The use of weather is a staple in most fiction, but I've rarely seen it figure in to most RPGs. The assumption seems to be that it's pretty much always a mild 20° partly cloudy day with no wind in every RPG everywhere. The old Greyhawk boxed set had fairly sophisticated weather rules, but I know of no one who ever used them.
How about you? Have you ever used (or had a GM who used) weather as part of the background setting in your RPGs? How was it used?
Absolutely. Outside of any mechanical influence, it adds to the tone of the game. Not developing atmosphere just seems like a lost opportunity.
Heheh, my first houserules were an elaborate weather system for ElfQuest (BRP), with exploding d10 for wind strength (the set came with 2 d20's, with numbers running from 1 - 10, and +1 - +10, and I felt so clever...)
Nowadays, I use weather mostly to set the atmosphere, separate days from oneother, and to remind the players in which season they are, etc. Not much for mechanical effects, though. Although if they insisted going out in bad weather or poor conditions, I would whip up something.
Quote from: daniel_ream;904801The use of weather is a staple in most fiction, but I've rarely seen it figure in to most RPGs. The assumption seems to be that it's pretty much always a mild 20° partly cloudy day with no wind in every RPG everywhere. The old Greyhawk boxed set had fairly sophisticated weather rules, but I know of no one who ever used them.
How about you? Have you ever used (or had a GM who used) weather as part of the background setting in your RPGs? How was it used?
I've only ever used weather to set the tone for a scene, setting, or challenge. Nothing really formal like a random table, or a weather "system" or anything, but I've applied some penalties to perception rolls, etc, things of that nature.
If its not a focus of the RPG then weather will vary as seems appropriate for mood. RPGs I have run where weather had a mechanical impact:
- Ryuutama - travelling in the wild
- The One Ring - travelling in the wild
- Hellas - sailing in the void
- Heroes of Hellas - sailing
We also use a weather mechanic in D&D5e as we have a Drow PC in the party.
My players have made choices to role-play in weather or not. Depending if it made things more interesting for them is all.
Not sure this counts as weather but in our last session we used environmental effects. During a fight the heroes ignited an underground pocket of methane gas. This made things rather interesting as flame geysers began popping up across the battlefield.
I haven't done it in the past, but I'm going to include it in my campaign that starts up next month. However, rather than rolling, I'm going to use Wolfram Alpha to access historical data. Even though I'm using the Forgotten Realms, I'm going to just pick a real world city that is approximately the same location/climate as whatever location in the Forgotten Realms the characters are currently at that day. Example:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weather+london+united+kingdom+june+29,+1977
It's really cool with times of day charts for temperature, weather, wind, etc.
I ran a game in Eberron nigh on a decade ago that spent two or three sessions where the biggest challenge was surviving, as a party of urbanite city dwelling adventurers tried to traverse the wilds in the middle of winter without taking a single act to prepare. Oh sure, I threw in a few fights with corrupted goblin things (Eberron critters... don't recall what they were called), but mostly it was saving throws against ever accruing fatigue damage from a lack of appropriate clothes... and the one player survival never even tried to build a fire to warm up!
Good times. The party lived, but I think the players hated me for that. Almost as much as they hated me for giving them a halfling hexblade for a nemesis/rival adventurer...
Quote from: daniel_ream;904801The use of weather is a staple in most fiction, but I've rarely seen it figure in to most RPGs. The assumption seems to be that it's pretty much always a mild 20° partly cloudy day with no wind in every RPG everywhere. The old Greyhawk boxed set had fairly sophisticated weather rules, but I know of no one who ever used them.
How about you? Have you ever used (or had a GM who used) weather as part of the background setting in your RPGs? How was it used?
mild sounds damn cold to me
all jokes aside yes my old group used it a few times and i can imagine running a game with out it
Used weather every session and every game world day of my Balazar/Elderwilds campaign. Griffon Mountain came with a nice seasonal weather chart.
In Call of Cthulhu weather is usually only an atmospheric add on or else is key to a specific scenario.
In Star Wars weather is usually indicative of the typical mono-climate worlds we see in the movies. So Sidron, a desert planet, will have dust storms. Lanthrym an ice planet gets snow, winds, and blizzards. The tropical rain forest world gets...daily rain. Osirrag, the nice world where nothing ever happens...gets nice weather every day.
For Honor+Intrigue I use weather, but it's not something I check for every session. I check weather if the session involves a lot of overland or sea travel. Cold and snow were a major factor in one series of adventures set in an especially cold winter with a vicious pack of wolves led by a loup garou. Rain and wind is an issue for matchlocks and to a lesser extent for wheellocks and flintlocks. So it's something I occasionally check for.
Including weather, using a calendar, tracking the days of the week, experiencing the passing of seasons, and celebrating holidays all add to making the world seem like a real place.
Yes. Weather in my sessions comes up in varrying degrees. Usually rain. Sometimes wind storms, once a flood. And of course BX had the sea travel weather effects.
After effects of weather are another fun one to use. Roads turned to mud. Flooding. etc.
Oriental Adventures also had some weather events.
For my part, when I'm doing up an adventure, I work out the weather six days in advance, which doesn't take me very long -- 15 minutes or so? The following is an example:
Weather for north and east coastal Avanari regions, next week:
1) Scattered clouds, Morning fog; Silver Moon: waxing crescent, Red Moon: new, Blue Moon: waning gibbous
High 79 degrees, Low 66 degrees
Wind from the W, 11 mph; veering due south at night, 6 mph
Waves 2 ft or less
That's more or less what it looks like. Wind speed and direction, and wave height, are important for my heavily-nautical campaign; they might not be for yours, although a 25+ mph crosswind is something of a suckfest for archers. If the group's doing a planned night assault, I'll throw in when those moons are rising and setting (GURPS has night time vision penalties depending on the lighting), information I have on hand but don't often bother with putting out there.
Another method is a surprisingly simple one I wonder why more GMs don't use. Want random weather for your setting's area today? Terrific. What season is it? Winter? Fair enough. It's summer here in New England as I type, but that's okay. Fire up the weather site on your computer (you can find those in carload lots, too, and I use wunderground.com, myself) and pull up a town on the other side of the world. So okay ... the weather report for Melbourne, Australia, right now has a daytime high tomorrow of 47 F, a nighttime low of 41. There's intermittent rain going on. Light winds from the N of 2-3 MPH. Morning twilight is at 7 AM, sunrise at 7:30, sunset at 5 PM, twilight until 5:30. That's something you can get at a glance, and that's good enough to be going on with.
When I still ran my M&M 3e game, which is set in last year, which they'll be flipping over into January, I was using a local weather broadcast news website to find out what the day and night would be like.
I use weather all the time.
I run a 5E sandbox that is heavy on resource-management, so weather is essential. I bought this die: https://www.thediceshoponline.com/dice/1287/D-G-Opaque-Blue-Weather-D6-Dice
5E has some decent rules and guidelines for the effects of weather on the characters. During in-game winter I roll twice if the first result is not snow, but definitely keep the 2nd result.
Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;904837I've only ever used weather to set the tone for a scene, setting, or challenge. Nothing really formal like a random table, or a weather "system" or anything, but I've applied some penalties to perception rolls, etc, things of that nature.
Ditto, pretty much.
------------
That aside: I recall this text file coming from from pre-2000 alt. -something group. It described in funny way same weather conditions under various systems. I can't seem to find it anywhere. Hmmm...
A lot, actually. In Dark Heresy, our first mission started on a Garden World during a rainstorm. Out in the rain, we took an aim penalty. The GM described the effects of it quite well, even the effects of las-shots cutting through rain.
Sometimes, when there's lots of staying outside. I've got a random weather table in FWTD and it's even got a random generator on the game website, which works for many cities with temperate climate.
Or, as Ravenswing suggested, you can use any city's weather forecast, that's a nice trick.
Quote from: Spellslinging Sellsword;904853I haven't done it in the past, but I'm going to include it in my campaign that starts up next month. However, rather than rolling, I'm going to use Wolfram Alpha to access historical data. Even though I'm using the Forgotten Realms, I'm going to just pick a real world city that is approximately the same location/climate as whatever location in the Forgotten Realms the characters are currently at that day. Example:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weather+london+united+kingdom+june+29,+1977
It's really cool with times of day charts for temperature, weather, wind, etc.
I also use real world data. Makes it easy for me.
I used a small third-party product with some weather tables during a recent Slumbering Tsar game. The near-constant inclement weather wasn't a major issue for an 8th-level party, but it was one of the ways that the inhospitable environment drained their resources, keeping them from operating at maximum efficiency most of the time.
Quote from: Sommerjon;905035I also use real world data. Makes it easy for me.
Me too. I'll find an area that corresponds to what I think the local game weather should be and go from there.
Shemek
I use weather in almost every session, mostly to set the mood or scene, but probably half the time it will have some kind of effect on the PCs whether it is damp, bugs, cold, hot, mud whatever. I don't use any kind of charts or look up specific effects, just make it up on the fly. Systems with fatigue or squishy HP make it pretty easy to make whether and survival significant to PC's calculus.
Quote from: daniel_ream;904801The old Greyhawk boxed set had fairly sophisticated weather rules, but I know of no one who ever used them.
I use them!.. thanks to this excellent widget (http://suuronen.eu/wf/).
Yes. Weather (and terrain) are a big part of making the world meaningful, and giving the experience of it to the players.
Try spending 24 hours outdoors some time, on a day with some rain. Weather is a big deal when you're outdoors...
Quote from: daniel_ream;904801How about you? Have you ever used (or had a GM who used) weather as part of the background setting in your RPGs? How was it used?
Of course!
I mean, sure, it's great to add to flavor text and whatnot. But if it's brought to the foreground, actually affecting action and information, it adds an immense amount to the game for the relatively small investment of tracking one more thing. And I find you don't really have to track it as much as simply be mindful of it.
Quote from: Lunamancer;905259Of course!
I mean, sure, it's great to add to flavor text and whatnot. But if it's brought to the foreground, actually affecting action and information, it adds an immense amount to the game for the relatively small investment of tracking one more thing. And I find you don't really have to track it as much as simply be mindful of it.
Absolutely. Seriously, even if you're caught for any other method -- and my weather site trick takes all of five seconds flat -- just roll a d10. What's the temperature? 1 is low, 10 is high. What's the precipitation? 1 is torrential rain, 4 is overcast, 6 is sunny. What's the wind? 2 is light breeze, 10 is a howling gale. Easy. That takes all of
four seconds flat.
Howdy, folks. This is my first post here, although I've been lurking for a while. I first started playing D&D (as my group's local DM) in 1979, but stopped playing in 1982 (went to college and had to study so much I didn't have time to be a worthwhile DM). Around Christmas 2015 I had a friend say her 20 year old son & a friend of his wanted to play "old school D&D," so I dusted off the old AD&D 1st Edition stuff, and away we went. We now have 6 players, and may soon add 2 more (but that's about the limit).
Anyway, I felt I had to chime in about the weather. When I DMed 30+ years ago, I never had any weather charts, and the weather was mostly always fair. Although if I wanted to give my party of adventurers a little trouble tracking the bad guy(s), I might have a sudden rainstorm brew up and wash away any tracks.
So now, in the modern era, I have some adapted weather charts. I assume my world (I use the old Judges Guild Wilderlands maps and main settings) is fairly temperate/moderate, with only a chance of real cold weather in the northern Wilderlands maps, and up in the mountains in those areas.
But what I really use are sunrise/sunset times. I made a chart of all days in a year, and amount of sunshine for each particular day, then figured equal time for sunrise & sunset. So I can tell players "it's about an hour before sunset" etc. And what I really take note of are the phases of the moon. It makes a difference if there is a full moon, new moon, or sometimes the moon never rises at all during the night-time (some days, the moon is only in the sky when it is daytime!). Knowing the moon phases helps keep track of when some clerics need to celebrate their rites (like sacrificing someone on the night of a full moon). Also, if you don't know exactly when Midsummer's Eve is, how do the druids know when to go out and harvest mistletoe? The moon phases (when it rises and sets) can also tell you when the tides come in and go out, so if a group needs to sail out of a harbor at "high tide" you can figure when that will be. Basically, when the moon is either rising or setting (just at the horizon) then you will have the lowest part of a tide. Then figure the time halfway between the moon rising and setting, and you will know when the high tides are. I use 2 high and 2 low tides per day. Characters aren't always near the sea, so you only need to use this data occasionally (usually). (Who would have known there would be so much of the real world in a fantasy game!?)
Of course, it's still easy to foil characters who want to travel at night during a full moon, as I can "fudge" complete cloud cover to dim the light below a usable value.
RustyDM
On a similar note, rather than a play anecdote, I have in the past used old almanacs and calendars to track dates and weather conditions. Not extensively, especially the almanacs... another great GMing plan that didn't quite play out as I'd hoped, but I do hate all these 'near future' games that just assume we either already know if the fifth of august in, say 2050 is a Tuesday, or assume we don't actually care.
I fucking care! Give me at least a starting point!!! Though, of course, computers have solved that little problem for me.
For the record? It's a friday. Expect bad traffic in the afternoon getting out of the megaplex.
Quote from: RustyDM;905586Howdy, folks. This is my first post here, although I've been lurking for a while. I first started playing D&D (as my group's local DM) in 1979, but stopped playing in 1982 (went to college and had to study so much I didn't have time to be a worthwhile DM). Around Christmas 2015 I had a friend say her 20 year old son & a friend of his wanted to play "old school D&D," so I dusted off the old AD&D 1st Edition stuff, and away we went. We now have 6 players, and may soon add 2 more (but that's about the limit).
Anyway, I felt I had to chime in about the weather. When I DMed 30+ years ago, I never had any weather charts, and the weather was mostly always fair. Although if I wanted to give my party of adventurers a little trouble tracking the bad guy(s), I might have a sudden rainstorm brew up and wash away any tracks.
So now, in the modern era, I have some adapted weather charts. I assume my world (I use the old Judges Guild Wilderlands maps and main settings) is fairly temperate/moderate, with only a chance of real cold weather in the northern Wilderlands maps, and up in the mountains in those areas.
But what I really use are sunrise/sunset times. I made a chart of all days in a year, and amount of sunshine for each particular day, then figured equal time for sunrise & sunset. So I can tell players "it's about an hour before sunset" etc. And what I really take note of are the phases of the moon. It makes a difference if there is a full moon, new moon, or sometimes the moon never rises at all during the night-time (some days, the moon is only in the sky when it is daytime!). Knowing the moon phases helps keep track of when some clerics need to celebrate their rites (like sacrificing someone on the night of a full moon). Also, if you don't know exactly when Midsummer's Eve is, how do the druids know when to go out and harvest mistletoe? The moon phases (when it rises and sets) can also tell you when the tides come in and go out, so if a group needs to sail out of a harbor at "high tide" you can figure when that will be. Basically, when the moon is either rising or setting (just at the horizon) then you will have the lowest part of a tide. Then figure the time halfway between the moon rising and setting, and you will know when the high tides are. I use 2 high and 2 low tides per day. Characters aren't always near the sea, so you only need to use this data occasionally (usually). (Who would have known there would be so much of the real world in a fantasy game!?)
Of course, it's still easy to foil characters who want to travel at night during a full moon, as I can "fudge" complete cloud cover to dim the light below a usable value.
RustyDM
welcome
Quote from: RustyDM;905586Howdy, folks. This is my first post here, although I've been lurking for a while.
Welcome. Thanks for posting.
QuoteBut what I really use are sunrise/sunset times. I made a chart of all days in a year, and amount of sunshine for each particular day, then figured equal time for sunrise & sunset. So I can tell players "it's about an hour before sunset" etc. And what I really take note of are the phases of the moon. It makes a difference if there is a full moon, new moon, or sometimes the moon never rises at all during the night-time (some days, the moon is only in the sky when it is daytime!). Knowing the moon phases helps keep track of when some clerics need to celebrate their rites (like sacrificing someone on the night of a full moon).
I agree day length and lunar phases are important. My Honor+Intrigue game is set in France. Most of Europe is pretty far north. For example, Paris (48.8566° N) is farther north than Quebec, Canada and farther north than almost everywhere in the continental USA outside of a tiny bit of Minnesota. It doesn't make it colder than Quebec, but day length is even longer in the summer and shorter in the winter than it is in the USA. I ran a loup garou adventure in the middle of winter and both the very short day and the phases of the moon mattered a lot as the PCs planned their hunt. I recently posted a bunch of links (https://honorandintrigue.blogspot.com/2016/06/new-links-page.html) to sites that allow you to calculate an annual calender, the lunar phases, day length, and stuff like that for both the past and the future.
Quote from: Bren;905602Welcome. Thanks for posting.
I agree day length and lunar phases are important. My Honor+Intrigue game is set in France. Most of Europe is pretty far north. For example, Paris (48.8566° N) is farther north than Quebec, Canada and farther north than almost everywhere in the continental USA outside of a tiny bit of Minnesota. It doesn't make it colder than Quebec, but day length is even longer in the summer and shorter in the winter than it is in the USA. I ran a loup garou adventure in the middle of winter and both the very short day and the phases of the moon mattered a lot as the PCs planned their hunt. I recently posted a bunch of links (https://honorandintrigue.blogspot.com/2016/06/new-links-page.html) to sites that allow you to calculate an annual calender, the lunar phases, day length, and stuff like that for both the past and the future.
Your version of Paris is in the Arctic?
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_United_States
Or did you mean the contiguous United States?
Quote from: Matt;905603Or did you mean the contiguous United States?
Yes I did. I owe you a beer.
Quote from: Spike;905593On a similar note, rather than a play anecdote, I have in the past used old almanacs and calendars to track dates and weather conditions. Not extensively, especially the almanacs... another great GMing plan that didn't quite play out as I'd hoped, but I do hate all these 'near future' games that just assume we either already know if the fifth of august in, say 2050 is a Tuesday, or assume we don't actually care.
I fucking care! Give me at least a starting point!!! Though, of course, computers have solved that little problem for me.
For the record? It's a friday. Expect bad traffic in the afternoon getting out of the megaplex.
Back circa 1980, we found that the Yellow Pages phone directory had a page with a chart that would let you determine the calendar for various years. We used them in our campaigns. Nowadays, computers have functions for that, too.
Thank you everyone for your responses. It's been very interesting.
If I may ask a followup question and narrow the scope a little: for those of you that run hexcrawls or similar sandbox games, do you have weather generators? Do weather patterns play any part in your hexcrawling? Do players take assumptions about the weather into account when planning their expeditions?
Quote from: daniel_ream;905698If I may ask a followup question and narrow the scope a little: for those of you that run hexcrawls or similar sandbox games, do you have weather generators? Do weather patterns play any part in your hexcrawling? Do players take assumptions about the weather into account when planning their expeditions?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Quote from: RustyDM;905586Of course, it's still easy to foil characters who want to travel at night during a full moon, as I can "fudge" complete cloud cover to dim the light below a usable value.
Welcome, Rusty!
But here's my question: why would you want to, as a matter of course? If the group's well-rested, and the lighting is good, what's wrong with them choosing to do that?
Quote from: daniel_ream;905698If I may ask a followup question and narrow the scope a little: for those of you that run hexcrawls or similar sandbox games, do you have weather generators? Do weather patterns play any part in your hexcrawling? Do players take assumptions about the weather into account when planning their expeditions?
I do have weather tables I've done up, somewhat based on Rolemaster's set, a different set for each season. It certainly impacts play: one group just last week got stranded in a city for a crucial two days longer than planned, when I bucked out on a midwinter roll, and they got one of those epic once-a-generation blizzards that dropped four feet of snow, with 30+ mph winds, and unseasonable high tides that caused extensive coastal flooding.
As far as weather patterns go, yes. Prevailing winds are from the northwest in the aforementioned city, which heavily impact sea travel.
Do the players take weather into account in planning. Happily, they're not morons. Travel during "storm" season is very dicey at the best of times, and sea travel in winter is asking for frostbite. The current group's had to travel in the mountains in early spring, where there's still deep snow in the upper reaches, mudslides are possible, and late snowstorms can happen. Chance favors the prepared mind.
Quote from: Ravenswing;905752Welcome, Rusty!
But here's my question: why would you want to, as a matter of course? If the group's well-rested, and the lighting is good, what's wrong with them choosing to do that?
Well, in my DMing of way back around 1980, the party wanted to be able to trail a bad guy to the bad guy's hideout in the countryside. It would have been too easy for them to just follow the baddies tracks from town, so I had a thunderstorm come up which totally obliterated the baddie's tracks. That meant the good guys (& gals) had to find some alternate way of finding the hideout. Eventually, they talked to the right folks at the local tavern, and those folks spilled the beans (after the party had bought the bean-spillers copious amounts of alcohol).
It was the same with the party wanting to go somewhere by traveling when the moon was full--it would have been too easy for them to get where they wanted to go, and I felt I had to give them more of an obstacle by causing the clouds to obscure the moonlight. I wouldn't always do that, but sometimes you just have to slow the party down a little.
Did someone else mention that it's also important to know the moon phases if you have any lycanthropes lurking around (or maybe even main characters)? You can't have a full moon every other night to trigger were-changes!
RustyDM
Quote from: daniel_ream;904801The use of weather is a staple in most fiction, but I've rarely seen it figure in to most RPGs. The assumption seems to be that it's pretty much always a mild 20° partly cloudy day with no wind in every RPG everywhere. The old Greyhawk boxed set had fairly sophisticated weather rules, but I know of no one who ever used them.
How about you? Have you ever used (or had a GM who used) weather as part of the background setting in your RPGs? How was it used?
Yes, I use weather.
I have used the Greyhawk tables. These days I am more likely to use an online weather generator.
Weather affects things like overland travel, sea travel, tracking, and sometimes combat.
I might make arbitrary calls about weather. Gods make it so.
Quote from: daniel_ream;905698Thank you everyone for your responses. It's been very interesting.
If I may ask a followup question and narrow the scope a little: for those of you that run hexcrawls or similar sandbox games, do you have weather generators? Do weather patterns play any part in your hexcrawling? Do players take assumptions about the weather into account when planning their expeditions?
Yes, the season and location and terrain and recent weather contribute to the likelihood of future weather. I generate the weather in detail in advance for the expected PC locations, and put it on the calendar I use to track what's going on. Weather of course has major effects on the situation, including travel time, visibility (especially at night), audibility (try being outside in the countryside at night - you may be able to hear for miles, until it starts raining or there's a wind storm, etc), effects of being outside on hiking and camping and equipment and loot & supplies & animals, how camps and night shifts are set up, use of campfires, game availability, what clothing & camping gear & effects have what effects, levels of rivers, what people in the countryside are doing, sailing, storm hazards, and so on. Players take weather into account or risk possibly having very inconvenient results. Some plans have had major weather considerations involved - it can make stealth and escape much more easy or difficult, etc., especially if you prepare in unexpected ways.
Weather can be really interesting and add a lot of depth to play... unless there's magic & tech in the game which makes it largely irrelevant with various "convenience" abilities that remove most such elements from play. At least, until those become unavailable for some reason. It also makes for some interesting risks. Um yeah you drove off that goblin attack... except for the one you didn't notice stealing your rain gear, or the fireball that missed and hit your tent, or the horses that panicked who were pulling your wagon with a bunch of your gear on it, or the lightning bolt that hit the magic item you were using to keep everyone warm & dry so you wouldn't need to pack winter clothes... too bad you are 300km into the wilderness. Etc. Those considerations are another reason why I like hexmap tactical combat, so such events are determined by what actually happens on the map, rather than by possibly unfair GM rulings. The line of fire of that fireball really did happen to end up on the tent, and there are rules for the chance the miss hit the tent at that range given the obstacles...
Quote from: RustyDM;905899Did someone else mention that it's also important to know the moon phases if you have any lycanthropes lurking around (or maybe even main characters)? You can't have a full moon every other night to trigger were-changes!
That was probably me.
I have a weather die I use. With a little 'English' on the results based on the previous day. Though even in the real world weather can be real weird.
I live in Canada. Snow gets used a lot. :D
Quote from: Krimson;906363I live in Canada. Snow gets used a lot. :D
A fellow Canadian! Hello! For my part I tend to avoid snow...
Krimson and Haffrung live in the same neighbourhood.
Me, I live in the Centre of the Universe. I'll buy you a beer if you're ever in town.
Quote from: Christopher Brady;906394A fellow Canadian! Hello! For my part I tend to avoid snow...
I have a fictional city that I use often called Heritage. I use fog a lot for that city as it's kind of my Castle Rock but with more Wendigo.
Quote from: Krimson;906415I have a fictional city that I use often called Heritage. I use fog a lot for that city as it's kind of my Castle Rock but with more Wendigo.
Heritage City, I like it. I assume it's near some mountains that trap clouds meaning it snows there for longer periods in the year?
Quote from: Christopher Brady;906472Heritage City, I like it. I assume it's near some mountains that trap clouds meaning it snows there for longer periods in the year?
I live in Alberta, and it's fictional location is based on taking Edmonton, Calgary, Jasper and Banff and drawing an X. So I think it's somewhere around Crimson Lake. I still have a map I kludged together (http://i415.photobucket.com/albums/pp233/KrimsonGray/Pretty%20Guardians%20of%20Heritage/HeritageCity.png) which I think is a mirror image of Grande Prairie (chosen because of similar population). I think it's location would definitely make fog a thing there are times, though there was no natural explanation. Most nights a luminous fog would roll in as the sun set, and the population knows to stay in at night because of what comes with it. I'm sure a good chunk of inspiration came from Stephen King's The Mist. If I were to use the place again I might drop that altogether and go with more natural weather effects. Here in Alberta I guess this year we're not only known for flooding but also one of the most massive forest fires in history. Fires are not something unusual and I'll probably use one in a future game because I can't think of anything that would make any level character feel so helpless so effectively.
As it applies to setting and sometimes plot, yes. Last session had a persistent drizzle, making tracking tough (which, of course, was what the characters were attempting to do). It will be more of a feature in the upcoming excursions into the mountains, where cold weather awaits them, as well as a hidden, tropical valley over a heat vent. The party has received clues about this when they obtained a list from an NPC mentor that featured both cold and warm weather gear. Since they're out to eventually find out why mentor didn't return, they'll run into both extremes.