Nice Weather for Fish - an RPG adventure

Nice Weather for Fish is a whimsical roleplaying adventure for all ages, set in a slightly sideways version of England’s Peak District, circa 999AD.

The Hope Springs Spring Fair is in full swing, with puppet shows, greasy buns, pig-riding, and a beauty contest judged by a man who may or may not be asleep. But just as the revelry peaks, the sky goes ominously grey, a single fish lands with a splat, and... then it really starts raining fish!

Moments later, a massive flood rampages through the fair, sweeping away tents and livestock before promptly slurping itself back upstream like a river that’s changed its mind. From the stunned silence of the revellers emerges a cry: “mummy! MUMMY!” Finn Spratt's little sister, Minno, has been carried away by the receding water!

It’s up to the players to trek upriver, finding Minno, through a weird landscape of boggy woods, bickering bandits, tiny suspicious miners, haunted cromlechs hiding cryptic secrets, and a hermit who may be the wisest person alive, but also refuses to acknowledge anyone’s existence unless they’re polite. They’ll stumble upon fairies with a passion for redecorating adventurers’ belongings, a mysterious rock that can turn back time, and a tribe of cave-dwelling fisher-folk who have many admirable qualities but fluent English is not one of them.

Nice Weather for Fish invites players to wade into a world where the fish fall from the sky, the rivers run backwards, and absolutely no one will explain why there’s a 21st-century wristwatch buried in the woods.

Nice Weather for Fish is written by Dan Sumption, with illustrations by the late Martin F Bedford.

Rules are included for playing the adventure using the Cairn roleplaying system and other Into the Odd-compatible games, and for B/X D&D and similar OSR rulesets.

The adventure contains four "scenes", and can be played over a number of sessions. It is presented as an A5 zine containing at least 60 pages, with colour illustrations including new creatures, treasures, and random encounter tables. 

If you have any problems at all trying to back this Kickstarter, please reach out to me via the FAQs page or Bluesky – or email peakrillpress@gmail.com – and I will help out.

Stretch goals

£1500: the book currently contains 9 fantastic colour images, commissioned from legendary Sheffield poster artist Martin F Bedford in 2021. Sadly Martin died in 2023. I would love to add a few more pictures, and if we reach £1500 then I will commission Rich Tingley to produce additional illustrations - these won't be in the style of Martin's pictures, but they will be very much in the same spirit.

£2000: my first Zine project, Mostly Harmless Meetings, grew out of the original random encounter table for Nice Weather for Fish. If we reach £2000, the entire text of Mostly Harmless Meetings will be included inside Nice Weather for Fish.