RPG Blog Carnival: Wasteland, Exploring the Bad Land of Mauvaisterre

 This month's RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Attronarch's Athenaeum, is all about Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.

Wilderness & Underground adventures, 1986 style

So I'll cover both. Up first, Wilderness Adventures.

When we think about wilderness adventures in RPGs, particularly Dungeons & Dragons, we tend to think about vast forests, dangerous mountains, and strange lands far from civilization. But what happens when the wilderness is just outside your hometown? What if the places you have known your entire life turn out to be far more dangerous than you ever imagined?

That is the idea behind the wilderness surrounding my fictional town of Jackson, Illinois, in 1986.

Mauvaisterre: The Bad Land

Mauvaisterre has come up in conversation before, for instance in the piece on Old Annie, the Mauvaisterre Hag.

The term is a rendering of the French mauvaise terre, or "bad earth" and "bad land." It is an actual place name in central Illinois for a creek and lake near Jacksonville, the town that is my model for the fictional Jackson.

In Jackson, however, Mauvaisterre is not simply a geographic designation. It is the name of the county, the river running through town, and the lake as well. Above all, it is an old name for the land itself.

"This is Mauvaisterre. This is the Bad Land."

The notion is that long before Jackson was a name on the map, this was country to be shunned. There was something amiss with the land. Not evil per se, at least in the beginning, but a spot where the line between the natural and the supernatural was thin.

The wilderness in and around Jackson bears witness to that.

You will find old farm roads, wooded creek beds, the odd abandoned buildings, and muddy riverbanks. Isolated stretches where one could go hours without another soul in sight. They are the kind of spots teenagers are wont to explore even when their parents have said no.

Some of these places still seem to radiate a sense of sadness or melancholy. Or as some locals have put it, "some of these places never saw a moment of happiness."

And there are things in those woods. Deer and coyotes and now and then a big cat are to be expected. Then you have the likes of the Crimson Cougar and Old Annie, which are far from ordinary.

Some places just seem to draw out the strange tales.

Magical Mystery Lane

In Jacksonville, there is a local legend about a country road called Magical Mystery Lane, a quiet backwater that was once a prime spot for teenagers wanting to be frightened. I took the concept and made it part of Jackson's permanent supernatural landscape.

It is an old road outside Jackson that winds through low ground and trees to the Mauvaisterre River. Narrow and in poor repair, it is especially trying after a good rain. An old iron bridge crosses one of the waterways, and once you put some distance behind you, the woods seem to swallow the road.

By day it is indistinguishable from any other run-down country road. At night it is another matter.

The accounts are well known; well, at least to a friend of a friend. A car will stall without cause. Headlights will show up behind you and are gone when you stop. Voices are heard in the timber and shadowy forms spotted by the bridge.

There are darker whispers too.

Legend has it that murders have been committed on Magical Mystery Lane and some have vanished entirely. Some would have you believe the spirit of a dead man haunts the bridge.

Jackson’s college students and teenagers find the place difficult to resist.

The School Bus

An old yellow school bus is parked off to one side of Magical Mystery Lane, half concealed by the brush and trees.

It has been a derelict for years. The paint is worn, windows broken or covered with graffiti; the remaining tires are flat. Rust has done its work on the undercarriage and wheel wells. Weeds have taken hold, and the trees are slowly making it their own.

No one can say how it came to be there or why it was left.

But there are plenty of rumors.

That bus was used to kill people.

As for the details, nobody agrees. Some have it that they were lured on and killed. Others are sure the bodies were stowed inside. Some have it that the bus was the murder weapon.

Some kids have even given it the name "The Murder Bus," though no solid record exists of any murders or deaths involving a school bus.

Then again, the story is different with every teller, and there is no evidence to be had. Everyone knows a guy who knows a guy who has been on the bus. Some will say they heard screaming. Others say they saw faces at the filthy windows. One tale says the engine turned over one night for no reason, even after years of being left to rot. Most of it is likely nonsense.

Mostly.

Exploring the Bad Land

In a game such as NIGHT SHIFT, the country around Jackson lends itself to a kind of adventure you do not get from your standard dungeon crawl. The characters are not pros. They are teenagers with a few flashlights, maybe some magic, a bicycle, or their parents' car. Part of the fun is making it to some out-of-the-way spot. Making it back can be more of an ordeal.

I am for treating the countryside as a series of linked locations. The characters may put two and two together about Magical Mystery Lane, look into oddities by the Mauvaisterre River, or come across what ought to have been left in the ground.

Six ways an evening in the Bad Land might go:

d6	Wilderness Encounter
1	A car shows up behind the characters on the road. You can see the headlights but hear nothing.
2	A large shape works its way through the underbrush, matching the characters' pace without ever coming out.
3	A child’s cry for help comes from the creek. No one is to be seen by the water.
4	Fresh tracks lead into the old bus. None are to be found coming out.
5	A well-known road lasts more miles than it should. The same tree or sign is passed more than once.
6	In the shallows a woman is standing still. At first glance, she is little more than a tangle of reeds and branches. Old Annie could be near.

They need not all end in a fight. Probably most should not. Most of the characters in this campaign are Survivors, not Veterans. 

What matters in wilderness horror is the isolation. The farther the characters are from Jackson (the town), the less the ordinary world there is to shield them. It is 1986; there are no cell phones. Car trouble on a lonely stretch of road means walking to get help. And if something is on your trail in the woods, you are on your own unless someone knows where you have gone. And remember, this is young Gen X we are talking about; there were PSAs on TV asking if you knew where your kids were. Should you go to the police and claim a supernatural assault, you would do well to have a better explanation.

Horror Comes Home

With Jackson, I have been thinking that horror does not have to be imported from some far-off place. It can be right there, over the town line, past the last street light.

The old bridge where the teens congregate on a Friday. The creek for fishing. The woods of your youth.

People know these places but do not really understand them. That is my aim with Mauvaisterre in Jackson. It is the darker, wilder side of things, older than the town and full of secrets it has been trying to put behind it for generations.

And on Magical Mystery Lane, an abandoned yellow school bus is in the process of rusting out.

Or so it seems.

Next time, we head underground.