“ A little way up the narrow valley, before they reach the woods, the PCs notice the squat, tumbledown buildings by the riverside. They are hardly big enough for a human to stand in, and the complex cogs and shafts that occupy the central cavity of one of the buildings are perplexing. What were these buildings? And how safe are they to explore?
Alternatively a desolate place is the perfect setting for a derelict chapel or croft. There needn't be any actual physical encounter involved, but it adds atmosphere to a place to see its dead history. For instance, in the Outer Hebrides there are whole deserted villages which were razed to the ground by the English during the Clearances. Such stories give a setting authenticity and character.”
“ The Dodge DynaMax is a rare care, coming at exactly the wrong time in history. The End of the muscle car era was nigh, and the market was already filled out with GTOs, Mustangs, Camaros, Chevelles, Novas and a dozen other high performance poor handling vehicles. The DynaMax had a plan to dominate the market with a combination of factory turbochargers and a complex eight speed gearbox. The machine was planned to triumph over the human driver element. What ended up happening was excess costs and mechanical issues saw the turbochargers removed and replaced with a conventional supercharger, and the eight speed transmission ended up being the bane of the car's existence. More DynaMaxes were destroyed or totalled by transmission failures than anything else. The car remains an ugly and ambitious reminder of a day gone by”
“ Rain slowly builds, thunder and lightning continue to roll in. Road muddies, horse/wagon getting stuck in the mud. Thunder strikes coinciding with a deep hole a horse just walked in, horse panics, breaks its leg (maybe just sprain?). Horse is decompacitated and the rain just went from pouring to an all out monsoon. Shelter needs to be found, horse needs to be taken care of, covered in mud, add the posibility of items being lost to the confusion with the wind and dealing with spooked animals.”