For Winter Week I thought I would go over some ideas and rules you can use in an RPG. Now some of these are won’t necessarily apply across all settings, some will make way more sense in a medieval fantasy like D&D vs a sci-fi setting like Star Wars. I’ll try to go over a few general ideas that could apply across genres first and then bounce back and forth a bit. Along the way I’ll also briefly touch on some possible encounters that you could run.
General GMing
Now a winter or arctic setting can really flex your creativity as a GM. Not only in terms of house rules and adjudicating; but also encounter design, item creation and skill challenges. You may have to consider adjusting your style a bit. I don’t usually bother with things like encumbrance, most of the time I find it unnecessary, unless a character is trying to carry something that is obviously extremely heavy and awkward. Well in a winter setting you may want your players to be mindful of their carry limit. They’re going to need to carry a bunch of extra equipment and extra clothing to keep warm and survive. Remember a lot of games might have a simple thermal cloak, or winter clothes to buy but the actual readout on them will only be rated for like -20 degrees or something (that’s -4 my American friends). That is not nearly good enough for actual cold temperatures, and for a good winter or artic setting the temperature should be at least twice as cold as that. Make sure your players are giving you a list of the stuff they’re bringing with them. Like I said you don’t have to, and it’s usually more book keeping than what I like to do, but it can lead to an interesting challenge later on if they forget something vital. It also creates a dilemma for the characters: survival or sweet, sweet loots.
Traveling
Traveling will be much different depending on the system and genre so I’ll break it up a bit and talk about some relevant rules for different settings.
Sci-fi
In a sci-fi setting it’s more than likely that your players aren’t going to be foot slogging long distances. They will be flying however (I include use of a speeder in Star Wars for this example as well) and that means storms are your friend. A blizzard kicking up while the players are flying somewhere provides a great opportunity for not only some roleplaying but a skill challenge as well. The two you’ll want to focus on are perception checks and piloting (or whatever version of those your system uses). The difficulty of those checks will scale based on the severity of the storm. Your blizzard should start out fairly mild and then build over time. In an Edge game for example, I would start with a low difficulty of maybe 2 dice. Then as things advanced increase it to 3, add in a couple Setback dice, and then for an extreme whiteout upgrade the dice for a total of 3 Difficulty, a Challenge die and a couple Setback dice. If they make it through, awesome, if not, then you have a party stranded in a blizzard that has to figure out what to do next.
One way I like to track the progression of a storm is every couple minutes or so role d100. 1-20 it clears, 21-40 it gets better, 41-60 it maintains, 61-80 it gets worse, and if you ever roll 81-100 it turns into a complete whiteout.
Fantasy
Travel in a fantasy setting during winter or in an arctic region can be very difficult and dangerous. As a start, if the rules provide any kind of travel times, double them. You should also adjust the amount of endurance checks for hazardous weather conditions and scale the difficulty to reflect changing conditions. You could put some of those checks into a skill challenge. It can be hard to walk down a steep slope when it’s covered in snow. Or maybe the party has to traverse a frozen lake and the ice may or may not be thick enough to hold their weight (this could also make a really fun encounter but I’ll try to get into that in another article).
Shelter
During your adventure the characters will eventually need shelter. Now this is worth spending some time on because it can be a chance for your players to get creative. They might try and find a cave, which is a good idea. Caves usually have something in them though, and what that is can scale depending on what level your group is. Examples include: bear, pack of wolves, trolls, ogres, or maybe the cave is the entrance to a dragon lair.
Equipment
There are certain things to take into account when dealing with equipment in cold weather. Even in Star Wars, things have a hard time in winter temperatures. So what does that look like rules-wise?
Sci-fi
Consider a PC who is outside and trying to use something and has to take a glove off. Add a Setback die, or other system-specific penalty, to the roll.
Modern
If it’s cold enough outside there’s a chance the car won’t start. Give your players a choice. If they drive a small car, maybe a full sized roadside emergency kit takes up a chunk of the storage space or they could take the chance of not having anything.
Fantasy
The only real big problem here is metal equipment, especially armor. The characters are going to have to wear layers underneath their armor. If you run a fantasy game in an exclusively arctic setting I would consider having alternatives to metal armors that provide the same protection. Dragon scales, hides from different magical beasts, or tortoise shell are some possibilities.
Well I hope this gave you some new things to consider when running a winter game or arctic setting, and some tools to deal with the harsh and erratic environment. Remember to let your players run with creative solutions, and adjust the rules I’ve given you to your group and their experience.
Justin
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