Warshield73 wrote:I am running a few Rifts games at a convention in February set in what amounts to a Hell dimension with no magnetic north and the sky is just rolling clouds with no sun, moon or stars. There are no large bodies of water just large areas of sandy deserts surrounded by mountains.
My question if you were a player dropped into this, in any game, how would you try to navigate? What magic or devices would you use to try and navigate?
As this is only a 4 hour game I am trying to anticipate what the players will do so I can speed it along.
As a player, I'd take stock of my resources.
If all I have is what you said there, then I'd pick the most identifiable mountain I could see, and try to use that as a landmark to track my relative position.
Beyond that, it's entirely dependent on circumstance.
IF there's local wildlife that qualifies as "animal," and IF I'm playing a caster with the spell Metamorphosis: Animal, I'd try changing into various animals. Many forms of earth life have biological means of navigation by sensing our magnetic North and such, and there could well be a local equivalent in local wildlife, IF there is local wildlife. Only, you know, not based on magnetic North, but some other local detectable presence, like a powerful source of magic, evil, good, psionic energy, light, sound, etc., electromagnetic energy, or whatever. Perhaps even smell, where animals there have such a keen sense of smell they can navigate based on sulfur pits miles away or something.
IF I'm a caster with the spell Second Sight, and there's another party member with telescopic vision, and if we're willing to split the party in order for me to navigate to a specific spot in such a way that I'd need outside eyes on my position, then that person could stay in on spot watching me, and I could check in on where I'm at from their point of view here or there using Second Sight.
Range is 5 miles per level, so it also depends on where I'm trying to go, and what level everybody is.
Perhaps if we're both casters, they could later fly or teleport to my location.
IF there are local Spirits/Entities, which seems entirely possible in a Hell dimension, one could attempt Commune With Spirits in order to get directions.
Of course, there's the spell Locate, with a range of 15 miles per level of experience.
One could either seek to Locate one's destination or an person/object there, or one could drop an item on the ground, and periodically Locate it in order to get a relative position, using that object as a kind of magnetic North, at least when within range, and IF the GM interprets the spell to give directional gists.
Oracle could be used in a "what if we go in THIS direction" sort of way. Not exactly navigation, but a potential way to avoid hazards and/or help find useful features like whatever passes for an Oasis.
Beat Insurmountable Odds might just let one navigate as if there is a magnetic North, even though there isn't one, at GM discretion.
Control & Enslave Entity might provide a guide, if entities are present.
Illusory Forest could create a landmark one could use as a navigation point as long as it's in sight. The spell doesn't seem to have any range of effect that I've noticed (though I haven't pored over this one to tell for certain), so in theory as long as it's in binocular range and line of sight, one could use it as a reference point.
If one has binoculars and such.
For that matter, the spell can be cast as far as 500' away from the caster, and I notice no restriction that requires the spell to be cast on the ground.
So one could create an illusory forest 500' straight up in the air. More, if one can fly.
Since the forest covers 3k' x 3k' per level of the caster, this could be visible for quite some distance even with the naked eye.
A 10th level caster could cover... wait, like 2,000 acres....?
Can that be right?
Somebody help me math this.
Summon Shadow Beast... well, Shadow Beasts have Land Navigation at 60%, and it's hard to imagine them using maps and a compass to utilize this skill. Perhaps they have some kind of navigational senses that would work in this other dimension? Hard to believe they're all skilled with utilizing Earth's magnetic North, and solely that.
Anti-Magic Cloud creates a cloud that seems to be stationary over the place it was cast.
Which could be used as a landmark. Or rather airmark.
Illusory Terrain could be used the same way as Illusory forest.
There's no mentioned limit on the height of the terrain conjured, so one could make an illusory mountain to use as a navigation point.
Or for that matter, something just as tall but even more unique, like a volcano, geyser, millennium tree, or whatever.
For that matter, I don't recall a height limit for Illusory Forest. Maybe one could make 10k tall trees or something.
Summon Fog works up to 10 miles away per level of experience, covering a 1 mile area per level of the caster.
So cast the fog someplace you want to go, then just keep heading toward the fog.
Or cast it just behind you, and keep looking back to see where you are relative to the fog.
Again, you might be able to cast it up in the air, making a sort of stationary cloud you could refer to as a landmark.
On to Psionics...
Astral Projection could be potentially used to scout around, assuming it works in the Hell dimension the same way it works on Earth. Getting to fly at mach 1 could help quite a bit in getting one's bearings, even if one has to return to their body shortly.
Clairvoyance could be used to detect hazards or beneficial features ahead of you, which isn't exactly navigation, but could still be useful in travel.
Commune with Spirits would work or fail much as the spell.
There are a number of of psychic sensory powers (Sense Dimensional Anomaly, Sense Magic, Sense Evil, etc) which would NOT be very useful as described in official stats, but which might be worth a try anyway just in case the GM decides there's something so powerful or unusual that psychics can sense it from much, much further than the normal range limits.
Not by-the-book, but it seems like the kind of thing that Palladium might allow or right into an adventure, especially given stuff like the visions various psychics had about the Mechanoids and other dangers, visions which have no basis in listed psychic powers or abilities but rather fall under external forces that affect psychics.
Come to think of it, this same logic could apply to various sensory spells.
Psychic Omni-Sight is such a catch-all of sensing things that it might be useful in finding some local patterns or energies or anything that might help navigate.
It lets you "literally see any movement, even the wind!" so maybe there are unusual air currents that can be tracked, or weird local versions of ley lines, or something similar.
And that's pretty much all I've got without getting into esoteric abilities, powers, and so forth.
The same kinds of things I've listed here could sometimes be shifted over to tech as well, I suppose. Maybe an Operator could use a drone for aerial recon, or make a tethered blimp/balloon for a landmark, and could certainly use telescopic vision to look for landmarks, as well as infrared, heat vision, and so forth to look for navigational tools that normal senses can't detect.
And of course there's radar.
