So how do you run environmental hazards?

[Lizard Lips]

So my PCs are off to sea, and to throw something a little different at them I decided running into a brutal storm at sea would be a nice change of pace. Problem is... I can't think of too much for them to DO. Part of the problem is that I'm not really sure how to handle a ship in a storm (the Seafarer's Guide was very helpful in explaining that in a storm the crew basically holds on to the ship and prays ), but there's also the fact that beyond holding on for dear life, bailing water, and holding the tiller, it doesn't seem like a very'fun' situation to play. In real life surviving a storm at sea would be a harrowing experience, but I just don't think I can pull that out of a DnD session.

I started thinking about other situations: forest fires, blizzards, avalanches, things that seem like they'd be cool scenarios for the PCs to survive, but I just can't think of the possible choices the party would face beyond "we flee" or "we hunker down and endure".

 

[Crothian]

Okay, a ship in a storm. They might have to pull down the sails or secure the rigging so it doesn't get destroyed. This could be very challenging with the wind and the rain. Balance checks, use rope checks, climb checks for when something gets entangles half way up the mast. And then there's the NPC or PC that gets thrown overboard, do you leave him, do you risk more lives trying to rescue him. Then, for higher level PCs, there's the Dragon Turtle the thinks a storm is the perfect time to attack a helpless ship.

 

[Falcmir]

A campaign I was recently in featured battling a storm. We glossed over the actual fighting the storm bit but we discovered the reason we were caught in the storm was because we were way off course. The route we should have taken was generally sheltered and much more calm than the route we ended up on. It turned into a mystery trying to find out why we were off course, eventually learning that mind influencing spells were at work.

Other ideas you could explore would be creatures using the storm to attack the ship, enemy saboteurs onboard trying to sink the ship, a murder takes place while everyone is busy fighting the storm, etc. In other words I think your best bet is to use the storm as a backdrop for interesting events rather than as a major obstacle in itself.

 

[Shade Murphy]

Or a combination of the these two.
While doing crothian's rules heavy idea you introduce Falcmir's idea of the storm becoming a backdrop for something else,
and go lighter on the rules.
That would make a good balance.

 

[Khorod]

Also, if you have a ship manned by player characters only, and a severe time-limit, they all can stuggle with the dice and in-character ideas to help stabilize and speed up the passage through the storm.

But that's much more boring than trying to keep the ship afloat while fighting the sahuagin gnawing through the hull.

 

[LostSoul]

I ran a ship adventure a while back.

It featured a storm demon that could posess people. One of the NPCs on board (the one who tried to start a mutiny) became possessed. And the possession granted him a lot of special powers.

The PCs were constantly making Balance checks, Spot checks, and generally freaked because they didn't know where the bad guy was, nor what he was doing.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think you need to make a combat situation out of it. Naturally the PCs would need to lower the sails and stuff but you can't actually fight winds and surf. However, you can fight air mephits and elementals as well as their water equivalents. When coupling this with all sorts of checks it might make a passable excuse for a real world storm. I think that this is how they symbolically do it in the theater at times. You need to have something tangiable and fightable in D&D.

For example if an elven king charge the PCs to deal with a raging forest fire I suppose they rather extinguish it by hunting down the Fire Elemental responsible than heev-hoe buckets of water.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Ask my IR players.
They had to endure environmental hazards in all 3 IRs the likes of which would scare orcs into running for their lives (well, almost scare them - Forrester's orcs were pretty brave lads and lasses!)