RE: (TFT) Travel,terain and groups

["Ray Rangel" <ray.rangel@cox.net>]

One of the "tricks" to good story telling is knowing when to stop describing
and allow the listener's imagination to take over. Do you have to describe
every tree in the forest or is it enough to convey the idea of a forest and
allow the player to do the rest.

Having run several games, speaking of weather, description is only necessary
when it has some bearing on the PC's actions or to set the mood of players.
Of course the same is true of any other condition or action as well.

 
Ray Rangel
ray.rangel@cox.net
http://xraysvision.blogspot.com/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tft-admin@brainiac.com [mailto:tft-admin@brainiac.com] On Behalf
> Of David Michael Grouchy II
> Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 12:43 PM
> To: tft@brainiac.com
> Subject: RE: (TFT) Travel,terain and groups
> 
> > From: selfinflicted_wounds@boardermail.com
> >
> > I'm not pushing for something set in stone but rather looking for a
> > baseline. How far can Joe Average travel over x terrain in y time? (4
> mph
> walk?)
> > The reason I look for this is exactly because of questions of
> > fitness, weight carried or encumbrance and STR comparisons,
> > among others. What I'm beginning to think is that there is no such
> > thing as a "standard" woods, or desert, or etc. For example sand is
> > NOT sand. Some of the stuff has value to construction, other types
> > are good for glass. Much of it is just sand. Then you take a look
> > at stuff like dirt and you just about pull your hair out cause how
> > are you going to try to describe all these details in game terms,
> > you haven't even made it to plants and AUGHHHHHH!!!!! It'll never
> > work! Too much detail.Jay,
>    In my earliest approaches to setting up a campaign I did a series of
> three
> weekends at the library to study weather patterns.  The intention was
> to make
> a table that I could cross index to terrain type and latitude.  I
> immediately
> realized that weather patterns are far too complicated.  I am better
> off just
> improvising them on the spot.  After playing that way for a short
> period of
> time I realized that my own imagination is far more limited and
> repetitive
> than I thought.  I had to stand back in sheer awe at the wondrous
> variety and
> chaotic subtlety of the natural weather.  Heck even when the weather
> was the
> same the look of the sky around me changed from day to day.  When I
> realized
> within myself that this vast cycle had continued without a single
> rerun,
> through out thousands upon thousands of years, my brain locked.
>    Luckily that weekend I found a new gaming product at the hobby store
> called
> Harn.  I originally picked it up because it had higher quality maps.
> Stuff
> that looked like an actual cartographer was involved.  Inside was a
> weather
> table.  All it did was start with the current weather and randomly move
> it in
> one direction or another; from wet to rainy, or from wet to dry.  Cool
> to
> cold, things like that.  I latched onto this weather table like a
> drowning man
> to a life preserver.  After using it for a year, patterns became very
> obvious
> to myself and the players.  The designers of Harn lived in Canada and
> the
> weather generated by the tables spent a lot of time being Cold, Wet,
> and
> Rainy.  After one particularly long spell of this, it finally became
> warm and
> clear.  The players rejoiced.  They told me that their characters were
> so
> happy at the good weather that they were all taking the day off from
> adventuring to stay home and have a bar-b-que.  I still chuckle to
> think about
> it to this day.
> 
>    Oh, also, about your first sentence up there.  The sheer percentage
> of
> contributors who feel the need to tell you that too much realism is not
> desirable surprises me.  It's almost as though your disclaimer was
> never
> written.  And you wrote this all the way back in August, no less.  Like
> Bruce
> Lee advocated, study a style so that we may forget it.
> 
>     So now I use weather in my campaigns strictly as a tool to
> influence the
> mood of the players.  Sometimes I like to tell a ghost story.  The
> weather
> turns dark and stormy.  Whey they are having trouble solving a mystery
> it
> starts to get overcast, maybe even foggy.  When the king has them
> thrown out
> of his castle, of course, the temperature begins to drop and it gets
> very
> cold.  You get the idea.
> 
>     David Michael Grouchy II
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