OT - Southern Lights
 

Do you guys in Australia and New Zealand ever get to see the Southern Lights, or are you too far north? I've seen the Northern Lights in Alaska; they were awesome!

I'm sure Legbreaker will be able to confirm but it is my understanding that you can sometimes see the Aurora Australis in Tasmania (Australia's southernmost state). The furthest south in Australia that I have lived is Albany at the bottom of Western Australia and you can't see the southern lights from there. I was born in New Zealand and you can definitely see the Aurora Australis from parts of the South Island and from Stewart Island.

Your question isn't completely OT for me Paul. In my T2K campaign I have included strange purple coloured veils of light in the night sky sometimes. The PCs think it is caused by dust in the upper atmosphere becoming electrically charged by the solar wind. I haven't confirmed or denied it to the players.

I don't think the PCs have been far enough north to see the real Aurora Borealis.

I'm in the north of Tasmania, and can confirm they're not visible here.
Even in the south of the island/state, I think we're still much too far north.

To give an idea of how from from the pole we are, the average daytime winter temperatures here are about 12-13 degrees celsius and nights only drop below freezing maybe a 20 times in a year.
Snow can be seen on the mountain tops an hours drive away and I've heard rumour it actually snowed here about 13 years ago (melted before hitting the ground).

So, compare that with a location somewhere in the northern hemisphere for a rough guide on how far it is.

That's what separates good GMs from Really Good GMs -- little details like that. I never thought of that one!

I concur.....delivering small pieces of info ,making the players question anything hehe.......(as long as it doesn't spend up all available playing time)

That's why I often dont! My players (one especially) would be off on one leaving all the other stuff behind given distractions like that :) Mind you, it can be fun at times as long as you can steer em back..

ahh.....then you have to use the "Unknown Sniper Assasin gm-trick" or "USAGT".....if a player (and there is usually one) uses up to much time in unimportant details or arguing for ages or anything else that pisses you of...hand a note either to him/her or one to each of the other players ....the note could say fex: a small red dot is moving about on the player in questions body....do you warn him or duck and cover?

....

another way is to have the player(s) strolling into a minefield...that usually shuts them up.......

you could have a sign saying sorry ....but you are in a minefield.......