Freelance Traveller

Exotic Weather

by Brett Kruger

This article originally appeared in Cepheus Journal #015, and was reprinted with permission in the May/June 2025 issue of Freelance Traveller.

The weather in role playing games is often an afterthought for most referees, but it can add greatly to the overall atmosphere of the game if done correctly and at the appropriate time. The weather can also be used to create challenges or obstacles in your games.

In this article I’m going to explore how different climatic conditions can affect the lives of the characters and the worlds they live in. I’ll take a brief look at how standard weather can be used in your games and follow it up with some examples of more exotic weather you can use.

While most referees, and possibly most players as well, think that the weather can only be used in fantasy or modern type games, it can be used quite effectively in science fiction games as well, especially storms, which I’ve used on more than one occasion myself.

So, let’s look at some weather events and how they can be used in your games.

• A stormy night can set the mood for an adventure in a dark forest, the thunder and lightning creating opportunities for surprise attacks or dramatic reveals. A sudden lightning strike can disable the player’s vehicle, leaving them far from communications with others and open to attacks from the locals. I’ve also thrown in high mountain ranges with particular electromagnetic fields that blocked communications, which can also intensify the lightning. Just don’t step out of the vehicle in the middle of the storm!
• A heat wave can affect the character’s equipment and vehicles, requiring them to seek shelter from the sun, find water sources, or deal with heat­related malfunctions. The heat can also cause fires to spread quickly, as anyone who lives in wildfire zones can attest to.
• A snowstorm can hinder the characters’ movement, visibility, and communication. They can cause vehicles to malfunction or become bogged, and the snow can also cover tracks, hide traps, or reveal secrets.
• A foggy morning can create a sense of mystery, uncertainty, and danger. This can also apply to smog in city streets. The characters may have trouble finding their way, recognizing friends or foes, or spotting threats. The fog/smog can also conceal clues, ambushes, or hidden passages.
• Storms can contain extremely strong wind gusts, which can affect the character’s piloting abilities or sailing skills. They can be blown off their feet, vehicles can be damaged or even overturned. The wind can also carry sounds, smells, or objects.

These are just a few examples that you can use in your games to give your players a little something unexpected. There are plenty of examples of the weather being used to affect the story in movies and tv shows, take your favourite, and use it in your game.

Now let’s look at some more exotic weather events to spring on your players.

Blood Rain

Blood rain (or the spores that give it its colour) has been identified as a type of rust fungus or algae, dust from local farms, biological material from a passing comet, and even identified by some as pathogens engineered by competing governments.

The rain can form a greasy slick, making manoeuvres difficult for the characters, cause illness or a disease that the characters may have to find cure for, or just gum up any equipment exposed to it.

Firestorms

Firestorms are a very intense and destructive fire usually accompanied by high winds but can also be started by attacks with nuclear or incendiary weapons that create a powerful updraft which causes very strong inrushing winds to develop in the surrounding area.

Firestorms can be taken to another level in science fiction. Movies and tv shows have portrayed moving walls of fire and wind, either generated by the rising sun or fission explosions from power stations or weapons.

Firestorms are deadly to unarmoured sophonts and vehicles, killing or destroying them within a matter of seconds, or minutes, and will even damage those that are armoured. Treat as double flame thrower damage or half vehicle mounted plasma weapon damage.

Vehicles on the spaceship scale, while armoured to protect them in space, can still take minor damage to things like sensors. This is up to the referee of course and depends on the plot of their game.

Hair Ice

Forests of this thick, hairlike substance can be found on any cold world and is sometimes compared to cotton candy (or candy floss). When it’s cold and humid, the hair grows thick on branches.

Hair Ice (also called frost wool or ice beard) has very recently been linked to a fungus. When the temperature drops, the fungus releases chemicals at a steady rate, allowing thin strings of chemical to be frozen into “hairs.” The nature of the fungus also prevents stacking or combining of the chemical, so each is like an individual, giving the ice it’s hairy look.

On some worlds this process can be hyper­accelerated, causing the hair to not only grow at a rapid rate, think meters per minute, but also entangle those unlucky enough to be passing by.

Treat Hair Ice attacks as a grapple attack, causing 3D6 cold and chemical damage per turn of successful grapple.

Razor Sand

So, what happens when the sand in a sandstorm generates enough static electricity to fuse together at high speeds? You get Razor Sand!

Forming on desert worlds when conditions are right, Razor Sand consists of hundreds of thousands of five­centimetre daggers of silicon travelling at between one hundred and one hundred fifty kilometres per hour.
While individual Razor Sand shards are not much more than a dagger attack, during a storm characters, buildings and vehicles can be hit by multiple shards each turn. For each turn the character is exposed to the storm, roll 1D6, multiply by 10, then multiply by another 1D6.

Unarmoured vehicles and equipment will get the same damage applied. Armoured vehicle and building damage is up to the referee’s discretion.

Void Lightning

Void Lightning is a rare and extremely dangerous event that can occur when starships exit faster than light travel.

If starships exit FTL at an incorrect angle they can drag some of the void space/hyperspace/jump space/dimensional space into real space with them. When this happens there is a sudden release of energy as the particles annihilate each other, resulting in what spacers call Void Lightning.

When Void Lightning does occur, treat as a particle beam if it hits the ship, doing 10D6 damage, or up to 50% more damage than an equivalent weapon in your universe.

Ion Storms

Ion storms are storms which contain very high densities of energised electrons and can usually be seen in the ionosphere of worlds as produced by their star.

Ion storms are the positive versions of geomagnetic storms and have a very high density of electrons. The total electron content (TEC) is used to measure these densities and is a key indicator of the strength of ion storms.

Ion storm occurrences are strongly linked with sudden increases of solar wind speed, where solar wind brings energised electrons into the upper atmosphere of planets and contributes to increased TEC.

Most spaceships and orbital platforms are shielded from Ion storms, but rare, extreme TEC storms can slip by detection grids and cause damage to electronic equipment, especially ship computers, sensors, communication arrays and weapons. Consider 1D6 to 2D6 damage to these components.

Coronal mass ejection (CME)

A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a significant ejection of magnetic field and accompanying plasma mass from a star’s corona into space. CMEs are often associated with solar flares and other forms of solar activity.
While CMEs can be detected by ship’s sensors, they are often difficult to detect as they are usually masked by the system’s star. Early warning systems will detect and warn ships in the path of a CME, if the system has such a detection grid in place.

CMEs are considered a plasma/fusion weapon attack if they hit a starship, doing 6D6 equivalent damage.

Anyway, I hope this short discussion on weather has inspired you to inject some weather-related events into your game.