Weirdcrawl: Qualities of a Weird Wonder

This is part of an ongoing series. Click here for the index.

In summary, so far in this series I have formulated the following as the basic setup of my 'weirdcrawl':

The player characters start off in a Port City on the edge of an inhospitable zone, an area of rough terrain that makes settled agrarian civilization impossible. Groups of nomadic people live in the inhospitable zone. They are culturally different from the settled civilization and the backbone of a system of trade routes between the settled civilization(s) on either side of the inhospitable zone. However, every once in a while they, or groups led in part by them, come back recounting strange experiences of weird wonders deep within the wilderness that few return alive to tell the tale of. 

It is having the players quest for and explore these weird wonders that I am most interested in. The previous posts have explored various things like geographical considerations or how to create a gradual sense of weirdness as players venture further and further into the wilderness. Today I will begin exploring the weird wonders themselves a bit more.

Qualities of a Weird Wonder

So, what exactly lies deep in the wilderness? What strange thing would compel a party of (probably) desperate individuals to seek it out. What makes something truly weird? What makes a venture to it worthwhile? What is the difference between exploring a wonder and exploring a dungeon? How exactly is it weird? How exactly is it wondrous?

To try and answer these questions about the weird wonders I have created a few baseline qualities that a weird wonder contains:

1. Sense of Scale: 
The weird wonders should contain a sense of scale. Bigger things, mountains, giant statues, hanging gardens, tend to be more awe inspiring and worthy of dangerous travel to. Additionally, by making them big it makes it harder for the players to bring them back to civilization and exploit them and helps explain why no one else has done so already. So while the physical size of the weird wonder may range and while it doesn't necessarily need to be gargantuan it should not be anything that could be easily used as an item.

2. Unknown Creation:
The weird wonder should have a timeless quality to its creation where even if it is man-made or constructed, it should have an unknown feel to it's creation. Where it gives the sense that it's existed for so long it exists almost apart from time or was created by a people or culture so different that they feel very alien. When the players gaze upon it they should have a hard time placing it in their conception of the history of the setting or human history.

3. Enigmatic purpose:
The purpose of it should at the same time be both obvious and yet hard to discern; the 'what' should be easily determined, the 'why' enigmatic, possibly even forever cryptic. For example, a giant evil
Statue of the Forgotten Leper King . It should be obvious that it was created, as most statues are, to celebrate or mark something. However, what that something is or the exact details should be enigmatic. Same with more natural things. The Graveyard of the Porcelain Elephants should be obvious when you see it. But why the Porcelain Elephants return only there to die of old age, or why they seem to exhibit such strange funerary behavior probably forever unknown.

4. Weird Quality:
This should almost go without saying but the weird wonder should possess some kind of weird quality or supernatural property beyond just being really old and mysterious. Something that wouldn't be able to exist in our world. Like life ages and decays at a greater rate around the Statue of the Forgotten Leper King yet white lily's seem to surround it that are said to be able to rejuvenate dead flesh. This weird quality or property should offer very little explanation of it's mechanism or why it exists. It just does.

5. Singular Site and Nature:
While the weird wonder itself should contain a sense of scale. It shouldn't be a vast sprawling site like an entire forgotten or lost city, or a massive cave complex. It should be of a singular site and nature. This helps explain why it is isolated and has yet to be explored and why the legends about it are focused. Additionally, from a gaming perspective, if the site for it is too big, it's easy for the players to loose sight of the forest amid all the trees. An adventuring site with only half a dozen to a dozen or so encounters tends to have more cohesive internal logic and focus around it's mysteries, than one with a hundred. The real adventure also shouldn't be just the exploration of the weird wonder, it should be the entire journey of getting there.

6. Trail of Remnants and Disruptions: 
The weird wonders shouldn't be things you stumble across or just suddenly find out of the blue. Their very presence, in some manner or another, should have remnants and disruptions around them. I do not mean this in a purely thematic sense. I mean it in the sense that if they are man-made some group devoted an awful lot of resources to their construction in some form or another. Remnants of this should dot the landscape. There should be things like abandoned quarries of stone that was used for its construction. Old shrines or houses or roads on the way to it. Maybe old carvings recording it's construction and history. Likewise whatever group built it probably considered it some kind 'pinnacle' achievement of their group. It should embody some kind of group ideal or expression in things ranging from it's architecture to recordings of it's construction, to mass graves of slaves worked to death to build it.

Natural weird wonders can be thought of in the same way. If a certain species is gathering is gathering in one place, or there is a very distinct natural feature in the landscape, it's likely to attract or scare off other species. It may even disrupt weather patterns or harbour previously undiscovered natural species or things.

In this manner as the players seek out and journey towards weird wonders they should encounter this trail of remnants and disruptions as they venture into the unknown.

7. Guardians: 
I am using the term guardian very loosely here, but it should have some personified people, creatures, beings, animals, characters etc. that are associated with it and serve to antagonize those that seek it out. They may do this for a variety of reasons and may not be immediately hostile to party etc. Their presence helps explains why it has remained isolated and hidden and serve to help make seeking it out not just a one sided affair. The party is not just exploring an empty site, they are going to have to interact with other characters or people.

However it is important that the wonder and guardian itself are never active. They never intrude upon the world of the heroes and essentially pose no threat to the 'settled' world. The Guardian isn't at the center of things, the wonder is. The Guardian more or less knows about the wonder and serves as a point of interaction and a probable reason why it's remained isolated and hidden.  Their motivations for doing so may vary.

Weirdcrawl: Four Degrees of Weirdness

So far in my quest to create a Weirdcrawl I have talked about normality and weirdness as a duality. At one end you have the main civilized area which functions as a home base, and then at the other end you have the wonders, marvels, the strange things, isolated deep in the wilderness by an inhospitable and unforgiving landscape. Serving as a bit of a bridge between the two, you have the groups of nomadic people living in the inhospitable zone as a buffer and reason why the weird things haven't been exploited. This is my basic setup.

However, upon further reflection,  in order for the players to venture from the normal into the weird, I think there are four degrees of weirdness. Understanding the differences between them I think is key to making the whole journey one of discovery and exploration where as the players go deeper and deeper into the inhospitable zone, things get more and more strange.

1. Unfamiliar Location 

This is probably the 'lightest' way of creating a sense of weirdness, a city or place the player characters are unfamiliar with.

For my weirdcrawl it's the Port City that the players start off in. It should be a new and unfamiliar location to the players and their characters but is a place where its fairly easily to grasp what life is like there for the common person. It should be loosely based off of real world location and not anything outre, like a city made of purple glass or some such thing.

Being a Port City on the edge of an inhospitable zone, it's not really a capitol or important metropolis but neither is it a lawless place or a frontier town. It's mostly just a regional backwater, mostly known for being the last stop before the inhospitable zone. It has a thriving trade scene with lively markets, as it largely exists because of trade across the inhospitable zone, but is mostly made up of common folk just going through their day to day. The civilization may be different from the current one we live in, but it has the same sense of normalcy about it.

For the quick campaign setting that I through together at the end of my last post, I'd probably base the Port City off of medieval Novgorod. Something like this:

I'm going to take the opportunity to revise the chart I created in my last post. Here is one to create a Port City on the edge of the inhospitable zone along with a table to determine what the major institution is in the city and their relationship with the people in the inhospitable zone:

Geography of Settled Empire

1d6	Terrain	Trade Goods
1	Rivers and Fertile Plains	cotton, rice, citrus, ivory, silk, sugar
2	Woodlands/light jungle and meadows	Furs, livestock, rare woods, silk, coca, coffee,
3	Hills and valleys	Metal ores, salt, gems, stone/marble, amber, incense
5	Island archipelago	Spices, pearls, tobacco, olives, whale oil, tea

1d4 Main Institution of Port City

1. Civil: a civil authority made up of normal citizens is prominent. This could range from a democratic town council to an oligarchy of the cities most wealthy and prominent families.

1. The civil authority is at odds with the far off ruling power and wishes to become independent.
   
2. The civil authority’s agrarian way of life is at odds with the nomads of the inhospitable zone which they see as uncultured.
   
3. Culturally the city see’s itself as descended from the nomads more than the empire it part of and wishes to form it’s own state with the nomads.
   
4. There is a new political theory brewing in the city. The underclass wishes the civil authority would become independent and experiment with this new form of governance.
   
5. The city see’s itself as culturally part of the other civilization across the inhospitable zone. They wish to join them.
   
6. The city wishes to increase it’s cultural prestige in the civilization it is part of.
   

2. Military: city has a large military authority and presence that is there to project a sense of force. This could range from complete and oppressive martial law to simply the city being in a strategic location on the edge of the inhospitable zone and the first defense against invasion.

1. There is tension between the military authority and the nomads who live in the inhospitable zone. The military authority is more powerful and see’s themselves as the rightful rulers of the inhospitable zone.
   
2. There is tension between the military authority and the nomads who live in the inhospitable zone. The military authority is weaker and the nomads have begun massing on the boarder.
   
3. There is tension between the city and another civilization beyond the inhospitable zone. They have likely warred in the past, travelling through the inhospitable zone to get to the edges of each other’s empires.
   
4. The city, being on the edge of the empire, tried to rebel, but the military authority was sent to the city and successfully crushed the rebellion.
   
5. The city was independent but has been peacefully (although not completely willfully) amalgamated into the empire.
   
6. The military authority has been tasked with the mapping the inhospitable zone and building roads, watchtowers, and forts in the inhospitable zone. This is somewhat of a fools errand.
   

3. Religious: religious life is a large part of the local culture and religious leaders hold political power or have great sway.

1. The religious leaders see the weird things in the inhospitable zone as signs of the deity they worship, they are eager to collect them.
   
2. The religious leaders see the weird things in the inhospitable zone as signs of another deity, they are eager to destroy them.
   
3. The religious leaders wish to convert the nomads to their religion.
   
4. The religious leaders wish to ensure that the Port City on the edge of the empire is devout in their worship and observance of religious rites.
   
5. The religious authority has built a new centre of religious learning in the city and wishes to learn more about the world (which was of course, created by their deity) through exploring the mysteries of the inhospitable zone.
   
6. The religion began in the inhospitable zone which is considered a holy land. The religious authority wishes to investigate places of religious lore.
   

4. Commercial: commercial enterprises, ranging from many fierce competing companies, to one single monopoly or guild, control the city.

1. They are interested in continuing trade with the nomads and ensuring trade at all costs and seek to create new treaties.
   
2. They are interested in trying to replace the nomads monopoly of the trade routes through the inhospitable zone.
   
3. They seek some new resource rumoured to be in the inhospitable zone.
   
4. The commercial authority seeks some rare resource from the civilization on the other side of the inhospitable zone.
   
5. Most inhabitants of the city are very poor and are ruled over by the fewer in number who control the trade.
   
6. The city cannot support itself in terms of food or water and relies on trade through the inhospitable zone to supply the bare necessities. 
   

2. Strange Customs and Beliefs

This is the next step in weirdness. You have a location or people that are grounded in reality, but they have strange customs and beliefs (at least compared to the settled 'civilized' Port City which is more closely modeled on our settled civilizations.

These people have strange customs and beliefs. These may be cultural/religious things like they worship a pillar of flame that they dance around every night, to more subtle things like they carry moth shaped talismans to ward off ghosts, to things which you don't see in the real world like they ride domesticated zebras.

I think this fits well with the peoples who live in the inhospitable zone. They're smaller in numbers, living in tight knit communities and have their own unique customs and beliefs that seem strange or more 'rustic' to the settled 'civilized' people. I've created the following charts to help generate some customs and beliefs for them. I've kept these customs and beliefs fairly abstract so that they can be elaborated upon depending on the specific geography of the inhospitable zone.

Geography of Inhospitable Zone

1d6	Terrain	Locomotion
1	Desert	Camel
2	Swamp	Boat
3	Plateau	Yak
4	Dense Vegetation	Human
5	Steppe	Horse
6	Badlands	Mule

1d10 Customs and Beliefs

Superstition and Taboos: things the players can do that will cause alarm.

1. A certain animal or plant is seen as blessed and harming it a great crime.
   
2. Blaspheme or disrespect towards the gods is a crime.
   
3. The group worships no idols, only natural things. All idols are zealously destroyed.
4. The group has holy talismans and sacred objects. Letting them touch the ground is considered blasphemy.
5. The group has a dietary restriction of some sort (meat, holy animal, fish, etc.).
6. Those who come into contact with unclean things are shunned.
7. They carry talismans to ward off possession by numerous different types of evil spirits.
8. Anyone can lay a curse upon another if the words are spoken in true anger.
9. A certain animal is seen as lucky and commonly kept as a trained pet.
10. Outsiders are considered unlucky.

Dress: appearances of the people

1. Lots of small dangling Bells.
   
2. Big brass buttons, circlets, arm bands, etc.
   
3. Lots of tattoos.
   
4. Elaborate daggers and other weapons.
   
5. Lots of colourful feathers and hides used in clothing as items of status.
6. Ritual scarification of the cheeks or other parts of the body.
7. Loose flowing robes with thick belts.
8. Clothes designed to hide the face and general appearance.
9. Lots of geometric embroidered patterns holding different meanings.
10. Clothing has elements (high heels, constricting pants) that make menial labour impractical and denote high status.

Architecture: appearances of where they live

1. Houses are made out of plain materials, sparse and minimal.
2. Elaborate carved ornamentation.
3. Flags and streamers abound.
4. Lots of tapestries and finely woven textiles.
5. Houses are built in hard to reach locations.
6. Houses are fully mobile.
7. Houses are concealed or built into the landscape.
8. Houses are open to the elements.
9. Houses are communal.
10. Houses have many defensive features.

Celebrations and Religious Rituals: events the players observe and can take part in

1. Elaborate offerings are made to bless new ventures and journeys.
2. Funerals are mournful weeks long affairs that all must partake in.
3. Elaborate offerings and sacrifices to ensure good weather.
4. Holding large celebratory feasts demonstrates social status.
5. Visions quests, especially among the younger, are common.
6. Rituals celebrations at night following a lunar calendar.
7. Ritual celebrations during the day following a solar calendar.
8. Elaborate rituals imitating mythical stories of the gods.
9. Rituals to ensure a good hunt or to attract prey.
10. Death is not seen as final. Funerals are more celebrations of people passing on to a different state.

Organization: how the people are organized and who they look to for leadership

1. Oracle: an oracle who interprets the will of the gods through divination and is consulted in important decisions.
2. Democracy: every full status adult receives an equal say in decisions and important matters are decided by mutual consensus.
3. Militant: athleticism and martial ability is valued. Those who have partaken in successful raids or feats of strength have higher status.
4. The Hearth and Spear: elderly women settle all the internal or domestic affairs of the village. Elderly men settle all the military and external affairs of the village.
5. Rite of passage: to be seen as a ‘full’ adult individuals must pass a very dangerous and painful rite of passage that often results in death.
6. Hunters: those who have great knowledge of the movement of the animal herds and food sources are considered to have high status.
7. Slavers: the group uses captured slaves extensively for menial tasks. Those who have lots of slaves are considered wealthy and have high status.
8. Ancestor Worship: the group has ancestor shrines and uses past deeds and actions of the ancestors to guide decisions.
9. Kahn of Khans: the group has a chief appointed by a charismatic ruler. The ruler has no direct control of the group but important decisions are made when the chiefs are called to come together by the ruler.
10. Clans: the group is comprised of a bunch of interrelated families. The head of all the families meet to make important decisions.

3. The Impossible with an Explanation

In this next degree of weirdness, unlike the previous two, you have something that is impossible in our real world, but has a plausible explanation of how it works or how it came about and how the players can make 'sense' of it.

This degree of weirdness is what most 'fantasy' elements in rpg stuff falls into. Like the dead being able to rise via magic, it's impossible in our world but in most fantasy games there tends to be a system of magic that normalizes it and makes it understandable. Such as the general idea of spell casting where you have to have say the right words and make the right gestures at midnight in the graveyard to evoke the magical energy to bring back the dead. Or some monstrous beast that was created from magical experimentation or some weird quirk of evolution.

I don't have any particular charts to generate this degree of weirdness as it is largely already covered by the rules of whatever system is being used.

4. The Irrational: 

As mentioned in my introduction, this fourth most weird degree of weirdness deals with things which are inherently irrational. They are irrational not in that they make no sense . They are irrational in that there is no rationale for what is occurring, or what they truly are. They tend to either defy understanding or investigation or both.

They just are like other natural phenomenon just are, except there is something fundamentally subjective, strange, or paradoxical about them. While it may seem like something this strange is very hard to conceptualize and generate in my next entry in this series I will be examining how to do so in further detail.

Until then it is time to use the tables in this post to put everything together!

Putting Everything Together! 

In my last post I rolled a Port City on the edge of a swamp and created the following:

To the east along the Vorba river lay the Free Cities of the White Sea along the northern coast. To the south through forest thick, lay the open plains of the Red Czar. In between lies the Black Basin. Miles and miles of cold swamps and mist shrouded mires where it is said two great armies of ancient cities fought long ago in dread cataclysm. It is where the Peaters dwell, so named for the peat they trade in. Small villages of ramshackle peoples said to be descended from the fallen cities, they travel the labyrinthine waterways in narrow boats bringing trade from east to south, making what life they can amid the dancing lights of the swamp and cold moonless nights when the black water laps at their boats.

Using my new charts I rolled/determined the following:

The Port City of Vorba:

• Part of a collective of free cities that lie along a heavily forested coast.
• Sits on the edge of the Black Basin, a swamp.
• The authority is Religious.
• The religion began in the inhospitable zone which is considered a holy land. The religious authority wishes to investigate places of religious lore.

With this information I'm going to continue the Russian theme of the area and say the church is loosely based off of the Russian Eastern Orthodox church where they worship the White Widow. A female goddess of the moon and frost who's followers seek her inner guiding light through meditative and mystical experiences. It's a peaceful  church with many orders of monks and a strong sense of tradition. It's not overly oppressive but tends to enforce it's traditional beliefs upon the population.

It views the Black Basin as a bit of a holy land because it's where the patron saint of the church is from. He was a strong unbeliever of the White Widow and traveled from the Black Basin as an assassin to kill her but upon meeting her instantly converted.

The Peatsmen

• Use boats to navigate. They are like water gypsies.
• They are ruled over by a charismatic 'Prince of Thieves' who is the leader of their gangs. 
• They believe that all water is sacred. It's hard to find clean potable water sources in their swamp. It is the source of life to be protected and treasured.  They don't worship a god and instead have a philosophy about adapting to life and living in the moment like water. It flows and is endless, it endlessly adapts.
• They worship no idols and destroy any idols of the White Widow that they find seeking to free the minds of her worshipers who they see as slaves.
• They scar their arms for every blood oath they have made. Those with many scars are said to be especially trustworthy.
• They dress in loose blue colored robes. Thin in the summer, thick and layered in the winter. They were thick belts made out of snakeskin.
• Their houses are fully mobile. They live in elaborate house boats that they dock together in loose villages.
• They toss gold rings and other jewelry into the waters of the swamp to bless a new journey or venture as traveling through the swamp is very dangerous and they seek to appease it.

The Red Czar:

• Lays on the other side of the swamp a far distance away.
• Not overly concerned with the affairs of the Free Cities.
• Trades for furs.

Overall the above information is all I'd really use in terms of the geopolitical situation. I'd add to it and make up more as the campaign unfolded. While this is a long post it shows how a few tables can be used to generate the basic geography and geopolitics. More isn't really needed as the focus isn't on the politics, it's on the strange and weird things! 

Weirdcrawl: Geographical Considerations

In my previous post I talked about how making players outsiders, strangers in a strange land, can do much for evoking a sense of the weird. Having the player character not be local to the region servers as a strong logical reason why they find it so weird.

In this post I would like to examine the geography of the region they find themselves in to see how it can be convey a sense of the Weird. The two main guidelines from my introductory post that I will keep in mind are: The Players should venture from the normal into the weird and The Weird should evoke a sense of awe

The first I think is easy to convey. The players should have to go from more civilized area's full of 'normality' to area's that are are full of wilderness where they encounter weird things.

The second is a bit more complicated. If the Weird elements exist in a civilized area, or an area that was easy to settle, then they would probably have been investigated, experimented upon, commercialized, exploited, and in general not evoke much of a sense of awe. For example, if there existed a weird place where gravity was reversed and water flowed up a cliff in a reverse waterfall, even if it couldn't somehow be commercialized directly, such as by putting a watermill there and trying to create some kind of perpetual motion water mill loop, the tourist industry that would invariably spring into being would probably greatly reduce all sense of awe. To this end one for the Weird elements to remain awe evoking they needs to be isolated. Otherwise they become normalized or 'civilized'.

Isolating The Weird

Isolating The Weird is a tricky thing. Having the players randomly explore a remote wilderness map and randomly stumble across weird things is generally not the best way to run a table top RPG. Things tend to work a bit better when the players have various leads (rumours, clue's, suggestions) to follow up on. It helps them decide what is relevant to their character and keeps the game interesting as the players can pursue what seems most interesting to them.

While having undiscovered, unexplored wilderness, like remote Siberia, may work well for explaining why the weird elements are isolated  I don't think it creates the most enjoyable hexcrawl. Additionally if the land were truly unexplored and undeveloped it really limits the weird stuff to more natural things.

So in order for the players to receive leads about the Weird things isolated in the wilderness, there needs to have been someone who experienced them and came back to tell the tale. The easiest way to do this is to have knowledge about the Weird encountered as general myth and rumour. Someone, probably not recently, encountered something weird and brought back a strange, probably not wholly accurate story of it that has become embellished over time or they are of questionable bias.

In this manner the Weird element is isolated not purely in a geographical sense (although that helps), but is isolated because it is really dangerous to travel too. Despite its distance to civilization, few manage to reach it without dying and it hasn't been exploited by humankind.

Journey to the Weird!

Getting to the Weird shouldn't just be a matter of travel, like spending four weeks or four months in the wilderness bushwhacking your way to where it is. It should be a journey! A physically dangerous, psychological testing journey! One that breaks the spirit of lesser men! Getting to it should be a quest in a classic sense.

Where the bulk of the adventure is what happens on the way and there is no guarantee it will be reached or when reached, will be what the party thinks it is, and getting there requires an almost obsessional desire to see things through no matter the cost.

Starting City

So far we have determined that the geography of the region, or some part of it, needs to be civilized in order for people to find out about the existence of the Weird elements. This place is also logically a good place to start off our adventuring party in. Where they are strangers to the area and have come to this bastion of civilization in order to venture out into the wilderness to seek out and explore something Weird they heard a rumour or tale about.  It should also be somewhat pedestrian in nature so that the emphasis is not on exploring it but seeking to explore the wilderness.

While a good idea for this type of locale may be a frontier town, and it is a common trope in RPGs. I think it doesn't work well in creating a Weirdcrawl. If it's a frontier city, it means there's a frontier that's slowly being expanded into by the civilization and settled. This tends to create a sense that the land beyond can be 'normalized' and isn't inherently inhospitable and isolating. This runs counter to needing the geography to provide logical reasons why the Weird elements haven't been explored or exploited.

To this end I think the city should be more of a 'port' city or gateway city. Kind of like the last city of the civilization or empire before some form of inhospitable terrain where the geography changes.

Natural Barriers and Inhospitable Zones

If you examine the geography of earth and its history one interesting thing that arises with landscapes with natural barriers and inhospitable terrain is the emergence of trading cultures and great trade routes. This is more fully detailed in A Magical Society: Silk Road but which I will summarize.

You begin with a geographical barrier like a mountain range. However, instead of simply having the terrain on either side of the geographic barrier be good or passable terrain you make it inhospitable. Like a desert or steppe or swamp or thick jungle or tundra etc. Whatever it is, the inhospitable terrain makes it so geographic barrier won't simply serve as a natural border between two agrarian civilizations but will create a large buffer zone. This buffer zone may have nothing on the other side, but more interestingly, could have another such civilization on the other side. Because the civilization on the one side likely wants trade goods they don't have from the other and vice versa, naturally you get trade routes forming through the inhospitable terrain. 

This creates an interesting situation where you have people traveling from a civilized place through an inhospitable and somewhat hostile area, probably not staying to long or exploring to much, but perhaps encountering something weird and bringing stories of it back to civilization. Furthermore, because the two civilized area's on either side of the barrier may have expanded outward into the inhospitable terrain beyond trying to claim and control it as their own (as Empires are won't to do) before retreating or collapsing back, the inhospitable zone may be littered with the remnants and ruins of these previous attempts or even previous empires or civilizations.

Common natural barriers and inhospitable zones can be summarized in a random chart:

1d6	Barrier	Inhospitable Zone
1	Rocky coastline	Dense forest/jungle
2	Mountains	Desert
3	River	Swamp
4	Mountains	Plateau
5	Mountains	Steppe
6	Canyons/Hills	Badlands

The Cultures of Inhospitable Zones

While the name 'inhospitable' may seem to suggest that no groups of people can survive in an inhospitable zone, there are very, very few places on earth that are truly inhospitable for human life or habitation. However, the cultures of the people that tend to live in these zones which are inhospitable to an agrarian civilization tend to share some common traits. These are detailed more in A Magical Society: Silk Road and once again I will summarize here:

1. Life is hard: it is generally harder than living in the agrarian zones on the other side of the barriers. Populations are smaller and people tend to live around or close by sources of water/food etc or migrate between them. They tend to be very sensitive to geographic changes such as a river drying up or an oasis being filled.
2. Adaptation through mobility: cultures in inhospitable zones tend to be mobile. They may live totally nomadic lifestyles, constantly moving with their horses and animals, or more semi-nomadic lifestyles where they move several times a year depending on the season or are ready to pack up and adapt to changing circumstances. Additionally their mobility may be motivated by things like displacement from internecine fighting.
3. Culture Exchange: while it may seem strange that the peoples in an isolating landscape are used to outsiders and cultural exchange, very often due to their mobility and interaction, forced or otherwise, with the peoples of the agrarian cultures on the sides of them, they are often used to exchanging goods and ideas from these peoples.
4. Trading: to try and improve their lives the cultures of inhospitable zones tend to turn to trade as a means of gaining goods they could not otherwise. They tend to specializing in trading and highly skilled at it and serve as great disseminators and often create demand for exotic goods from the surrounding agrarian cultures. 

Putting Things Together

Using the above I've created the following regional map. It's not complete enough yet to be a hexcrawl but gives a good idea of the region. I rolled a 3 and got River/Swamp. I've decided to base it off of Vasyugan Swamp in Russia as I like the idea of a Slavic themed cold climate swampland in the middle of the continent rather than near a coast.

The Black Basin

To the east along the Vorba river lay the Free Cities of the White Sea along the northern coast. To the south through forest thick, lay the open plains of the Red Czar. In between lies the Black Basin. Miles and miles of cold swamps and mist shrouded mires where it is said two great armies of ancient cities fought long ago in dread cataclysm. It is where the Peaters dwell, so named for the peat they trade in. Small villages of ramshackle peoples said to be descended from the fallen cities, they travel the labyrinthine waterways in narrow boats bringing trade from east to south, making what life they can amid the dancing lights of the swamp and cold moonless nights when the black water laps at their boats.