How can you make describing a desert setting interesting, Veeky Forums...

How can you make describing a desert setting interesting, Veeky Forums? What are some good tips for making such a place feel "alive" and not just like a lazily copy-pasted blank canvas?

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kinddm.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/10-encounters-for-a-desert-oasis/
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Have you ever actually been in a desert?

No, I haven't.

You can still have a varied environment, it is just arid.

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Australian here

A few things about the desert here-

We have red sand but depending on the time of day it changes hue from red to orange, yellow, blue, purple.

Plants are often spiky. We have a plant called spinifex grass that is just all spikes, the spikes have a natural glue on them so if you walk into one it's extremely hard to dislodge them. Did I mention the spikes are also slightly venomous?

The temperature varies from extremely hot during the day to rather chilly at night. Most animals come out during the dusk and dawn twilight hours. At night, the stars are insanely visibly and the milky way makes an impossibly large aqua-blue streak across the sky.

Waterholes and rivers draw animals in and have oases of green around them. Large predators such as saltwater crocodiles use these to ambush prey.

Geographically we have a lot of sandstone mesas and plateaus that jut out of the landscape. They are often pockmarked with gorges and waterholes.

In the great expanses of flat desert, we have salt flats where water has evaporated and endless white stretches to the horizon, if there is still water, it often reflects the sky creating the illusion of infinite blue.

If you've ever been out in the empty parts of the American west at night, you'd know how imposing the desert can be.

They sky is too big, and the land too dark. It leaves you too open to the influence of interstellar space. The stars are so numerous that the familiar constellations are lost in a sea of alien lights, interrupted only by the monolithic black outlines of distant mesas. On a moonless night, one can scarcely help imagining what nameless horrors may come seeping down from the depths of the void in the bitterly cold nights of that unwholesome expanse.

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Desert coastlines are also interesting.

This is the great Australian Bight, at the base of the cliffs you would find sea lions, great white sharks, and whales.

>one can scarcely help imagining what nameless horrors may come seeping down from the depths of the void
Skinwalkers, user.

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Make antarctica

"There's a reason that all great religions are founded on mountaintops and in deserts...the Stars."

Paraphrasing Mr Pratchett.

Nobody thought about simply adding insurgents?

The wildlife?

Well if there's nothing new under the sun, there's gotta be something underground.

Deserts smell different than other places. The plants aren't as floral as wetter climates, being more subtle or just outright sickly sweet. The air moves in gusts and bursts, but it's always moving. Trust me, you notice it more when it's not windy/breezy than when it is. In fact, when the wind does stop, you feel the weight of the air. The particles of dust, the bits of pollen, the heat from the sun. It layers down on you in ways you'd never experience anywhere else. You look around and think there's no life, but come back during the right week or two and you'll see nothing but blooms. Wander around under a full moon and you'll feel the eyes of dozens of creatures, large and small, watching you from afar. This place is foreign, but familiar. It's harsh, but gentle.

Honestly, go visit a desert for the day. Words cannot do them justice. It isn't the idea that "there's actually life out there," but more truthfully that "the whole place is one single living organism, violent and beautiful all at once."

Make it a dessert setting instead

The trick is, you put things in the desert, and you make those things interesting.
Wind makes different sounds, clouds can appear differently and potentially foretell the weather.
No environment is interesting by default, it's the characters and props that move the story along.
If you need help making interesting fantasy desert shit, then say so.

FUCK FUCK FUCK

I just dreamt the most amazing RPG campaign and forgot almostg everything about it. I realized once I saw this thread.

All I can remember now is that the players are set out to find something that was shattered and spread across the world. It's not what they think it is and I don't think it is something as clicheed as an ancient evil because I remember the story having a brialliant non-clicheed twist.

It was setz on a desert world and I wanted the group to travel via flying shipt.

Fuck, now it's all gone..

>Something shattered and spread across the world
>Desert setting

Osiris' bits?

Found some encounters for a desert
kinddm.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/10-encounters-for-a-desert-oasis/

Roaming bands of bandits as the desert acts as a highway for trade. The closer you get to one of the oases that dot the landscape and make up pit stops for the trade caravans the safer you are, but between them lies hostile canyons and cliffs with ample opportunites for ambushes. In the sands lurk mysterious beasts that, similar to the flatfishes of the sea, hide in clear sight looking for prey. At day the temperature is blistering hot while at night it's freezing cold. At the far distant horizon you can spot solitary behemoths that slowly make their way through the landscape.

Siq - canyons where one can find little rivers, wild camels, palmcrabs and those babuins locals use for herding goats.

There is a rumor that the siq labyrinth northeast has a city at its center.

Besides ordinary oasis, some drunkards mumble about oasis protected by mirages, fey sanctuaries left from when it wasn't a desert, fighting for milennia against the encroaching sands.

Most of the Saara is actually rock instead of sand. It even has moutain ranges where one can harvest snow for a king's ice-cream.

Flash floods.

The hydra-centipede is nasty during the night.

man, that's essentially how my take looks. would have been a great inspiration source had I found it earlier.

If you can, play RDR and FNV. Let yourself fall into the landscapes. Not the same as the real thing but remarkably visually faithful.