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MysticSkyWhale
2020-05-29, 03:21 AM
Good afternoon, evening, or whatever it may be,

I've been brainstorming ideas for a campaign that starts out with the PCs shipwrecked on a deserted island. However, the small hang-up I'm having is coming up with ideas to make scavenging supplies fun/engaging since it will be a significant part of the early bits of the campaign. Personally, I'd find it a bit boring if thing was handled by rolling an ability check and either finding loot or rolling again to find loot.

Has anyone ever run/played in a shipwreck campaign? Does anyone have any ideas for ways this could be run?

If it matters, the system I plan to run this campaign in is 5th edition D&D.

Mastikator
2020-05-29, 05:34 AM
If rolling dice doesn't make the game more fun or engaging, don't roll dice. Everything there is to loot: they can have it, they automatically find everything there is to find! This should not be a battle against luck (dice) but a battle against time. It takes time to loot, it takes time to build shelter, it takes time to gather supplies, when the night falls and it gets dark and cold so they better have a plan. If they can control the outcome of their decisions and have to evaluate (and deliberate among themselves) which choice leads to the best outcome then that makes the game a whole lot more engaging.
If that gets boring, surprise there are kobolds scavenging the shipwreck, roll initiative.

Zhorn
2020-05-29, 09:12 AM
If you do resort to rolling for a check:
Take the concept of a binary outcomes, passing if you meet/exceed the DC and failing if you roll below, and purge that from your mind.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1zaNJrXi5Y

Zarrgon
2020-05-29, 12:07 PM
Don't have any supplies laying around to find.

Go hard core Survivor Island/Lost/Naked and Afraid...plus Castaway. Give each character a scrap of clothing or two....and that is it.

So first off you will want to encourage the players to have their characters make things. Though mostly of poor quality. Still better then nothing.

You want the players hungry for ''real" things. They see a kobold with an iron knife and they get all crazy hungry to get it.

Quertus
2020-05-29, 01:01 PM
I heartily agree with focusing on "time", although I would have worded it as "opportunity cost" or "division of labor".

So, for giggles, suppose some defective caricatures of some of my characters got shipwrecked.

Quertus would salvage his books, quill & ink, and some comfortable pillows. He would find a shaded spot to read his books / draw the wildlife while "keeping watch" guaranteeing making it somewhat unlikely that a T-Rex could come crashing through the jungle and still get a surprise round on the party.

Mandrek would be checking on the condition of any shipboard weaponry (catapults, ballista, cannons, etc), then tearing the ship apart, erecting giant makeshift spikes to deter such a theoretical island T-Rex.

John will be sacrificing a few of his chickens (retrieved from the cargo hold) to provide the power to heal any wounded crew members. Then he'll retrieve the items necessary to make chicken for dinner (including ripping up more of the ship for firewood). Then he'll sacrifice any of the drugged crew members that the party doesn't care about to power even stronger spells.

Khan would be animating all the dead crew members to serve as a zombie labor force, a zombie makeshift structure, and/or zombie entertainment.

James Bird, awakened parrot, will be scouting out the island, looking for indigenous peoples to tick off by stealing their sacred relics or something.

K'Tamair am be smarter. K'Tamair am be securing all tasty goodness, not let native 4-legs find. K'Tamair am be finding locked boxes of shinies, save those, too.

Rei will be collecting indigenous plants/fruits - and, if no-one onboard / still alive recognizes them to know what is poisonous, will be eating them to find out.

”seems fine" - may cause weeks of dysentery, eat at your own risk.

"Yummy!" - save for a last meal, or when you are already mortally wounded.

"This tastes kinda funny…” - highly poisonous, use it to coat your weapons.

"I don't feel so good…” - could be related to a Sphere of Annihilation - attempt to take control of it.

"…” (Rei dead) - begin worshipping contents of Rei's stomach immediately. You won't regret appeasing your new god.

Raymond will be directing a crew to tear the ship apart to build a new, smaller ship, with which to leave the island. He will also suggest using any dead crew members as bait, to see what predators live on this island (alternately, send teams of two or three to "search for food", with actual motive being "search for predators").

Hopefully, you can see how each of these strategies would take certain amounts of time, and sometimes require resources, to sometimes require a roll before bearing fruit.

You shouldn't spell it out to the party, but there are numerous concerns: food, shelter, defense, scouting, health, morale, escape, loot, to name a few. Don't let the party be pants-on-head stupid (ie, describe the scene well, let them know when it starts getting dark, etc), but give them the agency to prioritize (and completely ignore) as they see fit.

aglondier
2020-05-30, 07:05 AM
Watch a season or two of Survivor. Inflict "challenges" on the players with rewards of dubious value. Have half the crew split off to form their own "tribe". Have them raid or sabotage the players camp. Go Lord of the Flies on them.

jayem
2020-05-30, 07:30 AM
Don't have any supplies laying around to find.

Go hard core Survivor Island/Lost/Naked and Afraid...plus Castaway. Give each character a scrap of clothing or two....and that is it.

So first off you will want to encourage the players to have their characters make things. Though mostly of poor quality. Still better then nothing.

You want the players hungry for ''real" things. They see a kobold with an iron knife and they get all crazy hungry to get it.

Two options, you could vaguely power fantasise it, abstract most of the shipwrecked side of things, and focus on the dramatic story. As the castaways heroically rescue the natives...

Or you could dial things down, break out the encumberence and supply rules. Make fighting them the battle of the game.
Climbing the tree gets you the days worth of coconuts, but a chance of breaking your leg (and the problem that causes).
Almost model it more on a Resource Based Eurogame than Chainmail.
(of course this doesn't work if you can just heroes feast ...)

False God
2020-05-30, 09:06 AM
Typically, I break things down into opportunity costs. Players get to do X number of things per day (I usually go with 3 for healthy, uninjured party members), every task requires Y number of players, more and it can get done faster (no more than the minimum "time block" though), less and it takes longer (always measured in time blocks, no partial time blocks) and all tasks take Z amount of time.

Honestly, I ran an exploration campaign on similar grounds. A lot of the "setup" can be rather dry. There just isn't much in the way around that. You can substitute "finding supplies" with "hunting" or "fishing" providing for a higher chance of some encounters if that's what players are looking for, same for "building shelter" can be "searching for caves" which might already be occupied. Include alternative resources, ie: if the party goes out looking for something they know is edible, they might only find some things they think might be edible.

Adding some "redshirts" is a great way to demonstrate that something is poisonous or dangerous without the need for a roll or to endanger the players. "One of the deckhands comes back with am armload of red mushrooms and pops one into his mouth!" *a few hours later* "Redshirt has been vomiting since lunch and is now unconscious and may not make it through the night."

Mr.Sandman
2020-05-30, 03:14 PM
If you have the first book of the Serpents Skull adventure path from Pathfinder that deals with a Shipwreck, and is even in a similar system so you could steal ideas from there.

NulliusinVerba
2020-06-11, 11:08 PM
I will echo what's been said here about using time as a construct. One thing that you could do is give each PC a set amount of 'time tokens', which represents an arbitrary amount of time (maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it's 30). Then, you ask your players to figure out a checklist of tasks that need doing before night falls. Maybe they need to loot, or scavenge for supplies? Maybe they need to hunt for food, or find fresh water? Maybe they need to build a shelter? Maybe they need to explore their immediate surroundings, or set traps against wandering monsters?

Whatever the action, you assign it a number of 'time tokens' of value determining roughly how long a PCs would need to spend doing it. Multiple PCs can cooperate and each spend a token to halve the time it takes. For instance, maybe they have 3 hours until the sun set. You decide setting up a shelter takes an hour, and the tokens are worth 30 min each (meaning each PC has 6 tokens to spend). You tell the players that any one of them can spend 2 tokens to set up the shelter, or they can each pay 1. Then, when the players have spent all of their tokens, night falls and they have to deal with the consequences of their own choices.

P.S. If they're stuck and run out of kinds of actions, ask them to roll for Survival or Nature to see how many different tasks the characters might remember to add to the list. Remember Matt Colville's multiple states of failure! Give them at least 1 forgotten one even if they don't do well on the roll, but have a few more in place in case they really succeed.

el minster
2020-06-11, 11:22 PM
maybe with a decent roll to hunt they have an encounter with an animal or scavenging for materials could give you an encounter with a lesser enemy?