Weather

[TiggerCCW UK]

How do you represent the effects of weather and temperature in Twilight? The next stage of my campaign is going to be Armies Of The Night and I'm planning on putting in some very cold, icy and snowy weather. How would you recommend representing this in game? I'm thinking of minuses to movement in snowy or icy conditions, minuses to agility where appropriate but I'm not sure about how to play extreme cold. Minuses to agility and movement for bulky clothes? Any suggestions welcome.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by TiggerCCW UK

How do you represent the effects of weather and temperature in Twilight? The next stage of my campaign is going to be Armies Of The Night and I'm planning on putting in some very cold, icy and snowy weather. How would you recommend representing this in game? I'm thinking of minuses to movement in snowy or icy conditions, minuses to agility where appropriate but I'm not sure about how to play extreme cold. Minuses to agility and movement for bulky clothes? Any suggestions welcome.

Harnmaster/Gunmaster has a fatigue system (both for running/fighting and that sort of thing and also for forced marches and lack of sleep). Harnmaster/Gunmaster simulates some of the effects of cold environments by applying fatigue penalties (because the body uses more energy when it is trying to keep warm). Also, Harnmaster characters have a Touch attribute and I could see that taking penalties (due to numbness in the extremities). Then there is the extra food requirement for people working in cold environments.

I'll look in my rule books and see what other effects there are. IIRC the Boomer T2K module talks about the effects of operating in the cold too.

[headquarters]

with the cold its easier to tire ,and also requirements for calories go up.

[TiggerCCW UK]

Originally Posted by headquarters

with the cold its easier to tire ,and also requirements for calories go up.

Increase food consumption by 50% maybe?

[Adm.Lee]

Challenge mag, say, around issue 28? had an article on weather and its effects, I used that a lot back in the (1st ed.) day.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by TiggerCCW UK

Increase food consumption by 50% maybe?

I guess thats ok .

we were told that we need to consume more fat when the weather grew colder to stay warm and to not feel hungry all the time .

Also in the cold -drinking water is a major issue .Eating snow or sucking on ice is not good .

Since all is frozen ,getting the required amount of h2o is a challenge .While marching with full kit you will probably need around 1-2 liters of water pr period to keep from dehydrating .

bottles filled with snow tucked under the clothing will melt it to water little by little - but if you have to keep up a high pace -like running from a pursuer with no let up - you expend more water then you get in .

dehydration will quickly lead to freezing and to increased fatigue in game terms.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I guess thats ok .

Since all is frozen ,getting the required amount of h2o is a challenge .While marching with full kit you will probably need around 1-2 liters of water pr period to keep from dehydrating .

What temperatures are you talking about? What you describe seems to be about -50°C. Anyway, if that is the case, dehydratation would be the least of your problems. If temperatures are closer to -10°C or -20°C that would be less of a problem except of course if you have no snow around. However, if you have snow finding water won't be that hard. Melting it might be a bigger problem but you might simply forget about that if you really are thirsty. As a result, I would expect you to die more quicly from some kind of diseases than from dehydratation.

[jester]

Weather or more acruatly temperature in some of my past adventures have been:

In desert touching metal with bare skin can cause burns if long enough contact then blisters <had this happen while doing pushups on a metal helo pad in the desert.>

Drying wind causing windburn, dry skin that would crack and of course sunburn.

Mirage throwing off your vision affecting acuracy and distance.

COLD:

Breath giving away someones position after they were running from the PCs.

COLD WET=miserable, fatigue one level higher and rest is harder to accomplish.

COLD COLD: Canteens freezing solid, even the gas mask valve freeze and breaks inside. <based on real events>

Sleeping with canteens that were frozen and they leak as they melt.

Touching metal or plastic with bare hand causes pain and hard to grab <not just because of the thickness of the clothing> it actualy hurts in really cold weather.

Numb fingers cause reloading to take longer, fingers to fumble and even mishaps with grenades. <I'd roll one dexterity roll per action>

FROSTBITE: it does cost fingers and toes, and nothing like adding character to your character, "Eh, I lost that toe in Norway."

It freezes exposed skin like the face, windburn from cold winds blowing, and of course snowblindness from reflecting off the snow.

PCs who do not waterproof their gear end up with wet gear eventualy,.

Weapons get rusty from the snow when it melts

Weapons and other equipments actions freeze in the cold. Vehicles are harder to start.

Mishaps with fire and electrical systems.

Fabric becomes stiff and can slice your hand, glass can crack easily

And of course the irritation of a clod draft blowing through a bullet hole in the vehicle or wind blowing ffrom unknown location in the tent/ruins/hootch where a PC is trying to sleep and the draft is blowing on them making life miserable.

Trenchfoot

Frostbite

Chillblains

Windburn

Hypothermia

Chaffing

Blisters from not changing socks

Rashes from not changing or cleaning self or clothes.

Constipation and impacted bowel from refusing to releave yourself because its too cold

Dehydration

Snow Blindness

Fatigue an effect of dehydration but also of the cold

Depression

Lethargism

Those are just some of the issues one can face with the cold.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Mohoender

What temperatures are you talking about? What you describe seems to be about -50°C. Anyway, if that is the case, dehydratation would be the least of your problems. If temperatures are closer to -10°C or -20°C that would be less of a problem except of course if you have no snow around. However, if you have snow finding water won't be that hard. Melting it might be a bigger problem but you might simply forget about that if you really are thirsty. As a result, I would expect you to die more quicly from some kind of diseases than from dehydratation.

Well it all depends really . If moving along without time to biouvac ,melting the snow that is everywhere is the problem not finding it - you would think that dehydration is only a problem in really hot enviroments - but in the cold it is a factor too.

Wet and cold is the worst combo imho - but cold-cold -like -5 to -15 is hard too.

In the winter you are only warm as long as you keep moving unless you have a heat source .If its 10 below and you are marching along with kit and all ,the sweat builds up .Once you stop you get cold rapidly.Also even if in the tent or biouvac the cold makes you burn energy to kep warm even if you are at rest .

So I guess imho its about roughly 50-100% more taxing doing winter manouvers than doing a spring manouver .But all factors come in to play of course and are too numerous to discuss in this reply.

[jester]

Abnother thing is in cold you NEED cream! I still have scars on my hands from cold weather training when a Boot. And even though wearing gloves most of the time my fingers split at the edges of the nail and the splits were down to about 2 or 3mm which made it painful if not impossible to use the affected fingers, to grab anything or touch them with those split fingers was a stinging burning pain that would give me pause!

As for water in cold climates.

I mentioned what happened to us in my first session of "arctic weather training"

And our Gunny, a nice guy but an IDIOT 1st Class and his fill in wasn't any better, although the third one was shit hot but he only lasted a year then the dickhead who followed him well I still pray his daughters end up in a snuff film.

But we ended up having to "melt ice" for water. But the idiot didn't pass out the heat tabs and such to do it with. So we really had no means to melt anything with. I came upon the bright idea of taking MRE plastic sleeves and filling them with ice and putting them in the sun when we did day operations. In my platoon the plastic casings were gold, each man had to have half a dozen to get a decent amount of water, the dark plastic would absorbe the sun better and if filled with snow, half of it would melt be the time we returned at the end of the day. A good portion would be greedily sucked down with enough to fill a canteen.

And we would also carry canteens in the open lashed to our packs or duece gear durring the day for regular training to help the sun melt the frocen contents as well as an MRE wrapper, half filled with snow on the outside of our gear or in a field jacket or Goretex pocket giving you about a liter of water.

So, those are a couple methods of melting snow into potable water without a fire or while on the move.

And for the record, we lasted for a solid week on minimal water eating snow, and no more than a liter of water a day doing such training, and I am talking hauling a sled, or walking up a mountain in skis ala herring bone or side stepping. I must admit, that was when I was in the best shape of my life ever! And alot of it was a result of that training.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by jester

Abnother thing is in cold you NEED cream! I still have scars on my hands from cold weather training when a Boot. And even though wearing gloves most of the time my fingers split at the edges of the nail and the splits were down to about 2 or 3mm which made it painful if not impossible to use the affected fingers, to grab anything or touch them with those split fingers was a stinging burning pain that would give me pause!

That's a good thing about being on an assignment where you're working with female troops -- you learn all the creams, the best wet wipes to clean yourself off, and all sorts of ways to take care of yourself in ways a guy wouldn't really think of -- and they know which ones are unscented, hypoallergenic, etc.

[Marc]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Challenge mag, say, around issue 28? had an article on weather and its effects, I used that a lot back in the (1st ed.) day.

I've found it. Actually is number 29. It seems a good article to simulate weather effects at game level (v1). Thanks for the reference.

[Targan]

Challenge article attached.

[unkated]

Originally Posted by Marc

I've found it. Actually is number 29. It seems a good article to simulate weather effects at game level (v1). Thanks for the reference.

Aw shucks, you make my heart sing.

I wrote, a dog's age ago (two dogs ages, actually).

The big change now is that rather than having to store or record the weather for a random year to use in the game, you can find on the web weather records for a location, select a random year to use as a guide, and just start from there for daily use.

I dug the article out to consider what would need revamping for V2.

Uncle Ted

[Sanjuro]

In severe cold, anything with an engine (or lots of moving parts) suffers from its lubricants freezing up. Modern engine oils have a bigger temperature range than they used to, but traditionally bush pilots in Canada and Alaska used to have to drain the oil from their engines overnight, then heat the oil over a fire in the morning. When the oil was hot, start the engine without any oil (this may also require heating the engine- yep, another open fire near vulnerable components) and immediately add the oil before the engine seizes up.
If equipment is matched to the climate it is used in, this problem can be mitigated (to an extent) by using the correct grade of oil, but if you are using vehicles originally planned for another deployment, or if supplies are rerouted...
To game the process of restarting cold-soaked gear, perhaps an encounter roll as the noise and heat involved attracts attention?