Using Magical Atmospheric Effects

Today's video is about magical effects that affect the very atmosphere and fabric of being in an area. These can include weather effects, but I would call them “weather like effects” because they're usually exaggerated in a way that they don't conform to the source of real weather. And this magical force can directly impact the creatures within that area, for good or bad, and impinge or buttress the magical forces those creatures have at their disposal.

I start by defining the main characteristic of magical atmosphere as scale, source and the effect itself. Scale is the area of effect, whether a single room or continent, while source defines who created the effect, and the effect itself means the sort of all encompassing power upon the players.

Scale impacts the logic of the source. A single room effect could easily be created by an individual, while a continent wide effect might only be attained by a deity. You could have an artifact or the remnant of some titanic magic struggle from the past that affects a wider area, much like the residual effects of a nuclear explosions.

Finally I talk about the effects themselves, using the two templates of scale and source to guide their creation. These include magic effects that mirror natural atmospherics, those that mirror spell effects, area effects which augment or diminish magical powers, both divine and arcane, area effects which create random magical phenomena, both small and large scale, and finally some combination of these effects.

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