Seasonal and climatic preferences in RPGs

[JarlFrank]

I like a variety of climatic zones. But generally I like landscapes that look and feel exotic and impressive: huge snowy mountain ranges with massive peaks, endless deserts covered by undulating dunes, jungles resonating with the song of exotic birds. Gimme landscapes with character.

Deserts are a particular favorite of mine. There's just something intangibly mysterious about them that exudes a certain allure.

I really love the deserts in Conan Exiles:

There's something really mysterious about deserts. A desolate wasteland with barely any life, with the hazy mist obscuring the horizon, the air shimmering from the relentless heat of the merciless sun.
And among those endless shifting sands, there are buried the remains of civilizations long gone. Once, perhaps, this desert was an oasis flourishing with life, but now all of that is in the past and only ruins remain.

It's a fascinating sort of landscape and climate. I love it.

 

[Kruyurk]

One good thing about deserts is that there is no stupid foliage to block your view. The few areas in Kenshi with tall trees can be annoying because of that.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

All roleplaying PG games would be improved proportional to the amount of snow added to the environment of the computer roleplaying videogame
Most importantly footprints must be able to be left from the feet of the player character or the non-player character or it's all for naught like panties without skid marks

 

[Alpan]

Interesting, I hadn't thought about this until now. But I like snowy weather in real life and I like snowy climates/biomes in my games because of the austere look of the snow cover and the silence it usually brings with it.

Though I do not have a specific preference for deserts I also sympathize with JarlFrank 's view above for the same reason.

 

[0sacred]

lots of love for snow in the comments so far. I figured as much. Though I'm not sure if it has to do with the Kodex being predominantly white or living in harsher climates.

However in an open world game I like when it presents several biomes. Just make the transition gradual enough so it won't be jarring when one second you walk through sunny green field and another you struggle through icy hail in the middle of a frozen wasteland.

This is true, but hard to avoid I guess. I'm a fan of the Might & Magic kind of varied environments, but the transition can be jarring. Sure you have the greens inbetween the whites and yellows, but that's about it.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'm a fan of the Might & Magic kind of varied environments, but the transition can be jarring. Sure you have the greens inbetween the whites and yellows, but that's about it.

Biome transitions can be pretty abrupt IRL too, especially when human meddling is involved (such as woodcutters creating a harsh border between forest and wasteland), or when there's tall mountains where rain only falls on one side but not the other.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Late Autumn/Early winter just after the first light dusting of snow. Damp cold afternoons when the sun is almost set, where your nose burns from the crispness of the air and all you can smell is wood smoke from the fire.
A time of year and climate that an adventurer might conceivably still be out trying to make end's meet in. The time of year and climate where the last battle of a campaign might be fought before the armies pack it in for winter and return home.

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Spoiler

I agree. Two great examples of this in film are Kingdom of Heaven:


And, of course, the famous battle scene from Gladiator:


Baldur's Gate 1 has some of this, and it's great.


The only weather and time of year that I enjoy as much is stereotypical northern hemisphere 'halloween weather'. I actually wandered around Fallout 4 for quite a bit longer than I otherwise would have because it captured it so well.

I usually dread games attempting to recreate the jungle, because it's almost always terrible. The Burma campaign in Hidden & Dangerous 2 was a brave attempt at capturing the feeling of the jungle.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Of games divided into zones with different climates, the Mountains of Frost from Faery Tale Adventure and the snow-bound Chersonese region from Outward are among my favorites:

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

I agree. Two great examples of this in film are Kingdom of Heaven:

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Yeah, I can almost hear "Burning the Past" from the soundtrack play anytime I see images from that film. Shame about the blue filter though.

 

[luj1]

Hot

 

[Skdursh]

Honestly, to me it's all good, so long as the game has enough variation and by that I mean the entire game can take place in a forest, but it better have enough villages, huts, dens, towers, castles, caves, fauna, flora, geological/environmental landmarks and weather patterns to keep it interesting.

That said, recently I tend to enjoy the settings of space, futuristic dystopic environmental wasteland and desert the most.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Bikini armor makes more sense in hot climates, so...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Bikini armor makes more sense in hot climates, so...

Sense and bikini armor are two concepts with no relation to each other:

 

[Nortar]

Bikini armor makes more sense in hot climates, so...

Sense and bikini armor are two concepts with no relation to each other:

The same reason I never understood why it became the standard way to portray (northern) barbarians wearing nothing but fur diapers.
Is Frazetta to blame?

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Bikini armor makes more sense in hot climates, so...

Sense and bikini armor are two concepts with no relation to each other:

That crotch armor hangs suspiciously low

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Female warriors itself is a silly concept so there's not much point in worrying about the details.

 

[Cryomancer]

Bikini armor makes more sense in hot climates, so...

Sense and bikini armor are two concepts with no relation to each other:

The same reason I never understood why it became the standard way to portray (northern) barbarians wearing nothing but fur diapers.
Is Frazetta to blame?

In her case, her hotness warms her.

Jokes aside, some people IRL are quite resistant to cold. There are studies about why Fuegians are so resistant to cold, they are adapted to live in the southern tip of south america, pretty close to Antarctica. The same could happen in a fantasy world and the barbarian tribes living in the extreme cold, those who can't adapt will just die. The study > "
Two genetic mutations are responsible for the extraordinary cold resistance of the Fuegians, the ancient inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego " https://www.uniroma1.it/en/notizia/...xtraordinary-cold-resistance-fuegians-ancient

A funny video :

Female warriors itself is a silly concept so there's not much point in worrying about the details.

Kunoichi + Shield Maidens disagrees with you.

 

[WhiteShark]

Kunoichi + Shield Maidens disagrees with you.

I'll leave the shield maidens to someone who knows better, but touting kunoichis as female warriors is the fakest of fake news.

• Firstly, the word kunoichi was originally just slang for woman. It wasn't until the 60s that it became associated with "ninja", and that was purely due to fiction.
  
• Secondly, in the earliest manuscript describing ninjutsu (lit. stealth technique), it only mentions sending a woman in place of a man where it would be difficult for a man to enter or having a woman (presumably a servant) sneak a person in using a box with a false bottom. In either case the manuscript describes using a woman for a specific task rather than generally employing female "ninja" (nothing called a ninja ever existed by the way, the historical term for a spy was "kanja").
  
• Thirdly, even if you were to assert that a woman being used in a ninjutsu counts as a "ninja", there is still zero mention of them fighting anything.

In short: spies existed, spying techniques making use of women existed, and female spies may or may not have existed, but """kunoichi""" warriors did not.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Kunoichi + Shield Maidens disagrees with you.

I'll leave the shield maidens to someone who knows better, but touting kunoichis as female warriors is the fakest of fake news.

Concerning shieldmaidens, historians are not really sure they were a thing sure, they are heroines of sagas, but there's a lot of other fiction there. It's similar to the Iliad. The fact Homer mentions Amazons who were allied with Troy and fighting during the war, does not mean women in ancient Asia Minor were actually taking part in warfare as ordinary soldiers. It was contemporary equivalent of fantasy literature.

The second 'proof' for the existence of shieldmaidens are the graves of women buried with arms. But again, burying someone with a sword, spear or shield does not necessarily mean the person was a warrior during lifetime. It's just a viking thing that they buried their prominent people of both sexes together with weaponry.

So we really don't know if women actually fought on the battlefields in a serious manner.

 

[ChildInTime]

I remember the days when I actually bought an Icewind Dale 2 CD and installed it on a computer at the place where my parents worked, since I didn't have anything but a cheap nes clone myself. Shitty, but also magical times, Inon Zurs music and snowy valleys always bring me back there, to those late evenings, playing as much as I could before it was time to head home. So yeah, snow far as the eye can see is the best.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

So we really don't know if women actually fought on the battlefields in a serious manner.

If their remains haven't been found on said battlefields then the answer is most likely 'no'.

 

[Zlaja]

I like deserts too and that's probably why I ended up joining the outlaws in Elex. I really liked the area they're in and at night it looked even prettier.

Another good example is Mad Max (not an rpg but still).

These types of environments give a great sense of FREEDOM.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

If their remains haven't been found on said battlefields then the answer is most likely 'no'.

You'd have to find the exact position of a battlefield from over 1000 years ago, then hope to find a skeleton that still has a hipbone in place that hasn't been pulverized by medieval to modern plowing, then hope that the soil conditions were good enough to preserve the iron. Just as soon find unicorn bones.

It should be noted that some Anglo-Saxon women were also interred with spear points in their cemeteries. I suspect this was just a done thing for germanics during a certain period. No idea if Saxon paganism shared the valkyrie myth with the north germanics, or if it was region specific.

 

[Kruyurk]

These rolling dunes as far as the eye can see, an invitation to adventure, such a sense of freedom as I have never experienced before. What wonders await me behind the next ridge?

Spoiler

 

[plem]

tropical climates really hit the spot for me in open-ended RPGs like SoZ, Deadfire and DOS2