Today's weather is....., do you use weather? Options

[Snow_Fox]

This week has been really rainy. I live in the hills north of Philly so we're ok, but the counties to the south have had flooding and Delaware has been even worse. (hope everything is ok Pistons)In 'Jersey there was severe flooding and several roads were closed as several birdges collapsed.

News footage in particular was a truck which could go no further with it's delivery, the road was flooded out. Ironicly the truck was delivering, a boat.

now this got me htinking. How many of our games include weather? If you only have rain when it's pertinant it will make the players suspicous. But it occurred to me that this was real, if you were commiting run, you could be in real trouble if you were on a road washed out, but players would resent hell out of the GM.

[Sepherim]

I do, when I remember to. Usually, whn weather poses a tactical problem to the run (I had them commit an assasination during a heavy snow fall, to keep them from using a classical sniper).

[Luke Hardison]

When I was in Seattle last, the tour guide quoted us an average of 325 days of rain a year or more. Therefore, my players start to get suspicious if it's not raining or at least misting during some part of the run.

If in doubt, I look up the weather in our area for the day, and use that. It's a nice randomizer.

[Snow_Fox]

Years ago the Dragon Magazine(like around issue #63) had a chart for weather, rainfall and temps etc.We found that really helps.

[Domino]

Yes. We get very scared when there is no weather and associated visual TN modifiers.

[RedmondLarry]

We have weather in our games. Last month the choppers couldn't fly because of a storm.

Just so you know, Seattle has more days of rain than New York City, but fewer inches of rain. Seattle's rain is typically light or misting, and such weather continues for 6 to 9 months through the winter. Rarely does Seattle have thunderstorms like I saw in Indiana this summer.

The joke around Seattle is that "Summer last year happened on a Thursday."

[Gorath]

Perhaps it would be best to use teh actual waether from seattle. But if you make a run that takes more the a day a weather statistic from Seattle would be help full. So you can tell your players if its getting worse or better.

Can someone provide a link to a weather data base for Seattle?

[Nikoli]

Yeah, a farmer's almanac is a great tool for weather because it can give you patterns for the last undred years or so.

[Bigity]

[Firewall]

I use weather, though I usually make it specific rather than random. I mean, a thunderstorm starting just before a fast getaway is good if it is deliberate. (TN penalties to handling and vision...) Having them set up for a sniper-mission, just to have thick fog on the day due to dice rolls is bad.

That is not to say that I never use random weather; I do, I just generate it beforehand and then prepare the specifics of some parts of the mission to suit the weather. (like removing much of the heavy armour in the middle of a heatwave)

When I do random weather, http://www.eposic.org/rpg/forecast.html is what I use.

[Shadow]

You know i lived in Seattle for four years and I didn't think it rained that much. Everyone there seemed to think it did. The four years I was there was 97 to 2001. I think it averaged between 70 and 80 inches of rain a year. We had the most gorgeous summers. You could count on perfect weather June through September. But like nightfall, as soon as October hit, rain, rain, and more rain.

Bear in mind though where I grew up 200 inches of rain in a year was not uncommon. So maybe it's all relative.

In a few games I have ran on the boards I have used weather to great affect, one was a monsoon that hit Seattle, the other was a massive Blizzard. In both cases the runners adapted and it worked out well.