#Adventures in the forbidden zone

[polybbiuss]

Texture - Elements of Design (10/10), digital collage

i feel like its easy to tell that this one was a bit rushed, but i only had a couple hours to do the coloring before it was due lol

[femaleziegfeld]

i wrote about my weekend at the movies in Varnsdorf ! :)

[horrororman]

More #horror films that were released on May 20th...

#Maniac (1963)(UK).

#TheEvilEye (1964)(US).

#MarioBava

#SpacehunterAdventuresintheForbiddenZone (1983)(US & Canada).

#scifi

#MollyRingwald

#Mosquito (1995)(US)(video premiere).

#GunnarHansen

#DominionPrequeltotheExorcist (2005)(US)(limited).

[metaphoricalcolours]

molly ringwald films, the official cinema release poster vs the dvd release cover (part 1: 1982-1986)

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I had a dream last night that I found a bargain bin DVD collection of a bunch of shitty 3D movies from the 80s and it came with two pairs of those red and cyan glasses, and I was so disappointed to wake up because I wanted to have a b-movie marathon...

[proserpine-in-phases]

The boys are trying to reach the Forbidden Zone, which would be this ⬇️⬇️

Creepy gap below the bathtub. They found a way around the barrier I'd built from a tote lid and the cabinet shelf SOMEHOW (because cats are made for crime) so now I installed a child safe lock and also am going to obtain some bricks to fill in that gap

[duranduratulsa]

Now showing on my 80's Fest Stevegoolie Saturday Night...Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone (1983) on classic DVD 📀! #movies #movie #scifi #spacehunter #spacehunteradventuresintheforbiddenzone #mollyringwald #PeterStrauss #michaelironside #erniehudson #andreamarcovicci #dvd #80s #80sfest #durandurantulsas6thannual80sfest #Stevegoolie #svengoolie #METV

[cultfaction]

Cult Faction Podcast Ep. 103: Spacehunter - Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Spacehunter – Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is this week’s spotlight subject! Produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by Lamont Johnson this 1983 American-Canadian Space Western stars Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Michael Ironside, Andrea Marcovicci, Hrant Alianak, and Deborah Pratt. All that plus your usual banter from three men who should know…

[amesmonde]

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983) Review

A bounty hunter with a vagrant teenage girl goes on a mission to rescue three women stranded on a brutal planet. Boasting a release in 3D, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is a flawed sci-fi adventure in the wake of Mad Max” and Mad Max: Road Warrior. Similar to Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn and Space Raiders, it seems to only exist to cash in on the release of Return of…

[boardgametoday]

Free League Publishing teases its 2023 releases

Free League Publishing teases its 2023 releases #ttrpg #miniaturegames

Free League Publishing has lifted the veil as to what we can expect in 2023 with new games and expansions! This isn’t everything, there’s more to come but already there’s a lot to be excited for! Announced Games From Free League Publishing 2023 Dragonbane Release: Q3 2023A legend is reborn. Dragonbane is the new and reimagined edition of Sweden’s first and biggest tabletop roleplaying…

[altocat]

FIRST SOLDIER EPISODE 2: CHAPTER 1

It's finally time! We were waiting FOREVER. I know you guys are very excited for Babygeal and Miniroth's first adventure together. So I'm recapping what you might have missed if you weren't able to see the chapter! Let's go!!!!

We open on the mysterious woods, a hooded figure staggering around wheezing and gasping. He's in some sort of ruins location. He drops a video camera cutting to images of sephiroth in fire and flashing forward to glimpses of scenes we'll see later in the story. We see Sephiroth, Angeal, and a Lucrecia-looking character named ALISSA. A new soldier ally? But she looks a LOT like Lucrecia so it's weird. A new friend? Or something...else?

Alissa is shown to be mentioning something about Sephiroth taking a magic sword (Masamune) and how it will empower him. Or, as she puts it, CHANGE THE WORLD. More clips from the trailer.

We cut to the present with Miniroth sleeping on the helicopter. Angeal disturbs his sleep like we saw before. It's still 1992 btw so not too much later than the Rhadore mission.

Miniroth is grumpy. Camera guy is here too--his name is Bachman.

Angeal is SIXTEEN also btw if you're wondering. Seph is prob 14 or 15.

Angeal keeps yapping and LMAO he's already talking about dumbapples. Miniroth is super annoyed and keeps blowing him off.

Angeal guesses that Seph has ever been lectured before and Miniroth FLASHES BACK TO GLENN. I'm already sad.

Bachman is reminiscing like this is a documentary he's looking back on. Angeal and Sephiroth land in September of 1992 into the ruins of Robio, on the southern tip of Wutai. Their objective is to find a bunch of missing soldiers.

Bachman is with the Shinra Records and Archives division. Sephiroth already hates being filmed. Bachman is basically there for propaganda reasons. Sephiroth WILL NOT humor his questions and is getting increasingly pissy.

Angeal is determined to find the missing soldiers no matter what. Four missing soldiers.

A monster appears! Sephiroth doesn't want to fight with the cameras rolling so Angeal steps in to fight for him. Angeal asks why Sephiroth didn't fight, Sephiroth says that Angeal had it handled. Bachman keeps hassling them for PR footage. Sephiroth was not informed about being filmed and is sulking. The guy is DONE.

They enter the Igara Forbidden Zone. It's a spooky place. Shinra thinks they're hiding something there. This is where the soldiers went missing. Angeal guesses there's some evil sort of entity in the area. Sephiroth is checked out.

Angeal tries to get Seph to cut loose. There's tension between them. Seph won't open up. The incident with Glenn really hurt him. He doesn't trust anyone.

Angeal spots something. It's a soldier and he's dead. Angeal is sad. He knew this guy and he was one of his friends. Angeal says they'll bring the body back later. They have to find the others.

They trek deeper into the Forbidden Zone. Angeal leads the way. ANOTHER body! That's 2/4 soldiers found.

Bachman brings up the Rhadore mission. Sephiroth flashes back again to the FS trio being kind to him. Sephiroth lies about how close he was to them, pretending he never got emotionally involved. But even then, Sephiroth is upset af when they are called traitors to Shinra. It's weighing on him.

Sephiroth tells Angeal that he's a special soldier. He's the only one who can speak freely to Professor Hojo. He warns Angeal THEY'LL NEVER BE FRIENDS (lol). Hojo must have done some shit to Seph before this mission, since he's so closed off. Angeal muses that being around Hojo must have fucked up Sephiroth's personality.

A third dead soldier found. Sephiroth still doesn't want to fight when monsters show up. Peak Grumpyroth. Only one more soldier left to find.

Sephiroth says that the wound on the body was made with a blade, the same as the other bodies. A PERSON killed the soldiers, not monsters. Angeal wants Seph to help him out and share intel. Sephiroth is not being agreeable.

They take a short break. Bachman brings up being friends with soldiers and says that Seph keeps to himself. Angeal lectures on TEAMWORK. Seph blows him off again. Sephiroth brute forces his way through without teamwork.

Angeal says he always wanted to work with Seph. He says if they can't be friends then at least comrades? Sephiroth keeps depersonalizing himself. He keeps calling himself just a "weapon" or a "machine". Angeal is DETERMINED to be his friend no matter what. They can get stronger through bonds. But Sephiroth is still depressed and checked out.

Lol they talk about ninjas. Angeal has fought them in simulations.

FUCKING HOJO JUMPSCARE. Seph flashback of fighting in simulations with Hojo overlooking his training. Angeal's data was included to test how Sephiroth operates with a team. Huh. Angeal was apparently partners with Seph in those simulations due to rankings. LOL GEN NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO PLACE I GUESS.

Angeal senses something's not right about this place (NO YOU THINK?). They talk about Soldier Intuition. Camera man is literally just there for Angeal to talk to since Seph won't talk to him lol.

Seph says they're being watched. Sephiroth just senses it while blowing off the whole intuition thing. We see a spooky purple presence tailing them.

Another body! The final one! And they're alive! But suddenly an old man with an INCREDIBLE AMAZING SWORD shows up. Sephiroth says that the geezer is unworthy to hold such a beautiful weapon. It's the Masamune btw. In case that isn't obvious. And the old man's name is Swordsmith Masamune.

NAMELESS (Sephiroth's old sword) breaks during the clash (rip). The old man says that he's the master swordsmith of Robio. He brags about how COOL AND AWESOME HIS SWORD IS. And how no matter how long he's waited, no one has come to claim the sword as their own (lol till now). He then runs off.

The injured soldier stirs and removes their helmet. It's that Lucrecia-looking chick Alissa. Sephiroth IMMEDIATELY panics because SHE LOOKS LIKE HIS MOTHER SADRFGHJGFD

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON ASEDRFGHFDS She asks if she looks like Sephiroth's sweetheart...or his MOTHER. AND THEN THE CHAPTER ENDS!!!!

But wait there's apparently extra content? Little glimpses. Hm...

Snippet 1: Angeal tells Bachman to take Alissa to safety while they gather their fallen allies. Sephiroth is still freaked out by Alissa. The mission wraps up. Bachman muses that there is no other soldier like Sephiroth. But the second he lost his sword...there were cracks in his psyche. Hm...

Snippet 2: Sephiroth is having a dream. It's his mother's voice and HOLY SHIT he's dreaming about seeing her im going to pass away. I'm going to die FUCK he's dreaming of having her with him and being in her life and hersdfdsdfs she makes him dinner and it's PUMPKIN SOUP AND I'M DYING HOLY SHIT HOLY FUCK ASEDRFGHJGFDSADFGHGFDSDSFGHFDS it's a fantasy in his head AND HE AND AND SHE ASDFGHFDSA I'm sobbing SHE HUGS HIM AND I'M ASDFGDSFD

Snippet 3: Angeal is thinking back to a memory with his father. It's Gillian's birthday. We see young Angeal with his dad and they're bringing out food for his mother enjoying a nice picnic. Angeal says he wants to do more cooking. Just some cute Banora lore mostly. Angeal is talking about enlisting. The extra wages will help his family. They toast in honor of sending him off. Angeal reflects on doing meaningful stuff with his life by joining SOLDIER.

END chapter. Whew. Holy cow. Super intriguing stuff. Who is Alissa? Why does she look like Sephiroth's mom? What's with the Masamune? Will Sephiroth EVER trust Angeal? ALSO HOLY SHIT WE GOT A CANON MOMMY ISSUES SCENE WITH Seph and Lucrecia I'm going to die.

[zippocreed501]

FROM THE B-MOVIE BADLANDS...

...images from the lost continent of cult films, b-movies and celluloid dreamscapes

Starfighters in 70's/80's SF movies

Tally ho! Let's fire up those pulse engines, charge the laz-burners and see if we can bag one of those damn Vyveek bounders! What?

Battlestar Galactica (1978) Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) Flash Gordon (1980) Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone  (1983)The Ice Pirates (1984)The Last Starfighter (1984) Enemy Mine (1985)

[iolausian-fields]

Ryan Gosling as young Hercules, being pulled under ground by a lurking creature

Young Hercules ep 41 - Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌈 Queer Books Coming Out in July 2024 🌈

🌈 Good morning, my bookish bats, and happy July! Pride Month may be over, but remember: Read Queer ALL Year. Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Happy reading!

[ Release dates may have changed. ]

❤️ Earth to Alis - Lex Carlow 🧡 Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts - Adam Sass 💛 The Sky on Fire - Jenn Lyons 💚 The Meaning of Liberty - Sage Donnell 💙 Making It - Laura Kay 💜 The Black Bird of Chernobyl - Ann McMan ❤️ A Map of My Want - Faylita Hicks 🧡 The Devil You Know - Ali Vali 💛 The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power - Various 💙 The Second Son - Adrienne Tooley 💜 Cursed Under London - Gabby Hutchinson Crouch 🌈 Forbidden Girl - Kristen Zimmer

❤️ Rise - Freya Finch 🧡 Undercurrent - Patricia Evans 💛 Online Rebellion - Blue Matt Jeff 💚 Wolf Gift - T.J. Nichols 💙 Cash Delgado Is Living the Dream - Tehlor Kay Mejia 💜 Miller: Origin - Starr Z. Davies ❤️ The Shadows Beyond - T.J. Rose 🧡 The Ones Who Come Back Hungry - Amelinda Bérubé 💛 Their Viscountess - Jess Michaels 💙 Fast Holiday - Kerry Lockhart 💜 The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky - Josh Galarza 🌈 The West Passage - Jared Pechaček

❤️ The Hades Calculus - Maria Ying 🧡 Misrecognition - Madison Newbound 💛 One Last Summer - Kristin Keppler 💚 Waypoint Seven - Xan van Rooyen 💙 Hiding Him - Adam Hattan 💜 Thousand Autumns - Meng Xi Shi, Me.Mimo ❤️ The Adventure Zone, Vol. 6: The Suffering Game - Various 🧡 Rowan & Aldred - Lucie Fleury 💛 Yoke of Stars - R.B. Lemberg 💙 Casting Vows - Ariella Talix 💜 Count Felford's Vessel - S. Rodman

❤️ The Actor and His Secret - Ben Alderson, Laura R. Samotin 🧡 How To Die Famous - Benjamin Dean 💛 So Witches We Became - Jill Baguchinsky 💚 The Amazing Alpha Tau Romeo and Juliet Project - Lisa Henry, Sarah Honey �� The Noble’s Merman - S.S. Genesee 💜 The Loudest Silence - Sydney Langford ❤️ Life is Strange - Brittney Morris 🧡 Bury Your Gays - Chuck Tingle 💛 I Will Never Leave You - Kara A. Kennedy 💙 The Blonde Dies First - Joelle Wellington 💜 Under the Lupine Moon - A. Knightley

❤️ Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf - Deke Moulton 🧡 Charlotte Illes Is Not a Teacher - Katie Siegel 💛 The Ghostkeeper - Johanna Taylor 💚 Trespass Against Us - Leon Kemp 💙 Exes & Foes - Amanda Woody 💜 The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl - Bart Yates ❤️ Unbound - J.A. Vodvarka 🧡 StreamLine - Lauren Melissa Ellzey 💛 Time and Time Again - Chatham Greenfield 💙 No Road Home - John Fram 💜 Queen B - Juno Dawson 🌈 A Darker Mischief - Derek Milman

❤️ Beautiful & Terrible Things - S.M. Stevens 🧡 Benvolio & Mercutio Turn Back Time - Elle Beaumont, Lou Wilham 💛 About Last Night - Laura Henry 💚 You Had Me at Happy Hour - Timothy Janovsky 💙 Moonbane - Jamie Jennings 💜 Between Fate & Failure - Amber D. Lewis ❤️ Blessed by the Cupid Distribution System - Robin Jo Margaret 🧡 Between Dragons and Their Wrath - Devin Madson 💛 Twisted Magic - Barbara J. Webb 💙 Rare Birds - L.B. Hazelthorn 💜 At the End of the River Styx - Michelle Kulwicki 🌈 Origin Story - Jendi Reiter

❤️ Eras of Us - Shannon O'Connor 🧡 Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema - Willow Maclay, Caden Gardner 💛 A Wolf in Stone - Jane Fletcher 💚 Toward Eternity - Anton Hur 💙 Portrait of a Shadow - Meriam Metoui 💜 Anyone's Ghost - August Thompson ❤️ Home Ice Advantage - Ari Baran 🧡 Unbelievable You - Chelsea M. Cameron 💛 Incorrect Eyes - Andromeda Ruins

[thefugitivesaint]

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983) A film that was almost instantly forgotten when it was released just days before ‘Return of the Jedi’ hit theaters. It was the one of the last movies to use 3D as a marketing gimmick to get audiences into seats. I was 9 years old when I saw it and I loved it. Adult me? *shrugs shoulders* It’s ok.  The stills I took (from a digitized VHS copy) where meant to give you a flavor of what the movie is like. The plot is as bare bones at a plot can get and the world building is severely undercooked. It all goes something like this: a luxury space ship suffers from some catastrophic space event that forces passengers to abandon ship. Three of those passengers land on Terra XI, a planet that was devastated by some kind of virulent plague and has become a kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape. Bounty hunter/mercenary Wolff (Peter Strauss) receives a “broadcast” about the stranded passengers and sets out to retrieve them and collect the reward of “3,000 Mega Credits.” Soon after arriving on Terra XI, while trying to rescue the three passengers, they are abducted by agents working for the local tyrant Overdog (Michael Ironside). Wolff decides to head off to free the women from Overdog and, along the way, runs into Niki (Molly Ringwald) and Wolff’s former colleague Washington (Ernie Hudson).  The story is a loose narrative of episodic action sequences involving strange creatures and weird people that are given almost no clarification as to who they are or why they do what they do. It is briefly mentioned that Overdog was once a scientist named McNabb who was sent to Terra XI to combat the plague (with two other scientists) but no explanation is given as to why they became tyrants or why they started experimenting on the Terra XI’s population. I guess that’s all the narrative the creators thought was necessary (this movie did come out in the wake of ‘Mad Max II: The Road Warrior’ and that movie is almost purely action with hardly a plot to drive it so..) This was Molly Ringwald’s second film and the score was composed by Elmer Bernstein (who also composed the music for ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘The Magnificent Seven’ to name two). The 3D-effects are as clunky as one might suspect. The overall effects (some of the miniature work is by legendary ‘Terminator’ animator Pete Kleinow) and production design (which is doing most of the heavy lifting here) are a mixed bag of competent execution and outright jankiness. Overall, it’s one of those modestly budgeted science fiction films from the 80s that didn’t hit it big, barely raked in a profit, and quickly faded into obscurity. It’s worth one watch if you’ve never seen it.  And, should you have any desire to put this movie into your brain, you can do so here (this might be a better quality copy than my digital VHS transfer). Oh, what folk have gabbed about the movie over at letterboxd. 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Drafting the Adventure: Wilderness and Exploration

For a game with exploration as one of it’s “core pillars”, d&d is kinda shit at producing gameplay conducive to actually making players feel like they’re exploring.If you play it by the book travelling from point A to B often feels like a slog, and a good number of groups are completely justified in skipping it entirely and just getting to the good bits. I think the problem largely stems from trying to cram the hexcrawl/westmarches style of gameplay from d&d’s heyday into the central gameplay loop when really it should be the focus of very particular kinds of adventure. Think of a big exploration adventure the same way you’d run a heist or murder mystery, usually a one off unless you’re running a specialized campaign. 

With that said, the base rules for hanging out in the wilderness are IMO in massive need of an overhaul, so we might as well overhaul those along with setting up a good guidelines for running an exploration based adventure. Before we dive under the hood and get into all those storybuilding steps and mechanics, lets look at how my system works from the players’ perspective: 

In lieu of any urgent quests or fantastic job offers, a group of adventurers decide they’re going to explore the wilderness outside their settlement and look for some opportunities. 

One character chats up the locals, hearing rumours of what might be going on outside the walls. The second does some research on the area and finds a few trustworthy maps to copy. Another checks the local bountyboard for outlaws and monsters it might pay to hunt down. 

The party sets out, and the DM asks the party which player wants to be the group’s surveyor: keeping a list of what places the party has visited, what options are available to them, and what might need a bit more exploration. 

The DM has divided the area they’re exploring into zones with names like “The forbidden peaks” or “ The merry meadows” which gives each area a strong geographic identity and makes it easy for the party to remember and gives them an idea of what to expect. 

Every time the party walks into a new zone, they learn the area’s name, and how many “points of interest” are in that region. A point of interest could be anything from a unique environmental detail to the lead in to an encounter to a monster lair to the entrance to a whole dungeon. The surveyor keeps track of these points of interest, making space to write in whatever details they think are relevant. 

Likewise upon entering into a new zone, the party are made aware of “landmarks” striking points of interest that are obvious to the naked eye and don’t need to be searched for. Because this group prepared before they left, they’ll likely have learned of a few more points of interest in the region based off the information they gathered. 

When the party have fully explored a point of interest, the DM tells the surveyor to check off the name of that location, indicating that it’s safe and that the party can turn their attention elsewhere

When deciding where to go next, the party has two options:  Set out for a specific area (one they know about or have visited before) or to Wander, poking around till they find a location they didn’t know about previously. The DM may ask for checks while the party is traveling based on the difficulty of reaching the point of interest or the particulars of the zone they’re travelling through. 

Because the DM has been upfront with how many points of interest are in the zone, the party have an understandable goal of filling in a list and checking off each location. This feels like actual exploration because the party is actually making the decision of where to go and how deep to search, combining those key elements of choice and discovery that make setting out into the unknown so rewarding. 

Below the cut I’m going to go into detail about how to BUILD an exploration adventure, everything from designing goals to fit your narrative needs to choosing what kind of points of interest to seed into the world .

First step: Setting Bounderies 

When preparing a wilderness adventure, you’re going to settle on an area that the party is exploring and why: are they low level nobodies knocking about the countryside surrounding the starting village till the call to adventure finds them? Are they high level heroes looking to comb a vast wasteland for the location of a forgotten temple? Are they desperate survivors battling the elements as they attempt to find a pass through the deep wilderness? Obviously these will set the scale and tone of your adventure, but they’ll also help you define your boundaries: are your party moving towards a specific goal, or are they fucking around? Are they able to return to the comforts of civilization on the regular, or are they on their own? Is their exploration more of a self driven sandbox, or are they trying to find a route to a particular destination fellowship style. 

Perhaps most importantly you need to ask: SHOULD this adventure be exploration focused? These sorts of adventures are a lot of work and if the party is only going to go through this region once you might be better served by just planning some encounters and pantomiming the idea of exploration in your narration. 

Second step: Zoning it out

Now that you’ve settled on your region, you’re going to start cutting it up into Zones, large areas with a distinct geographic identity that will stick in your party’s mind: the area around a village might be divided by its cardinal points into fields, swamp, forest, and hills, able to be explored in any order, where as an attempt to cross the mountains might be separated into a sequence of 1) foothills 2) a choice between peaks OR caverns 3) river 4) lake. Obviously you’ll give each zone a striking name as you develop its theme that will help reinforce its identity by the time you present this to the party. I’d recommend three to six zones, as any more than that it gets hard to differentiate them from eachother. 

Third step: Making lists

Now comes the fun part in designing your points of interest. I’ve found this is a two part process of brainstorming physical locations within each zone and determining what sort of encounters might happen there, though often times the latter comes before the former. It’s important to remember that an encounter is more than a fight, and fights are more than just face to face combat.  Here’s some ideas to get your brainstorming started:

Generally you’ll want atleast four and a maximum of twelve points of interest per zone ( though I tend to default to six) this is not only to prevent you from having to make too much content, but also to be able to use a die to determine what random point of interest the party finds when wandering. Every 2 locations they check off your list, decrease the die size.

Between landmarks and information that a party can gather through rumour/studying maps, I’d advise having no more than half your Zone’s content discoverable before the party actually starts wandering. This is to preserve the sense of the unknown which is vital to feeling like exploration means something.

Landmarks are like billboards drawing your party to particular content, ranging from natural features like hills or rivers to ruins or statues. Use them to deliver details the party should know about the zone early.

Trails or other signs of habitation are your friend, as they allow you to tease what an encounter MIGHT be without giving things away immediately; bandit ambushes, lost travellers, local wildlife, all of these could be at the end of a trail, but it’s far easier for you to bait the party with their own curiosity than come with an obvious “this place looks like a trap, do you want to step in it?”

When it actually comes to combat encounters, I’d advise balancing how challenging the encounter is with how much forewarning the party has. Ambushes they walk right into should be easy or very easy, while medium and hard encounters should either be opt in ( seeking out a beast in its lair) or avoidable ( hiding while the chimera circles overhead)

Points of interest can have many things to discover within them, such as frontier settlements, or Structures and Caverns which can be run as small dungeons.

Some locations may act as gateways into different zones. This is particularly useful for overland travel adventures where the party has to find the right point of interest to lead them on to the next phase of their journey. 

For longer explorations it’s a good idea to include “safeholds”, places the party can use as a campsite rather than roughing it in the wilderness an being exposed to the elements or the threat of random encounters.

Puzzles and scavenger hunts are amazing activities at points of interest, especially if the party needs to go somewhere else in the zone/area to solve them.

Need to express that one particular point of interest ( or perhaps a whole zone) is difficult to traverse? Have the party roll con saves to avoid exhaustion/survival checks to find a better route. You can likewise do this with stealth checks to avoid the patrol routes of enemies or the hunting grounds of vicious predators.