The importance of the seasons in your adventures/campaigns?

Okay, on a personal level I have always been interested in the seasons, the yearly rhythm of the natural world and such, and as a result I like to keep track of time in the adventures and campaigns I run via the seasons and seasonal festivals and what not.

My question to everyone else is - to what extent have the seasons and their festivals played a part in your adventures and campaigns?

I generally try to have them present in some form or another, but it's rarely a major plot element. It does sometimes set up things like wilderness battles in muddy terrain as a spring downpour comes through, or Balance checks on ice-covered cobblestones.

-The Gneech

They play an important role as wars, orc raids, giant white spiders emerging from the great wood, etc. all occur at different seasons. I try to have them set a flavor and have a tactical effect, if any, they tended to have hsitorically. Dare I say it, hopefully it gives a feeling of a living world and a "sense of wonder."

Not just seasons, but day to day weather plays an important role whenever the party is outdoors, even if just for flavour and descriptions. Festivals I tend to ignore for the most part, though some players make a bigger deal than others out of their deities' holy day(s). And my players have learned to pay at least passing attention to the game-world weather, as I just finished a story arc based on climate change...

Lanefan

In the first adventure arc of my Oriental Adventure campaign, Autumn was prevelent part of the story. One very important encouter was at the Fall Harvest Festival fighting a horde of bakemono (oriental goblins) and a large Fire Elemental. I set the mood with a speech from the local Shugenja on the seasons and how all things must eventually be put to the flame to encourage new growth.

After that the party was sent out by the provencial lord to scout the trail ahead of the caravan to the capital in anticipation of the Winter court. I used lots of nature descriptions and tried to tie it into weather effects and the mood of the NPCs.

When my next arc starts up it will be winter in the capital and the mood will be bleak as the PCs will lose their sponsors and be forced to flee across the sea.

That's in comparison with our current adventure - the "who cares, lets just kill things" adventure.

In one-shot games (which, unfortunately, is most of what we play, these dyas), if I am the GM, I will throw it in whenever I think it's convenient, but that's rarely. Most adventures take place in a few weeks, or less.

In campaigns, I am famous (infamous?) for bedevilling the PCs with minor, mundane stuff... like weather. First level PCs who adventure without tents soon learn why they are important! Those without bedrolls & blankets suffer fatigue, etc.

In a campaign, I will announce the time of year at the outset, and have the weather pre-rolled for two weeks at the start of the campaign. If the PCs go on a long trip that takes up more than two weeks, I will make up the rest, instead of stopping to roll, then roll up another month or so after the game.

In one subtropical campaign, I had a platemailed PC running around the jungle, and constatly had him rolling for heat exhaustion, but somehow he just never seemed to fails his roll! In another winter campaign, I had a dextrous Wylf (Elf) go out, early one frosty morn, to go check on the horses, hit the icy, second-story steps... and recover admirably, without swan-diving to the bottom! Lucky PCs, I tellya!

I also did a MERP Campaign wherein the PCs spent Christmas in Bree, and had to come up with presents, and contributions to the Yuletide Feast... No combat, but some fun roleplaying, as I recall! Good times!...

Very important. Winter is usually, but not always, or at least mostly, down time for the PC's to do mundane things. Such as "train" for new skills, make some armor, create scrolls, potions, or magic items, that kind of stuff. I often have "down times" between adventures as well. Anywhere from a few weeks to months, depending on what the players want to do.

We keep track of the seasons mostly for holidays. Although the climate has also been the subject of magical battles, currently the PCs fear the first day of winter, which may start an ice age.

Now when I ran an island game with monsoons the weather was of utmost importance, any adventuing during the rainy season was pure misery for fighters "the foe is 100ft away, on this muddy hillside its 5 rounds of double moves, and its a -4 penalty for archery"

The weather and seasons are a factor in my game. When they started at 1st level in fall, they quickly learned that travel through mountains under heavy rain is dangerous. The first snowfall nearly killed them, so they decided to winter in a town.

From then on it became tradition to take winters off if at all possible. The time they had to slog cross country late winter/early spring to stop a plague from spreading reinforced it. Frost giants & winter wolf attacks followed by fighting barbarian hordes & ship-to-ship combat in heavy spring rains.

The summer they quested for a lost city across a tropical savanna was the summer they traveled at night, rather than die from the heat. I think the cleric & wizard burned half their low level slots on temperature enduring/modifying spells to make life bearable.

I forgot to mention there is an annual town fair that they have visited for the last 5 years. They occassionaly go to other festivals & fairs, but this is their adopted home; the first place they were given a modicum of respect and treated as contributing members of society. Most of what they know about how to act in proper society was learned at these fairs. Each year they grow into a new socio-political-economic strata and find some new aspect to the fair that was previously closed to them or completely unknown. (I'm not sure how much longer *that* can keep happening)

Weather, certainly, but until recently I had only a narrow experience with the greater variety of seasons. That is, in the sense of experiencing a temperate climate as opposed to a tropical or semi-tropical one. It can be hard to accurately convey snow and freezing conditions if you've only experienced them through film or photograph, or the feelings such things evoke.

Storms, wind, rain and tides all have strong thematic elements that I've used effectively before. Festivals often revolve around planting, harvest, and tides, as well as monsoons. It's certainly interesting seeing folk try to travel around in plate mail during monsoon season!