I really like your suggestion how to turn an underachiever element such as weather into a powerful flavor piece. While I would also agree that GM/player style and preference should determine the how much time we meddle on issues of weather, I think that your sample flavor text for the sodden city shows how something as simple as steady rain fall can really change the aural landscape of a village – I could see weather as a great tool for the GM to ‘get the most’ out of the players’ senses and imagination with minimal effort and no ‘new’ material that wasn’t on the fly.

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@Loz: I agree, it comes down to priority and GMing style. A GM should do the work first that makes the game most fun to play for him and his players.

I feel I’m somehow less than respectful for the excellent quality of the above words for saying this, but I feel that my point of view may also have merit for some so I’ll present my philosophy on weather/climate in RPGs.

Adding massive amounts of detail to your game-world can be great. It can also be a time-sink.
Basically, for me, the climate is “background” information to add flavour text in my description of the gaming world, nice, but I don’t spend too much time on it. A general and brief mention at the beginning of each scenario helps get the players “into” their roles. The weather is what hits players in the face if I decide to include it. The decision is based on my objectives for the scenario: if the team is in a hostile environment, and logically overcoming the hazards of heat/cold/rain/storm/waves, etc is a part of the thrill, then yes I’ll include it. If I feel I have a short space of time that can profitably be used to spice up the “living, breathing” feeling of the world with a short burst of unusual weather, ditto. Giving players a chance to shine (show off their characters skills and gain the applause of their peers) is also worthy of our gaming time.
Otherwise it gets the “hand-wave” treatment of a brief description and we move on to something else (see Johnn’s recent articles on “hand-waving” past the (ahem) unimportant stuff).

The overriding criteria for including weather/climate thus break down into two aids towards two sub-objectives.
Sub-objective one : the GM presents his world in terms that helps the players visualise it easily.
Sub-objective two : elements that present challenges for the player characters to overcome, and chances for them to shine.

The over-arching objective is, of course, “All for fun, and fun for all!”
So, I won’t try to kill off players with the weather, but I might challenge them to survive under difficult circumstances… occasionally. Being informed that your character has pneumonia once is an interesting even potentially enriching gaming experience. Five times in a row and it’s just a drag….

Note that this implies that I’ve decided in advance the climate of the various regions of the world (based on geographical principles, during the world creation process) and all local variations are decided on a case-by-case basis when I’m in the throes of the *scenario* creation process. Should I be using one of the game systems I’ve invented, this is also the time to check over my rules decisions for how to handle the effects of the weather on the players. Again, I follow what to me is an important principle: “Keep It Simple”. You’re not really obliged to print out bundles of weather tables and roll on them in real-time in-game (I’d automate this under excel anyway :) ). A few simple preparations and decisions ahead of time save you tons of delays during you precious game-time. You only need to describe what is relevant to the gaming party, anyway…

So, a basic principles recap:
Keep It Simple (Prior Prep helps!)
All for fun, and Fun for All!
If it *aids* you, include it:
Climate helps present your world
Weather is a tactical element to eventually spice up your scenarios.
…. otherwise, mention it briefly and move on to better stuff.

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@Questing GM: Thanks from both of us for the kind words!

@BGG: That was the foundation of the original weather tables that I put together back in the early 80s. But instead of drawing a line through the seasons, there were progressive modifiers so that you couldn’t really say where one ended and the next began, and so that if you had rain on two successive days it was a little less likely that you’ld have rain on the third, and so on. I don’t know Markov chains from fence-link chains, but I did understand the concept of feedback loops, both positive and negative, so that was what I used.