Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3205933" data-attributes="member: 2020">I proposed this once and wish to propose it again:  Why not use the Spelljammer rules for a specific ground campaign setting?  That is:  In the 2E Spelljammer Campaign, any object that left an atmosphere took a small amount of that atmosphere with it.  The larger the object, the more atmosphere it took (but never enough to make any dint in a planet's actual atmosphere.)  What if this rule was applied to the surface terrain itself, and we counted mountains as rising out of the atmosphere ... and thus taking atmosphere up with them?  Under this system, atmospheric pressure would not drop with altitude IF the rise involved a mountain range or plateau (such as Tibet or the Great Basin are plateaus.)  Instead, the atmosphere (indeed, the whole troposphere) would 'curve' up and over and down the mountain range and/or plateau in question.  Surface winds and weather phenomena, jet stream winds, clouds, storms, and the boundary of the tropopause itself would 'curve' upward to match the change in surface altitude, rising up and over mountain ranges, and up and across and over plateaus.  Atmosphere pressure would still drop normally above level land.  Above mountains and sloped terrain of any kind, altitude would be 'straight up' from the point of view of the ground:  if the ground was rising straight up (as per a cliff) then 'straight up' in altitude would be sideways (thus, the atmosphere 5 miles *sideways* from a steep mountain would be thin, as opposed to 5 miles *upward*, until you got to the mountaintop, beyond which atmospheric pressure would drop normally directly above the peak.)  If two 50,000 foot high mountains stood 20 miles apart, and you tried to fly from one to another, atmospheric pressure would drop, you would come to the clouds (which would be rising nearly straight up or down, relative to the mountainside, although rain would still fall normally according to gravity ... this could result in some very strange atmospheric phenomenon) and then to the jet stream winds (again, racing up or down), then to the jet stream again as you 'descended' towards the other mountain, through more clouds and possibly storms, then back to the 'surface' with surface temperatures and pressures.  The air temperature would drop from sea level warmth to the frigidity of 100 below zero, then back to the warmth of the surface.  There would be other notable changes with this system.  Mountains would no longer block storms, so no rainshadow areas would exist.  Mountains would cease blocking the flow of moisture to the Arctic, resulting in violent storms there.  Mountains would also cease blocking the flow of cold air, allowing Arctic Air to plunge equatorward in dramatic fashion.  As the Ice Queen blew her wintertime gales, and these met up with the Sunlord's heat, colossal storms would blast across the temperate latitudes.  Hurricanes would no longer be disrupted by mountains either, although land would still weaken and dissipate them eventually.  In the Forgotten Realms, if this were the system, the entirety of the Realms would become wetter.  The whole Unapproachable East would change to forest (subarctic in the north to temperate in the south, except where magic had permanently desertfied the land.)  The Shaar would become a temperate forest.  All those mountain ranges would become green and fertile, the ice and glaciers disappearing.  It would become colder in the winter further south, and warmer in the summer farther north.  The Frozenfar would be assaulted by heat waves and rain and begin to melt rapidly, while the Shining South would see freezes and snow during the winter (much to Dambrath's delight and Var the Golden's consternation.)  The Inner Sea would grow, the Great Glacier would expand faster (magic, anyone, to stop it?), and Anauroch would see the usual (rain, which mysteriously and instantaneously dried up.)  Flight of any sort would take on new dimensions and problems, especially around mountains (the rain is blowing upward, did you say?  And it's raining up there, and snowing down here?  There's a gale from the north here, but it's calm aloft, say you?)  Perhaps the Spelljamming reality only exists in some mountain ranges and plateaus, and has been cancelled by magic (or, never instated by magic) in others.  Thus, my mountain range is green and fertile, but yours to my north is barren and airless (but it blocks cold waves, making my mountains even warmer.)  Perhaps the plateau at 10,000 feet is barely inhabitable, but that great plateau at 25,000 feet is lush and green.  In cases like this, the prevailing winds and jet streams are wildly altered from the norm as they must deal with the normal reality in some areas, and the Spelljamming reality in others.  The entire worldwide climatic system is altered.  Temperate latitudes exist at 60 degrees north in some places, but only 30 degrees north in others.  The 'Chunnel' of mountains allows cold air to reach the equator in one section of the world, producing snow there, compliments of the Snow Queen.  However, the Sunlord created another passage for his heat waves, and part of the Arctic is tropical.</blockquote>

Verification