I recently stumbled upon this system for determining weather. and realized this could be something useful for my dark sun games so I decided to make a version more suited to the tablelands. I reckon it could be useful for some of you folks as well.
I really like this. You inspired me to do a hex-flower for Dark Sun terrain. Iâve made several versions. Hereâs one:
This one uses a 2d6 HF like those created and expanded upon by Goblinâs Henchman:
Stepping off the edge means you go to the other end of the row or column, unless youâre at the top or bottom center. Probably better explained here.
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These are new to me, but the concept seems pretty straightforward. However, the one thing that I donât get is why a 2d6 is used and not just a d6 or d12 (with two results per side)
the 2d6 will bias movement in the HF towards the side the 7 is on. So the one depicted above will have a tendency to move downwards and not upward as often.
Is that intentional that the probability on each side isnât equal?
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I think it is intentional as by having it biased towards downwards it does lead to the result of a swamp being the least likely and considering what the tablelands are like, that sounds right to me.
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yes! it allows for different directions to be weighted differently. Down and to the left is higher probability than right and up. And of course you have to block the top and bottom center so that most likely and least likely are not next to one anotherâIâll add the red xâs to my next draftâstill trying to figure out if the placement of the hexes work right before I finalize.
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This is fantastic. Iâve taken yours and adapted my own version, ran it through 50 or so rolls and am happy with how it is working. Cheers!
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I think the problem I have with this weather chart is that it seems by default youâre imposing a penalty of double water rations or more 60% of the time.
Would it not be mechanically simpler (and less sadistic) to just make cool weather give some kind of a bonus, and then leave hot as just the no change default state? You could then double water requirements for deadly hot.
While halving the water consumption on a cool day could be described as mechanically identical to what I had, however it was intentionally sadistic to get across a bleak and desperate feeling.
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This is wonderful! It genuinely brings a big old smile to my face to see people adapt and use my work.
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Making 2x the âstandardâ amount of water need the new âstandardâ feels like an unpleasant surprise for players.
YMMV, but if I, as a player, did my homework and planned ahead for a 1 gal of warer per day as a base value, and then after we leftt town, the DM said: âJK, you really need 2 gal of water a day, more if youâre âdoing stuffâ, lolzâŚâ thatâd be the last time i trusted that DM. 
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This is a good suggestion. Perhaps cool weather allows for increased range of movement, or an increased rate of exhaustion removal if resting on this day (I am running a 5e DS game).
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One idea I had was to give access to this to a druid or ranger of the party, so they could see the trends and take care of tracking⌠much like a skilled weather reader, they would have a bit of fore-knowledge. They would also fully know the possible worse case outcomes of a trip (such as multiple days of 4x water from deadly heat) and prepare accordingly. Or even decide to push further when seeing that cooler weather will prevail, or it might even possibly rain. I would therefore keep the water penalties as is.
That is exactly the way I use these charts and it has worked wonders in my games. Iâll pregenerate an entire years worth of weather, normally with seasons taken into mind but from my understanding athas has a very low axial tilt so very mild seasonal differences so I would just use this chart for an entire year.
In regards to the water penalties that is me trying to make players travel by night as that is historical what people have done.
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