Sharing real world expertise as a gaming resource - AMA

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Gotcha.... yeah I think for me, pretty much every version of DnD starts to break down when you get to higher levels. I try to limit mine to low / medium power range, beyond which I just lack the talent to make it work. Some people can, and have a lot of fun with it.
 
I feel kinda useless. :grin: Oh, wait! I did forget: I can find obscure stuff on the net, I think it has to do with stubbornness and maybe a little OCD. But I've had friends ask "What is the toy that looks like this.." and be able to find its name and find hats from the description and other things. I've not yet found a person, I'm looking for (Artist, looking for contact info) but people are hard as all get out.
 
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Everyone can ask pertinent questions. For example, could you think of some insightful questions for our friend the camper who spends a week in a tent in Maine in the winter?
 
Everyone can ask pertinent questions. For example, could you think of some insightful questions for our friend the camper who spends a week in a tent in Maine in the winter?
Other than "was it cold", you mean:grin:?



More seriously Ravenswing Ravenswing here's something I've always been wondering: how do you maintain hygiene when it's so damn cold that swimming in the river is out of the question? And yes, I know people do jump even in waters right after breaking the ice over it...but what if you're camping with someone sick?
I'm sure you can think of some session ideas as to why PCs would do such a thing.


...Actually I think I just got the answer from your blog post, so scratch that:thumbsup:!
 
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More seriously Ravenswing Ravenswing here's something I've always been wondering: how do you maintain hygiene when it's so damn cold that swimming in the river is out of the question? And yes, I know people do jump even in waters right after breaking the ice over it...but what if you're camping with someone sick?
I'm sure you can think of some session ideas as to why PCs would do such a thing.


...Actually I think I just got the answer from your blog post, so scratch that:thumbsup:!

It's easier high tech. One of my staples for camping generally was that I'd keep a quart-sized thermos to hand, and a gallon-sized water jug. I'd fill the jug with ice heading outbound (and that'd be cold drinking water for a whole weekend), and every morning, I'd boil water to fill the thermos. That hot water was good for a day, usable for cocoa, tea and washing up. A tiny little squeeze bottle with a concentrated liquid soap (Dr Bronner's Sal Suds, in my case) would be all you'd need for a week's worth.

But what you do for serious winter camping is that you get a wall tent, and make sure it's canvas, not nylon; synthetic fabrics just don't hold the heat all that well. You bring in a small sheet metal camp stove (and half the reason for the canvas tent is to fit an exterior stovepipe) that burns wood, and a surprisingly small amount of wood will keep the interior as toasty warm as you like. Strip on down inside that, take sponge baths.

Beyond that, there's a whole lot of "don't worry about it." If you're doing it right, you're sweating as little as possible if you're out of doors for an extended period in winter: sweat is the enemy. Exert yourself as little as is feasible, keep your movements steady and languid, remove layers if you're getting warm.

Translated to low tech for RPG adventuring purposes, this is entirely doable -- scratch the SUV, insert pack animal. If you're backpacking instead, and going very light, the stove isn't going to be an option, but a jar candle will heat up the interior of a small tent (presuming it's not an open faced tent like a Forester or a Baker) to a tolerable level, if not balmy.
 
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a jar candle will heat up the interior of a small tent (presuming it's not an open faced tent like a Forester or a Baker) to a tolerable level, if not balmy.

Seriously:shock:? Either jar candles give way more heat, or tents require a lot less heat, than I'd expected so far...

I suspect it might be the latter. I usually associate tents with being those open structures that are mostly keeping you dry from rain and warmer than you'd be if exposed to the wind, but still lacking actual walls...

So how do you insulate the tent? As far as I can tell, the biggest heat sink would be where the canvas is meeting the ground, so is there a way to prevent heat loss from there?
Amusingly, that would probably apply to very hot climates as well, you'd just need to insulate to keep the air inside colder:shade:.
 
We did a thing once with a candle and a flower pot, which worked surprisingly well. The other thing I learned in the Army was to make a wind brake, which you can do out of snow, but also with vehicles, trees, dirt etc..

During hot weather, it's very helpful to just be in the shade, and in some cases you can put a tarp over your tent. That can be helpful in the rain too, though it's probably going to be a problem if it's windy. Curious what Ravenswing thinks about that option.
 
Medieval tents could be (perhaps) surprisingly sophisticated.

These are 10th-13th Century type for one or two person use, the kind you might bring with you on a sleigh or a boat.

1680029800535.png


A later, late medieval type 'pavilion' style tent, probably for up to about six people.

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You can see some kind of similar ones in this painting from one of Froissart's Chronicles

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This type is called a "bell tent" and has been in use since the seventh century

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The main downside of all these archaic types, is that lacking materials like nylon, plastic and aluminum they are much heavier to carry, and generally aren't the kind of thing that you can just hike out with on your back. You'll need a pack animal, boat, sleigh, sled etc.
 
From my few years in Chicago (Rogers Park/Evanston & the Loop), the real question was Do you know the three street names that rhyme with female anatomy?

And since I am female, it is somehow more culturally acceptable--if no less bawdy--to answer that.

I've now lived in Chicago for 25 years.

It's (at least) four streets:
Medina, Melvina, Paulina, and Lunt
 
Seriously:shock:? Either jar candles give way more heat, or tents require a lot less heat, than I'd expected so far...

I suspect it might be the latter. I usually associate tents with being those open structures that are mostly keeping you dry from rain and warmer than you'd be if exposed to the wind, but still lacking actual walls...

So how do you insulate the tent? As far as I can tell, the biggest heat sink would be where the canvas is meeting the ground, so is there a way to prevent heat loss from there?
Amusingly, that would probably apply to very hot climates as well, you'd just need to insulate to keep the air inside colder:shade:.
Since heat rises, a gap at ground level shouldn't be too much of a problem as long as wind isn't getting up under there (so a windbreak is a great idea).

A small tent warms up surprisingly easy. Body heat can make a small tent pretty comfortable pretty quickly. I have camped in winter conditions while caving... Though one time we dealt with the winter conditions by camping inside a cave (no tent, just sleeping bags, sleeping pad, and a ground cloth to keep the camping gear from getting dirty - it was a dry section of cave so not too much worry about moisture, but that would be another reason for a ground cloth).
 
Most caves are typically a constant, usually pretty moderate temperature right? I mean very generally speaking...

One thing I remember about exploring a mine once, you don't have that natural breeze that caves usually have. The air smelled stale, even pretty close to the entrance.
 
The main downside of all these archaic types, is that lacking materials like nylon, plastic and aluminum they are much heavier to carry, and generally aren't the kind of thing that you can just hike out with on your back. You'll need a pack animal, boat, sleigh, sled etc.
The other big thing with canvas (and some synthetics) is that if you touch the fabric on the inside, water will come in through that point, so you need a tent big enough that you can avoid that.

As for insulation from the ground, a ground sheet (also keeps things cleaner and dryer), and keeping off the ground - camp stools, camp beds, and so on are all designed to help with this.
 
Most caves are typically a constant, usually pretty moderate temperature right? I mean very generally speaking...

One thing I remember about exploring a mine once, you don't have that natural breeze that caves usually have. The air smelled stale, even pretty close to the entrance.
Yes, caves are a pretty constant temperature, generally the average temperature for the region. So some caves are pretty nasty cold... Also caves with less circulation can be colder, there is at least one cave on a (short) mountain in NY that has year round ice because it's only entrance is at the top.
 
The other big thing with canvas (and some synthetics) is that if you touch the fabric on the inside, water will come in through that point, so you need a tent big enough that you can avoid that.

As for insulation from the ground, a ground sheet (also keeps things cleaner and dryer), and keeping off the ground - camp stools, camp beds, and so on are all designed to help with this.

Real good point about touching the fabric. For insulation on the ground I think they used to use straw and / or grasses, which tends to work pretty well. Except it might have tics in it etc. I remember reading about fumigating straw with smoke as well...
 
Yes, caves are a pretty constant temperature, generally the average temperature for the region. So some caves are pretty nasty cold... Also caves with less circulation can be colder, there is at least one cave on a (short) mountain in NY that has year round ice because it's only entrance is at the top.

Very interesting, i didn't know that was the rule. I've been in a bunch of caves in the Smoky mountains and it was seemingly always in the 60s or so so i guess that correlates to a year round average temperature...
 
And yes, you started the game with 3d6 matches, etc. You also rolled to see how good your backpack (if any) was, and your basic clothing (which included details like how many pockets your clothes had). Getting trousers with large pockets and a good jacket with the same was a normal early goal if you rolled crap starting clothing. Also wet weather and cold weather kit - getting that before the GM declared it was winter was important, unless it was an Aussie based campaign (and the published campaigns were mostly set there because their author was an Aussie).
Hmmm.... I would be reluctant to face a Victorian winter without proper winter gear in the absence of modern heating.

There's a reason the local aboriginal population made these from Possum skin.
cloak_front.jpg


One thing I've discovered when hiking is that even temperatures that seem comparatively pretty mild really creep up on you when you're in them for hours, rather than just passing through while walking to the shops or waiting for a train.
 
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OK, now another question for all of you cavers... how do you remove the body after caving the head in is there danger related to gases:angel:?

I mean, if a cave (like a mine) doesn't have good circulation, and there are animals in it which use up the O2, don't you risk getting in an area where you can't breathe? Which can be fatal if you lose conscience, though that would require some uncommon persistence, I'd gather...:thumbsup:
Related - how likely is it to get in an area with other nasty gases? CO (not CO2) can be a killer, that much I do know, but I'm not sure how likely it is to encounter underground in a pre-technological society:skeleton:.

Give me fun info to make my PCs' lives even more fun:grin:!
 
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We did a thing once with a candle and a flower pot, which worked surprisingly well. The other thing I learned in the Army was to make a wind brake, which you can do out of snow, but also with vehicles, trees, dirt etc..

A candle and a flower pot would work just fine. Heck, take an empty 12 oz can, fill it a third full of dirt, stick a candle in that. (Just be careful touching it with your bare hands!)

During hot weather, it's very helpful to just be in the shade, and in some cases you can put a tarp over your tent. That can be helpful in the rain too, though it's probably going to be a problem if it's windy. Curious what Ravenswing thinks about that option.

It's always been my habit to put a tarp over my tent, for just that reason; just get one large enough to go over your tent. Stake it down solidly enough, and you're good. (If you're expecting high winds, either do the wind break thing, pitch the tent inside of tree line, or use iron spiral stakes.) For hot weather, pole it so there's about three inches of separation from the tent, and it's a great deal cooler -- otherwise, trust me, if that tent's in direct sunlight it'll be too warm for comfort by an hour after dawn. Among other virtues, this immunizes you against your tent springing a leak ... or the touching-the-sides thing mentioned earlier.

And yes: except for the smallest of tents, low-tech materials make it a bit of a bear for weight. This is why your fantasy character owns a pack mule. The carrying capacity of a pack mule will exceed anything you might want to bring for routine camping, including cook gear, a cot, a futon ... For party purposes, you might want a Baker tent instead of individual Foresters. Google it if you want a picture, but it strikes me as a very efficient three-season tent for adventuring purposes; easy to get out of for 4 AM monster attacks!

The reason all this matters (at least for those of you who are realism bugs) is that sleeping rough just makes you cold, stiff, miserable, and possibly sick. Stuck in my memory is an all-weekend fantasy LARPing event. I was going walkabout about a half hour before dawn on the event site (in the hill country of western Massachusetts), and there saw a teenage lad who'd obviously swallowed the Hollywood okeydoke about tough guys sleeping rough. He was stretched out on a hillside, wrapped in nothing more than a thin cloak. Not even a sleeping bag. It was foggy, dew all around, and he was shivering in his fitful sleep. If I hadn't been using my smallest tent that weekend, I'd have woken him up and dragged him to mine. I don't now recall -- this being over thirty years ago now -- but I expect he wasn't much good with the day's adventuring thereafter.
 
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A candle and a flower pot would work just fine. Heck, take an empty 12 oz can, fill it a third full of dirt, stick a candle in that. (Just be careful touching it with your bare hands!)



It's always been my habit to put a tarp over my tent, for just that reason; just get one large enough to go over your tent. Stake it down solidly enough, and you're good. (If you're expecting high winds, either do the wind break thing, pitch the tent inside of tree line, or use iron spiral stakes.) For hot weather, pole it so there's about three inches of separation from the tent, and it's a great deal cooler -- otherwise, trust me, if that tent's in direct sunlight it'll be too warm for comfort by an hour after dawn. Among other virtues, this immunizes you against your tent springing a leak ... or the touching-the-sides thing mentioned earlier.

And yes: except for the smallest of tents, low-tech materials make it a bit of a bear for weight. This is why your fantasy character owns a pack mule. The carrying capacity of a pack mule will exceed anything you might want to bring for routine camping, including cook gear, a cot, a futon ... For party purposes, you might want a Baker tent instead of individual Foresters. Google it if you want a picture, but it strikes me as a very efficient three-season tent for adventuring purposes; easy to get out of for 4 AM monster attacks!

The reason all this matters (at least for those of you who are realism bugs) is that sleeping rough just makes you cold, stiff, miserable, and possibly sick. Stuck in my memory is an all-weekend fantasy LARPing event. I was going walkabout about a half hour before dawn on the event site (in the hill country of western Massachusetts), and there saw a teenage lad who'd obviously swallowed the Hollywood okeydoke about tough guys sleeping rough. He was stretched out on a hillside, wrapped in nothing more than a thin cloak. Not even a sleeping bag. It was foggy, dew all around, and he was shivering in his fitful sleep. If I hadn't been using my smallest tent that weekend, I'd have woken him up and dragged him to mine. I don't now recall -- this being over thirty years ago now -- but I expect he wasn't much good with the day's adventuring thereafter.

Great post there Ravenswing.

As a former US Army medic I can attest that 'sleeping rough' without blankets can indeed be bad for your health, in fact it's possible to die of 'exposure' (basically hypothermia) even in what feels like relatively comfortable weather. The risk is considerably greater if it's raining or even misty enough that your clothes get wet.

As for the idea of 'realism bugs' - this is how I feel about interesting commentary such as yours above. Knowing all this doesn't mean that we must be a slave to the real world ways of doing things in a game (or a screenplay, novel etc.) but it does give us the patterns of how things work in the real world.

You can zoom in or out on your level of abstraction, go for high detail or very low detail, but if you know how things kind of fit together you will understand the reasons for certain kinds of gear, for specific traditions or behavior, laws and customs, even language. Any of which can be useful in an RPG.

I for one don't believe that an RPG should be a one for one simulation, but I have found it's very helpful to have the basic data available when you are trying to make your own model. You can make up your own realities, physics etc., but often there really isn't any need. For me things fit together the right way when you borrow from history, as so many of the best genre fiction authors have done since the 19th Century...

Discussions like the ones we are having here are exactly the same kind of conversations that Robert E Howard, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith etc. had via letters. Ours just move a bit more quickly through the incomprehensibly complex aether of the digital chaos vortex...
 
So for example in an RPG you might have a scenario where coping with severe weather during a hunt for the abominable snowman (or Mi-Go) is meant to be a factor in the plot, in which case all of the above could be interesting and possibly give you ideas for a plot hook or two. Like the idea of someone who was trying to sleep in their cloak and woke up wet and shivering on the verge of hypothermia, so they had to find shelter, saw a building with a light in the window, made their way shaking and shivering to the front door, and knocked...
 
OK, now another question for all of you cavers... how do you remove the body after caving the head in is there danger related to gases:angel:?

I mean, if a cave (like a mine) doesn't have good circulation, and there are animals in it which use up the O2, don't you risk getting in an area where you can't breathe? Which can be fatal if you lose conscience, though that would require some uncommon persistence, I'd gather...:thumbsup:
Related - how likely is it to get in an area with other nasty gases? CO (not CO2) can be a killer, that much I do know, but I'm not sure how likely it is to encounter underground in a pre-technological society:skeleton:.

Give me fun info to make my PCs' lives even more fun:grin:!
Bad air in a natural cave is pretty rare, it's much more common in mines. Natural caves tend to have very good air circulation. That said, areas with no air circulation are possible and then bad air can become a problem. Also, there are some cases where there is something venting poisonous gasses. Very acidic water can also be an issue. There are some caves with life forms specifically adapted to the high acid conditions.
 
As a landscape architect, I want to talk to you about ducts... wait, not ducts. Contours!

C'mon, get your levels sorted. Rivers flow downhill. Stairs are usually twice as long as they are tall. A 1 in 20 slope does not an obstacle make. 10 feet wide is a road, not an alleyway. Stop it with those fractal maps, coasts and mountains don't look like that.
 
The reason all this matters (at least for those of you who are realism bugs) is that sleeping rough just makes you cold, stiff, miserable, and possibly sick. Stuck in my memory is an all-weekend fantasy LARPing event. I was going walkabout about a half hour before dawn on the event site (in the hill country of western Massachusetts), and there saw a teenage lad who'd obviously swallowed the Hollywood okeydoke about tough guys sleeping rough. He was stretched out on a hillside, wrapped in nothing more than a thin cloak. Not even a sleeping bag. It was foggy, dew all around, and he was shivering in his fitful sleep. If I hadn't been using my smallest tent that weekend, I'd have woken him up and dragged him to mine. I don't now recall -- this being over thirty years ago now -- but I expect he wasn't much good with the day's adventuring thereafter.

Just having to sleep in an old wooden house (unheated, uninsulated, but weatherproof) on a cold night (for here, so a few degrees of frost cold, not northern US/Canada cold) with nothing but normal clothes plus a heavy great cost was bad enough, thanks.

Likewise the time my pack ended up in a river long enough for my gear to end up damp, in damp bush. It didn't matter if I tried "wear all the clothes" or the advice about wear little or nothing in your sleeping bag to get maximum effect from it, it was awful, and that was with a bag that was supposed to be effective when wet (though it was about 1990, so it wasn't as good as those you can get now) and with above freezing conditions (and a shelter half, in shelter with no wind).

I think the worst was an exercise where the brass managed to fuck up enough to result in us grunts being separated from our packs on a sub-zero temperature night. No rain, or we'd have been evaced (or dead). The whole platoon of us got in behind the biggest clumps of tussock we could find and huddled up like sheep, and didn't dare sleep for fear of not waking up. Damn but that was a long, long six hours - then we did a dawn assault, while so cold we could hardly hold our rifles. For an encore the next night the brass fucked up again and forgot they had me and a couple of others out in an observation post overnight - and it rained and our OP was in a hollow. Spent the night sitting on my helmet to keep my arse out of the water, which a shelter half rigged overhead to keep some of the rain from running down our necks, but it wasn't as bad as the previous night because it wasn't so cold. Still, two cold nights without sleep.
 
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OK, now another question for all of you cavers... how do you remove the body after caving the head in is there danger related to gases:angel:?

I mean, if a cave (like a mine) doesn't have good circulation, and there are animals in it which use up the O2, don't you risk getting in an area where you can't breathe? Which can be fatal if you lose conscience, though that would require some uncommon persistence, I'd gather...:thumbsup:
Related - how likely is it to get in an area with other nasty gases? CO (not CO2) can be a killer, that much I do know, but I'm not sure how likely it is to encounter underground in a pre-technological society:skeleton:.

Give me fun info to make my PCs' lives even more fun:grin:!
I can't resist chiming in here, though with book-learning not real experience. One of the things I like to do in historical gaming is have the world work the way educated people at the time thought it did, rather than the way we know it does. As it happens, epidemics and especially the initial 'strike' of the Black Death were blamed by some thinkers at the time on poisonous exhalations from below the ground, which caused earthquakes and then vented into the atmosphere. Here's what Konrad of Megenberg had to say about 'bad air' underground in his On the Mortality in Germany (c. 1350):
When air full of vapors and fumes is shut up and imprisoned for a long time in the earth, it becomes so corrupted in some regions of the earth that it may be turned into a potent poison to the human constitution. [This happens] especially in caverns and the bowels of the earth, which cannot be ventilated by new and fresh air. This is proven by much experience concerning wells that have been unused for a long time and had their openings sealed for many years. For when such wells are opened and cleaned out, it frequently happens that the first man to go in is immediately suffocated, and sometimes many who follow him in turn...
Working from this paradigm, I think you'd be justified in having characters suffer damage when breathing in previously-sealed undergrounds--or, maybe more interestingly, contract diseases as a result.
 
Likewise the time my pack ended up in a river long enough for my gear to end up damp, in damp bush. It didn't matter if I tried "wear all the clothes" or the advice about wear little or nothing in your sleeping bag to get maximum effect from it, it was awful, and that was with a bag that was supposed to be effective when wet (though it was about 1990, so it wasn't as good as those you can get now) and with above freezing conditions (and a shelter half, in shelter with no wind).

Yeah, wet gear bites. I was always careful about siting my tent properly, using a ground cloth, silicone sealant renewed a couple times a season on hems and corners, everything. Until the time where we got hit with an outright cloudburst, and for hours. The site was awash, everything was soaked through (and it took my futon weeks to dry out). So I promptly went out that week and bought a few 20-gallon plastic tubs, and used those for camping ever after -- hey, they made perfectly good camp tables! That was also when I started getting in the habit of an extra tarp over my tent ...

As a landscape architect, I want to talk to you about ducts... wait, not ducts. Contours!

C'mon, get your levels sorted. Rivers flow downhill. Stairs are usually twice as long as they are tall. A 1 in 20 slope does not an obstacle make. 10 feet wide is a road, not an alleyway. Stop it with those fractal maps, coasts and mountains don't look like that.

Never mind the people who site large cities halfway up a mountainside, miles from the nearest water source, with a perfectly good valley below ...
 
Yeah, wet gear bites. I was always careful about siting my tent properly, using a ground cloth, silicone sealant renewed a couple times a season on hems and corners, everything.
I generally kept as dry as possible, by careful setup of my shelter, etc. A lot of guys used to take shortcuts and not bother with channels around their shelter to stop run-off coming under it, and having their shelter fairly high so they'd plenty of room under it. All well and good until the wind gets up and the rain comes down.

Never mind the people who site large cities halfway up a mountainside, miles from the nearest water source, with a perfectly good valley below ...
On the other hand, as seen here in NZ recently, valleys aren't always a great choice of site either - they flood when you get lots of rain, and every so often you'll get those 'one in a century' storms that overwhelm your drainage and everyone gets to learn to swim real fast.
 
A shelter half is better than nothing at all, but not a whole lot better. Honestly, if I was in a survival situation and had one, I'd make a bough lean-to all the same, and use the shelter half as a topper and the front flap.
 
A shelter half is better than nothing at all, but not a whole lot better. Honestly, if I was in a survival situation and had one, I'd make a bough lean-to all the same, and use the shelter half as a topper and the front flap.
...so you'd make the other half?
 
A shelter half is better than nothing at all, but not a whole lot better. Honestly, if I was in a survival situation and had one, I'd make a bough lean-to all the same, and use the shelter half as a topper and the front flap.
I'd probably build the lean-to over the shelter-half, using it as a liner. That should help the thing not blow away, too. It depends on the groud and resources at hand, though, and how much time you've got, etc.
 
I ran nuclear power plants on submarines for six years. (MM2 (SS), 1987-1993, in case anyone wants more detail). I've been an avid target shooter for fifty years now, so I know my way around firearms. I reload my own ammunition. I don't come around all that often, so if it seems like I'm ignoring your question just be patient.
A friend of mine was a Nuke. Were you Fast Attack or Boomer?
 
Non-practising mental health nurse if you want some truth about psych units (typically not half as many serial killers, nor containing quite so many unethical superhuman experiments as Hollywood would lead you to believe).
Ok, I’ll bite. It is true that DID patients can present with physiological changes to correspond to different identities?
 
I can't resist chiming in here, though with book-learning not real experience. One of the things I like to do in historical gaming is have the world work the way educated people at the time thought it did, rather than the way we know it does. As it happens, epidemics and especially the initial 'strike' of the Black Death were blamed by some thinkers at the time on poisonous exhalations from below the ground, which caused earthquakes and then vented into the atmosphere. Here's what Konrad of Megenberg had to say about 'bad air' underground in his On the Mortality in Germany (c. 1350):

Working from this paradigm, I think you'd be justified in having characters suffer damage when breathing in previously-sealed undergrounds--or, maybe more interestingly, contract diseases as a result.

This makes me think of the terrifying real life temple of Pluto at Hierapolis, which is like something right out of a Conan novel, but it's 100% real.



1680556627328.png
 
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