Yaaass! Another King video! Let's open a weekend-beer and get started!

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

I will have one as well Lauge!

I love using weather and climate! I've used encroaching deserts and jungles threatening inhabited lands as well as huge firestorms and supernaturally long lasting blizzards as threats that cannot be defeated with a sword. A slowly creeping, poisonous miasma that the players must quest to find a way to stop. That sort of thing.

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

Exactly Squams! Players tend to want to fight their way out or look at their stat sheet to beat an opponent, but with an all encompassing threat like weather it takes a longer set of actions: a storyline, which is why we play.

My campaign is set in a desert - very much alike the Arabian desert you mentioned - so terrential rain and especially blizzards are not the most common weather fenomenons. There is though one type of weather that might create a change in the story in the desert: The sandstorm. Since there is no rain in the desert - and the wind might not be in the extremes, tracks may linger for longer - at least in softer desert dunes. Furthermore my dad once travelled in the Nothern Sahara, and has repeatedly told of how easily you can get lost in a desert. This led me to two ideas. One of them was the very easy way to get the players where I wanted. "The bandits kidnapped the miners!! You see their tracks in the sand!" The other one built on top of that: throw a sandstorm towards them! It will disrupt the tracks they were following, and it will disrupt their own tracks so they have no way of knowing where they came from. All this builts up to what I wanted to say. You can always cast a storm of some sorts to make tracks or footprints - be it in mud from rain, snow from blizzard, or in the dunes of the desert after a sandstorm. But you can just as easy remove them once again by casting the same storm again. Even without dragging fantasy into the metrological situation of your world, you can easily use weather as a plot device for halting your players. The storms might destroy tracks as well as leaving new ones behind. And it doesn't even have to be an extreme storm before the party is lost and confused in the desert. Exhaustion points incomming!!! Juuuuuuuuust make sure you dont have a ranger with the current terrain as their favoured terrain. That was the mistake I made and suddenly the party was not half as lost as I thought the might be. I also thought a nice and long comment might help your algorithms a bit ;))

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

More great ideas from my subscribers! Of course I forgot to mention getting lost in the snowstorm/sandstorm, which is another factor we used to roll every day in the "prehistoric days" of D&D. And leaving tracks in the mud for creatures to follow! I was just running in a group on-line that got exhausted in the desert; we survived but were paranoid about meeting something before we got provisions and an area to rest. I also mentioned only lave as an atmospheric effect underground; you could have weird vapors from fissures or plant life, choking clouds bat guano, or sudden flooding from rainstorms above ground. So there's my nice and long reply!

I had a rain effect happen as a party walked into a town so they could follow the tracks. I also used the magical weather effect which kept a northern artic town hospitable and it is getting more dangerous for them by the day to be there

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

I love the idea of a magical weather effect that is diminishing: the players may have to fix whatever is going wrong to save the town. I'm going to use this Joseph! Thanks.

I've been looking forward to this episode ever since you hinted at it a few weeks ago. I never thought about fog being toxic, susceptibility to disease in tropical biomes or geysers erupting underfoot. I've got so many ideas now!

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

I'd been thinking about it for a while Joel, but your comment on a blizzard in your campaign spurred it on. Thanks!

Seasonal monsoons in a particular region is one of favorites.

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

Another great effect! Unlike the hurricane monsoons just bring perpetual, non-stop rain that soaks through everything, turns roads to mud and creates a difficult combat environment. If you want to get away from the typical tropical setting, think about a seasonal monsoon in a tundra environment like the Russian steppes: mud that can prevent movement!

Weather should be utilized to build atmosphere. Dark, moonless night. Still air where noises carry. Heavy rain or fog. A clear day where you can see the dragon arching high in the sky before he notices you. Smells, sounds, cold or hot, the weather sets mood and layers realism. And it should impact the world, players and mechanics too.

@DDHomebrew

Жыл бұрын

Creating atmosphere is something we forget, but essential to story telling, which is a big part of D&D. Not just the battles or the role-playing. And it adds to the tension of exploring!

Love when a channel has that unique tag line or intro/outro, yours is no less awesome. I am so new to DnD and I find myself telling EVERYONE I know about it now. They hate me! Lol jkjk actually got 2 lifelong buds and my little bro to be PCs in a custom campaign I want to design and run for them. Love DnD so much and my one regret may be not getting into it when I was a kid lol always been an rpg game fan but never took the deep dive into the original! Thanks again for your comfy informative vids.

@DDHomebrew

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks so much for the comment Jerald: helping new players is part of the reason I'm doing this channel!

@the_foliot

3 жыл бұрын

D&D Homebrew ..and I’m glad for it!

This was an outstanding video.

@DDHomebrew

2 жыл бұрын

Glad you liked it!

My campain has one area which is influenced by magic in a way that the weather changes drastically and rapidly. In one moment you can almost have a heat stroke and in another it can start to snow for example. This effects a whole continent, which is known as the most deadly of all. Some tribes use magic on their own to stabilize the weather in small area, but most are living underground with druids having the greatest prestige since they can provide essentials with their magic.

@DDHomebrew

2 жыл бұрын

Really cool idea Glarak. It demonstrates to the players something we forget in the gameworld of D&D: how much we all take weather for granted. And any time you have rapid (ie magically induced) changes you have tactical challenges.

Dust storms and wildfires. Make the players head for cover or run like hell.

@DDHomebrew

10 ай бұрын

Weather effects are great because they can be so massive that no one, however powerful, can simply run away without some risk.

Weather and related conditions can meaningfully impact a campaign. After several months of endless blizzards and literally no sunlight, I was feeling bored and fatigued running Rime of the Frostmaiden. That's why my players and I are preparing to place it on hold indefinitely and go to my homebrew setting, which features a healthy variety of climate and weather. Does a given rainstorm matter? Maybe not (unless....), but too much uninterrupted sameness may not be ideal for an extended campaign.

@DDHomebrew

2 жыл бұрын

You want to vary things up, but you're right; if the weather dominates everything, like it would in an arctic or extreme jungle/swamp area, it can wear on the players and GM. That's probably why the Mediterranean climate setting is so popular; I lived in Southern California for 25 years, and rarely do you worry about the weather.

@TalkingAmerican

2 жыл бұрын

@@DDHomebrew This next campaign will start in the Gulf of Mexico at the base of the Mississippi River. Don't like the weather? Wait 20 minutes. It'll change. :)

@DDHomebrew

2 жыл бұрын

@@TalkingAmerican Sounds like Michigan, where I grew up.