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View Full Version : World Help Would this survival based campaign be considered 'fun'?



Rolen
2016-09-18, 03:18 PM
Hello everyone! I've had this idea for a campaign brewing in the back of my head for quite a while now, and recently I've decided I was finally going to commit to putting it to paper. Or rather, to Word.

Anyway, I'll be using the Pathfinder system, and maybe its world, but names are easily changed, you know? The basic premise I've initially thought of is to take the first part of Serpent's Skull, take away the 'plot' of it, and basically emphasis the survival bits. I guess you could kind of add elements of Kingmaker to it through the base camp, but the idea is to survive out on an island, the campaign would have less focus on running around killing things and more on surviving and role-playing.

Yesterday as I was brainstorming and browsing the pfsrd, I thought to myself "Hey, what if we threw Lord of the Flies in there? Pathfinder has rules for young characters..." and that's when ideas really started to flow. What if I threw the players on this island with young characters with only NPC classes? What if I had them build their characters using only a 10-point buy to further emphasis that they aren't in fact heroes, just a bunch of kids that have to stick together to ward of starvation, disease, and the threat of vicious predators?

I've already got a beginning in mind, sort of 'inspired' by the part in Pinocchio where the carnival basically kidnaps a bunch of children, at least... I think that was a scene in Pinocchio. Less polymorphing into donkeys though. Anyway, I think I'd start them off in town, tell them there's a carnival coming, introduce them to their fellow castaway children, then one mass hypnosis or sleep spell later, they all wake up in a ship, storm and or kraken hits, ship sinks, party wakes up on the shores of where the campaign proper will take place.

Beyond that, so far it's a little plot-lite, but from what I saw reading through Serpent's Skull, you really can't have that much in the way of a main plot while giving the players zero direction the way it does.

As I said before, I'd like this campaign to emphasise more on roleplay and survival. I'd like for all PC's to be young characters using NPC classes, but I'm not so sure about 10-point buy. Is that too much? Fights would be dangerous, especially when nobody will have any real weapons or armor, being, you know, kids. Would an overall lack of combat that doesn't pose a serious risk to players get boring? I'm sure through creativeness they could take out things, but you never know how players do things.

Gwaednerth
2016-09-18, 04:30 PM
As long as your players are down for it, go for it. There are no obvious problems. You're going to need to really flesh out the island though. If it doesn't have distinctive parts and interesting features and so forth it's going to offer a lot less for the players to explore and a lot fewer resources for them to play with.

Rusvul
2016-09-27, 06:13 PM
I would enjoy that game hugely, though it's certainly not for everyone. Pathfinder might not be the best system for it, though- you're taking a high fantasy game where players are essentially magic superheroes and trying to make it a low-fantasy game where players are regular kids... Savage Worlds does cater to the very lethal combat (especially with the gritty damage variant rule,) though if your group is used to Pathfinder then nonmagical SW characters might seem a bit dull to them. (It does have the bonus of rules for young characters, though.)

Definitely do what Gwaednerth said, though. This isn't something you want to be ad-libbing. Also carefully consider what rules you're going to use for things like foraging and doing things without proper tools, because those will definitely be relevant.

Mechalich
2016-09-27, 07:54 PM
In traditional Pathfinder all survival issues with regard to normal environments, even extreme ones like the arctic, become completely irrelevant by 5th level, when Create Food and Water has come online and characters have sufficient spell power to walk around naked in a blizzard all day long and suffer no complications from cold. If magic is banned survival issues can hang around a little longer, but the ranger still starts cranking out a ridiculous survival bonus relatively soon and builds an island fortress that would make Robinson Crusoe jealous in short order. Beyond that, D&D and Pathfinder aren't really designed to handle survival situations. Disease and malnutrition and all sorts of other conditions are simply debuffs that you apply to characters temporarily. The various limited conditions don't parse vagaries of suffering from a variety of maladies especially well.

So yeah, as Rusvul mentioned, you really should consider an alternative system for this sort of thing.

Rusvul
2016-09-27, 11:53 PM
"...vagaries of suffering from a variety of maladies..." might be my new favorite phrase.

MintyNinja
2016-09-29, 02:55 PM
As others have said, it depends on your players. For me, I almost want to learn Pathfinder just for that campaign. That sounds amazing! But then in the past I've also proven that the way to get me on board with anything is to allow me the mechanics for building things IC. So a bunch of kids building a shelter? A camp? A proto-culture? Hell yeah.

Recherché
2016-09-29, 04:39 PM
I can't say that it's something I would be interested in. But I tend to like my characters fairly competent. I will also repeat that I'm not sure pathfinder is the best system for this. Everything is too binary and comes down to one roll of a single d20 which is highly swingy. Especially at low levels you're likely to lose a lot even with the best t laid plans simply because that single d20 rolled badly for you.