Weather in your Games?

[Vegepygmy]

Do you use weather in your RPGs and, if so, how so? Or not?

As DM, I once killed a PC with a blizzard. Despite multiple warnings about the severe conditions outside, the player had his character leave the safety of a cave and got dropped by the cold damage. We talked about it afterwards, and it turned out that he just didn't believe I was serious about using the weather rules.

 

[Celebrim]

I think I picked up this link from another thread here, or maybe on Paizo's boards: Weather Forecast & Reports - Long Range & Local | Wunderground : Weather Underground . If you look there you can see what the actual weather was for a given place and date, covering up to the last ten years maybe. If you keep track of dates in your campaign, it would be easy to just pick a year and month and choose an appropriate analagous place to where your campaign is and you get weather that is very... realistic, .

Everything old is new again:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/248189-weather-generator.html

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I picked "other" because we use weather in my current game I play in every time we play. Reason being, we are in the jungle and have to do endurance checks, it rains every day and it's hot and very humid. So it actually plays a big part in the current area we are stuck in as a party to explore (shipwrecked).

 

[Smoss]

I picked "other" because it depends. For my pre-written adventures, weather is important for dramatic reasons.

But in "normal" play, I use weather as appropriate for the season and with a chance of happening similar to the good old real world.
Smoss

 

[ComradeGnull]

I use weather a lot in my play-by-post games. PbP means that I can sit down and roll up weather as needed without it disrupting play at the table. It also helps establish passing time, which can be a challenge in PbP games where a single in-game day can take a long time to play out.

For pre-modern settings, I think using weather to modify things like travel times and the use of certain abilities (gunpowder weapons and other missiles, particularly) can add a lot of grit without bumping the fatality rating.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I frequently ignore weather. However, I used substantial non-random weather for dramatic effect in my last campaign. Before that, when I ran a maritime game, I actually did come up with a chart and roll weather because I thought it was important for the verisimilitude that a sailing ship be bound to the winds. Other than that, sometimes I just throw in a weather description for flavor.

 

[3catcircus]

I want the appearance of realism, but I'm lazy, so I use Weathermaster. Pretty sure it is no longer supported or available for purchase.

 

[Stormonu]

Weather in my game generally only comes up when there's a dramatic reason for it to be important. I've used rainstorms, lightning storms, and even a hurricane in my game, as well as a flood caused by torrential rain.

I generally start my games in Spring and keep track of days as the campaign progresses, with the idea that when winter comes, the PCs adventures might slow to a crawl. However, I haven't had a campaign that's made it to the first snows yet, they usually wrap up by late summer in the campaign world.

I've tried using random weather charts in the past, but they were too random at times.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

I picked "We sometimes use weather to mix things up." I started my Pathfinder game in the setting of Thunder Rift during the winter. I haven't had major blizzards or blasting winds or anything, but I keep things consistent with it being wintertime.

The biggest thing about it being winter is that the river that runs through the valley freezes over in some places, making boat/barge travel slower. This makes it easier for bandits to attack the ships and steal the cargo/rob the passengers/get beaten by the PCs.

What the PCs don't know is that the winter is going to last longer than expected due to a winter witch, who is working with an NPC that they're aware of. Once they discover that link, things will get really interesting.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

I chose "other". I have used weather off and on over my 3+ decades of gaming. Recently (last half year or so), I've been using it every time I DM. I bought a program for weather waaaay back when called "Weather Master", from MilieuSim. It was online-only activation, and I emailed him about a possible other option for registration...no go...but "if MilieuSim ever changes servers or goes out of business, we'll release a personalized patch for each person". Of course, they closed doors and *didn't* relase a patch for registered users. So, we users, had to find...er..."creative ways around" reigstration.

Anyway...Weather Master is an awesome program. You can use it to create your own worlds...how many moons, size, base temperature and a bunch of other scientific terms and ratings I have no idea about. One major thing I use is it's daily "Log"; you can type in notes and whatnot. I use it to keep track of particular events going on with NPC plans/goals, holiday's, etc. You can print out a day-by-day list of sun rise, sun set, moon phases, high/low temp, "block-hour" weather changes (e.g., "7am...", "12 noon...", "8pm..."), etc. (in metric or imperial).

So, yeah. WeatherMaster allows me to keep track of day-to-day weather and campaign/story lines all in one place...and allows me to print to paper or .xml (which I can then convert to PDF to use on my TabletPC).

^_^

Paul L. Ming