10 weather features for wilderness encounters

As mentioned earlier, I've been trying to come up with simple setups and situational rules that make random wilderness encounters more tactically interesting without turning them into elaborate set-pieces. Turns out, the always-excellent Emmy Allen had included several in her Narrative Wargame of Chivalric Medieval Romance. Still, many of these ideas were not mechanically explicit, or included things that are hard to recreate in a game with several players and one referee. So I re-wrote the list to make it more mechanically specific. I've used ICRPG notation, so to use it with another system consider hard/easy to be disadvantage/advantage or bonus/penalty, and target to mean AC/DC/TN or any other number that you need to meet or beat to succeed with your action if you use roll-over, or a number to be added to your die roll if you play roll-under.

Also, if you're new to the series, by "board" I refer to any physical surface or visual aid used to frame and represent the spatial relations of the fictional location where an encounter or similar takes place: grid, battle mat, tabletop, graph paper map, wilderness tile, Legos, chessboard...

source: Aths-Art

Random Weather Conditions (adapted from Dolorous Stroke)

Roll 1d12 (or 1d20, depending on how frequent you want weather conditions to be.)
1. Sunrise. In the raking light of the rising sun, normal actions relying on sight are HARD for characters facing East, but deciphering petroglyphs, magical writing and seeing the invisible is EASY.

2. Sunset. Every other round, target increases by +1 (max +5) as darkness decends.

3. Clearing heavens. Every other round, target is reduced by -1 (min -3) as sun breaks through the overcast skies.

4. Searing heat. Physical actions are HARD for all characters wearing heavy armor (plate, or +5 or more ARMOR).

5. Gale. Perception checks, ranged weapon use is HARD, and orders don't carry far in the wind.

6. Blasting Winds. On a 1d4 timer, all actions become HARD for a round, and any exposed and weak terrain feature has a 1-in-6 chance of falling down.

7. Lightning storm. Divide the board in 6 sectors. On a 1d4 timer lightning strikes, hitting the most standout target in a randomly determined sector for 1d12 damage and automatic knockdown. Factors that make a target stand out:
i. elevation,
ii. height relative to neighboring elements (a Large model near Medium models, a Small near no-one),
iii. metal worn
iv. height
If no-one stands out (for example if everyone throw themselves to the ground), decide at random.

8. Lashing rain. The rain makes the ground slippery and visibility poor. Dexterity, perception and ranged weapon use is HARD.

9. Fog. Line of sight is reduced to 6 squares; beyond that it is impossible to discern friend from foe or even characters from objects. Models and terrain are deployed as markers that are only revealed when a PC is within this range and hidden again once out of range. All markers (including those representing unrevealed terrain) move at a speed of 2 squares during the referee's turn.

10. Biting cold. Fumbles occur on both 1 and 2.

11+. Perfect conditions.

1p adventure: The Bone Keep

Covered in perpetual mist lies the ruins of a keep, the site of an ancient battle. Who fought, and for what cause, is lost to time, but the ground is thick with broken bones and rusted war-gear that tell of terrible casualties. Reality is thin here, and a sinister presence stalks the ruins. Drawn here by the terror of the ancient massacre, it reaches through from the shadow realm to feed on the souls of the living. To this keep of mist and bone you’ve come, seeking a relic of great power.

Perhaps you can atone for what your own swords have perpetrated, by readying them once again...

The Bone Keep is a small adventure location, heavily inspired by Runehammer. Because of this, the entire keep is designed as a "room" in ICRPG parlance, meaning that it is meant to be played on a board. I've used the D&D adventure grid because I have it and it fits on my table, but you can use whatever. The important thing is just to set up the board so that the characters cannot walk in straight lines between the grove, the central tower and/or the far tower, and that the skull piles are in choke points.

The basic idea of being chased by evil mist while avoiding stepping on undead comes from a room outlined in the Fire & Ice-series. However, unlike in the ice room, the evil mist does not freeze the character but draw them into a mirror world or sorts. The idea is of course to get even more play out of a single board.

Another great Runehammer idea is to provide a location specific but general search table that you roll on no matter if the perception check or referee ruling indicates you "found" something or not. As the entire adventure basically takes place in "combat time" - there is always a threat present - there is a pressure to always perform combat-oriented tasks. By providing a search table you boost the reward for searching, thus gently tilting the risk/reward balance in favor of this non-combat activity in a less arbitrary way than if you were making up rewards on the spot.

You can download the adventure here.