Design Challenge: The Barrowmere.

Jim posted this challenge over on the Atelier Hwei discord, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm not that familiar with the specifics of free kriegsspiel (genre? method?), but I like the idea in principal - it's a system agnosticism I can really get on board with: here is some of the world/system, now get on with it - you know or learn the genre conventions already, so explore with those in mind.

Even if you're not intending to play it yourself, this is a good exercise for getting your world-building started, and hopefully getting an imagination feedback loop going.

The Barrowmere.

Beyond where the Barrow Downs tumbles down from Sweethouses - summer resort of the wealthy metropolitan, new land breaches the waters of the Great Grey Void like a raft of world-turtles.

Long stripped of danger and treasure, the Downs have not seen so many adventurers, cultists, scholars and speculators in a generation. An archipelago becoming a peninsula, the Barrowmere is a soggy environment thick with mounds and tombs - and the old stories of the Barrow Downs Companies suggests they are brimming with undiscovered treasure, occult secrets and bizarre beasts of ill-rumour.

Daily Events.

1. Crackdown on unauthorised prospectors by local authorities.
2. A previously risen section partially submerges.
3. A previously risen section completely submerges.
4. New company attempting to muscle in on smaller claims.
5. Stinking miasma clings to low-lying areas - general sickness and frayed tempers.
6. Severe storm descends from out on the Great Grey Void.

Stake/Steal A Claim on this...

1. Collapsed Mound.
2. Abandoned Excavation.
3. Abandoned Pumping Station (odds/evens site is wholly or partially flooded).
4. Unexcavated Mound.
5. Flooded Tomb.
6. Spiral Shell Structure.

Spiral Shell Structure.

Odds/evens it's intact/ ruined.

1. Fallen, buried, flooded.
2. Fallen, partially buried, flooded - odds/evens.
3. Fallen, accessible.
4. Upright, buried, flooded.
5. Upright, partially buried, flooded - odds/evens.
6. Upright, accessible.

Accessible means you can get to it on foot - you still need to find a way in.

Mysterious Inhabitants.

1. Dead Dreamers: ancient, horrible, weird - their Dreaming can affect the Waking world.
2. Mound People: exist across two dimensions simultaneously - think ours is a hallucination.
3. Servants of the Orbus/ Orcus: death/demon worshipping cyclopes with shareable beholderkin eyes 
4. Intelligent/ Social Undead.
5. Sea Creatures/ Monsters: somehow able to survive out of the depths.
6. Merfolk: this isn't your claim to stake, it's their home.

Special Fish-out-of-Water Surface Encounters.

1. Twitching Kraken - the size of a field; surprisingly resilient and adaptable.
2. Stranded Submarine - not from round here.
3. Shipwreck - ancient or modern.
4. Dead/ Dying Whale - poor thing.
5. The opposite of Deep-Sea Divers - adventurers/prospectors from the undersea realm.
6. Burst Abyssal Leviathan - over acres; swarming with scavengers; stomach like a collapsed circus tent.

Tropes.

• Goldrush economics.
• Unscrupulous predators.
• Ill-prepared fortune seekers.
• Well-prepared claim jumpers.
• No justice without friends or money.
• Ineffectual or overbearing local authority.
• Cramped, insanitary conditions.
• Revived cults/gods.
• The mighty sea.
• Going too far.
• Trespass on the mythic.
• Emerging and improvised technology.

This is a broadly hostile, unexplored and unregulated dungeon/wilderness frontier for amoral adventurers - sound familiar?