So I'm planning a (modern-day) game that will take place on a tropical island.
Problem is, I know shit-all about tropical islands, and searching for the terms just yields a lot of resorts.
Can /tg/ help me out? Any sort of adventure hook or background detail would be helpful, and I'd also be interested in any info people have about real-life islands, especially regarding non-tourism focused settlements and/or nature preserves.
It's going to be humid as fuck
Bizarre creatures due to isolated environment
Probably no big animals due to not a lot of food.
Bonus points for this place once having natives, but were wiped out by mysterious force.
>>54859410
Thanks for your input! How big is 'big'? Are we talking raccoon-sized? Wolf-sized?
As for the natives, one thing I'm trying to take inspiration from is Easter Island, so mysterious stone heads are likely to be all over the place.
>>54859839
So we're mostly talking Polynesia and the like? Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji, Maori New Zealand and so on?
I'd look into the history, mythology and culture of these places, and potentially their interactions with the west for inspiration for how they react to your players. Polynesian myths especially have some cool stuff you could work with.
>>54859135
assuming you're wanting to make some fantasy land, make shit up.
failing that - don't make it tropical then - Vancouver Island sure don't look tropical to me, put it there.
>>54860558
Yeah, places like those - the original idea for the setting was "at some point in the 1950s, a previously hidden island was discovered in the Pacific ocean, where bizarre things happen." Ideally it'd be relatively recent, but I want a decent-sized city and I can't find any hard data on how long it generally takes to build an entire city - the only islands that have recently been populated just have research stations full of freezing scientists.
I was already planning on having factions - islander and westerner would work pretty well for the flavor of two of them...
>>54859135
It could so humid and hot that just using a plate cuirass is to ask for a heatstroke. Water + salt may make iron and steel not worth it, so natives craft armour of bronze and brass.
This is one of many things I learned browsing this fa/tg/uy's blog, who's creating "Hari Ragat", a setting based on the history, mythology and culture of Austronesia/Oceania/Southeast Asia:
http://hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/03/building-southeast-asian-settings-part-i.html
http://hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/04/on-southeast-asian-settings-part-ii.html
Browse his blog for a fuckton of ideas.
http://hariragat.blogspot.com.br/search/label/hari%20ragat
http://hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2017/06/island-generator-for-hari-ragat.html
He also compares his local mythology with greek's, and natives with vikings. Specially the teeth studded with jewels.
>>54862215
This is a really useful link! Thanks!
>>54859135
Hurricanes are bad news.
Really, really bad fucking news. That's not your average temperate climate storm (even tough to be fair nowdays climate has taken up some levels everywhere) I think the idea was that basically anything you could build will be destroyed in some years when these strikes.
If the island isn't too big, check out your water sources.
If the island is big... well, interesint shit happens if -as it often is- terrain is bad (mountains, jungles). Obstacles can become pretty harsh and few kilometers means another, unexplored, world or even biome. See New Guinea.
An interesting fact is that polynesians made regular trips for resources in the hundreds of kilometers. Peculiar stones for tools, especially.
You will probably not give a fuck but small animals might destroy local wildlife pretty easily.
Final bump. Thanks for everyone's help so far!