Right now, the rain is falling.

[ramble]

No, it isn't; it's cascading. It's hammering down in a translucent sheet as I sit here in the kitchen and drink my coffee and look out into the gray. White splashes like TV static burst from the dark wood of the porch as the falling raindrops rebound.

Right now my wife is out walking the dogs. I plan to have a towel and tea ready for her return. You know, one of my players is moving to Las Vegas this summer; considering that we've had one sunny weekend in the last 20 or so, I can hardly blame her.

The rain just picked up again.

So now I wonder as I search for a way to make this on topic: do I use weather enough in my games? A druid or cleric with weather control spells could be deadly to an entire economy, destroying crops and producing massive panic and famine. Do I ever describe the feeling of cold rainwater dribbling down the back of heavy iron armor? Should I add a monster that only attacks when it is raining, leading townsfolk to fear to go out into the downpour? Or how about a sunny vacation town that all the rich nobles to go in high summer, which suddenly becomes a miserable swamp due to a curse?

Starting to slacken now, drops still making the tree branches dance as they bounce off of leaves.

I just can't relate to people who have constant droughts. The concept is foreign to us. I've been lots of places like this, and it never seems quite real. And yet I'm aware that abundant water is a phenomenal natural resource, one not to be whined about.

A more cynical person might suggest that it can be a phenomenal natural resource during the middle of the week, instead of every weekend.

More coffee, and more idle consideration. Why would a druid target a town with ceaseless rain? Well, to annoy the people, of course, but that's both petty and overdone. How about... there are a race of creatures living under the town. Let's say intelligent carrion crawlers in the sewers? Sure. The druid wants them out of there. But she can't kill all of them herself; so if she makes it rain, it will drive them to the surface, and the town will be forced to hire adventurers to deal with the problem, and this will allow the druid's allies to safely make their way into the sewers to retrieve the object that the carrion crawlers were worshipping as a false god! So the PCs will both have to fight intelligent and scary foes in the rain, then descend to the flooded sewers in order to stop the druid's allies, who will lead them back to the druid herself. Instant adventure.

Okay, your turn. Weather related adventure idea? Distract me. If I hadn't mentioned it, it's raining outside.

Obscure reference: Rob McKenna, the Rain God.

US East Coast Weather Table
=============================

1 - Rain
2 - Sheets of Rain
3 - Rain, thunder, and lightning.
4 - Slightly drippy light rain that makes you think it won't rain much, but then it does.
5 - Brief sunlight followed by rain
6 - DM's Choice or Roll Again


... hope that helps.

Wulf Ratbane said:

Obscure reference: Rob McKenna, the Rain God.

Click to expand...

Only obscure in a crowd different than our own. If I remember correctly, the clouds loved him, and wanted to be near him.

large lake on which a lot of shipping occurs have recently been brought to a shipping standstill because of bad weather caused by a storm giant who is ravaging anything that attempts to ply the waters over his underground home.

what noone has yet figured out is that he is simply angry because the love of his life, a silver dragoness, is long overdue to return from her research being done in human form.

turns out the silverdragoin had dealings with a nasty night hag and has aquired demon fever. she succumbed to the disease before making it back to the hills over the loch and lies racked with fever in a local primitive hospital run by lawful monks for the poor and orphaned.

p.s., a little rain here everyday. not the soakers that have bombed large parts of the east coast, but a quick shower in the afternoon which makes the grass grow quicker and ensures the plums on the trees in my backyard are supersweet...and ripe for a very short time.

it also keeps pots from drying...any decent level of humidity can keep a pot too moist to fire for months. the best way yo check is to daily enter the studio and hold each pot that might be close to my cheek, feeling for the coolness of evaporation. so here i am again, going down the rows, pressing pitchers and crocks and urns to my cheek and closing my eyes each time, as if the sensitive skin high on my cheeks might be able to read better if i cannot see.

One of my personal favourite monsters : the fogshark!

THose shapes in the mists can be really dangerous

Piratecat said:

Only obscure in a crowd different than our own. If I remember correctly, the clouds loved him, and wanted to be near him.

Click to expand...

Anything I can do to help bring you out of your own personal long dark tea time of the soul...

But you are right, this rain sucks... but I have a girlie on her way back to see me, too, so we'll just have to find something to do indoors.

Wulf

I was in the desert many years ago, in the Mideast no less, and I saw the most amazing daylight, nearly cloudless, rain and lightning storm. The bolts ran across the sky for MILES and MILES. It was incredible. Lasted all of 15 or 20 minutes and then it was back to normal.

Talk about freaky weather. Never seen anything like it.

Sounds like a good entrance for a blue dragon if you ask me.

Having lived most of my life in Scotland, I am barely aware that there is a weather state other than rain. Rain is what it always is, and rain is what it always shall be.

It's like some twisted watery version of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The other side of the ledger

Very interesting. Perhaps I can add the other side, being a Texan and more worried about drought than constant rain.

Although this summer has been wet so far thanks to El Nino, Texas usually begs for rain. I cannot imagine being in a place like Seattle (or apparently Boston) where drought is unimaginable. Down here, the drought in Colorado has gotten so bad that the Rio Grande is bone dry, and actually no longer reaches the Gulf of Mexico! Mexico and the US are fighting over Mexico's alleged over-use of water flowing from Mexico into the Rio Grande. Here is another way for weather to affect a campaign - the weather gets bad enough that people come into conflict for the remaining scarce resources.

In fact, I would say that Texas would be very foreign to you, Piratecat. We don't have the seasons you are used to.

Winter is usually dry and cold only for a week or so at a time when a front (a "blue norther") comes in.

Spring is beautiful, 70s and clear, but it usually begins in February and ends in April!

Then (except in El Nino years), April and May are wet with temps from the high 60s to the high 90s.

Then comes summer. 92-100 degrees (or more) and dry as a bone most years. Water restrictions are becoming common even in central and east Texas, when in the past only the desert west had them.

Finally, summer ends with the late September to October(!) rainy season. Late October through December is usually a lovely fall. No leaves turn, since most trees are scrub oak. It's usually in the 70s.

Thus, Texas is really a semi-arid, even psuedo-tropical climate dominated by when it rains and when it doesn't. Travel to somewhere like Texas would probably lead to "season-shock" for those used to temperate climes, just as it blew me away when I had to shovel snow in Chicago - in April!

Finally, when the storms come, they are usually very violent, much like the true desert storm described above.