... now with 35% more arrogance!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

You Don't Need a Weatherman

Thanks, everyone who commented on the weather post. I'm glad people like it! I had another idea that's related to something Roger said in his comment.

If the weather gets worse (or better,) which feature improves? Roger suggests rolling twice for temperature and percipitation; I would just roll once and assume both categories worsen or improve. But if I wanted to break it down, there's basically four weather elements we could track: cloud cover, wind, temperature, and precipitation. Cloud cover is less important, because we can usually just assume it's 100% in winter or if it's rained or hailing/just stopped.

If the weather changes, roll 3d6 and read them left to right, but basically only look for 1s; these indicate a weather component that doesn't change, in the order wind/temp/prec. So, a 1xx means the wind strengthens or calms down, an xx1 means the precipitation changes. All 1s means something else -- the weak sister, cloud cover -- changes. Now, we can have the wind pick up to gale-force without a cloud in the sky, or have fog roll in, or have warm rains or sudden chills.

Alternatively, you can look for 1s and 6s. Any 6 indicates something truly freaky, like tornadoes or acid rain. Not sure what "freaky temperature" would be; extremely localized temperature changes, maybe? An icicle forms on your nose in the middle of summer?

4 comments:

  1. Man, man, man, you're blowing my mind. I missed your last post but this one makes it even better. So simple. Thank you.

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  2. There used to be a "today's weather in hell" web toy on the brunching shuttlecocks site: my favourites were "rusty nails" and "giant slugs." and then there's Emperor Ming's "hot hail."

    I think I feel a table coming on. Or even a simple sentence constructor.

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  3. @Richard: Good job!

    It seems like it was only a month or two ago that Brunching Shuttlecocks still had their archives up, even though they stopped producing new material five or six years ago. No more geek hierarchy chart. No more cyborg name generator.

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