Situation Panel for current setting/conditions.

Perhaps this could be attached to the bottom of the chat window. It would be a panel to indicate basic conditions of the game setting, such as current weather icon, wind speed icon, relative temperature, a sentence to describe the setting (i.e., "Inside the leaky, smelly hold of the caravel, 'Orson's Comet.'" or "Just outside the town of Fittleton's Ferry"), etc. I have found that with a lot of text shooting back and forth, folks sometimes miss the most basic of set-ups... a simple 'Situation Panel' could help build atmosphere as well as keep everyone on the same page.