New Snow: Minor Weather Effects in Your Game
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Me, standing out in the snow in Spokane, WA, 2008
So, for the first time in many years, snow has fallen on the Tidewater area of Virginia. Normally too warm to even consider falling, it’s dumped this morning. Being raised in Washington state, I’m used to buckets of snow (the winter of 2008, we got 12 feet up there, and they shut down the airports, leaving me unable to leave town), but the people of Virginia are not, and I’m not going to deal with those idiots driving in this weather, so we’re hunkering down.
This, naturally, made me think of gaming.
How often do you introduce weather effects in your game? Do your characters go to sleep one evening in the encampment they set up, then wake up the next morning with everything covered in snow? How would that effect them? If they didn’t set anyone on watch, what are those goblin footprints doing going through their camp, and why didn’t said goblin steal anything? What was it doing?
How about drizzling rain?
In a 4e game, you could have the heroes set out on a 2 week long journey on horseback. Each morning, they would have to roll an Endurance check to keep from losing a healing surge, which would remain lost until they could get themselves completely dry at an inn or something. It would represent getting a chill in their bones, and being less effective if they came under attack.
Minor weather effects can add a lot of possibility to your game, introducing new situations and minor inconveniences for your PCs.
Now, I’m going to go take my toddler out to experience his first time playing in the snow.
As a GM while I sometime impose mechanical penalties from weather, I find it must useful for mood and scene setting. In L5R game we just played, the character set out on their new mission under stormy skies, which some of them viewed as a poor omen. The heavy rains caused mudslide which both delaid their travel, causing them to have to camp in the open, and released ghosts from the bodies now exposed to the skies which the characters had to deal with.
.-= Sean Holland´s last blog ..Worlds Beyond the Sea of Stars =-.
I rarely impose some game effect in encounters due to weather, but definitely incorporate them in skill challenges. Dropping a healing surge or 2 is a great way to describe the bangs, knocks, and general exhaustion players would get from overland travel.
Usually at the start of some overland travel I’ll roll a D6 and if I get a 1, give details about poor weather. It might mean simply they don’t make as much time as they normally would, but at the least adds a little flavor to the environment.
I don’t get caught up too much in this, as the poster said above, if the story needs a dark and stormy night, you can bet I’ll be describing the rain coming down in buckets for the players.
.-= Geek Ken´s last blog ..Thoughts: Eberron Campaign Guide =-.