Running a survival game

[Quertus]

(If any of this sounds familiar, like you’re in this game irl, stop reading)

I’ve been asked so run a… survival game, I suppose you could say. Thing is, all the examples I can remember (which, with my senility, doesn’t say much) playing through, the other players were generally nonplused by how “easy” it was.

So, best I can figure, the game might be an “accidental Isekai” scenario. Maybe there was actually a Hero summons somewhere, and the PCs got pulled in by the wake of the spell accidentally, and sent to the middle of nowhere. Or maybe some trickster gods did it on purpose, or maybe it’s just a natural phenomenon. Regardless, the PCs are in Unknown territory, in the middle of nowhere. They have to struggle to survive, not just against monsters, but against the elements, while finding food and building tools.

Or something.

Because I don’t have experience with this “survival” genre (or, at least, don’t remember any relevant experience), I’m looking for advice on… well, just about everything. What does it look like done right, what does it look like done wrong, what are good scenes / challenges to include, etc?

Also… currently, I’m looking at Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, and D&D as possible systems in which to run this game. My current plan is to do a 1-shot in each, and see what the players have to say.

How much does terrain matter? Middle of a forest? Coast of a deserted island? Any other good choices?

Any thoughts, suggestions, advice, or cautionary tales?

[Ameraaaaaa]

(If any of this sounds familiar, like you’re in this game irl, stop reading)

I’ve been asked so run a… survival game, I suppose you could say. Thing is, all the examples I can remember (which, with my senility, doesn’t say much) playing through, the other players were generally nonplused by how “easy” it was.

So, best I can figure, the game might be an “accidental Isekai” scenario. Maybe there was actually a Hero summons somewhere, and the PCs got pulled in by the wake of the spell accidentally, and sent to the middle of nowhere. Or maybe some trickster gods did it on purpose, or maybe it’s just a natural phenomenon. Regardless, the PCs are in Unknown territory, in the middle of nowhere. They have to struggle to survive, not just against monsters, but against the elements, while finding food and building tools.

Or something.

Because I don’t have experience with this “survival” genre (or, at least, don’t remember any relevant experience), I’m looking for advice on… well, just about everything. What does it look like done right, what does it look like done wrong, what are good scenes / challenges to include, etc?

Also… currently, I’m looking at Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, and D&D as possible systems in which to run this game. My current plan is to do a 1-shot in each, and see what the players have to say.

How much does terrain matter? Middle of a forest? Coast of a deserted island? Any other good choices?

Any thoughts, suggestions, advice, or cautionary tales?

I'd say try to make sure nothing comes easy to them without good reason. If they want to hunt a dear their methods will matter. Are they tracking with a bow and arrow? Setting up a rope trap? Using magic? Ect ect.

Are they building shelter? How will they get the materials? Do they have an axe? Can they find leafs?

How will the weather play into this is also an important question.

Basically decisions matter. If hunting with a bow and arrow they better either be good with an arrow or hope to het lucky. If building a trap then have them describe the trap. Ect ect.

I never run a survival game but this is just my opinion on what makes sense for the survival feel.

[King of Nowhere]

it's all very generic. is it a fantasy setting? a realistic ancient one? postapocaliptic?

in a realistc setting, competent people have no troubles surviving in the environment. it's what our ancestors have done for millennia, so it's hard to justify a difficult game - unless they are trying to survive in a desert or something.
modern, untrained people would have a hard time with survival. but a roleplaying game involving incompetent people is something i've never heard about.
in a fantasy setting, you can throw a lot of monsters at the party. in a realistic setting, animals are not much of a threat

[Quertus]

Can they find leafs?

I’m feeling dumb - why do leaves matter?


it's all very generic. is it a fantasy setting? a realistic ancient one? postapocaliptic?

I might be putting the cart before the horse, but… so far, that’s not the important bit. That is, if I can find a system + concept that I can run, I’ll go with that.

And, while it might well be “modern incompetent characters Isekai’d into” a fantasy / post apocalyptic / whatever setting, the players a) are willing to slightly use player skills, but more importantly b) want to bring characters who between them have certain basic skills covered.

So, myself, I’m more interested in questions like “random 20th level party finds they’re the only people in the world - how long do they survive, and what kills them?”; this group is more into “well-designed 1st level party finds they’re the only people in the world - what steps do they take to bring back civilization, and can they survive to do so?”.

[Olffandad]

You may want to have a conversation with the players about failure... do they want to risk death from hypothermia or from running out of water?

Do they want a high level of detail on survival, like gathering food or building shelter? Are they okay with situations that are mechanically suboptimal, like being limited to primitive weapons? You could probably have a good conversation with your crew about what they mean by survival... like recreating the Hunger Games book or movie? Some other setting?

I think what made the Hunger Games successful is that Katniss managed her food, water, rest, etc successfully, for instance - not that she was a superior fighter.

Players may be challenged and inspired for higher creativity if they have fewer resources to use... but they have to be willing to stretch their legs, I think.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've generally found survival to be really hard to do in games-- so many of the expected tasks are impossible to model other than with a skill check. Like, you could maybe have different DCs and skills required for different sorts of, say, foraging, but any way you slice it there are a bunch of time-consuming tasks that don't lend themselves well to narration.

The two best systems that come to mind are GUMSHOE and Powered by the Apocalypse.

GUMSHOE games like Trail of Cthulu are oriented around investigation, not survival, but the underlying philosophy might translate. The idea is basically that the "finding clues" part of a mystery should be automatic-- if you have the relevant skill and remember to use it, you find the information you need (with the potential option of spending a resource to learn a little more). Those skills, in turn, are extremely granular. Given that a survival game boils down to a ton of skill checks and remembering to do the right thing in the right circumstance, I can imagine using a similar approach. (The "scary, powerful, alien monsters" bit also might work well for a portal fantasy type game). It's been a long time since I read a GUMSHOE system and I've never played, though, so my knowledge is pretty rusty.
PbtA character features are usually as much about manipulating the narrative as they are performing a specific task. That seems like it could make for a workable approach--or at least one that functions more gracefully than your standard simulationist-inclined system. A little googling lead me to a PbtA system called The Warren (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/168477/The-Warren?affiliate_id=386172), which is a Watership Down style game about intelligent rabbits trying to survive in a world of hostile environments and dangerous predators. I expect it would be easy enough to adapt to more conventional humanoid characters.

I'll throw in the Coen-Brothers-movie-generation game Fiasco as an honorable mention-- it's not really an RPG and it's definitely not intended for a multi-session campaign, but it is all about being trapped in a crappy situation with untrustworthy companions where things inevitably go wrong and everybody gets hurt.

[Ameraaaaaa]

I’m feeling dumb - why do leaves matter?

Big enough leaves from particularly big trees can be used for shelter.

[stoutstien]

Some systems handle this better than others. I think of the DND line up 2e came the closest with setting specific guidelines.
5e would be difficult without going through and filtering everything first because there's too many options that just "nope" this entire motif.

I have to give a plug for WWN for this. The wilderness rules on page ~48-50 are simple but engaging for running this type of stuff. It rewards being good at being in survival situations, or otherwise lacking supplies, without being a drag or handwave. Found some food/wood/water but do you take the time to preserve or push faster and hope you don't need to stop again?

There are a few features that allow heroes to avoid the negative impacts of not having enough food water asleep but they can't effectively recover plus it takes significant investment to keep those options running. Assistant promotes using features to come up with solution and rather than having features as solutions. Survival theme is basically one overall reoccurring question that the party needs to answer.

System strain is also a good tension mechanic to keep them moving.

It's simple enough you can pout it over to different systems.

[Mechalich]

Some systems handle this better than others. I think of the DND line up 2e came the closest with setting specific guidelines.
5e would be difficult without going through and filtering everything first because there's too many options that just "nope" this entire motif.

Yeah, this is one of the biggest issues. Basically any supernatural power at all more or less nopes out survival difficulties in all environments that aren't supernaturally deadly, but supernatural environments can never match the real world for the full set of challenges that the immense level of detail of the real world provides.

One of the other tricky bits in survival scenarios is that the most dangerous factor is often disease, whether from infections, parasites, insects, or other causes. Unfortunately, TTRPG systems struggle to properly support 'one of your party members has Yellow Fever, whether they will live or die is almost completely up to the RNG.' Disease is very good at killing pre-industrial people introduced into foreign environments, but there's very little that can be done about it given the often complete lack of treatment options.

[False God]

(If any of this sounds familiar, like you’re in this game irl, stop reading)

I’ve been asked so run a… survival game, I suppose you could say. Thing is, all the examples I can remember (which, with my senility, doesn’t say much) playing through, the other players were generally nonplused by how “easy” it was.

So, best I can figure, the game might be an “accidental Isekai” scenario. Maybe there was actually a Hero summons somewhere, and the PCs got pulled in by the wake of the spell accidentally, and sent to the middle of nowhere. Or maybe some trickster gods did it on purpose, or maybe it’s just a natural phenomenon. Regardless, the PCs are in Unknown territory, in the middle of nowhere. They have to struggle to survive, not just against monsters, but against the elements, while finding food and building tools.

Or something.

Because I don’t have experience with this “survival” genre (or, at least, don’t remember any relevant experience), I’m looking for advice on… well, just about everything. What does it look like done right, what does it look like done wrong, what are good scenes / challenges to include, etc?

Also… currently, I’m looking at Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, and D&D as possible systems in which to run this game. My current plan is to do a 1-shot in each, and see what the players have to say.

I've run a survival game in 2 systems: D&D and WoD.
The standard WoD "human" character against the standard WoD threats in a open-world survival game work fine. I know it's not listed on any of your systems, but I figured I'd toss it out there that the baseline assumptions for the game work well for survival games.

I've run survival in 5E, 4E and 3.5/Pathfinder 1E.
It works fine in low-level 3.5/Pathfinder. (by low level, 5 or less, no WLB, just grab the starting gear and get dropped in the woods). The lower the level, the more brutal the game. Skills are low, death is easy, etc...

I found survival to simply not be the intended style of gameplay of 4E. Would not recommend.

I found survival highly un-fun in 5E. Even at low levels a lot of basic class features, particularly if your players build to favor the game, will absolutely neuter the challenge of a survival game. I don't fault my players when 3 of them built Rangers for the "shipwrecked on an unknown shore, try to survive" game I set up, but I very quickly realized that the Ranger feature that lets you automatically find food in their favored terrain basically eliminates any form of hunger/starvation/forcing the party to hunt and forage outside their comfort zone elements you attempt to employ.


How much does terrain matter? Middle of a forest? Coast of a deserted island? Any other good choices?

Any thoughts, suggestions, advice, or cautionary tales?
A LOT

Boundaries helps for one-shots, "deserted island" is great for a shorter game where the goal is to survive for a shorter amount of time until a passing ship is able to rescue you. Islands can provide a variety of terrain and resources and the biome transitions are very rapid (ocean, coast, mountains, all crammed together), which can provide a variety of threats. Similarly the biomes are all relatively small, which makes their amount of resources fairly limited, which can be good for the whole "forcing players to adventure outside their camp" element.

Forests are fine, but I typically find that they're too easy to simply wander in a given direction till you get out. It's not guaranteed and the DM can place "high mountains", "steep cliffs" or other boundary elements around the party to prevent them from leaving, but it feels a little forced if the landscapes aren't set-up naturally.

No particular horror stories, but IMO a game with some kind of fatigue mechanic to limit how much a character can do in any one day, paired with slow healing and slow recovery mechanics goes a long way to emphasizing good resource management. If the characters can exhaust themselves every day with no effect and wake up the next day fully restored, they absolutely will.

[Vahnavoi]

Older editions of Warhammer Fantasy and 1st edition AD&D at low levels are reasonably suited for this, but what I really suggest you do is play UnReal World (http://www.unrealworld.fi/) on a computer right now. Old versions are free and well worth your time to look at.

Nobody give me any of that "but it's a computer game" crap. Every mechanic in play in UnReal World is firmly based in the same tradition as tabletop roleplaying games and it is a great example of an open-ended, free roaming game. Furthermore, the in-game documentation is extensive to the point you could rip it off for tabletop purposes.

The overarching lesson you ought to take home is that details matter, and the amount of detail players put into what they do is the primary mechanic that determines if they succeed. In practice, this means minimum of shortcuts; if players want to eat, they have to look for food and then say they eat it; if they want to camp, they have to make shelter, chop firewood, set the fire and tell who keeps watch at night; if they want to use magic, they have to do the whole song and dance and show up at lakeshore at midnight while high on shrooms. None of that "I roll for survival" or "I cast fireball" type of crap. Ideally, players can use an information resource such as UnReal World's in-game encyclopedia or Ultimate SAS Survival (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Survival-John-Lofty-Wiseman/dp/0007312857) as a manual for how to get ahead in the game, and, equally importantly, if they don't, they will suck. Avoid automation and assumptions, especially assumptions of player character competency, to the highest degree you can stomach.

Finally, since I know who I'm talking to: survival wipes its ass with your notions of "combat as sport" and "combat as war". You might think it's in the latter genre, but it isn't, not as defined by you. Here's why: because survival does not come with any implicit promise of being winnable. Survival begins where preparation stops; the situation is fundamentally unpredictable and no guarantee exists that the right out-of-the-box thinking will actually lead to survival. It's entirely possible to be already dead and not know it. UnReal World provides several scenarios that demonstrate this well, standouts being starting as already beaten at the outskirts of enemy terrain, starting in the middle of wilderness with your hunting partner already dead at the claws of a large predator, and starting as an escaping slave at the middle of an enemy camp. Bonus points for starting any of these during winter, when there are no easy sources of food or water lying about and just the lack of proper clothes can kill you.

With that in mind, as a game master, I'd go to run a survival-themed game with a folder full of spare starting characters, with the expectation that for a long time, it's not a question if the player characters will die, only a question of when and of what. Also, with the understanding that IF players can find a predictable game loop where their longterm survival is no longer in question, they've effectively won and the correct thing to do is to start over from worse initial conditions.

[Quertus]

A few quick thoughts:

I'm actually debating whether there will be any other sentient beings in the world besides the PCs.


disease

Yeah, disease is rough, no argument there. However, if the PCs are the only / first humans in the world, as I've considered making be the case, is there any cause for there to already be diseases that affect them in the world?

Even if they're the only / first humans on the continent, my Knowledge:History suggests that human diseases won't have gotten there yet. But if, say, humanity went extinct, and they're just the first humans in a thousand years, could diseases that affect them have stuck around?

This is the kind of "realism" questions I've been pondering wrt diseases.

Of course, other forms of sickness are on the table regardless.


Finally, since I know who I'm talking to: survival wipes its ass with your notions of "combat as sport" and "combat as war". You might think it's in the latter genre, but it isn't, not as defined by you. Here's why: because survival does not come with any implicit promise of being winnable.

I mean, I'm trying not to give my players quite the kind of CaW experience I would expect when I hear "survival", as, say, Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, would likely die of starvation in a solo Survival scenario, having no skill at or experience with getting food.

But, yeah, I expect my players will be trying to figure out how to guarantee a win - or even how to guarantee a roll (as opposed to an automatic failure) - for certain tasks.



You may want to have a conversation with the players about failure... do they want to risk death from hypothermia or from running out of water?

Players may be challenged and inspired for higher creativity if they have fewer resources to use... but they have to be willing to stretch their legs, I think.

So, yeah, I should probably have that talk with my players, and make sure we're on the same page here, wrt difficulty and gameplay.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Yeah, disease is rough, no argument there. However, if the PCs are the only / first humans in the world, as I've considered making be the case, is there any cause for there to already be diseases that affect them in the world?
Sure there is-- we know tons of diseases that originated in animals before jumping across species, and some infection had to be the one to take that first step.

But parasitic diseases (like malaria) are an even better choice. "It affects all mammals but it's worse for you because you haven't evolved any resistance" is an easy narrative for players to swallow.

[Duff]

For a one shot, can I suggest make the party need to build a good enough raft/boat for a short ocean crossing?
You're shipwrecked on an island. You can see the land in the distance.

That gives you the boundaries, makes it clear to the party where they need to go next and has a built in end to the game

[Quertus]

currently, I’m looking at Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, and D&D as possible systems in which to run this game. My current plan is to do a 1-shot in each, and see what the players have to say.


For a one shot, can I suggest make the party need to build a good enough raft/boat for a short ocean crossing?
You're shipwrecked on an island. You can see the land in the distance.

That gives you the boundaries, makes it clear to the party where they need to go next and has a built in end to the game

I couldn’t quite understand some of the comments; thank you for putting it in a way where I could understand where people were coming from.

I wasn’t actually planning on making the one-shots be explicitly survival themed. Maybe include a few of the relevant rolls / skills / concepts, but just as part of a normal “day in the life” adventure / scenario. Mostly just introduce the players to the mechanics of the system, what the character sheets look like, what characters in those worlds are used to doing, etc, so that they can attempt to protect their desired game play onto that framework, to see how well it fits, and where the pain points might be.

Like I said, I can imagine how my characters might work in a true survival setting, despite them never having encountered such. Am I asking too much of my players to expect the same ability to translate character + system into at least a discussion of how the game might work? Is it really hard to come up with questions like, “But how would a D&D character know how to (ie, how would one be able to adjudicate whether or not they know how to) smelt ores? Properly irrigate fields? Fish/hunt without depleting the local wildlife?”?

It might be dubious whether the PCs will survive long enough to worry about some of those concerns, but I think those are the type of challenges they want to build characters to overcome.

[King of Nowhere]

So, myself, I’m more interested in questions like “random 20th level party finds they’re the only people in the world - how long do they survive, and what kills them?”; this group is more into “well-designed 1st level party finds they’re the only people in the world - what steps do they take to bring back civilization, and can they survive to do so?”.


weeeell...
by full 3.x rules, a 20th level party would survive forever, unless they start killing each other. when the sun goes red giant and engulfs the planet, then the fighter will probably die. the wizard will probably survive even that.

as for a 1st level party bringing back civilization, the first step is to have different sexes in the party...




Yeah, disease is rough, no argument there. However, if the PCs are the only / first humans in the world, as I've considered making be the case, is there any cause for there to already be diseases that affect them in the world?

Even if they're the only / first humans on the continent, my Knowledge:History suggests that human diseases won't have gotten there yet.


Sure there is-- we know tons of diseases that originated in animals before jumping across species, and some infection had to be the one to take that first step.

But parasitic diseases (like malaria) are an even better choice. "It affects all mammals but it's worse for you because you haven't evolved any resistance" is an easy narrative for players to swallow.
to expand on that, there would still be a lot less disease than there currently are. in the real world we have all the disease/parasites that we share with animals, and a bunch that specifically target us. in a new world, there would only be the generic stuff. so, less disease.
on the other hand, as grod correctly points out, there would be stuff for which we have no genetic resistance.
oh, general septicemia from wounds would still be on the table.

[Lord Torath]

Without antibiotics, even a blister can be lethal. One of the USA's early presidents lost a son to a blister.

[Gungor]

Adhering to biology in the real world, I think disease would be even more of a problem for first human settlers since microorganisms which aren't really that harmful to the local fauna might be devastating to a new species.

One general question to consider in running a game like this is player knowledge versus character knowledge. Do your players know how to survive in the wilderness? Do they want to play characters who do? Are you, as GM, expected to know the best choices for survival? It's important because while a player might not know, say, whether trying to hunt an animal is easier or harder than trying to trap an animal, their character might. Or the other way around - the player may be have extensive experience but is playing a character who is transported from a relatively comfortable urban environment to the middle of nowhere. And the players may or may not expect you to know which is easier and set the challenge appropriately and may even be upset if it doesn't match their expectation.

In real life, I don't know how to use a sword but I can still play a character who does because the mechanics of D&D abstract combat enough that a d20 plus proficiency encapsulates that knowledge. If I had to narrate whether I parried, or feinted, or riposted, or what grip I used to hold it, or even whether I slashed or stabbed with it, I'd have no idea.

So do you/your players want to describe narratively how they do things, in detail? I think that would require lots of knowledge by GM to adjudicate decisions - and the level of knowledge of the characters would necessarily match that of the players. Or, do you want to make fairly abstract decisions and let skill proficiencies and dice rolls decide the outcome? Or something in the middle? Different game systems provide different levels of granularity but in order to achieve verisimilitude, I think it would be good to understand what the players are looking for and whether it is possible to achieve it in any system.

[Vahnavoi]

Disease is one of those things that works best if you don't overthink it, and abstraction is well justified, for following reasons:

- many common diseases share the same set of symptoms: fever, nausea, weakness, pain, etc.
- for the same reason, diagnostics to differentiate them don't exist in survival conditions
- most of them respond to the (very limited) treatment options of rest, hydration and (rare) anti-microbial or anti-inflammatory plant-based medicines such as garlic or willow bark, if they are treatable at all.

With that in mind, let me outline a simple disease mechanic:

1) Disease is tracked by a counter that goes up and down.
2) Each week, you check what kind of conditions a character has been in, and roll a % check to see if they have contracted a disease.
3) the base chance is 1%. Consistent cold and dry, or hot and dry, weather reduces this by 1% unit. Bad hygiene, living in cramped spaces, lack of clean water and insufficient clothing all increase the chance by 2% units each. Direct exposure to source of infection, such as being bitten by an ill animal, eating stale food or presence of already diseased characters increases the chance by 5% units for each incident. Warm and humid weather increases the chance by 5% units. Travel through marshland or swamp increases the chance by 15% units.
4) if the check is failed, a character's disease counter goes up by 1, and the chance for next week is reset. If the check succeeds, a character's disease counter remains the same, but the chance keeps accumulating for the next week.
5) a week of rest with sufficient hydration and medication will lower a character's disease counter by 1, to minimum of 0.

You can substitute days for weeks if you want a faster based game. You can then tie the number on the disease counter to any detrimental game effects you want. For example, it could serve as % chance to suffer cardiac arrest during physical activity, or as source of hitpoint damage over time, or a general penalty to all activities.

[Quertus]

as for a 1st level party bringing back civilization, the first step is to have different sexes in the party...

I don't want to admit I kinda overlooked that bit, despite it being an issue in some Farming anime that was "required reading". :smallredface:


Without antibiotics, even a blister can be lethal. One of the USA's early presidents lost a son to a blister.

I've had numerous blisters without antibiotics, so this must be a rare occurrence, or require, you know, a huge area of blisters? I'll grant, even a small burn can be a vector for disease, but I didn't know the blisters themselves could kill. Scary.


Are you, as GM, expected to know the best choices for survival?

Ouch. That's a problem. My player hasn't exactly devoted a lot of my skill points to "Suvival". Which will make me adjudicating finicky details of survival... tricky,


So do you/your players want to describe narratively how they do things, in detail? I think that would require lots of knowledge by GM to adjudicate decisions - and the level of knowledge of the characters would necessarily match that of the players. Or, do you want to make fairly abstract decisions and let skill proficiencies and dice rolls decide the outcome? Or something in the middle? Different game systems provide different levels of granularity but in order to achieve verisimilitude, I think it would be good to understand what the players are looking for and whether it is possible to achieve it in any system.

I like to talk in terms of vectors - the decisions the player makes determines the direction, and the skill of the character determines the magnitude of the vector.

Put another way, first, the player needs to come up with a workable plan - trying to get eggs from a cow or milk a chicken just isn't gonna cut it. If they have a workable plan, then how well / how quickly / what odds they have to accomplish the task is determined by the character's skills/stats.

So if they try to increase the occurrences of amber gris by drilling holes in coastal trees, they may discover maple syrup, but it won't affect the odds they intended to influence.

From a more practical perspective, if some free-range chickens lay 5 eggs, how many of them can the character find how quickly, and what are the odds of any other consequences (like breaking one or more eggs, or getting a cut that might become infected) in the process? I want a system that's good at having that kind of conversation, and has good support to hang any necessary homebrew off of.

I'm hoping that, after a few 1-shots, the players will have the examples and vocabulary to be able to describe what they (do and don't) want out of the game, to have some more concrete foundations to discuss about this. For now, I'm looking at big-picture items, and trying to figure out what can go wrong.

Getting everyone on the same page about the level of detail vs narration certainly sounds important to avoid a lot of things going wrong.

[Tanarii]

The only games I've seen that really pulled off 'survival' were really more about planning ... ie expedition outfitting.

[Vahnavoi]

From a more practical perspective, if some free-range chickens lay 5 eggs, how many of them can the character find how quickly, and what are the odds of any other consequences (like breaking one or more eggs, or getting a cut that might become infected) in the process? I want a system that's good at having that kind of conversation, and has good support to hang any necessary homebrew off of.

No, you don't want that. You should instead focus on a system that allows easy and rapid placement of the characters, chickens and eggs and makes it easy to tell when the eggs would break.

Let me try to explain this using patience card games: Klondike solitaire is one of the most popular of them. The basic rules of gameplay are very easy to learn and shuffling the card deck gives a huge amount of different hands to play. Those are what give it appeal and replay value.

Counting the odds of winning a dealt hand? Hard enough problem to make professional mathematicians cry. The game is one of unknown information, a player doesn't even know if the hand dealt is winnable before flipping over some of the cards, and calculating the odds of winning may therefore be impossible without cheating.

To bring this back to survival, how much food and how fast the characters can find are best left as empirical questions to which the players have to search a solution. Trying to explicitly solve those questions as the game master is a waste of your time, you only need a rough estimate. The odds? You don't need to know the odds.

[Lacco]

Survival games! Woooo!

Okay, now that it's out of my system... there was a lot of good advice here, so I may regurgitate some, but will try to expand if possible. I usually run Riddle of Steel, and include survival scenarios, one-shots and adventures all the time. I also tried to run some survival-focused games here on the forum, but I am terrible at running games at forum.

Disclaimer: I will be using the Dwarf Fortress definition of fun in the whole text.


Also… currently, I’m looking at Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy, and D&D as possible systems in which to run this game. My current plan is to do a 1-shot in each, and see what the players have to say.

D&D is best suited to the 'Hunger Games' scenario.

For a survival game, the best systems are the ones where you have to balance combat abilities and skills (where you can put more points into skills, but it limits your combat abilities): so a game with separate combat and skill system may be fine, but will not be as good as one where you can get a skill monkey and a warrior that protects said monkey. If there is just one 'survival' skill, it will also limit the possibilities (e.g. Burning Wheel has a separate Firebuilding skill).

A good system for survival games will have wounds, diseases and poisons that will affect the player. Starvation, freezing to death, heat strikes and other fun things will also improve the experience. HP is a bit of an issue, as death spirals are a way to go in survival - regardless of how unpopular death spirals are, they are good for survival games.

In a survival scenario, ideally you want more issues than players can tackle.

So, sleeping in armor = you wake up tired. Being tired = you work slower. Working slower = no shelter. No shelter = you sleep in armor. Sleeping in armor = you wake up exhausted...

Blisters on foot are usually par for the course, but as someone who had to march with blisters on foot, grinding your heel and bleeding into your socks is very unpleasant and will make it harder to even put the boots back on.

And that's the next thing: the survivors should be relatively low-powered. I don't mean lvl 1 expert (ideally, no levels), but they should not be these heroic powerhouses that ignore pain and can sustain themselves with a piece of bread for two weeks.

Depending on the game your player want, I'd suggest starting with a limited area (e.g. lost in forest during heavy rain, flash flood cutting the path back, with some shelter ahead - last game I used an abandoned wayside tavern which included some bandits). If they want the 'expedition planning', the area can't be so limited, but should be easy to get lost in (outdated maps, confusing terrain, low visibility), hard to traverse (no roads, at best paths), with little to no assistance (e.g. no friendly farmers).

Deserted islands are great if your players agree with the premise. If they are like my previous RL gaming group and they trust you completely (to royally screw them over), then the best idea is to provide them with the 'expedition gear-up phase' and then just dump half of the stuff to the bottom of the ocean during tempest and dump them on the island.

Winter travel is also great: makes food less available, gives you the additional fun of frostbite, sparse to no forage, frozen or wet firewood, makes any terrain even harder to traverse... it just works well. However, there needs to be a good reason for the adventurers to even venture beyond city walls during winter.


Any thoughts, suggestions, advice, or cautionary tales?

I tend to provide shelter for the party; even if it is 'infested' at first and they have to clear out some bandits, I usually don't require them to build their own shelter. Water, food, heat, sleep, healing and safety should be all sufficient challenges. It also provides you with 'base' - so they don't usually decide to venture too far away. Limited areas are GM's friend in this case, as the loot, encounters and everything else can be easier to manage and more detailed.

Put them inside a location. Consider resources, add complications or restrictions.

Main rule of survival games for GMs (from me) is: everything has its cost. There is nothing free (except maybe for air). Cost can be manual labor, time, fatigue - but also can come in the form of complications, restrictions and other fun stuff.

Example:
Food. There is food, but a) raw (needs to be prepared, cooked, roasted or even butchered) b) limited (most of the food is rotten, some is spoiled, requires separating and maybe some work to sort through it) c) protected (e.g. there is an apiary outside - honey is good, bees are bad; there is a beautiful meadow with gorgeous [read: tasty] deer, but local wolves frequent it too, the cellar has food and wine but if you open it, you invite the rats that live in the cellar... that is, if you can unlock the robust cellar door).

Water. The well is dirty (requires boiling the water), the bucket leaks and the rope is rotten. The small spring nearby gives out a pint per hour and is frequented by local wildlife. Wine's in the cellar (raaaats and key). In case of winter, lack of dry firewood makes boiling the water you have a bit complicated.

Sleep. Fatigue should be a thing and should contribute to the death spiral (there should be levels of fatigue and different effects). Sleep can be a problem if there is a rat infestation, no comfortable beds mean less fatigue gets removed, cold or damp clothes will make sleep rather unpleasant.

Safety. The door is broken, most windows are boarded but not all of them, some are just gaping holes. You want to patch the holes, but that takes time, material, effort and skill - and if you don't patch them, you won't be able to get the heat up, you won't be able to sleep well... you get the drift.

Magic and divine magic can be used to great effect as additional complication. If the system handles things like background count (Shadowrun; 'magical pollution', makes it harder to cast spells if you are different type of magician, can be cleansed) or dedicated domains (e.g. cleric of death marks the area as his domain, other domains/opposing domains get additional difficulty for rolls), it's a good thing to implement.

Heat... well, firebuilding is a skill. And while most characters will be able to make a simple campfire, it takes time to heat up an abandoned house. Comfortable warm clothes may also become more important than quality armor in some cases.

So: nothing comes for free, complications are a good price and your resources are often restricted or even temporary.



Now, that was a braindump from my side.

Regarding the chicken debate: you have three chicken.
If you have a character with "Cook" skill, you can prepare a tasty chicken even with subpar equipment. One chicken = one meal for 2 people that will take them through the day without them starving.
One chicken lays - at best - one egg a day. If it's well fed, in a good condition and in the exact age it needs to be.
So if you have a four character party, you have to decide: do you eat two of them to feed your folks and keep the third one? Or do you try to get some other food so you get 1d4-1 eggs per day?

Okay, dear starving characters. You had your omelette, the cook rushed it due to fatigue and starving penalties, now roll for salmonella :smallbiggrin:.



EDIT: @Vahnavoi: Nice disease system! Simple and stremlined. I like that.

The disease system I tend to use works a bit different, mainly due to the dice pool system I use, I don't deal with percentages but with roll difficulty/target numbers. I have found that for specifically games that require tracking of conditions on three axes (plural of axis?), I get good results with d10 dice pools. Target number is how contagious the specific disease is (very contagious diseases have a high target number). Ability to resist the disease (e.g. Health or Vigor attribute) determines the dice pool. Difficulty to resist is set by the amount of successes that are required to beat the contagion check. Dice pool is increased if there are positive modifiers (e.g. good bed, warm food, medication), difficulty is increased in case of negative modifiers (e.g. exertion, sleeping on the ground).

If you get contaminated, your immune system has to succeed on two separate rolls against another target number/difficulty; every time you fail, your symptoms get worse.

It requires some work, but since it's medieval fantasy scenario/game, I don't need too many sicknesses, only several types of basic ones that get modified symptoms. At one point I was thinking about creating a randomized sickness generator, but I decided to save the idea for later...

[Silly Name]

Of all the systems I've played, the one I found to be the best at running "survival scenarios" has been Sine Requie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_Requie): the setting itself may not be what you're looking for (as it's very, very peculiar), although the Lost Lands portion of the setting naturally lends itself to survival gameplay;
The latest edition (the third one) is honestly fantastic. It's dark, gritty, death comes about easily but never feels undeserved. Characters are mostly assumed to ultimately be normal human beings, perhaps with military or academical training and sometimes with good equipment based on profession and rank, and even the rare "lucky" fellow who has been blessed by some occult powers isn't a D&D-style wizard slinging fireballs around: you may end up having a "sixth sense" that helps you perceive the supernatural, or some limited form of telepathy, maybe even a bit of pyrokinesis...

The system is entirely skill-based: whenever a character wants to attempt an action, the GM tells the player to draw a card from either the deck (for most actions, whereas the Major Arcana are reserved for some special actions or situations), and if the card drawn has a value equal or lower to the skill rank + related ability score of the character, the action is a success. Figures follow special rules (Jack = Automatic Failure, Queen = Success with a Downside, King = Failure with a Downside). If the character has no skill ranks related to the action, the card is drawn against their most applicable ability score divided by half (e.g., a character with no ranks in Weapon: Rifles trying to shoot a rifle draws a card against half their Aim score, whereas a character with even just one rank in Weapon: Rifles draws a card against their skill rank + their Aim).

Characters (and enemies!) can get wounded, mutilated, infected, poisoned...

The one issue is that, as far as I can tell, there exists no official English translation of any version of the game, which I suspect is at least partly due to the nature of its dystopian setting scaring off international publishers.

[Quertus]

While I hope to circle back to it later, I want to thank everyone for the ideas for survival one-shots, and survival campaigns in general. I think, once we get through the general system introduction phase, I’ll run a survival one-shot in the prospective system(s), and likely use these ideas in the one-shot or subsequent campaign.

I’ll look over some of these systems, with an eye towards adding them to the initial one-shot rotation.

Ultimately, I expect the players and I will homebrew some mods to whatever system we choose, and I’ve already begun some world building for potential drop zones.

But once we’ve tried out a few systems, I’ll let everyone know what the players had to say about their desired experience.

[stoutstien]

I'd toss mork Borg on the list if you are comfortable with rule light systems. Basic rules are free and for survival focused games it actually functions quite well once you get over the shock that it's normal to die often. (Adjustable in that regard)

[oxybe]

Big enough leaves from particularly big trees can be used for shelter.

The more accurate answer is insulation. Dried leaves, moss, twigs, etc... allow you to raise your body off direct contact the ground floor, in addition to providing some level of comfort. If there's one thing the ground (esp cold and/or wet ground) is REALLY good at doing at night, is sucking the heat out of your warm meat sack. it's not the most comfortable rest, but if you can collect a big enough pile, it should help stave off some heat loss.

For gameplay based around survival I would add "keep track of time".

I've become a bit more fussy about doing so behind the scenes myself so it's something I'm familiar with.

Assuming the gameworld's planet is about as big as ours and the climates are similar too, i would recommend finding a location IRL that matches up with the place you're dropping your players off. You can get a surprising amount of valuable GM data this way: I tend to put my games in a north east america type setting, IE where I live IRL. I then find metorological data.

This nets me sunrise & sunset times, as well average temperatures for each month throughout the year. I tossed in the phases of the moon, because those are cyclical and easy to track, as well as a seasonal weather generator to use to pregen in case players get access to stuff to predict the weather and you'll basically have a season or even a year's worth of data to pull from, pre-generated ahead of time.

It may sound like a lot of GM work beforehand and it sort of is, but it's all stuff you can do behind the scenes in bulk and have on hand for immediate use depending on how fast players are doing things.

One option would be to look at the AD&D Wilderness Survival Guide for ideas. I would NEVER play it note for note, but if you're looking to mine a book for survival gameplay stuff, this is definitely an option.

[Pauly]

My interest is survival is more in the literary form than in the gaming form. My comments are based more on what works in books than anything else.

- The central struggle is the struggle between resources expended (energy, heat, sweat, time) and resources acquired (chiefly food, water, shelter, rescue). The protagonist needs to acquire resources faster than expended. Although early on it may be that resources will be expended faster as they build a base/acquire skills.

- There is a cycle of grind -> payoff -> crisis.

- once a skill has been acquired (eg learning how to fish) let it become automated and happen off screen. The interesting part is in the challenge to acquire the skill/build the tool not using that skill/tool.

- A crisis may or may not come with some kind of payoff. Don’t make all crises only be a disaster to be avoided (this is my main criticism of The Martian as the crises only increased the difficulty level). For example in Robinson Crusoe the crisis of the headhunters came with the benefit of finding an ally in Man Friday once it was successfully cleared.

- there is a goal/win condition. That win condition is not survival it is surviving long enough for rescue/escape.

- I know many computer survival games use an element of exploration to solve a mystery to keep interest up and to give the players a reason to keep continuing.

A really useful link is
https://youtu.be/lcsZHOD9P8E
The Bush Tucker Man is a series where the Australian Army’s survival expert shares his experience/knowledge on how to survive in the rough parts of Oz.