Skiis, snow and the enviroment in general

[Primitive Screwhead]

Environment books are solid supplemental material in general, though their appeal is very niche unless it's padded out.

IMHO, the WoTC environmental books are indeed niche, but thats because they go deep into one specific climate/setting focus. In some cases, this is good.... but its not what I am looking for. Too extreme focus with all the special races and items.

What I want is simple rules that provide a real mechanical difference between a jungle and a mountain steppe.

Wildscape is a supplement that provides that, with a short chapter on each type of climate and sets of conditions that can be applied to the game. It also has rules for tactical terrain pieces. Its a book that I will be HR into 4E.

 

[Ahglock]

I want good rules on this, for levels 1-9 the environment is something that even in its relatively normal ranges can provide important encounters or encounter modifiers.

I'm not so sure how specific you have to get though. You can easily have good, somewhat bad, bad, really bad, and dead god were all going to die stages with basic penalties associated with each stage. Add some text explaining with a couple examples how these penalties can be integrated into multiple bad weather and environment scenarios.
Jungle- stage two environmental encounter. -1 to all actions fatigue set in after 4 hours of walking, or 30 minutes of strenuous exercise.
Heavy Rain- Stage two environmental encounter. -1 to all actions fatigue set in after 4 hours of walking, or 30 minutes of strenuous exercise.

If they have the room sure go into more detail, but I wouldn't mind of the more detail comes in later books. Like in the Wilderness Survival Guide.(dear god I used to buy everything)

 

[barsoomcore]

I think what 3e did for environment rules was pretty ok. There were rules for blah blah blah lava.

Yeah, but the basic lava rules were just not up to snuff, were they? Basically unplayable, really.

Fortunately there's a FREE product now that really fills in the gap on the whole LAVA front. Check out Fire and Brimstone for some lava rules you can really get some use out of.