Can you make sense of my weather chart?

[Arravis]

Hey guys, our 4th edition Forgotten Realms game (set in 3rd edition era Realms) is set in Vaasa; a location where weather plays a critical role. Anyway I've made several weather generation systems, none of them to the satisfaction or simplicity I want, that is until now (I think). Anyway, I've maded a "weather wheel", its a calendar-based weather generation system (based on the weather in Vaasa). I'm curious to see if its use is self-evident or perhaps too complex... anyway, its in the attachment below. I'd love to hear comments and ideas on this, thanks guys!

-Arravis

P.S.: Its still a work in progress... not quite finished I think.

 

[weem]

When I saw your title "Can you make sense of my weather chart?" I thought, "Okay, I'm going to go right in and check out the chart before I read his post" (so I wouldn't be influenced by any additional notes you may have added about how to read it) - that way I could give you a good idea of how easy/hard it was for me to 'get it'.

It took me about a minute and a half to get the idea (after figuring out the best zoom level from which to view it). Probably more specific than you were looking for, but the idea is that it was pretty easy to understand.

With that said, I like it a LOT and may do something along these lines for my own setting!

Good job

 

[Arravis]

Heh, it's good to hear it was at least semi-intuitive. I'm very glad you liked it! For me, it makes a year look both oddly long and short at the same time.

-Arravis

 

[Gort]

Very cool. If it wasn't tied to your setting, I'd steal it right away. As it is, I'll just have to settle for emulating it instead.

I never tend to bother with weather outside of "dramatic storm" in my game - a light drizzle or strong wind would spice things up a bit.

 

[Andor]

It seems pretty clear to me. I might add in a chance for either seasonally extreme or unseasonal weather on the chart.

And a year seeming both long and short sounds about right.

 

[Arravis]

Excellent... thanks for ll the positive comments guys!

-Arravis

 

[Lanefan]

Nice design.

Maybe the only change I'd consider is making the temperature bands a +/- from seasonal norm, instead of absolute degree values. Thus, "very cold" might be 15-20 degrees below normal whatever time of year it is, while "warm" might be 5 degrees or so above normal. Temperature works nicely this way (and is probably the only variable that does), in that no matter what time of year it is the variances fall within a certain range depending on climate. Here where I live, for example, a variance of 20 degrees F from normal in either direction at any time of year is extreme. In a dry desert or the high arctic, the variance might be more; in equatorial jungles, the variance might be a lot less.

Then, all you need is a vague idea of what the seasonal normal temp. would be for whatever climate/season your party happens to be in; and that's up to you as DM to determine.

Lanefan

 

[Jhaelen]

Wow, this looks great! What software did you use to create this?

I definitely could use something like this for my setting (arctic climate).

 

[Celebrim]

When I was younger, circa say 1997 or so, I spent a great deal of time thinking about weather generation systems and making them realistic, flexible, and interesting. Some of my work was ok, but it always had problems and fixing the problems tended to make the system clunky and complicated.

I have since started using what is I think about the perfect weather generation system. It works like this:

Pick a city in the United States that you think has weather similar to the sort of weather in your games current location. Get on the internet, say www.wunderground.com, and look up that cities weather for however many days worth of weather you want. Viola, instantly generated realistic and flexible weather generation with I dare say minimal die rolling.

Color it with weather of dramatic necessity as needed.

PS: The calendar is great, but perhaps not for weather generation.

 

[Arravis]

Lanefan: The temperature bands (and the degrees they cover) are pre-defined in the 3.5 DMG (and supplemental works like Frostburn, etc). In game, I rarely go into details of the exact temperature and simply describe the temp-band its in.

Jhaelen: Illustrator, not an easy task either unfortunately.

Celebrim: We actually have done this in our game already, there's a weather station in the middle of alaska that we use... but since we round-robyn DM, different DM's like different ways to generate the weather. Personally, I'd rather generate it on the fly. Just feels "right" for some reason.

-Arravis