D&D 5E 7 Days to D&D

[TaranTheWanderer]

For a 7 day time frame, Base building works well at higher levels: Fabricate, Stone Shape, Wall of Stone etc...

There is Move Earth which would be useful too. But, the problem with that is they're all spells and you want your 'crafters' in the party to help too!

My advice is change the time to 1 month. That's 4 weeks (maybe a 10 day week) of 'adventuring' to find resources and allies and return them to your home base and upgrade your base.

I'd start with a simple base: maybe it's a small village or a cave (if you all play goblins!). You make small forays into a nearby forest to secure an area and you reinforce it and make it safe enough for NPCs to come and gather materials. Maybe you find survivors who have specific specializations that give you extra upgrades. Crafting skills that PCs own give you the potential to upgrade stuff quicker and at less of a cost.

So, essentially, for 1 or two weeks of the month, it's a survival/exploration game where you find NPCs and resources (clear those mines out so you can get your miners in). Then, the other 2 weeks is building your fort. Which is just a mini-game so you don't spend lots of in-game time on it. Assign points to upgrades. Finding NPCs and having appropriate crafting skills and tools unlocks upgrades and makes upgrades cheaper. Finding resources through adventuring gives you points (maybe use the xp table for your points so, as they level up, they are also tracking points) that go towards the upgrades. If you use milestone leveling, xp can be used purely for leveling your town.

So, it'd be a bit of work to figure out the system, but once done, you can just play a post-apocalyptic D&D game.

Lots of opportunities for social encounters too. You find a rival town but they don't want to join you but they have a blacksmith so you have to convince them to join you - or kidnap them! Or maybe a rival kidnaps a bunch of your labour while you're out adventuring and you have to rescue them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

EDIT: just be sure to use weapon or item breakage/use rules. Magic items dont recharge. Even Lingering wounds could be a nice addition. Slow Natural Healing or Gritty Rest can be used: any long rest spell you use when scavenging wont be back in time for the Red Moon!

Until you get access to duct tape repair kits and cooking, which if you haven't by the second horde night, you kind of deserve to die.

 

[dave2008]

So I’ve become slightly obsessed with the computer game 7 Days to Die, which was sold to me as Minecraft for adults… and boy does it deliver.

There are a couple of key ingredients. My question is, could these be applied to a D&D campaign to evoke the same feelings.

• The world is post apocalyptic - a zombie plague has destroyed civilization and there are very few survivors
• Zombies in the daytime take on a variety of forms and behave in different ways. Most are relatively slow but can do a fair bit of damage when they get up close. Most can be dispatched at range. Occasionally a struck a zombie turns feral, or begins feral and can sprint and attack faster.
• At night, all Zombies turn feral and sprint. It’s very easy to be ganged up on at night. They can also get a feral sense which means they always know where players are.
• There a traders that reward completion of quests with improved resources. They also barter for resources and tools.
• The whole world can be interacted with for resources. Players can learn skills to be better at adapting these skills and can learn recipes for new tools.
• You can build with various materials of increasing toughness but the game used redimentary physics. Unsupported structures collapse damaging anything or anyone on them as they do. Zombies can and will attack supports if they can’t get to the player.
• Here is the killer… in the evening of every 7th day when the sun goes down, the moon turns blood red and waves of dozens of feral zombies spawn in and attack the player… if they can’t reach the player they will keep attacking whatever is in its way until it brings the object and the player down. The more weeks that pass the bigger this horde gets with tougher enemies too.

Essentially the game is to collect enough resources in the 7 days to defend yourself on the blood moon.

My question is… could this be the structure of a D&D campaign…

… discuss!

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That sounds pretty awesome and I think it could work.

There was a 4e adventure which was similar, but on a much smaller scale. You had to survive a night in a church/temple (IIRC) as waves of undead tried to get to you. There were skill challenges and investigation needed to make it through the night and, IIRC, the undead got more powerful as the night wore on. I ran it for my group and it was a lot of fun.

 

[dave2008]

Won't work with 5e. Not unless you gut the system. Primarily for reasons Clint cited above.

Actually it could work well with variant rest, recovery, and possibly lingering injury rules. One week recharge vs 1 day recharge works well with the blood moon concept.

 

[TheSword]

In D&D it sounds like the dread domain of Falkovnia in the 5th Ed of Ravenloft setting.

About survival in D&D I imagine something like Dark Sun. Maybe the PCs are Athasian survivors who have built a camp near Kalidnay, but there is a planar rift toward the "Endless Night"(Shadowfell).

Falkovnia is a really good shout. The Dark Powers would explain the unusual behavior of the zombies. Driven to seek out the living when the blood moon rises.

 

[TheSword]

Actually it could work well with variant rest, recovery, and possibly lingering injury rules. One week recharge vs 1 day recharge works well with the blood moon concept.

Yes, I think having to decide between using your powers to prepare for horde night or use on horde night would be a real challenge!