VeniaSilente
Smexy. Videogaming when I can.
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2008
- Messages
- 96
- Reaction score
- 34
Well, I'm missing on some context such as what's in the mountains but, any ideas I'd have would boild down to "make the stairs accessory to the problem".
Have to climb some stairs / walk a very badly maintained trail? Add some very inconvenient wind and a lack of safety measures, and or a wizard trying to Rocks Fall Everyone Dies the party. Works wonders if the trail has to go by a path carved up on the mountain.
The trail is very long and monotone? Have it be designed so that the characters don't even know if they took the right path. Have the lack of signs and landmarks be a thing.
Climbing stairs is s simple even your characters can do it? Not if they were created with giants or hippogriffs in mind! Perhaps the structure of the trail is not really well suited to ~2m tall bipeds. What if the path was actually designed for the quinquennial pilgrimage of the local Ariados population?
Landscape too simple? Add any of the ISO Standard approved trail and staircase-related narrative hazards to your landscape: wooden bridge over a lava pool, fork on the road where one option leads to an "obviously" bad place, exposed passages where the path disappears under a pile of snow and the characters won't know where it resumes or if there's a turn on the road, etc...
Chapter too monotone? Break up the plot ninjas! One of the steps of the trail was actually a trap and your characters just activated! Now, they must face the in-universe equivalent of a Monster House. Or perhaps they just activated the natural geysers of poisonous gas and they need to get out oof there before they become part of the landscape. Heck, have the trail have been designed by someone with a sense of practicality and flair and make it be lit up in traps and roundabout trickeries that force the characters to treat the trail as they would to a board of Snakes and Ladders.
And of course, have one of the characters sprain their ankle or something.
Have to climb some stairs / walk a very badly maintained trail? Add some very inconvenient wind and a lack of safety measures, and or a wizard trying to Rocks Fall Everyone Dies the party. Works wonders if the trail has to go by a path carved up on the mountain.
The trail is very long and monotone? Have it be designed so that the characters don't even know if they took the right path. Have the lack of signs and landmarks be a thing.
Climbing stairs is s simple even your characters can do it? Not if they were created with giants or hippogriffs in mind! Perhaps the structure of the trail is not really well suited to ~2m tall bipeds. What if the path was actually designed for the quinquennial pilgrimage of the local Ariados population?
Landscape too simple? Add any of the ISO Standard approved trail and staircase-related narrative hazards to your landscape: wooden bridge over a lava pool, fork on the road where one option leads to an "obviously" bad place, exposed passages where the path disappears under a pile of snow and the characters won't know where it resumes or if there's a turn on the road, etc...
Chapter too monotone? Break up the plot ninjas! One of the steps of the trail was actually a trap and your characters just activated! Now, they must face the in-universe equivalent of a Monster House. Or perhaps they just activated the natural geysers of poisonous gas and they need to get out oof there before they become part of the landscape. Heck, have the trail have been designed by someone with a sense of practicality and flair and make it be lit up in traps and roundabout trickeries that force the characters to treat the trail as they would to a board of Snakes and Ladders.
And of course, have one of the characters sprain their ankle or something.