Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;1014179How do moon phases influence your game - are you using a magic system that relies on lunar cycles, or is it mainly for colour description? I ask because I'm contemplating tracking lunar phases for a dark fairytale type WFRP game, but I'm not sure whether it's worth the effort, especially since one of the moons is random and erratic.

It's when the werewolves come out.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1013988When preparing a game most GMs include a mix of random adversaries and challenges and a few that are planned.

It seems the weather could be approached the same way. The GM generating random weather when its really not an issue or purposefully plugging in a storm or heatwave when it lends something to the adventure.

Is this they way you approach weather in your game, or do you do something different?

I have read a few times that some believe weather should always be random, that forcing a snow storm or something is GM overstepping and yet GMs place specific monsters in a room or bandits on a road all time. Is there a difference? If you think so, explain.

Of course there is a difference. If playing in a long-term campaign that is trying to offer a consistent game-world, the weather is an impartial element (or something at the bidding of specific gods or perhaps powerful wizards), and not something the GM uses to deliberately make things interesting by dictating weather results.

Imagine a game where the logistics of travel are an appreciated element of play. Part of the game may be about the pros and cons of what equipment and supplies and people to take on a trip, what time of day to travel, when to go where, and the weather can be a big factor in that. Or it could just be a simple thing about needing clear sky for moonlight to conduct a night attack or cast a spell that requires it or something. That can either be actually up to game systems and dice, in which case the players can play a game about accounting for and thinking of good ways to deal with that, or it can be a game where the GM chooses what the weather is, and can and does either aid or torment them based on what the feels is fun or cool or dramatic (which may or may not be appreciated by the players).

In general, and particularly in an ongoing campaign, I don't want the GM dictating the weather at will. Or at least, I wish the GM would choose the weather usually with some degree of impartiality and fairness and balance, and not for cliche dramatic effect or to prevent a strategy that should work from working because he has control issues.

However, in limited scenarios, or when there is an in-gameworld reason such as an angry weather god or wizard or curse, I don't have a problem with dictated weather.

In an ongoing campaign where the weather starts being suspiciously appropriate to some purpose, though, as a player (and as a PC when appropriate) I'm liable to decide that effectively there is a weather god at work deliberately shaping the weather, based on the evidence. (Reminds me a bit of the rain god who doesn't know he is one in Douglas Adams' So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.)

Nature is often an overlooked feature that can definitely add something to a game. Weather, fires, phase of the moon etc.

Weather has rarely come up in game, the only time I can recall weather being a consideration was after the party escaped into the wilderness with basically the clothes on their back after a particularly humiliating defeat. We spent a few sessions just wandering about the countryside trying to survive. I think it was the only time that GM ever opened the D&D wilderness survival guide. It was an unplanned thing but turned out to be the most memorable part of the campaign.


I wouldn't have an issue with a dictated weather event being used to influence the PCs if it makes sense. An example I can think of would be a major winter storm being expected and the PCs have a time sensitive journey planned. This pushes them to leave early to beat the storm, but possibly before they are fully prepared, waiting for the storm to pass which might cause time table issues down the road, or push through the storm. Now if it were the middle of summer that would be dumb...

Random works for some situations. If you regularly produce weather in your game then having a major unplanned inconvenience due to weather is fine, but I wouldn't just make random weather rolls out of the blue, unless the situation dictates that minor weather matters. Its winter, so the players need to pack cold weather gear, tracking rainy days, snow days, cold but clear days doesn't really matter as they are prepared for it. If they abandoned all of their camping and cold weather gear so they could haul more loot on the other hand it would make sense to know what kind of hardships they will face, but they should be aware that weather is a factor. Not too cool to let them dump all the camping gear they have never needed and then halfway home go, oh yeah, btw it is the middle of winter and it is snowing, you all die of hypothermia...

Some weather element cards was something I wanted to add to Dragon Storm way back. As additional scene cards.

As for moon phases. Dragonlance had that for wizards way back.

As for werewolves and multi-moon settings. One easy solution was that the transformation was triggered by a specific moon.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1014452Maybe, but it would be more interesting for me.  Maybe they're all beat up when it happens?  Maybe they're carrying a shitton of treasure?  Who knows?

Using this entry from OA, I had one group almost get wiped out completely by a randomly rolled storm:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2033[/ATTACH]

I wasn't planning on it -I just rolled the storm as part of daily events. The party was already made up of walking wounded and ended up in a desperate battle with a pair of trolls just so they could use the trolls' cave for shelter. The intensity level went way up because of the storm.

I roll-up weather in advance, usually on a season basis.  Why?  Because there is weather magic in the game, and those ole' farmers and sailors can be pretty good at predictin' the weather.   Where there is weather magic to both predict and control, at least locally, the weather it's good to know.  Weather control, IMC, is a high level "game" that is played discretely at the strategic level to mess with another kingdom or help your own.  Those adventurers may be able to live on gold alone, but the army needs, grain, horse and hay.  Even more important as I nixed the whole create food or water spells long ago.

Almost forgot, weather also makes a big difference for visibility and aerial recon, both of friends and foes.

Quote from: Bren;1014450For some settings this makes sense. For others, such as those with active deities and/or non-scientific explanations and non-natural causation for weather the weather actually does care, or at least the weather you get is a manifestation of the cares of the storm god. Have you honored his holy days and made all the appropriate sacrifices?

For my setting, I figured the gods set things in motion, but don't bother micro-managing all the day-to-day details that ongoing existence entails.  The various nature deities can and do make alterations to the pre-existing pattern as necessary, but only for the really important stuff.  The various storm priests and druids understand this, and don't bother trying to alter any and every weather cell that might be somewhat inconvenient, because they understand that less-than-perfect weather is a necessary part of life (and also because they're usually dicks).

It depends on the weather.  If you're talking mudslides, flooding, and avalanches then it requires a certain amount of precipitation before it occurs.  If I'm randomly generating the weather and the last few days are incompatible with the weather encounter type I treat it as a "no encounter."  If I'm planning a weather encounter I build up to as if I'd randomly generated it.  Stuff like severe storms/hurricanes are perfectly fine to be rolled or planned and happen almost immediately.

But I should point out that I normally pre-roll all this stuff to cut down on administration at the table.  So it is kind of planned.

It depends on where the game is taking place. There was a recent meme about it always being sunny in the Forgotten Realms. Conversely in Ravenloft, the weather is almost never pleasant. One of my modern games took place in a town in Alberta called Heritage (my own Castle Rock/Innsmouth type place) where a fog rolled in almost every night and things rolled out of it which probably was influenced by The Mist as well as living near a Provincial Park where wildlife comes into urban areas at night. This was often combined with sleet and visibility was often zero, defined as under 100 meters though it could get as bad as about 10 meters. You can create a sense of isolation in your own neighbourhood.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1013988When preparing a game most GMs include a mix of random adversaries and challenges and a few that are planned.

It seems the weather could be approached the same way. The GM generating random weather when its really not an issue or purposefully plugging in a storm or heatwave when it lends something to the adventure.

Is this they way you approach weather in your game, or do you do something different?

I have read a few times that some believe weather should always be random, that forcing a snow storm or something is GM overstepping and yet GMs place specific monsters in a room or bandits on a road all time. Is there a difference? If you think so, explain.

I'm sort of planning a Hex Crawl, and part of the exploration aspect I've been considering are exactly that: weather and environmental "encounters". I've been making a list of things but haven't gone beyond that as of yet.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;1014112Random or (plot-relevant) planned encounter?
There's a third way: use real weather data.

Just a few days ago Oakes Spalding (of the "neo clone" Seven Voyages of Zylarthen) published three books about medieval weather data (England, Iceland, Indea).

Thanks for the signal boost!

Actually it's not "real" weather data in the sense of being a transcript of the actual weather of seven sample years for, say, London, Reykjavik or Mumbai. Rather, I designed an algorithm to "crank out" weather for each climate type. The AVERAGE seasonal temperatures, precipitation rates and possible precipitation types for the seasons were designed to be a match in each case, but the actual weather is fictional, if that makes sense. Also I made the weather slightly more exciting (though only slightly). For example, there's a bit more fog and snow in London than there actually is, at least at this time (2017), though I think in two years out of the seven, there's no snow at all. Also, you get the occasional Bifrost Bridge to Valhalla (especially in Iceland), which I'm not sure the weather stations have reported recently.

I don't pay too much attention to weather, generally speaking, except when there's something relevant going on like terrain (extremes of cold or hot weather, for example), or sea voyages or the like.

That said, in Dark Albion some of the travel-encounter tables include harsh weather, as well as other terrain features.