Some quick & easy weather tables for your RPG

https://lowfantasygaming.com/2017/01/27/weather-tables/

Hey these are neat! Let me thumb through them and give you my thoughts real quick:

1. Synching the weather pattern to a single die roll seems like it might result in some pretty sever weather shifts, no? What about linking it to a pools of dice (2D6, whatever) so that it seeks an average? That way you get weather that conforms to a pattern, and you could have running modifiers based on the previous day's weather, to indicate it getting wetter/dryer/whatever.

Oooh, you could also put less likely but more spectacular weather on the far ends, instead of it being solely in the providence of GM discretion. Just a thought.

2. The shifting is cool! Now you've got me wanting to look up meteorological data to see if I can't improve this...

3. Maybe instead of having default weather, you could simply prepare multiple weather charts to reflect different climates? Maybe make them seasonal too...

4. God dammit, now I have to do this. The bug has bit. Curse your generosity, Psikerlord!

Harn has a pretty decent weather pattern. It is a chart with 20 entries and you roll a die to see how far you shift up and down (or remain the same). There is a column for each entry. The trick of it was how clever the entries are laid out. It resulted in a very natural flow of weather changes.

Quote from: Azraele;942856Hey these are neat! Let me thumb through them and give you my thoughts real quick:

1. Synching the weather pattern to a single die roll seems like it might result in some pretty sever weather shifts, no? What about linking it to a pools of dice (2D6, whatever) so that it seeks an average? That way you get weather that conforms to a pattern, and you could have running modifiers based on the previous day’s weather, to indicate it getting wetter/dryer/whatever.

Oooh, you could also put less likely but more spectacular weather on the far ends, instead of it being solely in the providence of GM discretion. Just a thought.

2. The shifting is cool! Now you’ve got me wanting to look up meteorological data to see if I can’t improve this…

3. Maybe instead of having default weather, you could simply prepare multiple weather charts to reflect different climates? Maybe make them seasonal too…

4. God dammit, now I have to do this. The bug has bit. Curse your generosity, Psikerlord!

Haha yes do it!! And great idea about the 2d6. My initial plan was roll starting weather maybe once a week, then use the shifting table, something like that. Gm judgment!

I usually have typical weather ranges and limits noted for each season for each region, and a "flux" rating that affects how much the weather is liable to change during a day or week (I tend to set those higher in spring and autumn). It takes more change shifts to move out of the typical ranges, and limits push strongly back towards typical.

Quote from: Skarg;942977I usually have typical weather ranges and limits noted for each season for each region, and a "flux" rating that affects how much the weather is liable to change during a day or week (I tend to set those higher in spring and autumn). It takes more change shifts to move out of the typical ranges, and limits push strongly back towards typical.

Leave it to the human calculator ;-)

Care to share the rules in detail?

its really great and help full link for WIP sandbox setting thanks for share

I just started a new campaign and I'm cheating with weather by just using historical real world weather for a stand-in. I decided that the area the players are in is similar to the climate in Calgary, so I just use Wolfram Alpha and voila, all the information for the day. :-)

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weather+calgary,+AB+May+1,+1978

Quote from: Azraele;942982Leave it to the human calculator ;-)

Care to share the rules in detail?

Sure, though I'll have to compile & type something up. Also what I've been tending to do more of is what Spellslinging Sellsword suggests: find an Earth analog and a random date in the right part of the year, and use historical data.

I had made weather tables for my "FtA!GN!" sourcebook. However, generally speaking I don't feel like it's really necessary to have random weather tables. I'd rather play it by ear.