"Weathering the Storms" (Dragon #137) and the Köppen Climate Classification System

The second major inspiration for what would later become THE ALMANAC of FANTASY WEATHER was Lisa Cabala's article "Weathering the Storms" in The Dragon #137.

The central insight of the article was to present twelve climate templates, templates that both tracked the different climate tyoes of our own world as well as (presumably) any half-way "realistic" fantasy world. The climate templates were these:

1. Desert
2. Tropical Savanna
3. Steppes
4. Equator
5. Warm and Rainy
6. Monsoon
7. Warm with Dry Summer
8. Warm with Dry Winter
9. Cool and Rainy
10. Cool with Dry Winter
11. Tundra
12. Polar

Each type was defined by its temperature ranges within the four standard seasons as well as the daily precipitation chances within those seasons. Those two variables and how they changed or varied (or didn't) from season to season constituted the basics of any climate type, and simply by presenting twelve of those types you could track the richness and diversity of all the earth's climates, or so it seemed.

For example, much of Western Europe was Warm and Rainy (5):

Unlike some other climate types, Warm and Rainy had a simple precipitation rate scheme. Daily chance of precipitation was a constant 40% throughout the year.

That's it.

I found this to be an improvement over what I saw as the more fiddly mechanism for determining temperature presented by David Axler in his "Weather in the World of Greyhawk" (The Dragon #68). There, the referee would, among other things, constantly be checking latitudes. Cabala's scheme also seemed more true to life. While latitude obviously affects temperature, in our own world wildly different climate types co-exist at identical latitudes. And in turn, very similar climate types appear at quite different latitudes.

So, the original design for my fantasy weather algorithm was to enter the climate data for the twelve climate types and then choose the appropriate one for each geographical location I wanted to model. If the average temperature for one or more seasons came out significantly different than that shown by the data for the location, I would simply make the appropriate adjustments.

However, in my quest for greater "realism," I soon became a bit dissatisfied with the list. As I found myself making more and more "adjustments" it became clear to me that the twelve templates offered worn't really enough. There were hot deserts and cold deserts, for example.

Somewhere along the line I discovered the Köppen Climate Classification System. In the late 19th century, the Russian-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen had also separated the world into different climate types. After the system was modified and refined by others, there were a resulting thirty climate types (or thirty-two, depending on how you counted them). Here were hot deserts and cold deserts (and hot semi-deserts and cold semi-deserts), among other things.

My inner weather nerd (yet another inner nerd this outer nerd never knew it had) became excited.

Again, one of the things that is fascinating about the climate types (if you're into this sort of thing) was how they didn't track latitude, at least as much as you would think. The world map above sort of gives you a sense of that, though it's more apparent if you focus on a smaller area. Such things as warm and cold ocean currents, wind patterns and so on are often much more important.

This is of course a commonplace for anyone with even a minimal knowledge of weather and climate, but it was useful and interesting to be reminded. 

I suspect Cabala had riffed off of Köppen but had wisely chosen to simplify it for her Dragon article. Thirty templates would have been too many for a scheme that required one to consult charts and roll dice. But if I were designing a relatively complex algorithm from scratch, starting with thirty sets of data wasn't that much more difficult than starting with twelve.

I would later make things even more granular to model different areas within each type - London versus Paris, for example - in order to make each location modeled truly "its own." And in the end, the classifications themselves would fall out as I settled on basing each of my own climate templates on the raw climate data for the particular location modeled, as opposed to its Köppen classification (which used the same sort of data but in a more general manner).

So, for example, I used Athens, Greece as a model for my internal Köppen template of Csa - Temperate, Dry and Hot Summer:   

But when creating my own Climate Template 101: Temperate South, which I roughly modeled on the climate of Jerusalem (also classified as Csa), I entered an entirely new set of data:

Would anyone have known that Temperate South, which I claimed to have roughly modeled on Jerusalem, was in fact really roughly modeled on Athens?

Yes. I would have. God would have.

Okay, even God probably wouldn't have cared, but still.

THE ALMANAC of FANTASY WEATHER: Volume 1, Swords & Sorcery was intended to simulate Middle-Eastern, Central Asian, Robert Howard-ish, Fritz Leiber-ish, "Swords & Sorcery"-ish sorts of climates. And, dammit, Athens didn't really fit. Entering the data for a second Csa climate type only took an extra hour or so.

And now, that one weather nerd out there who knows that it never would get down to -11 F in Jerusalem can't complain.   

But readers of THE ALMANAC of FANTASY WEATHER will notice that each of my own climate templates is also labeled with the Köppen type that it fits.

Tomorrow, the excitement level ramps up. Yes, I'm talking about temperature.

"Weather in the World of Greyhawk" from Dragon #68

As I might have mentioned before, the idea for designing what would eventually become THE ALMANAC of FANTASY WEATHER came to me when I was re-imagining druid spells for the Book of Spells supplement to SEVEN VOYAGES of ZYLARTHEN. Many of the spells were directly or indirectly linked with weather, which naturally brought up the question - how do you know what the weather is?

As far as I know, none of the original rulebooks for old-school D&D - OD&D, Holmes, B/X or AD&D offered a weather generation mechanism (I didn't go back and check this, so it's possible I'm wrong), which is sort of odd considering that some of the books, such as the DMG, went into such great detail on other things.

However, an article by David Axler, "Weather in the World of Greyhawk" in The Dragon #68, offered a detailed and robust system. As I understand it, that system had been or would be also incorporated into the Greyhawk boxed set. This was where I started.

Readers of FANTASY WEATHER may note that I took many of the same names for precipitation events from that article - Light Rainstorm, Heavy Rainstorm, Light Blizzard, Heavy Blizzard and so on. Since my original intention was not to design a commercial product, I didn't initially worry about copyright, but when I did start to think about that, the naming conventions seemed generic enough to be fair game, and I did notice that much of the same list was used in some of the other newer non-TSR weather products.

I soon altered the list however. Some of the names seemed too American or Western - Hurricane, Tropical Storm, Tornado, etc. - or too obviously culturally specific - Monsoon - for the tone I was trying to set. I didn't want FANTASY WEATHER to sound like the weather report from a North Carolina CBS affiliate, or an AP report from Bangalore. And I folded the article's "special weather" into the more general list. If you used the calculation scheme of the original article, a desert would only get a sandstorm once every eight years, or so I figured it. Where's the fun in that?

I used the article's durations, rainfall/snowfall amounts, wind speed ranges and the like for each precipitation event as a jumping off point, but soon started to fiddle with them for various reasons. For example, I soon discovered that while the rainfall amounts initially seemed realistic, if you did the math, the amount of yearly rainfall for pretty much anywhere in Greyhawk would be off virtually any terrestrial scale - often more rain (in inches or millimeters) than even the wettest place on earth. One of the first things I designed was a method to quickly alter rainfall and snowfall amounts to fit the data for the climate type being simulated. For example, if the weather results for a London-type climate yielded 400 inches of rain on average (roughly ten times the actual total) you could simply divide the rainfall for each event by ten. Of course, you could also just make precipitation events less likely (by a factor of ten) but that possibility wasn't attractive. London is pretty rainy. That doesn't mean you get a huge amount of annual rainfall, measured in inches or millimeters (it's less than New York), but it does mean that you have 150-200 at least slightly wet days per year. Reducing that to 15-20, which would have amounted to desert conditions, didn't seem right.

I realize that the last consideration is more for weather nerds or "realism" nerds. It's unlikely that many readers, referees or players would know or care that the sum of the daily rainfall totals wasn't "realistic." But I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well get it right.

"Weather in the World of Greyhawk" also gave me the idea for those funky rainbows (including that 1 in a 1000 chance of a Bifröst bridge), which I thought, if nothing else, added a fun flavor to things. So I left the idea intact, though I did twiddle the percentages. Later I would add in "supernatural causes", again, suggested by the article, although I substantially modified their chances and content. And I significantly changed how lightning worked. I wanted there to be at least a chance of it in most rain-event types, not just in thunderstorms. Again, this seemed to better match the real-world data, at least as I understood it.

And, of course, I found the article's mechanism for generating each day's weather with dice to be utterly impractical. It just took way too long. That's not the article's fault per se, of course, simply an unavoidable factor of real-world physical realty. That you could do it virtually through an algorithm coded into an Excel Spreadsheet, and then present it clearly in "almanac" form, was the whole idea behind FANTASY WEATHER.

That's the sum of it. I don't mean to sound critical of what in my view was the best treatment of weather and climate to ever appear in a TSR product. Along with a later article, which I'll talk about in the next post, it gave me the framework for how I would look at the problem of fantasy weather. The central insight of the article for me was framing the thing around "precipitation events" and their properties. But there's a lot more to the article than that that either I didn't talk about here or didn't find relevant for the FANTASY WEATHER project but that is still quite interesting and useful in its own right.

If you have The Dragon #68 in hard copy or have access to the PDF, I urge you to read or re-read it.

Tomorrow: "Weathering the Storms" and Köppen climate types.

Witches in Early D&D

A witch (one assumes) from the "Witchcraft Supplement in Dragon Magazine #5 (March, 1977)

Witches have a curious history in early Dungeons & Dragons (here, I'm defining "early" as 1974-early 1980). They were never statted or described as a monster or class in any of the rulebooks. However, there were two illustrations of them in Monsters & Treasure (in that 1974 booklet, no other monster or class had more than one illustration, and there weren't that many illustrations anyway), there were three fairly long and detailed Dragon magazine articles about them in the space of just two years, and the "Holmes" edition of D&D implied that witches were soon to be a character sub-class.

But, of course, in AD&D at least, there ended up being no witches. Alas, witches were the most prominent monster or class that, for whatever reason, never quite made it.

Here's a breakdown (by quarter) of appearances of witches in early D&D:

01-03/74 - Dungeons & Dragons (3LBBs): two witch illustrations; charisma example; broom of flying (1)

04-06/74

07-09/74

10-12/74

01-03/75 - Greyhawk (Supp. 1): no witches

04-06/75

07-09/75 - Blackmoor (Supp. 2): no witches

10-12/75

01-03/76

04-06/76 - Eldritch Wizardry (Supp. 3): no witches (2)

07-09/76 - Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes: Tounelea (Finnish) (3)

10-12/76 - The Dragon #3: "Ladies in D&D" - witches as high-level female Magic-Users (4)

01-03/77 - The Dragon #5: "Witchcraft Supplement" for witch NPCs (5)

04-06/77

07-09/77 - Dungeons & Dragons (Holmes): witches presented as an upcoming sub-class; charisma example; broom of flying (6)

10-12/77 - AD&D Monster Manual: no witches

01-03/78

04-06/78 - AD&D Players Handbook: no witches

07-09/78

10-12/78 - The Dragon #20: "Another Look at Witches" player-class supplement (7)

01-03/79

04-06/79

07-09/79 - AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide: no witches but there was a broom.

10-12/79

01-03/80 - AD&D Deities & Demigods: "witch of the fens" (Arthurian), Snow Witches (Nehwon) (8)

1. There were two illustrations of witches in the three little brown books:

Men & Magic, p. 17.

Men and Magic, p. 27. I think I've seen her somewhere before...

In addition, a witch featured in perhaps the most memorable description for how ability scores might be used beyond their explicit effects:

In addition the charisma score is usable to decide such things as whether or not a witch capturing a player will turn him into a swine or keep him enchanted as a lover (Men & Magic, p. 11).

And finally, a Broom of Flying was included as one of the original 29 miscellaneous magic items:

Broom of Flying: This device allows the owner to fly at Dragon speed (24"/turn). The user must know the "Word of Command" to make it function. The Broom of Flying will come up to 24" when its owner summons it with the command word. It will carry two persons but its speed is reduced by one-quarter (Monsters & Treasure, p. 37).

And that broom even made it into the list of long range flying speeds - being able to cover 200 miles in a day (though I assume only 150 miles with two riders):

The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 16.

However, out of the 77 monsters that appeared in the monster tables and subsequent descriptions, and the 75 that would be suggested as "Other Monsters," appear on the Encounter Tables or rear their heads above water in the Naval Combat section, Witches were not among them.

2. Eldritch Wizardry would feature much "occult" material, including a full catalog of diverse demons and a cover drawing of a naked woman being sacrificed on a stone slab. But there were no witches.

3. A brief mention of a witch would occur in the Finnish Gods and Heroes section of Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes:

Tounelea: 

Armor Class: 9, Move: 9", Hit Points: 30, Magical Spell Ability: As 11th Level Wizardress, Fighter Ability: As a Wizardress

This was an evil witch type that was opposed to Vinanamoinen (p. 39).

4. In an early Dragon article, "Notes on Women and Magic," also called "Ladies in D&D" in the Contents, Witches made an appearance as high-level female Magic-Users. There was some good stuff in the article, I think. Unfortunately it was drowned out by the outrageously sexist slant of the piece, which was widely derided and mocked (by both women and men) at the time (see Jon Peterson's The First Female Gamers).

5. In another early Dragon "Witchcraft Supplement," a robust non-player-character witch class was sketched out. It included good witches, bad witches and new and unique witchlike spells and magical items. Interestingly, it was authored by someone who has never been identified. It's actually a fantastic piece, and I cribbed some ideas from it (in a hopefully appropriate way) for a handful of Witch spells in Seven Voyages of Zylarthen.

6. In the "Holmes Basic" edition of Dungeons & Dragons, intended to be a cleaned-up version of D&D that would serve as an introduction to the forthcoming AD&D, the witch keeping a "charismatic male" as a lover example was given again, and the broom of flying would make another appearance (this time as one of only ten miscellaneous magic items). Most intriguingly, however, a witch player-class seems to be promised for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons:

There are a number of other character types which are detailed in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. There are sub-classes of the four basic classes. They are: paladins and rangers (fighting men), illusionists and witches (magic-users), monks and druids (clerics), and assassins (thieves) (p. 7.).

Note that except for the witch, this gets things exactly right. That seems to hint that a witch class was originally planned for AD&D but then dropped. However, a few years ago Zenopus Archives showed that the passage in Holmes' original draft did not include reference to a witch class. Gary Gygax would later claim that the later insertion of "witch" into the final text must have been Holmes trying to force the issue (Gygax didn't know then that the reference didn't come from Holmes) or a "joke" by someone at TSR: "I never had a PC class of that sort in mind for the game," he said on Enworld in 2005.

7. In Dragon #20, a shorter article put forth both original material and some bits cribbed from the earlier treatment in Dragon #5 to set forth a witch player-class.

8. And finally, witches made two minor appearances in Deities and Demi-Gods, TSR's AD&D reworking of their earlier Gods, Dem-Gods and Heroes: In the entry for Arthurian Heroes we learn that Sir Garlon (the invisible knight) was

given the power of invisibility by a witch of the fens for the promise to only use the power for evil (p. 19).

We also learn about Snow Witches in the Newhon Mythos of Fritz Leiber:

Many of the northern tribes have a group of women that have a measure of magical power. These women, after some preparation and working together, can control all forms of cold and ice spells. They also possess, among the strongest members, a limited telepathy when in direct eye contact with a human. Given a group of 5 women and 24 hours of time, limited weather control (chilling) is possible; this effect has a range of 5 miles (p. 96).

***************************

There were a few non-rulebook accessories published in the late 1970's - 11 modules and the Monster and Treasure Assortments, among them. But as far as I know, no witches appeared in any of these products.

If anyone has any other early D&D "witch appearances" to add, that would be welcome.

The witch was the most "OD&Dish" creature to have never officially existed. That's the main reason I included her in Zylarthen. She just seemed to fit the OD&D vibe so well.

As a player-class, a witch might have been more problematic, being fraught with potential controversial associations involving sexism, reverse-sexism and connections with the occult. I have no idea whether these considerations played a part in the poor witch's failure to emerge.

UPDATE (Noon, 11/15/17): The last paragraph of my piece was an attempt to end things on sort of a neutral but suspenseful note. But I actually don't believe that "political" considerations had anything to do with the witch's official absence. In the mid- to late-1970's the "Satanic Panic" hadn't started yet (D&D was still a niche hobby product that was still largely under the radar).

It's possible that "sexism" considerations might have played an oblique roll in why the witch wasn't considered as a player-class. After all, having an entire subclass limited only to females might seem a bit odd. And, of course, there was always the magic-user. Just learn how to cackle, paint your conical hat black and put a brim on it, and you're off.

But the absence of witches as NPCs or monsters is still puzzling to me. Note that there were many female monsters with creepy spells or powers - groaning spirits, lamias, nagas, night hags, etc. - in the AD&D Monster Manual. I think in the end it was just a sort of random whim of Gygax. Or perhaps he felt that a witch was too potentially complex to be a listed monster but too similar to a magic-user to be a class of its own. And then there were those Dragon articles...

OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Dragon #37

The piece is by Darlene Pekul and appeared in the May 1980 issue.

I am fond of it partly because it graced the cover of one of the first issues of The Dragon that I purchased, and thus it helped to define the look of the game for me. Its pastel colors and serenity provided a neat contrast with the usual fare.

Oddly, I never noticed the skulls until now.

Pekul (who legally changed her name to the one-word and capitalized 'DARLENE' in 1984) was one of the most prolific of the early TSR artists. Indeed, that same issue of The Dragon seemed to feature her work on almost every page, from city and wilderness illustrations—'From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass'—to calligraphy and background design—Out on a Limb, Leomund's Tiny Hut—to the comic strip, Jasmine, which would run for twelve issues.

She also was responsible for the 'fat unicorn' on the title page of the Dungeon Master's Guide, the cover and interior art for a number of TSR adventure modules and perhaps most famously, the full-color map of the Flanaess for the 1980 World of Greyhawk release.

The neat illustration below (also in the DMG), probably contributed to good old-fashioned mutual suspicion among players as much as any other single thing:

Curiously, Image Googling 'Darlene Pekul' or even 'Darlene Pekul The Dragon' or 'Darlene Pekul Dragon Magazine' does not yield this OSR Art Friday's featured piece. Doing a reverse search seems to imply that it has rarely, if ever, been previously discussed or featured. I hope this post, in its small way, helps to redress that.