What does Winter want?

When a Conflict develops, and the GM has a Season like Winter (or Spring, etc.) on one side, what is an appropriate goal for the Season?

Is it “Kill them! Kill them all!” (Always have “kill the Mice” as a goal).

Or more like “If you (the mouse PCs) want it, then I don’t want you to have it. Nyah!” (Just the simple negation of the Mouse PCs goal).

Or something else?

I mean, it is not like Winter is motivated by food, like a Fox would be.

First, I assume we are speaking about a Journey Conflict. The Conflict Goal for a season will be dependent on the story and the PCs. However, it could include things like:

  1. get delayed (if time is important)
  2. get lost (if location is important)
  3. cause harm or death
  4. split the PCs
  5. destroy equipment and resources

PM,

What’s the situation? What’s are the players doing? Where are they? Where are they going? What’s the state of the winter weather?

There’s a lot of situational/contextual cues that you can use to make goals obvious.

As a GM, ask not what you can do as Winter, but what Winter can do for you.

Splitting the party is particularly genius. It comes with the usual headaches, but losing each other in the snowblindness–well, that’s classic.