Weather chart use primer
I rather feel like I was remiss in my post showing the weather chart.
Here is a de mystified explanation. Asides are in italics, ignore them at your discretion.
The chart is primarily intended to use in conjunction with the Warplan 5x5, maps. The grid system of a card has 5 rows by five files of smaller squares.
Of course in the example page I have managed to have cut off most of the month's names, although I think you can make out June's to the left.
Normally a strategic map has 5 card rows by 5 card files. Sorry to belabor the obvious but it's worth it in the end. Or so I think.
The weather chart is useful especially for the big layout of 25 cards. The map cards are laid out in grids of 5x5 .
On the weather chart itself, each of the 12 months is represented. Each month has a grid of 11 possible outcomes, assigned by 2D6 dice, rolling 2 through 12.
The small grid by month under each dice roll result is a small weather map. The weather is meant to be superimposed over the map grid.
The individual squares here refer back to the cards as laid out in the grid. Confused yet?
The weather is based on any icon showing up in the map square. No icon, clear skies, others as per the key.
The 2d6 rolling concentrates weather in the results 6,7,8. The weather from results 2 and 12 is seen less often.
If you want some variation on where the rain falls on your grid, simply rotate the die roll result chart and apply that to the map. This can lead to interesting results; more on this later.
Believe it or not, this rotation scheme took years to dream up. There are probably better methods, but I don't want to know about that.
And now, for the most horrific example of how to use the chart.
...,a tale of sound and fury...
Imagine you are a busy umpire and are tasked with plotting the movement for the next turn.
Opening the orders for countries A & B you notice the sly players are ganging up on country C by combining fleets and sending them East to attack the somnolent fellow.
Now it behooves the outcome to note the coastal area was full of shoals, cliffs and general bad areas to venture with a ship. Being stealthy by nature the players ordered the two fleets to hug the shore.
Out comes the weather chart. The roll in June , the month of the turn, shows the main event as the wind condition. When the orientation roll fror the chart to the map is made, the wind direction is South.
A d10 roll for wind severity results in 10, which is the opposite of a zephyr. I set up a decision tree for each ship and proceeded to put wrack & ruin on all but two of the twenty sails. By no means a certain fate, but my rolling was consistently high.
Worse yet, the fleet of erstwhile country C fleet had been port during the storm, missing out on the excitement. Subsequent lifesaving and salvage trips along the coast were responsible for the country C "pax maritime" period that followed.
I kept the sheet with the decision tree for over a decade, sadly it is lost to ages now.
So yeah, we use weather a lot in campaign games.
.....signifying nothing...
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