Weather Report

This week’s entry is coming in a day late, my apologies. Yesterday I was participating in the 4th Annual Operation Supply Drop 8BitSalute, and was deep into video gaming up until mid-afternoon. After that 24-hour game-a-thon, I crashed for the rest of the day, and was only awake a couple evening hours before getting back on my nightly zen schedule. So here it is!

Anyway, let’s talk about the weather, shall we?

Right at a year ago, I moved from Alabama to South Dakota, from the balmy humidity of the deep South to the windy two-season year of the mid-west. Of course, I knew one of the major changes I would experience would be the weather. Thankfully, my Army career prepared me well for being able to handle such changes, but even so, it’s been interesting watching and feeling those changes for real.

Take the past two weeks here, for example. The greater part of the start started in damn near drought conditions, with daily temps a pleasant 68 - 80 degrees. Winter then came back and the temps dropped to freezing levels, and brought sleet and snow. Yep, snow. In May. Hailing from Alabama, where snow is rare in the dead of winter, seeing snow in May was something else. And as of this writing, it’s currently raining, and has been raining for 4 days straight, replacing those earlier drought-based fire warnings with flash flood warnings.

So, to lead this topic into D&D, ponder how much (or little) the weather is playing a part in your campaigns. Is it? Or is it merely a passing consideration that barely gets considered? Note that I’m not talking about environment here, but weather specifically. Desert, glacial, mountainous, or aquatic environments are exactly those, and should impact your sessions in a variety of ways. However, weather is its own entity, and can affect sessions in much the same ways as environment, or can have its own special effects. Weather can also be used for dramatic purposes, from setting the tone of an encounter, to actually being an encounter.

When thinking about how weather can be made a player in D&D, storms may come first and foremost to mind. I once DM’d a session where I took the 3.5 edition adventure A Dark and Stormy Knight and converted it for 4th edition play. This module introduces the concept of storm-peace, which I found very interesting, and was working on building an entire campaign idea based on it. Read now the storm-peace section on page 2 of the adventure for its description.

Using the storm as exhibit 1, here are some things to consider first before bringing it into play.

1. What is causing the storms? (Or it could be a single storm.) Are the storms naturally occurring? Are they being developed due to natural magical elements? Are they being conjured by a magical being? Was one conjured by a magical being eons ago, and it somehow went wild? Are they the direct signs of an angry god? Are they the symptoms of a planar being’s attempt at breaking into this plane?
2. What are effects, both great and small, of the storms on environment (flora and fauna) and civilization? How long have these effects been in place? What are some future effects that may happen, and what are the conditions that have to be in place for them to happen? Do / will the PCs have any affect on those conditions?

Earlier, I mentioned weather actually being an encounter. Think about that for a moment. Are you looking for that next great encounter? Well, when was the last time your players / your character fought a storm?

Here are some adventure hooks to help bring storms into your adventures.

1. Storm Chasers. After a terrible storm devastates a town, PCs hear rumors of various mysterious elements of the storm (suddenly appeared / disappeared directly over the town, strange lights / apparitions / creatures / voices / music in the midst, etc), the town leaders seek to hire a group of adventurers to ‘chase’ down the storm and end it.
2. Storm Creatures. Storm Giants, Storm Archons, Storm Devils, or any other storm or elemental beings, are hindering travel through the main trade route pass through the mountains. The PCs battle through a host of the storm beings, and face off against an actual storm as the boss fight.
3. The Ozard of Wiz. An obviously magically-created small storm picks up a house in town and drops it on the town’s only hero, and somehow rips off the hero’s trademark glittery red footwear. A hefty reward to the group who can find and return the footwear to the disheartened townsfolk, and discover the cause of the storm.
4. The Perfect Storm. The PCs catch wind (;}) of a tremendous storm approaching. Do they work towards trying to convince people to make preparations or seek shelter without any evidence to back up their claim, or do they ride out to mess with Mother Nature directly in vain hope of ending the storm before it reaches the people?

  

One thing I have yet to do as a DM is run a session where a storm is the main Big Bad. For that, I need a stat block for a storm, which I've not yet sat down to write up. If you know of one readily available on the Interwebs, please point me in that direction.

How important is the weather in your campaign? What fantastic weather encounters have your characters experienced and survived? Share your stories in the Comments below, on google.com/+RPDMJim, or @RoleplayingDM on Twitter.