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Sunday, October 30, 2011

Winter and the effects of travel


The view of the road leading to my place, taken yesterday. It's too damn early for this!

One thing I don't think is addressed well in gaming is the effects of snow on travelers. Not having snow plows, many roads would become hard to find, if not impassable. If the group does not have snow shoes or skis, they will have a heck of a time getting anywhere. And they'd be tired as heck after going only a mile or two. They'd hardly be in any condition to fight.

If attacked, I'd think someone who has been forcing his way through snow should have a penalty to both his to hit rolls and his armor class, to reflect the fact that he'd likely be too exhausted to do much to defend himself. Something like a flat -1 to AC and a -1 per hour traveled penalty to hit.

2 comments:

Van Noa said...

I've always liked Snow in Fantasy games and felt it's been really underused. It's a pain to walk through, it's exhausting and you can very easily succumb to the elements.

I haven't represented this mechanically much at all. The one time I considered it, I had a player who refused to change out of dancer's costume and I thought it would be in bad taste to kill them in the first hour of the first session.

Instead I had to settle for NPC's handing out warnings to be on their way soon before the pass between the mountain's was snowed in.

Dan said...

I would have killed the players character. I have no problems dealing with stupid. It's one thing to fudge a combat where the players are just having unlucky dice, it's another when they blatantly go against common sense.