itch.io Community » General » Recommend a Game

The Forecast - a journaling excercise for worldbuilding or just enjoying a wind-down

A topic by sinopiasaur created Aug 07, 2021 Views: 289

Viewing posts 1 to 1

A very relaxing journaling game/exercise! Creating weather forecasts for imaginary regions is easy and quick using the tables, a d6, and a pack of cards.

https://starshinescribbles.itch.io/the-forecast

I actually used a Tarot deck instead of a regular deck to generate ten region names (draw two cards for inspiration), then for the rest of the game ignored majors and page court cards, redrawing them. (Mapping suits for most tarot decks to a regular deck is usually cups to hearts, swords to spades, wands to clubs, and pentacles to diamonds.)

For each region's weather report, I imagined what I might say on the live radio cast to describe each region, and then added a small tag of commentary based on the report and aspects of the region, to keep things fresh.

Note: sometimes some of the weather conditions can clash, so I either added a fantastical excuse for the clash, a boggled reaction, or altered one condition as I saw fit.

I needed a small journaling game to reward myself for a little achievement, and I much appreciated this game.

An excerpt of a sample playthrough of the Forecast. Note: you can look up the beaufort scale to get specific knots for each wind speed if you like.

And now, the forecast...

Barren Point: wind blowing east, 43 knots, strong gales. Heavy snow... yet perfect visibility, if you're of the yetifolk persuasion. Later on winds will decrease slightly to about 35 knots, the gales slowing a bit. Truly fitting weather over there!

Celebration Town: winds blowing north, gentle breezes and almost calm. There's frost however! Visibility very good. Everyone should consider partying indoors.

Fool's Lake: winds blowing north just barely, extremely calm. Very bright and sunny, though visibility is occasionally poor from the perpetual sulfurous steam rising from the lake. The lake waters are good for fishing but take care sailing!

Sorrow's Ridge: winds blowing west, quite a gentle breeze. Still, there's a thunderstorm. Visibility bad occasionally. Perfect weather for King Lear.

Indecisive River: winds blowing south at storm-level forces. Naturally there's a thunderstorm there. Yet visibility is occasionally good. Later the winds will change direction eastwards. Truly even the wind can't make up its mind there!