General General Weather Table

[Spinward Scout]

Extrapolated a bit from the table in Mission to Mithril and from watching the News, here's a general weather table for just some weather when you don't want to guess.

Throw 2d6 for Weather Event
2 Severe or Heavy Storm
3 Windy or Drifting Snow
4 Precipitation or Mild Storm
5 Clear
6 Partly Cloudy or Overcast
7 Clear
8 Foggy
9 Precipitation or Mild Storm
10 Severe or Heavy Storm
11 Partly Cloudy or Overcast
12 Tornado or Blizzard or Sand/Dust Storm

You can switch them around to fit the current World your Players are on or even add new types for strange Worlds. Here's the breakdown for chance of each slot.

2 - 1 in 36 chance
3 - 2 in 36 chance
4 - 3 in 36 chance
5 - 4 in 36 chance
6 - 5 in 36 chance
7 - 6 in 36 chance
8 - 5 in 36 chance
9 - 4 in 36 chance
10 - 3 in 36 chance
11 - 2 in 36 chance
12 - 1 in 36 chance

EDIT: Corrected

 

[Timerover51]

Not a bad idea. An alternative if the players are on an Earth-type world is looking up the forecast for an area similar to what they are operating in and using that.

Edit Note: There is also some bare-bones weather information in the Double Adventure: Marooned and Marooned Alone.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Not a bad idea. An alternative if the players are on an Earth-type world is looking up the forecast for an area similar to what they are operating in and using that.

Edit Note: There is also some bare-bones weather information in the Double Adventure: Marooned and Marooned Alone.

Thanks, Dale!

And I will check that out.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

Extrapolated a bit from the table in Mission to Mithril and from watching the News, here's a general weather table for just some weather when you don't want to guess.

Throw 2d6 for Weather Event
2 Severe or Heavy Storm
3 Windy or Drifting Snow
4 Precipitation or Mild Storm
5 Clear
6 Partly Cloudy or Overcast
7 Clear
8 Foggy
9 Precipitation or Mild Storm
10 Severe or Heavy Storm
11 Partly Cloudy or Overcast
12 Tornado or Blizzard or Sand/Dust Storm

I like this list, it's clever putting "nice" at the high probability

I'd love to see someone smarter than me expand this to have some DM's on the throw based on average planetary temp, maybe seismic activity, atmo type and hydro number

 

[kilemall]

I like this list, it's clever putting "nice" at the high probability

I'd love to see someone smarter than me expand this to have some DM's on the throw based on average planetary temp, maybe seismic activity, atmo type and hydro number

There is a whole lot weather gen process in World Tamers Handbook. It’s rather involved.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[Baroun Tardis]

There is a whole lot weather gen process in World Tamers Handbook. It’s rather involved.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

I just recently started digging through TNE - the whole Virus thing turned me off when it was first published, and I refused to read any of it. Now that I've started digging, I'm running across gems, and thank you for pointing me at one

 

[coliver988]

I've yet to use it, but hex flowers sort of have a "memory" so that the process is not mostly random. See this wordpress site: https://goblinshenchman.wordpress.com/2019/06/03/hex-power-flower-weather/ for a weather random table.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

I've yet to use it, but hex flowers sort of have a "memory" so that the process is not mostly random. See this wordpress site: https://goblinshenchman.wordpress.com/2019/06/03/hex-power-flower-weather/ for a weather random table.

Talked to a friend of mine about Hex Flowers yesterday because of this post, and he turned me on to a bunch of other things these are used for
Hex Flowers are a pretty elegant way of setting up a "state machine" and I'm now having mental flashes about other uses for these. One thing that comes to mind is a game with a Saberhagen Berserker or a rogue Bolo, with the hex containing questions that make DM's on the roll to move to another hex (enemy range being a DM for example)

 

[coliver988]

temporary derail re: hex flowers. The Fantasy Trip used them in one of their Hexagram magazines (in-house, similar to the old JTAS magazine) for handling solo combat against fighters or wizards. Used as sort of an AI state machine to determine what happens next based on what is happening now. With various DMs based on current stats, so that it is essentially a slightly smarter opponent. Again - I really like the idea but have yet to use it. Like so many other things! And as they are d6, perfectly compatible with Traveller (and if GURPS, then hex bonus!) Though I have seen other dice combinations (oddly a d7 version, though a d6/d8 gets close to the same curve as a d7)

Anyway - back to the weather. Per Mark Twain: “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”

 

[punkrabbitt]

I seem to recall Tarsus having some stuff about weather. I could be wrong.

 

[Spinward Scout]

EDIT: Updated Events 5/9/23

2 Severe Storm or Heavy Snow
3 Windy or Drifting Snow
4 Light Precipitation or Mild Storm (Rain, Sleet, or Snow)
5 A Sunny and Clear Sky
6 Partly Cloudy or Overcast
7 A Sunny and Clear Sky
8 Mist or Fog
9 Light Precipitation or Mild Storm (Rain, Sleet, or Snow)
10 Severe Storm or Heavy Snow
11 Partly Cloudy or Overcast
12 Tornado or Blizzard or Sand/Dust Storm

 

[Grav_Moped]

Were it me, I'd lay it out on a couple of axes, maybe three: temperature, precipitation, and perhaps wind as an independent factor (or secondary once the other two are determined, as 2D-7+{[temp roll]+[precip roll]}/2 or something like that).
Arrange from cold to hot, dry to torrential downpour/blizzard, and calm to gale (or beyond) wind.

Setting each out in order of intensity would allow for DMs for climate, latitude, and altitude.
Thinner atmospheres would have higher day/night temperature swings.
I think worlds with moons (and thus more tidal effects) would get higher winds, but I don't know that.
Areas with mountains would get more wind; and more rain/snow on the upwind side of the mountains.
Western coastal areas would have more stable climate, and likely more rain.

(I'm just going off vague memory of a lower-division geography class I took several years ago.)

 

[RogerD]

Weather is so dependent on the planet, I think you should just build it into encounter tables or use GM fiat for storytelling purposes. The most useful thing to come up with as an aid to GMs is a creative list of bad weather situations, which would be influenced by all the general physical characteristics of the planet, including the terrain type and even the influence of moons as Grav_Moped says.

For general description purposes, coming up with a prevailing weather condition can be useful I suppose, but it's sort of an afterthought most of the time, right?

 

[Spinward Scout]

Corrected

 

[Spinward Scout]

Were it me, I'd lay it out on a couple of axes, maybe three: temperature, precipitation, and perhaps wind as an independent factor (or secondary once the other two are determined, as 2D-7+{[temp roll]+[precip roll]}/2 or something like that).
Arrange from cold to hot, dry to torrential downpour/blizzard, and calm to gale (or beyond) wind.

Setting each out in order of intensity would allow for DMs for climate, latitude, and altitude.
Thinner atmospheres would have higher day/night temperature swings.
I think worlds with moons (and thus more tidal effects) would get higher winds, but I don't know that.
Areas with mountains would get more wind; and more rain/snow on the upwind side of the mountains.
Western coastal areas would have more stable climate, and likely more rain.

(I'm just going off vague memory of a lower-division geography class I took several years ago.)

I like your ideas. I was trying to make a generic Table for when you just want to tell the Players something.

I'm assuming that Temperature is Seasonal - Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall average temps with below average on a roll of 2, or above average on a roll of 12. Adjusted for each World.

Wind is already included in the Table. 2, 3, 4, and 9, 10, and 12 can have Wind components.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I like your ideas. I was trying to make a generic Table for when you just want to tell the Players something.

I'm assuming that Temperature is Seasonal - Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall average temps with below average on a roll of 2, or above average on a roll of 12. Adjusted for each World.

Wind is already included in the Table. 2, 3, 4, and 9, 10, and 12 can have Wind components.

Extremely off-the-cuff weather generation system: figure out a place on Earth that is similar to the place your characters are. Check the weather there, and that's what they get.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Extremely off-the-cuff weather generation system: figure out a place on Earth that is similar to the place your characters are. Check the weather there, and that's what they get.

Nice!

Which would be faster? Rolling a 2d6 or 5G?

 

[bookwyrm]

Nice!

Which would be faster? Rolling a 2d6 or 5G?

I don't think it's so much about speed as it's about how fun the result is (from the GM's POV).

You could do tests to find out which one is preferable, or do both and choose the one that fits the situation best (from the GM's POV).

 

[coliver988]

and honestly when I had to deal with weather, I just used the 2d6 reaction table, where 2 was a "dark and stormy night" and 12 is a beautiful day in the sun.

to an earlier post: and yes, weather really would be specific to each world. I can see weather tables similar to the animal encounter tables (and if I recall, weather could be in those tables as well - it did not have to be all critters)

and if I were to get really in-depth about it, I'd also take into account the atmosphere, type of star and all that. But, not being knowledgeable enough, it would all be guesswork. But asking ChatGPT, I get the following from asking about the weather of a thin atmosphere world around an FV star:

According to web search results, an FV star is a main-sequence, hydrogen-fusing star of spectral type F and luminosity class V. These stars have from 1.0 to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 6,000 and 7,600 K¹. A planet with a thin atmosphere around an FV star would likely have a wide range of temperatures depending on its distance from the star, its orbital eccentricity, its axial tilt, and its albedo. However, some general estimates can be made based on the habitable zone of FV stars.

The habitable zone is the range of distances from a star where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet. For FV stars, the habitable zone is estimated to be between 1.5 and 3.0 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun². This means that a planet with a thin atmosphere in the habitable zone of an FV star would receive between 0.11 and 0.44 times the solar flux that Earth receives². Assuming a similar albedo and greenhouse effect as Earth, this would correspond to an equilibrium temperature range of -50°C to 10°C³. However, these are only rough estimates and do not account for other factors that may affect the climate of a planet.

If a planet with a thin atmosphere is closer or farther away from its FV star than the habitable zone, it would experience more extreme temperatures that could make it uninhabitable for life as we know it. A closer planet would be hotter and more prone to losing its atmosphere due to stellar radiation and wind, while a farther planet would be colder and more likely to freeze over completely.

Therefore, the possible range of weather for a planet with a thin atmosphere and an FV star depends on many factors, but it could be anywhere from very cold to very hot, with some intermediate regions that may support liquid water and life.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 5/10/2023(1) F-type main-sequence star - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-type_main-sequence_star Accessed 5/10/2023.

 

[frankm]

Temperature is probably the biggest factor missing from a UWP for standard planets. But since temperature varies depending on atmosphere, altitude, longitude, season, etc all on one planet, it's kinda hard to make up weather based on so little data. Earth's average temperature is about 15 C, but hardly anyone experiences that for long. I'm in the desert right now, and temps daily range from near freezing at night to ~20 C during the day. Flash flooding in a desert should be pretty rare (although it does happen!). I like RogerD's suggestion of making it part of the story depending on the planet. Warning players that a big storm is coming might give them ideas or mess up their plans if they don't take it into account.