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Thread: Thoughts on Whirlpools

  1. #11

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    Torstan, Sounds fun but challenging to DM. I wish you well.

    I'm curious how you do things. Boat to creature battles are easier to run than fully underwater encounters in 3 dimensions but aren't easy.

    Give us a report on challenges overcome .


    Sigurd

  2. #12
    Guild Journeyer arakish's Avatar
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    In all honesty, I have only once used a whirlpool in a gaming session over the last 35 years of RPGing. I have never put one on a map.

    rmfr
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  3. #13
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    Are you going to TPK them if they fail the skill challenge?
    Last edited by loydb; 09-16-2008 at 11:47 AM. Reason: clarity

  4. #14
    Guild Adept Valarian's Avatar
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    Got one on my September challenge map
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  5. #15
    Community Leader NeonKnight's Avatar
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    I am all for whirlpools, especially in a fantasy setting.

    In the real world, Whirlpools form often in the oceans, but are just not the big threats people feel they are.

    Once again, WIKIPEDIA to the rescue

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool

    A whirlpool is a swirling body of water usually produced by ocean tides. The vast majority of whirlpools are not very powerful. More powerful ones are more properly termed maelstroms. Vortex is the proper term for any whirlpool that has a downdraft. (Technically, these approximate to a 'free vortex', in which the tangential velocity (v) increases as the centre line is approached, so that the angular momentum (rv) is constant). Very small whirlpools can easily be seen when a bath or a sink is draining, but these are produced in a very different manner from those in nature. Smaller whirlpools also appear at the base of many waterfalls. In the case of powerful waterfalls, like Niagara Falls, these whirlpools can be quite strong. The most powerful whirlpools are created in narrow shallow straits with fast flowing water.

    The five strongest whirlpools in the world are the Saltstraumen outside Bodø in Norway, which reaches speeds of 37 km/h; the Moskstraumen off the Lofoten islands in Norway (the original maelstrom), which reaches speeds of 27.8 km/h; the Old Sow in New Brunswick, Canada, which has been measured with a speed of up to 27.6 km/h; the Naruto whirlpool in Japan, which has a speed of 20 km/h; and the Corryvreckan in Scotland, which reaches speeds of 16 km/h.

    Powerful whirlpools have killed unlucky seafarers, but their power tends to be exaggerated by laymen. There are virtually no stories of large ships ever being sucked into a whirlpool. Tales like those by Paul the Deacon, Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe are entirely fictional. The closest equivalent might have been the short-lived whirlpool that sucked in a portion of Lake Peigneur in New Iberia, Louisiana, USA after a drilling mishap in 1980. This was not a naturally-occurring whirlpool, but a man-made disaster caused by breaking through the roof of a salt mine. The lake then behaved like a gigantic bathtub being drained, until the mine filled and the water levels equalized. Although some boats and semi trailers were pulled into it in the classic whirlpool stereotype, no human lives were lost.

    In popular imagination, but only rarely in reality, whirlpools can have the dangerous effect of destroying boats. In the 8th century, Paul the Deacon, who had lived among the Belgii, described tidal bores and the maelstrom for a Mediterranean audience unused to such violent tidal surges:
    Not very far from this shore... toward the western side, on which the ocean main lies open without end, is that very deep whirlpool of waters which we call by its familiar name "the navel of the sea." This is said to suck in the waves and spew them forth again twice every day...

    They say there is another whirlpool of this kind between the island of Britain and the province of Galicia, and with this fact the coasts of the Seine region and of Aquitaine agree, for they are filled twice a day with such sudden inundations that any one who may by chance be found only a little inward from the shore can hardly get away.

    I have heard a certain high nobleman of the Gauls relating that a number of ships, shattered at first by a tempest, were afterwards devoured by this same Charybdis. And when one only out of all the men who had been in these ships, still breathing, swam over the waves, while the rest were dying, he came, swept by the force of the receding waters, up to the edge of that most frightful abyss. And when now he beheld yawning before him the deep chaos whose end he could not see s bumhalf dead from very fear, expected to be hurled into it, suddenly in a way that he could not have hoped he was cast upon a certain rock and sat him down. — Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, i
    So, in a fantasy setting, whirlpools are just plain fun. Maybe they are conduits to the Elemental Plane of Water, whereas Geysers are conduits from the elemental plane of water (sort of a return of water so the volume of water exiting equals the volume of water leaving....hmmm I can already see D&D plots revolving around various nefarious groups plotting to block one of these conduits )
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    Guild Member aeronox's Avatar
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    Today I got a chain-mail from someone at work... and it had this image:

    It empties some of the dam's water.

    Kinda cool.
    Attached Images Attached Images

  7. #17
    Community Leader RPMiller's Avatar
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    That's dam cool!
    Bill Stickers is innocent! It isn't Bill's fault that he was hanging out in the wrong place.

    Please make an effort to tag all threads. This will greatly enhance the usability of the forums.



  8. #18
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by aeronox View Post
    Today I got a chain-mail from someone at work... and it had this image:
    WOW thats scary ! I had to see if this was a photoshop but no its real...

    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e...13089&t=h&z=17

    http://www.panoramio.com/photos/original/10262321.jpg

    Just cant believe that they have this without some kind of safety net over it.
    Last edited by Redrobes; 09-17-2008 at 08:38 PM.

  9. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Redrobes View Post
    Just cant believe that they have this without some kind of safety net over it.
    Think of it as evolution in action!

  10. #20
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by loydb View Post
    Think of it as evolution in action!
    Hmm perhaps I am more psychopathic than you then... I was not thinking that somebody might accidentally fall / swim into it as opposed to somebody throwing or chucking people into it.

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