Friday, October 2, 2015

Discussion: Do You Use The Seasons?

Fiction, of all types, has a strange relationship with the weather and seasons in that, namely, it doesn't. I mean, sure, you'll sometimes get a holiday special for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or some other big holiday. For the most part though, every day is in a weird nebulous state of spring/summer/fall where the weather is warm enough for t-shirts, cold enough for jackets, and nary a snowflake in sight...unless, of course, the weather is a part of the episode in some meaningful way.

This is also true in RPGs. Except, well, some games use them more than others. With that in mind, I am curious about you and your games. Do the seasons pass in your game? What about the weather? Does it come up excet when it is a key story point to be one kind of day or another?

The game my group plays most frequently is L5R, and there the world has rules for the seasons that keeps them in play at least in the broad sense. Summer is the war season, so many bushi are home - or specifically not at home but in the field - for the fighting and what not. Winter is the court season, where people stay inside and the talking and politics game really ramps up. Autumn and Spring are transition seasons for Samurai, but also important in their own way for the rest of the populace.

Beyond that though, weather seldom comes into play in our games. It is something I am working on addressing for my games going forward. What about you though? Do you use the weather? Do you track the seasons? How does it impact your game?

3 comments:

  1. I tried introducing weather to my Star Wars game, after I read a column by the Angry GM. However, my players reacted with immediate fear and suspicion. I pulled back and have been slowly trying to reintroduce it as a concept.

    It still hasn't come up in the Halo game, though.

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  2. I haven't yet, aside from a couple of mentions. But I think it should be a bigger factor. And I hope to make it that way in the next game I run.

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  3. As I've been farming I've been using seasons more in games because they are very important to me IRL in a way they never really impacted me before I was growing crops. Also since I'm running Village Simulator weather is more of a thing I'm aiming to bring in.

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