Rain...Water from the sky...
A beacon of home or a fore-shadowing of doom?
Refreshing or bone chilling?
Pereceptions.
It's fall and the rains come with numbingly cold winds that sap strength. Overcast gray skies create a gloom that reaches everywhere, stealing heat, dousing spirits. Thick mud slows feet trodding through the showers.
Yet it is rain. In spring and summer it's a joy. Warm rain, fun puddles, making the earth green. Lightening storms are amazing works of thunder and great flashes of light etching across the sky. There is power...or just fun.
Rain has many faces, all which create different settings...placements. It sets the tone of a scene, an atmosphere of despair or hope...sometimes both. In movies rain is used to put emphasis on a scene, with lighting indicating mood.
In KTDARPG, we have used rain and weather in all forms for setting the tone of the game. Battles were fought in rain, with lightening flashing at the climax. A hurricane set the tone for the oppressive harshness of winter. Sunlight and moonlight seem like minor touches yet they add a life to a scene--a connection otherwise lost to us.
Weather isn't something we can escape, even in windowless buildings. Spring fever and the increase of energy permeates. As winter's cold winds penetrate our bones so does weather affect our players' moods and actions. Summer a time of action...Winter a time of rest....in the game its Spring, and the rain didn't bother the people at Market Day. It was refreshing, a reminder of the newness of spring and of life. And all the players whether in one thread or another reacted to the rain, uniting the characters.
It's all in the perception. Each player or character would see the rain from their different viewpoints. To the homeless it's an unwelcomed bath, to a bartender increased business, to a farmer a lifesaver. For Fort River is a city of different people and places, and even the weather is affected by the perceptions.
- Hawk
Photo source: copyright Cloud-9 "The Tribe"
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