Upkeep and Weather

[kato13]

kcdusk 11-06-2005, 03:32 AM Do people use the Upkeep rules?


Does anyone allow weather to play a big part in their games? Its just poured down here today (raining), and i was thinking it'd be hard going if you were out there marching or camping or whatever. And i started to think about how it might affect a character in game terms. Aside from a CON roll if it was particularly cold, or a compulsory fatigue level if you cant find adequate shelter, the only thing i could think of doing was making characters do double upkeep on weapons, clothes etc to keep them clean or dry or whatever (or face serious CON rolls for hypothermia or mishap/jam rolls when you go to fire your weapon next).


That would slow down any travel, be boring for the players (hey, mimics real life if you have to sit the rain out) and might allow an encounter just as you get your battle rifle broken down ("you've just stripped down your main weapon for cleaning when you hear a twig snap just outside the window of the abandoned hut ...").


Anyone else have any "weather effects"?

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DeaconR 11-06-2005, 03:42 AM Weather is a very serious aspect of my game, in that winter is lasting well into spring and it is almost always overcast, cold and a bit damp. The fact that the snow is occasionally thawing a bit by day makes patches of ice occur all the time. Driving requires care as the roads are not maintained and it is easy to drive through a large puddle that may reach the vehicles engine. Ice also makes driving dangerous. Because of the area they are in (Plum Island and the Long Island area) there are dangers from storms as well, and there are strong currents around the island. Myplayers appreciate the environment enough to know the importance of keeping warm and dry whenever possible and getting hot food and liquids as well.

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ChalkLine 11-06-2005, 05:05 AM There's nothing I dislike more than games set in an eternal spring afternoon


Bad weather is a good thing in T2K, it allows you to bring visibility in and let your players worry less about the horizon. The elements are something we are used to winning against, and if you make them dangerous it reinforces how far out of the civilised safety zone the PCs are too.

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pmulcahy 11-06-2005, 02:16 PM A little secret: I generate weather using rules from an old Dragon magazine. The rules were designed for use with the World of Greyhawk, and I throw out all the magic influences, but otherwise, they are the best rules I've seen for generating weather.

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DeaconR 11-06-2005, 02:26 PM That's cool Paul; I find the best gms are often those who are not ashamed to mix and match, grab what works and use it if it adds to the fun.

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graebardeII 11-06-2005, 07:34 PM I use weather as well. I use the weather table from Morrow Project.

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pmulcahy 11-06-2005, 07:37 PM Hey, I'll take anything I can get. Some of the melee weapons on my site are based on their D&D equivalents...

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Targan 11-06-2005, 11:24 PM I am sure by now no reader will be surprised when I say that I use the weather rules from Harnmaster, they are the best and easiest to use that I have found.

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thefusilier 11-07-2005, 04:12 AM Anyone ever try to run a game set in the winter? Remembering winter exercises with the infantry I think it would be a nightmare for the characters, especially those on the move.

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Targan 11-07-2005, 04:30 AM The past 18 months of my campaign have been set in the 2000-2001 winter on the US North-East coast and yes, it has been a nightmare for the characters.

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DeaconR 11-07-2005, 09:50 AM I am. When you factor weather and temperature into a game it means the environment itself becomes a really big deal for the characters. Equipment maintenance becomes more difficult, fatigue increases, and you have to worry about things like hypothermia and frostbite. At the current point of the game it is mid spring but the climate has gone wonky and the thaw has not fully taken place. Another thing that is worriesome is that local people are worrying about when they will get to start planting. There is perhaps only a couple of weeks before it becomes a serious problem.

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Grimace 11-07-2005, 06:17 PM A little secret: I generate weather using rules from an old Dragon magazine. The rules were designed for use with the World of Greyhawk, and I throw out all the magic influences, but otherwise, they are the best rules I've seen for generating weather.


Hey, would you mind sharing what it is, exactly, that you use? I always find that I'm never satisfied with weather charts that I see, so I'd like to take a gander at what you use.

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kcdusk 11-07-2005, 06:35 PM I'll dig out some randow weather charts from Advanced Squad Leader (ASL), and post them here. They'd work well in a T2K world i would think.

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ChalkLine 11-07-2005, 07:49 PM It rained for the duration of my PbEM set in Poland, the players took the dim light, sodden gear and trench foot with stoicism that I thought was brilliant. Slipping over wet, muddy ridges torn up by artillery, sprinting across rainslick steelbridges under fire and sitting in damp bunkers watching the never ending rain outside. The PCs were all cold, wet and hungry for the entire game.


The sun came out when I finished the game and the PCs were on the platform to catch the train to the port, kinda made a nice ending.

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thefusilier 11-07-2005, 10:01 PM I'll dig out some randow weather charts from Advanced Squad Leader (ASL), and post them here. They'd work well in a T2K world i would think.


Wow, I haven't played that in years, regular Squad Leader that is, I never got into Advanced.

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DeaconR 11-08-2005, 09:56 AM It rained for the duration of my PbEM set in Poland, the players took the dim light, sodden gear and trench foot with stoicism that I thought was brilliant. Slipping over wet, muddy ridges torn up by artillery, sprinting across rainslick steelbridges under fire and sitting in damp bunkers watching the never ending rain outside. The PCs were all cold, wet and hungry for the entire game.


The sun came out when I finished the game and the PCs were on the platform to catch the train to the port, kinda made a nice ending.


Niiiiiice. That's cool, I love atmospheric (no pun intended) stuff like that.

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graebardeII 11-08-2005, 06:59 PM yes as I recall there was the stopping of the rain, the announcement there was a cease-fire, the war was over and Paris went nuts, tried to hack JD.

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pmulcahy 11-09-2005, 12:45 AM This actually happened to us in Korea, and would be interesting to see the looks on players faces if a GM did it to them...


During an exercise in early winter known as Ulchi-Focus Lens (a joint US-ROK exercise), we set up the DTAC during the morning in a muddy field. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the tracked vehicles were slowly sinking in the mud all day -- not enough to be noticeable, but enough so that when night fell and temperatures fell well below freezing that night, the tracks froze into the ground.


The ROK Marines, playing the Aggressors, did a night attack on us about 2 AM. Unfortunately, both sides were equipped with MILES (a training system that makes exercises sort of like a giant game of Laser Tag); we powered our vehicles out of the now-frozen mud, but not nearly fast enough to avoid getting "blasted" by the ROKs. Scratch one DTAC.


There was an exercise we were on when I was with the 24th ID at Ft. Stewart (now reflagged to 3rd ID) when we first received our Bradleys. A Bradley went into a muddy area, and got stuck. Another Bradley went in to tow him out; it got stuck. The Platoon Leader's Bradley went in to check out the situation; it got stuck. They called for an M-88; it got stuck...in short order, 34 vehicles were stuck in this giant area of mud. I took the BMT and BMS in a HMMWV so they could try to figure out what to do, and we damn near got stuck. Took close to two days to get all the vehicles out of that mud field! The worst part was that the place didn't look like it was deep mud at first glance; you really had to drive or even walk carefully to even notice the deep mud.


And that reminds me of another mud story: during EIB training soon after I came on active duty, we were moving tactically to the EIB site. It had been raining heavily the night before. When we came to a "dirt" road (more like a mud road), we went into the usual tactical road-crossing procedures, and then the point man crossed the road first. He got about halfway, and then suddenly sank into mud up to his knees. He tried to keep going, but only about three feet later, was into mud about halfway up his chest. We didn't have any rope, so we took off all our belts, tied them together, and managed to pull him out. Damn mud didn't look that deep...and we went further down the road and then probed it with long branches before we crossed it again. It sort of got me thinking: that patch could have been a great place to ambush someone, if you could channelize them into that mud patch.


There another story about mud I heard once (probably apocryphal). A newbie tanker decided to sleep under an M-1, since there was a decent amount of clearance under it and it was raining. When he woke up the next morning, there was only a couple of inches between him and the bottom of the tank, and the rest of the crew had to drag him through the escape hatch, and he had plenty of scrapes from head to toe, a ruined uniform, and an Article 15 to show for his night of sleep.


Mud could sure add a lot of fun to a game!

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Targan 11-09-2005, 12:53 AM I like the ambush idea. Like it alot. Definitely food for thought. I hope none of my players are reading this!

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chico20854 11-09-2005, 07:04 AM Paul, I seem to recall (from the early Challenge magazine article, Inside the M1) that there was no floor hatch in the M1, a much-loved feature of the M60. But good story, and it just as easily could have been a M60!

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DeaconR 11-09-2005, 08:18 AM Those are interesting stories. Snow can be a problem as well; I remember having to do an orienteering class that was cancelled simply because you couldn't see more than a meter or so in front of your face. It can also seal up passes, close up roads and if it is new and slick and it is not quite cold enough it can make it impossible for some vehicles to drive well in.

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kcdusk 11-09-2005, 01:17 PM Black ice can be a killer

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ChalkLine 11-09-2005, 02:23 PM In the saltwater swamps in south west Australia (full of bloody tiger snakes) we encountered quicksand, our 4x4 survey ute was driving down a 'sand' road and you could see this wierd pressure wave, and then we went straight in. I got out the window and walked about two metres away on solid sand while the ute sank next to me, totally wierd. The top of the road was dry and about a foot below it it was soup for one to two metres. If you tapped the sand with your boot the water rose up into it and it suddenly became the same soupy mess, but you could see a wave forming in the sand as it liquified and that told you to move. The ute, which was light as we'd already set up our GPS gear and used up all our marking stuff, floated on it's belly pan and was dragged out by another ute. Anything heavier than that would have sunk, the suction of one of these areas made one of our D8 dozers almost totally unrecoverable, it had to have a big 'V' shaped slice are dug out with excavators to get it to unstick. I suppose a IFV or MBT, with their big flat bellies, would be even worse.

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Twilight2000V3 11-09-2005, 07:00 PM I think the driver in an M-1 has a floor door. I recall hearing a story from a frined of mine who was in teh army as a M-1 crewman. He was teh driver adn forgot to latch his bottom hatch. They busted thru a creek and he had to use his feet to keep the hatch closed or drown.


I maybe wrong....


M

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