It’s time for extreme and unusual weather. We use hexflowers to determine weather patterns for the world of Gnomestones. When we land on the big question mark on the top of the hexflower, it means extreme weather.
Before hexflowers, I used other resources for simulating weather. I like this one, which has a nice system for weather culmination, and this one covers four seasons. Both have great sections for unusual weather. However, I don’t know if there are any OSR resources that differentiate the extreme weather specifically by season. The brilliant KTrey shared this resource when I posted the question on Bluesky. After quick searches on Google and Reddit, it appears that this sort of resource does not yet exist. But that’s all ogre now.
Here is a collection of extreme weathers organized by season. Roll 1d6, and consult the key for the result. If your result is Unseasonable, roll again on the Unseasonable Weather chart and consult the key.
Spring
Pollenstorm - The air is filled with the spores of reproducing plants. Visibility is low and players must roll for allergies. Spores periodically accumulate into semi-sentient pollen creatures that like to eat humans.
Lightshower - It’s raining light! Beautiful opalescent sunlight rains down, delivering manic joy and minor burns to all those in the path of the shower. Collect the liquid light for a potent alchemical agent.
Mischievous Fog - This fog gets off on being confusing. Endless opaque walls that display disorienting and troubling mirages. Consider a typical roll for getting lost, now the results are flipped. Players should expect to be lost until the fog abates.
Sun refuses to rise - The sun got used to shorter days, and now it’s balking at the increased workload. It could be quite a while before it is coaxed back over the horizon. Eventually animals will begin to exhibit signs of night-madness.
Astral Myst - This ‘mist’ is made of disorganized astral matter bleeding into the material plane. Prepare for unexpected magical health effects, encounters with roving extra-dimensional beings, and the appearance of astral portals.
Summer
Heatwaves - The heat has coalesced into waves that intermittently roll over the land with tangible mass. If you get caught in one you’ll be boiled alive and crushed. It is possible to surf the high density swells of superhot air.
Thunder Squall - The local thunder is feeling ambitious and it’s not going to wait for the lightning this time. Random concussive blasts harangue the party, knocking people to the ground and causing damage and hearing loss.
Sentient Cumulo - A young thunderhead has become aware of its own existence and it’s not taking it well. Now the juvenile nimbus formation is going on an hysterical rampage. Side effects include getting thrown out of the troposphere.
Reverse Rain - The clouds missed their precipitation and so they’re taking it back. Water rises in droplets from the ground and into the air. It’s possible to gain significant elevation through the updraft. Extreme dehydration risk.
Monhurrinado - It’s the weather version of a turducken. Inside the monsoon are a bunch of hurricanes, and inside each hurricane are several tornadoes. You’re fucked.
Autumn
Decaycloud - The seasonal trend in decomposition has spilled over into a cult-like fervor. Now a sepia cloud of morbid empathy glides across the land, and every living thing it touches feels significant peer pressure to join in on the dying. The miasma of perishing biota can cover several acres before it burns itself out, leaving behind localized wastelands.
Leafstorm - Many plants produce sharp leaves, and sometimes autumn squalls whip these leaves into skin-shredding clouds of razorblades. Damage will be delivered to all present.
Fire Typhoon - Did the typhoon catch on fire, or did the fire roil into a typhoon? It’s too late for speculation, because a double helix of roaring flame and scalding water is tearing across the countryside.
Sun refuses to set - The sun got used to being the big man in town, and now it’s refusing to relinquish control. Expect volatile sun behavior: erratic and misleading paths across the sky, horizon avoidance, heat fluctuations, sunscreams, and extended days. Animals exhibit signs of day-chosis.
Edible Precipitation - Whatever is coming down from the sky, you can eat it. Could be a rain of frogs, or a torrent of chicken wings, or maybe a downpour of honey, it’s up to you. Potentially dangerous, of mysterious origins, and definitely delicious. No ration rolls needed for a while.
Winter
Sky Shards - Hail, but massive and serrated. Expect catastrophic damage. Sometimes the shards will have things frozen inside.
Lightning-blizzard - The bolts of lightning accompanying this storm are made of ice. The bolts violently crash into the ground, where they stand for varying lengths of time. Some pillars collapse immediately, but others stay erect for months before the spring melts eventually cause them to decompose.
Timesnap - It’s so cold that the fabric of reality is freezing. Pockets of supercold air burst into blocks of solid ice through exothermic deposition. Time itself slows around the cube-shaped energy depressions. Battle initiative suffers significant convolution.
Rimefield - The ground is covered in ice as far as the eye can see. Most of it is very slippery. Proceed with caution.
Smothering Drift - The sun is abruptly blotted out as a year’s worth of snow falls in an instant. The initial crush kills many, and the survivors gradually carve a functional labyrinth out of the snow.
Unseasonable Weather
Meteor - This meteor has a high chance of hitting the ground. When a meteorite crashes into the world of Gnomestones, it often contains the corpse of the dwarf.
Eclipse - The day the seers warned us about! Sometimes the moon is blotted out, sometimes the sun, and sometimes both, don’t ask me how. Magical powers are tripled in strength. Malevolent shadows rove across the land. Protagonists receive visions, portals open to other plains, and if you die your soul is lost forever.
Different Season - Roll on the newly selected season’s chart
Same Season - If the unseasonable weather roll results in the original season, then you have No Weather. To be clear, this does not mean balmy, calm, or mild. A spacetime anomaly has occurred, and now there’s no weather at all. This is the worst result on the chart.
Until next on another nail-biting episode Gnomestones, when we discover if we have enough time to participate in a surprisingly competitive forest-based itch jam.
The “extreme weathers” are hilariously inventive. If only we had such extreme weathers in our world!