Weather and Microclimates

[MNBlockHead]

How are you all dealing with weather and climate in RW? Up to now, I've pretty much just fudged it. Either making it entirely up or using very simple random weather tables. I want to be able to offer something richer and more "realistic" without creating much work for myself. Below is my planned approach. I would appreciate any suggestions.

1. Since my fantasy world's climates are easy to match to IRL Earth climates, I plan use use historical weather lookup services, like Weather Underground.

2. I will prepare a list of climate types and put them in a column in a table, the next column will have a zipcode, airport code, or City-State-Country from real-life Earth that represents that climate.

3. When creating a Place:Region:Geographical topic, in I would enter the appropriate values in the climate fields. The climate would be selected from a tag list and the zipcode, airport, or city would be entered into the annotation (or just enter the URL to the page with historical weather info for that region).

But creating a region topic for every climate, even on the highest level is too much work. While I can, again, fudge the climate pretty well just but looking at my world map, that isn't really satisfactory, so my next step is:

4. Use Hexographer to create a simple color-coded climate map. I'm not going to plot out the entire world, but when preparing any overland scenes, I would indicate climate with color and with hexographer I can drill down further into a specific hex to account for microclimates due to lake effects, the windward/leeward sides of mountains, etc.

Anyway, I'd be interesting on how others handle weather and climate beyond making it up on the fly.

 

[Farling]

Weather doesn't have enough of an effect in my campaign unless it is relevant to the plot.

I guess it could come down to the GM wanting lots of detail, but the players not caring so much (a bit like has been said about detailed time-keeping)?

 

[Vargr]

I have never understood that it should not be in the players interest to know that.

Both time and weather is of paramount relevance in movies, books, plays and in people's own lives - even more so when you are dependent on them (a farming community, for instance).

If the players do not care, then it is because the GM does not use neither time nor weather in his world. Quite frankly, when I play with a GM who does not use time and weather I always get the feeling that I am in a 2D world lacking immersion.

That is not the same as having to invent new weird stuff as "today is the third plurf in the second me'ta of the Slarf circle in Emperor Augustus second reincarnation of the fourth reign; it is two meffles past the Dog's Sentinel".

But having no timesystem and no weather is akin to be a sailboat and dead in water out of sight of the coast - boring and pointless.

 

[Viking2054]

Although time and weather can be important to the game, is it important enough to have predetermined inside your Realm Works campaign data? I will use weather to set a mood or impose a condition on a scene but I rarely create it before I sit down at the game table. I'm just not sure it is worth it enough to worry about ahead of time. Now, I suppose if weather is key to the story... such as some cursed character that only comes out to play when it's cloudy or raining, then I guess predetermining the weather might be necessary. But then that might be something like a werewolf only coming out to play under the full moon kind of thing.

On the other hand, recording the weather conditions so the players can look up what the weather was like when something happened is fine by me and I've noted it down on old hand written or excel based calendars I've done for some of my campaign worlds.

 

[Lexin]

I will use weather to set a mood or impose a condition on a scene but I rarely create it before I sit down at the game table.

If weather is really important to the game, I'll have written it in to the preparations for the scenarios. Generally, it's not that much of an issue, unless I decide I want to make the characters miserable for some reason (such as they're fooling around in a way that's irritating me) then I'll pretend to roll the dice and tell them that it's raining or snowing, depending on where they are in the world.

Usually in the worlds that I'm running, the phases of the moon are more important (like Hastur can only come down when Aldebaran is in the sky) and recording that information would be more useful. But obviously, as I'm the GM, it happens when I say it happens, even if it turns out I'm later wrong in RL terms, I'm still right in game terms. If you see what I mean.

 

[MNBlockHead]

"today is the third plurf in the second me'ta of the Slarf circle in Emperor Augustus second reincarnation of the fourth reign; it is two meffles past the Dog's Sentinel".

Reading that sentence makes me strangely happy. I would love to play in a campaign where the DM could actually pull it off.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Weather doesn't have enough of an effect in my campaign unless it is relevant to the plot.

I guess it could come down to the GM wanting lots of detail, but the players not caring so much (a bit like has been said about detailed time-keeping)?

I agree that you don't want to be so bogged down in "realistic" detail that you detract from the tempo of the game, but pulling out weather details doesn't take too much extra prep (e.g. having a historical weather database like Weather Underground that you can use to look up weather for the environment your party is currently adventuring in).

It is nice to simply add some flavor about the party walking through a miserable rain. Also having weather slow down or speed up travel times, have negative/positive effects on battles, sneaking, passive perception, etc.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Although time and weather can be important to the game, is it important enough to have predetermined inside your Realm Works campaign data?

No. But I *do* think that knowing the climate of where the party is, what the season is, and being able to quickly pull up weather details (either from a historical weather service, a table, or just fudging it based on climate and season) adds to your ability to describe the scene and build a mood.

What I like about weather, once you have a system (and it needn't be too complicated) you have an easy way to add some flavor that is not taxing on your attention and doesn't take much preparation.

I do think, however, if I'm going to go through the work of creating a geographical region, I might as well add the climate and link to historical weather for a similar area on real-life earth with that climate. But I would not create a Region:Geographic topic for the sole purpose of recording the climate (that's what maps are for).

 

[Viking2054]

I don't try to map the weather in my campaigns. I also don't much bother too much with recording weather, any more. I may or may not be asked what season of the year it is during character creation, but other then that my players don't care about the weather unless I make a big deal about it.

The season soon gets forgotten after character creation... My players feel prepared for whatever comes their way if they are prepped for the season at character creation. Besides, tracking that stuff usually gets lost over time when you get together to play once or twice a month and then end up on two to six month breaks because of real life interfering in the groups ability to get together. I'm sure weather might be important to those that can play every week but I find that weather is something that is determined either when I set down at the game table, or when a player happens to ask about it... and in both cases it's usually a toss of the dice modified by season, location, and maybe altitude.

 

[Vargr]

No. But I *do* think that knowing the climate of where the party is, what the season is, and being able to quickly pull up weather details (either from a historical weather service, a table, or just fudging it based on climate and season) adds to your ability to describe the scene and build a mood.

What I like about weather, once you have a system (and it needn't be too complicated) you have an easy way to add some flavor that is not taxing on your attention and doesn't take much preparation.

I do think, however, if I'm going to go through the work of creating a geographical region, I might as well add the climate and link to historical weather for a similar area on real-life earth with that climate. But I would not create a Region:Geographic topic for the sole purpose of recording the climate (that's what maps are for).

I completely agree.

I don't need a table telling me, that today it will rain 0.8 mm and the it will be lightly clouded with sunny spots from differing directions.

But I need to know, that we are at the end of winter, that this is usually when the cold loosens it grip, but this year the winter drags on. I need to consistently being able to describe the impacts this will have. I need to have planned that the prolonged winter will mean an increased mortality rate among slaves, that the land will be boggy (if that is the word) from all the melt water and the harvest will be in danger.

I need this information to let the consequences slip into rumors and the everyday life happening around them. I need it to give some flesh to the story.

And I need to know, how cold it is, how tough it is to navigate the countryside and I need to be able to convey this to the players in a way so that it appears realistic. And they actually take the weather into their planning. The have decided to wait for better weather before going "bad-guy-hunting" in a huge forest - they don't feel like freezing out there and getting bogged down in all the snow. They - actually - don't - want - to - freeze - out - there... How often do you get a party to say that? Most of the time parties (or their players at least) don't care much for the hardships of the player characters.

And to pull this off, I need to have a pretty good idea of the seasons, the weather (at least in broad times) from day to day and how the weather will develop over time.

Not on a nitty-gritty detailled level, but in a somewhat broader sense.

Do I need a special function in RW for this? No. The features already available do the job nicely (I treat it as any other piece of information).

I can do a lot of this out of the top of my head, if I know my seasons and I know my reasons for what causes or at least influences future events.

*replace "need" with "want" in the above if you like.

 

[Vargr]

Reading that sentence makes me strangely happy. I would love to play in a campaign where the DM could actually pull it off.

Trying to understand it myself makes the world spin a little...

I hope and pray that the coming calendar system in RW can pull something like that off.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

............
1. Since my fantasy world's climates are easy to match to IRL Earth climates, I plan use use historical weather lookup services, like Weather Underground.

IMC (Greyhawk) they actually made MANY tables for managing this in the mid 1980's, up to and including them (indirectly) in several books (ie World of Greyhawk & D&D 1e Wilderness Survival But I found the various charts toooo detailed and cumbersome for ingame play (IMO) so I created an excel spreadsheet utilizing those tables as a guide for the min's and max's of various areas in the campaign world.

Twice a year (real world) we have what we call a "Game-a-Thon" and part of my preparations for that 3 day event is to run my weather calendar for my DM binder out 6 months. This gives me a guide for the next six months of weather for the area, tides, moon phases, etc... (plug Calendar Request here as it would be NICE to integrate this into RW calendars).

By having it printed out in advance, it is more readily available for "forecasting" ect. I have found (as is most things from a gaming perspective) if it is unimportant to the DM, then it becomes unimportant to the players, and subsequently to the characters.

By minimizing things like weather, there is no real need for characters to buy cold weather gear, fear an upcoming drought or blizzard, nor have skills or feats that allow them to traverse or combat in ill conditions such as snow or mud. They will work those details if you the DM does. The hard part is real world time to manage such details, which is why I do it only every 6 months.

............
2. I will prepare a list of climate types and put them in a column in a table, the next column will have a zipcode, airport code, or City-State-Country from real-life Earth that represents that climate.

An interesting approach. When I was creating my spreadsheet from the resource canon material, I did something similar since my world is like yours similar in size to earth. I found cities (real world) that matched latitude and geography to my fantasy ones to create that baseline.

............3. When creating a Place:Region:Geographical topic, in I would enter the appropriate values in the climate fields. The climate would be selected from a tag list and the zipcode, airport, or city would be entered into the annotation (or just enter the URL to the page with historical weather info for that region).

But creating a region topic for every climate, even on the highest level is too much work. While I can, again, fudge the climate pretty well just but looking at my world map, that isn't really satisfactory, so my next step is:

4. Use Hexographer to create a simple color-coded climate map. I'm not going to plot out the entire world, but when preparing any overland scenes, I would indicate climate with color and with hexographer I can drill down further into a specific hex to account for microclimates due to lake effects, the windward/leeward sides of mountains, etc.

Like you I have a custom map that defines probable weather regions (but I'm just anal retentive that way)

For those that want a simpler approach, but don't just want to "make it up" you could utilize a random weather generator and "massage" the results to fit your needs.
See here is one.
Weather Generator
or this if you don't mind a free register with EnWorld
Random Weather with Gregorian Calendar

DLG

 

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks for the links.

The d20pfsrd.com is a bit too simplistic for me with only three climates and simplistic data/descriptions.

The ENWord application is better.

But I think I have benefited from and am cursed by having traveled a lot. Not all equatorial areas are alike.

By using Weather Underground, I just need to think up a place on real-world earth that has similar geography to the location the party is at without need to come up with a complicated set of tables or plan anything in advance. Like you, I don't have time to plan all the weather details, but with my system I don't have to. I only have to plan the weather if it is important to the plot of an adventure (e.g. if the adventure involves solving the mysterious deaths that occurs when the fog rolls in, you'll probably want to make sure that there is going to be some foggy days).

It would be nice if the Weather Underground would give some description of the weather other than just stats, but I'm pretty good a looking at temp, rel. humidity, wind chill, etc. and giving a decent in-game subscription. For better or worse, I've experience enough climates and severe weather events that I have personal experience to draw upon.

 

[MNBlockHead]

...The have decided to wait for better weather before going "bad-guy-hunting" in a huge forest - they don't feel like freezing out there and getting bogged down in all the snow. They - actually - don't - want - to - freeze - out - there... How often do you get a party to say that? Most of the time parties (or their players at least) don't care much for the hardships of the player characters.

And to pull this off, I need to have a pretty good idea of the seasons, the weather (at least in broad times) from day to day and how the weather will develop over time.

Agreed. I would go further, though. I can fudge pretty good the general weather for seasons and climates.

But weather can be hard to predict and change quickly from day to day.

If in real life, I can go from enjoy playing in the snow outside on Monday and cancel school and keep the kids inside because otherwise lots of them would suffer sever frost bite and risk death waiting for the bus the next, why shouldn't the player characters need to work about as they travel to confront the frost giant that has been devastating villages on the north border?

It doesn't take much work to do a quick look up and it adds to fun, making for some interesting decision making and troubleshooting scenarios.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

Thanks for the links.

The d20pfsrd.com is a bit too simplistic for me with only three climates and simplistic data/descriptions.

The ENWord application is better.

I agree with your assessment, but I think you and I might be in the "detail oriented minority" hehe
The links provided would probably just spark the creative "juices' of a DM that generally skips over the fun that weather challenges bring to the table. Ask an archer about High wind conditions sometime!!

But I think I have benefited from and am cursed by having traveled a lot. Not all equatorial areas are alike.

You and I suffer from the same malady too much travel! And like you I have come to embrace what I have seen first hand as a sanity check.

Too often newer DMs get caught in the "the table or roll says this or that" and miss the nuances of good role-play. I generally take the middle ground. IF the gaming weekend could be effected by the weather I have pre-regenerated some 6 months earlier, then I make note of it as part of my game prep, but if the forecast suggests heavy rain, but the PCs are 3 levels deep in a dungeon, it might not even be noticed while they were adventuring inside, so it effects them little... directly.

But maybe when they emerge, they discover their favorite pub they enjoy going to spin their tales of victory got wiped out by a tornado or flood....

Time and events go on for everyone, not just the PCs. That is what my players refer to as the sneaky ole Bas**d at the end of the table effect.

Insert Calendar Plug HERE...

 

[Viking2054]

If they are 3 levels deep in a dungeon that is poorly designed, too close to the flooding river then weather sure could be a problem as the dungeon starts to flood... <evil GM grin>

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

If they are 3 levels deep in a dungeon that is poorly designed, too close to the flooding river then weather sure could be a problem as the dungeon starts to flood... <evil GM grin>

I like how you think Viking... I think you qualify for what us old gurnards' used to refer to as the Grimtooth award

Grimtooth on Amazon
GRimtooth on DriveThru RPG

 

[Viking2054]

lol... I loved those trap books.

 

[AEIOU]

Or if you want the best of the best from all of the Grimtooth's, Frog God has PDF's for The Wurst of Grimtooth's traps available for $20. I recently ordered a grab-bag box from them and the out-of-print hard-copy version was included as one of my rare items. My 14-year-old walked off with it and pored over the pages for several days. Muahahahaha....

https://www.froggodgames.com/wurst-grimtooths-traps

 

[MNBlockHead]

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Goodman games is releasing a new 460-page hard cover collection of all of the Grimtooth's Traps books.