Survival Roleplaying Games?

[gunnar11]

Hey there, I had a really easy question for you (I hope)

Are there any tabletop RPG's that are about Survival?
No fighting monsters or outsiders, just surviving in the wilderness?
Or perhaps just having to fight hungry wolves or something, but with the focus totally on survival?

Thanks in advance ^^

[The Dark Fiddler]

The closest systems I can think of are Don't Rest Your Head and Dread (also known as "that game where the dice are replaced by Jenga"). They're not that close, though, because they're both designed for more psychological and horror type games... still, they've both got an "inevitable death" feel (a bit less so in DRYH, I think, but that's also the only one I've ever played), if that's the type of survival you're looking for.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

GURPS sounds like the one for the job.

[rorikdude12]

GURPS 4e even has rules for sunburn.

[Nepenthe]

Mouse Guard could manage it.

[mjlush]

Hey there, I had a really easy question for you (I hope)

Are there any tabletop RPG's that are about Survival?
No fighting monsters or outsiders, just surviving in the wilderness?
Or perhaps just having to fight hungry wolves or something, but with the focus totally on survival?

Thanks in advance ^^

Do you actually need a system? Initially you'll need a dice rolls to determine how successful hunting/gathering is. But the players are going to rapidly move to
farming then it becomes questions like:-

How much land can one person till, how many calories does that land produce how much food does one person need to eat, what materials are available for tool making. Perhaps a simple skill system to determine if someone has the knowledge to say make bronze tools but you need little more than that

[gunnar11]

Do you actually need a system? Initially you'll need a dice rolls to determine how successful hunting/gathering is. But the players are going to rapidly move to
farming then it becomes questions like:-

How much land can one person till, how many calories does that land produce how much food does one person need to eat, what materials are available for tool making. Perhaps a simple skill system to determine if someone has the knowledge to say make bronze tools but you need little more than that

It's more that I want to run a game completely focused on surviving in the jungle. I think the D&D rules are too shallow for this kind of RP.
In D&D you just roll survival or search (tracking) for everything. I'm in search of a system that actually is all about surviving.

And if there isn't one, I'm keen on making one.

[mjlush]

It's more that I want to run a game completely focused on surviving in the jungle. I think the D&D rules are too shallow for this kind of RP.
In D&D you just roll survival or search (tracking) for everything. I'm in search of a system that actually is all about surviving.

And if there isn't one, I'm keen on making one.

There isn't one ... your best bet is GURPS, your players will spend hours creating characters and agonizing over points balance (1), then in game they will probably roll skills about 2-3 times per session... probably between them.

What you will probably end up with is a pissing match between players as to who can display the most detained knowledge regarding jungle survival and the day to day lives of indigenous 'Jungle tribes'.

The thing is there are IMHO two options: players who are not especially knowledgeable who will spend a lot of time making Survival(Jungle) (2) rolls and players who are knowledgeable who use that knowledge to avoid making Survival(Jungle) skill checks.
The former kind of player will probably forget to turn up after the second session the latter will use Google to upgrade their knowledge and you had better do the same

I do speak from experience, though in my case it was pseudo Roman agriculture, trade and politics.. I not saying that it was not fun, but a lot of the fun was avoiding making rolls by fast talking the GM.

(1) they will probably end up using the 'talent' advantage to get a wide range of mid level skills
(2) OK OK you can make it exciting by asking for botany, tracking and trap making rolls
but its still a pretty small pool of skills your using.

[Ozreth]

AD&D

[LibraryOgre]

The original version of Palladium's "Beyond the Supernatural" had what they called "victim rules"... you played a standard person in an old-school horror movie. If you died? Well, you rolled up another Victim.

[Jack of Spades]

AD&D

In seriousness, AD&D is the only system where I've even heard stories of a campaign working out the way you're describing. In the end a lot of players just don't want to see rules that fiddly and complex. They'd just rather use the abstraction of skill rolls.

If anyone can find anything like this, though, I will be downloading it in a heartbeat.

A big problem with looking for something like this is that the more obscure an RPG is, the more free-form it tends to be. So something with that much crunch will be difficult to dig up (at least using the sites that I follow).

[Grod_The_Giant]

Fate? You can write your own skill list, there are very good guidelines for creating stunts, and the system's very good for roleplaying, which I suspect will wind up being the main attraction in a game like this. (Given that most of the "action" will be skill checks)

[The Dark Fiddler]

Fate? You can write your own skill list, there are very good guidelines for creating stunts, and the system's very good for roleplaying, which I suspect will wind up being the main attraction in a game like this. (Given that most of the "action" will be skill checks)

Hmm... Fate isn't exactly made for games like these, but there aren't any systems that are, really. I suppose taking a rules-light, generic system like Fate and tweaking it would be the best solution. Thinking about it, I could see Fate working well with the right tweaking.