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I have built a calendar in Excel that generates an entire year of weather in one go. It also tracks moon phases.
You feed it basic weather information for each month (average high, average low, chance of rain, etc), and then force a recalculation (F9 in Excel). This keeps the weather from recalculating every time the sheet changes. My idea is to set up a sheet for the first year, save it, and use it to keep notes throughout that year in game time. The next year, save a new copy and do it all again. It is certainly not a real climate model, but it should be good enough for gaming verisimilitude.
The temperature calculations take into account daily information so you don't get wild swings from day to day, and I have it set so it won't exceed the record high and low you feed it to keep a fluke feedback loop from pushing the weather way beyond the norm.
I used historic weather data for Kiev, but you could easily put any historic weather information into the sheet and generate weather for any climate. I have protected the sheets to keep the formulas from being screwed up, but there is no password, so if you want to tinker, have fun.
Most of the user work is on the "Setup" tab. It's pretty self explanatory, but there are a couple of things to note.
First, you have to put all of your seed temperature data in as Celsius. I probably could have figured out a way to do either, but frankly it was more work than I wanted to do. You can have the Calendar display either, but when collecting your research just make sure to get metric temperature data.
The Prevailing Winds column lets you choose a direction per month - this will weight the wind direction toward this compass point. Wind is based on the previous wind direction, but this variable weights the overall chance to keep it generally coming from a chosen direction. Since it is per month, it can be changed through the year if desired.
The most esoteric column is the "Wind Modifier." Wind speed is determined on a d100 style table. The highest category of wind is above 100. Rolling up a storm adds a bump to the d100 roll and can push into the "Windstorm" category. The "Wind Modifier" column is a flat bonus to the wind speed roll every time in the month (it's kind of like the "Danger" modifier in the Game Mastery City Stat Block). I wouldn't put a very high number in this because it can quickly skew the wind toward gale force very quickly, but if you want to have a notoriously windy month or two, this modifier will do that for you.
The "Across the board Temp. Adjustment" modifier does exactly that - adds that value to all high and low temps through the entire year. Normally it should stay 0, but I'm thinking about having the Summer and Winter courts of the fey a very active part of the campaign, and as summer is ascendent I wanted to allow years to get hotter and hotter. You can always just ignore it and leave it 0 for no effect.
I hope other folks find this useful. It definitely works in Excel, and I did a preliminary test in LibreOffice that worked fine. It does use a couple of formulas not available to OpenOffice, so some of the calendar won't work on that platform.
Please respond to this thread if you have any issues - I will keep an eye on it off and on and do what I can if you find any problems.
Forgot to mention a couple of things.
First, the preferred temperature scale determines if all measurements are metric or imperial, so Celsius shows precipitation in millimeters, while Fahrenheit shows it in inches.
Second, the climate description subtly affects temperature. Temperate doesn't change the calculations, but the hotter end of the selections weights the high temperatures higher in the warmer months and the colder end of the selections weights the low temperatures lower in the colder months. This is still bound by the record high and record low limits. I'm sorry if that is confusing - I was finding that despite a really low record temp in winter, the weather was never even getting close to that. When in doubt, just pick temperate.
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I've been trying to do something like this myself for a while but I haven't had the time or expertise. Thanks Filmguy! I'm using Open Office rather than Excel and have been having some issues forcing a recalculation but it seems to do that fine when I open the file. I also can't seem to see the moon phases where they should show up.
Yeah, the moon phases are specifically where Open Office breaks down with the calculations. I used the ISERROR formula which is set up to display a null field when there is an error. Unfortunately Open Office does not support that formula.
LibreOffice does support that formula, for what it's worth.
Being an Excel junkie myself, I can appreciate the work you put into this. Thank you for helping me take my game to the next level, FilmGuy!
This is an excellent resource. Thank you for making it! (I had been copying out historic weather day by day off a website before... this looks like it will work basically just as well with a lot less work.)
Just found this, and just in time for my campaign that kicks off in 11 days. Just wanted to say that this is most excellent and the work you put into it is staggering. Only question I have is your precipitation amounts, do they always show up as mm regardless of whether the calendar is showing Fahrenheit or Celsius? I only ask because there were some curious amounts otherwise (36.54" in 5 hours for instance -- which reads as just over 3 feet to my mediocre American education. :P
This is a perfect resource! My campaign is 4 in game days in, but I managed to make a set that fits the no special weather for those days... so now I got weather for the rest of the year, and every after!
I found this incredibly helpful, thank you. I put a random encounter roller in additional columns, so it's everything you need.
It really does make a significant difference to the game. An otherwise-skippable random encounter with an under CRed monster becomes quite a different story in high winds and rain!
Very late to the party, but is this still available somewhere? The current link appears to be dead.
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Assuming the OP has no objections, I'll re-upload my copy of his work to my Google Drive.
Kingmaker Files with Weather Calendar
Hope this helps people.
Assuming the OP has no objections, I'll re-upload my copy of his work to my Google Drive.
Kingmaker Files with Weather Calendar
Hope this helps people.
I appreciate your generosity, many thanks.
Hello, this is awesome but I got a question: every time I write something in the notes or anywhere else, all the calculations change... any way to avoid that?
Copy everything you don't want to change, then use "Paste Special - Values", which should replace the calculations with the fixed numbers that are in the cells and stop calculating altogether.
Assuming the OP has no objections, I'll re-upload my copy of his work to my Google Drive.
Kingmaker Files with Weather Calendar
Hope this helps people.
Updating the link: Kingmaker Files with Weather Calendar
I have a different solution. Got a diary, will be using it for the two parties, and given the Slavic feel, searched up the weather in Luhansk for last year. Have just been copying out the weather into the diary, and noting the Pathfinder names for the months and days. This is going to save so much time, and it fits with Druidic characters being able to predict the weather (will be able to tell them, rather than having to roll).
Random weather rolls can be too chaotic.