Continuing my
exposition on table procedures for common exploration feats & rules, which
began here with
part one.
Introduction
I’ve been
holding off on a big one for some time now: Weather.
I wanted
something that allowed for more than just a shrugging off of weather as a game
element, for I find a lot of the difficulties inherent to surviving the great
outdoors derive not so much from making miles of progress, but from doing it
while facing down a gale that hardly even allows one to draw breath. Finding
shelter because the party decided it was time to do so is nothing but a chore,
having to do it under a torrential downpour before exhaustion piles up and
precious hit-points start being washed away is an adventure. I’m
here to sign up for that last one.
It’s easy to
conclude that this could get icky and complicated pretty quickly if going for
an exhaustive approach. Luckily, my scope of interest is bounded by what I’ll
need at a table in the heat of the running. I can bear to make do with some a
lot of arbitrariness here.
Note that the
intention is neither the lazy thinking approach of “I can just dictate
whatever weather I need” or “I’m sure there’s an app for that” nor is this the
overly self-indulgent “translating a complex weather algorithm into dice-roll
notation, complete with subtables for phases of the moon”.
No, this is
just plain young me, doing it like Sinatra.
The Safest of
Topics
Talking about
the weather? Well, not in an RPG context.
Afterthought
to some, wooly mammoth of an issue to others, weather generation in a
procedural manner is probably well beyond my ability to create and I’ll admit
straight at the launchpad: I’m deliberately biting off way more than I can chew
here. If there is a practical and convincing take on weather systems out there
I’ve yet to see its presentation or meet its author.
Christmas is nigh and I feel like I don't ask for much: I wish for a
procedure that is elegant, that preserves the running’s momentum, something
that can be done at-a-glance and dispenses with consulting any but the most
rudimentary of tables, something eminently usable and that doesn’t feel like
it’s been frontloaded to serve the party’s narrative, for detriment or benefit.
Gameable Weather
I’ve consulted
with the gogs and magogs of Wikipages, I’ve learned a bit about Köppen climate
areas and generally become better informed for it, but I’m not about to define
traits for inches of rainfall or miles of windspeed, no, I’m after the gameable
fatty portions, not the marrowy numeric hairsplits.
Even for a
system that embraces modelling an order bordering on chaos, I’ll still need at
least a couple of stable points of comparison, needles with which to spin the
thread. For this I choose to turn to the directions of the compass and an array
of temperature descriptions, then narrowed by climate type, to base the
die-roll’s results upon.
I’ve seen
online the whole “Weather as Reaction Roll” and I wish to move past that a bit
while shooting to keep the parts that enable the same kind of simplification.
The weather
roll, despite some interpretative differences, is then to be distant kin to a
reaction roll for the very basis of how the weather is shaped (improves and
worsens). Its reading is to be somewhat subjective, its result dispersion to
rely on uncle Gauss’s help, its results mainly descriptive. These are still
just bare bones, waiting on testing and refinement before table use is
forthcoming.
Left to the
Seasons’ Random Display
When to make a
weather roll?
Being as I’m
no climatologist, let me stress once again: I’m not out looking for the correct
but rather the game-relevant answer.
Drawing from
my rich double-paned-glass-filtered experience with weather, I’m thinking
weather rolls might be appropriate (and easier to remember) at liminar
junctions during a given day: one daily roll seems plenty good for the
parameter of temperature, with partial rolls at every four-hour watch after
that being usable for precipitation and the shifting of the wind’s direction,
this for a generic temperate climate. When we get to the more tropical
latitudes, more frequent rolls for precipitation might be desirable, the
opposite applying for the more stable climate types, such as deserts.
Of course it
need not be as intensive as this, a single roll can be extrapolated to last for
several days and ad-hoc rolls can also be made simply for partial consultation,
such as determining just the shift of the wind’s direction or speed, iterating
as long as the matter remains important. If the fastidious approach doesn’t
turn out so good, I’ll have to think of something else, such as keying weather
roll triggers on Wilderness encounter tables. Realism is just a yardstick, one
that I’d rather bend than break.
The Crunchy
Bits
For the
simpler reading, go with just the leftmost columns, growing complexity can then
be added by extending the reading to the right, culminating in the use of the
ancillary worksheet that tracks the evolution of weather over an extended
period of time and which is intended to be used either by the party for
record-taking or, more importantly, by me as referee, to plot out a week’s
worth of weather in advance.
Anatomy of a
Weather Roll
I endeavoured
to atomize the constituent elements of weather that I’ve found to be gameable,
trying to answer the question of how deep can one mine a simple 2d6 roll for
meaning before out pops the Balrog of overcomplexity?
To maximize
the possibilities, I started by differentiating the two six-siders used
(colours being good for this) and then decided on the categories to decode from
rolling the bastards. Note that all of the following have some sort of effect
or implication on travel, shelter, survival, vision and combat. Hence me
dubbing them gameable elements:
Turn of the
Weather: The Reaction Roll’iest part of the
roll, as simplicity is better served by a degree of randomization inherent to
the roll instead of trying to accurately model temperature drifts like an
almanac. In effect, this will mainly determine if the weather is getting warmer
or colder, with the effect evenly spread out over the duration until the next
roll.
Though the
temptation presents itself, I cannot shirk numeric signifiers – they feel
very modern and thus inadequate in the context of fantasy –
despite my view that I should avoid conventions common to our contemporary
upbringing, such as that of measuring temperature in clearly defined scales,
still the implication remains that the referee must get the meaning across, and
records of the weather must be kept, in order for the whole system to mean
anything. The graded approach is a concession, as I don’t see the verbal
descriptions catching on or being sufficient in transmitting the idea of
temperature to the players.
Temperature
Die: One of the differentiated d6s is used to mark the
temperature. This is the most objective part of the roll, keying into the
ancillary table that relates the temperature’s descriptive term.
Precipitation
Die: The other differentiated d6 is reserved for precipitation,
with six different degrees. It only means anything when it rains, with rainfall being dictated by the 2d6 roll.
Prevailing
Wind Direction: Determine North as facing the roller. Trace an imaginary
line from highest to lowest die result.
Wind Speed: Measured
from categories 0 to 5, subtracting the temperature die’s result from the
precipitation’s. This works out to a nicely embedded secondary stratified
probability curve.
Duration: After a fair
while spent experimenting, I settled for slicing time into daily for
temperature and once every four-hour watch for rain and for wind. Should one of
the durations expire during gameplay, simply recheck the lapsed result if it is
at all important, or default into calm air/lack of rain if not.
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Closing
Thoughts – Crucial Extrapolations
Never a slave
to the die roll, the understanding is that the weather is only rolled to
unearth some bare bones, the interpretation of that which is seasonable, along
with some other deductions must all rest on the referee’s shoulders. For
example: it is ever obvious that the temperature must drop by 10 to 15 Celsius
at night, no matter what.
Careful
reading will also yield results for Fog, Sleet, Hail, Cyclonic winds and Snow,
as these are all a matter of crossreferencing temperature with precipitation
level and windspeed. The present geography too must play a role, as each local
climate will imply a different set of expectations regarding Precipitation and
Average Temperature. Elevation, presence of an active volcano, mountain chains
and shelter in the woodland or deep valleys. There are things no simple table
can do for the referee. You just have to know how to play it by ear.
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