

Another possibility would be an island within the Sargasso Sea. The very salty Sargasso Sea is often regarded as being lifeless apart from the large amount of seaweed there.  Christopher Columbus noted that the Sargasso Sea had masses of seaweed on the surface. Thinking land was nearby, he fathomed the sea, only to find no bottom.  Perhaps there was, amongst the seaweed, a low-lying island....

Since the Middle Ages, floating derelicts have often been found in the Sargasso region of the Atlantic. The legend maintains that in the Sargasso Sea derelicts are found shipshape but otherwise bereft of a living soul. On one occasion a slaver was sighted, but when boarded was found to contain nothing but the skeletal remains of crew and slaves. In 1840, the ship Rosalie sailed through the area but, as the London Times later reported, was thereafter found drifting and derelict. In 1857 the barque James B. Chester was found becalmed in the Sargasso, with the chairs upended, a putrefying meal still on the mess table, and no sign of the crew.  In 1881, the schooner Ellen Austin, bound for London, discovered a derelict adrift in the Sargasso. The captain put a prize crew aboard, but then the two ships became separated by a squall. When Ellen Austin resighted the derelict, the prize crew was gone.  As recently as 1955, the Connemara IV was found deserted and drifting in the area.

For hundreds of years the Sargasso Sea has been the subject of lurid tales.  Nineteenth-century paintings show sailing vessels being devoured by the weed that floats on the surface of the sea. Much of the sea's peril comes from its location in the almost windless “Horse Latitudes”; so called because ships en route to the Spanish Main were often becalmed there and their horses were slaughtered for fresh meat and to preserve water. Another name for the Horse Latitudes is the “Doldrums.”