Hello all. I’m finding that I’m having a bit of a harder time figuring out how to get more weather-based twists into my games. I really want to engage with the Seasons turning mechanic, but I have a hard time justifying a weather-based twist on a mice or even animal obstacle.
Any ideas, advice, or examples?
The simplest weather-based twist is to have it start raining at the worst possible moment.
I’ve found weather-based twists are best when they cascade. It rains, then there’s a cold snap that freezes everything and then is starts snowing… That’s three twists for fall.
Or a persistent Drought in the summer does wonders for the atmosphere. Every time you get chance, talk about the heat, tell them how dry and cracked the earth has become.
And you can follow up the weather based twist with a nice solid wilderness obstacle: raging rivulets, concealed deadfalls into the Darkheather or, worst of the worst, a forest fire.
Can I ask what you mean by “justifying?” Are you looking for a causal relationship between the obstacle and the twist, or do you just mean that you find it hard to think up an interesting weather based twist during those obstacles?
If you are trying to find ways to introduce more weather based twists, one technique I’ve found useful during mice obstacles is to have one of the mice that the patrol is escorting/guiding/saving to corner a member of the patrol that isn’t good at Weather Watcher while out of ear shot of the rest of the patrol and ask what those clouds over there mean. Requires the right circumstances and and some luck with the dice, but it is often a safe bet.
Both really. I feel like I’m worrying to0 much about getting the obstacle and the twist to relate somehow. I can think of obstacles galore, but linking twists to the failed ones is a bit more challenging.
I’m not sure if this was the intention but:
What I learned from Mouse Guard is that a Twist from a failed roll doesn’t have to have anything to do with what was going on originally. Obviously there’s not much a patrol of mice can screw up so much as to change the weather. A failed roll is the game telling you that you get a Condition or a Twist (depending on what the GM decides). The Twist actually isn’t a result of your failure (remember, once you succeed or get a Condition, it’s like you succeeded in the first Test), it’s more like something that got in the way. Like, you’re journeying through the wilderness, and before you get to your destination it starts to rain hard. A Twist is the game and GM saying: no, you’re not done yet, there’s actually another obstacle in the way before you get to be a hero.
So no, they don’t have to relate.
Ahh! That helps!