Ideas needed for a fantasy survival series

[Wolfx]

I am in the process of starting a series of games, and I want the overall feel and theme to be survival. The outpost where it begins is about to fall to the encroaching hoards and the characters must escape and aid the remaining settlers. They must travel through the wilderness to get to the nearest major city which is at least one month of steady travel.

My problem is I don't want it to just involve defending the caravan from the monster of the week, but I didn't want yet another dungeon crawl or quest for mighty magic treasure. I wanted something different. I just don't know how many options there are for this type of thing.

I have come up with a couple for now:

1. Slave traders follow the group and begin grabbing the weaker members during the night. Hopefully with the characters trying to follow them in order to rescue the lost members of the caravan.

2. Running into a sacred bog/glen and dealing with the protectors either in a diplomatic way or in a violent way depending on what I place there.

3. Standard long trek through the wilderness stuff. Lack of food, losing the trail or getting lost, weather problems and other such stuff.

I would appreciate any ideas or suggestions.

 

[Lugh]

Slave traders are always a good idea. Especially if you give them a bit of a boost, like the ability to fly. When the characters wise up, and start tightening up on security, have people continue to disappear. It quickly becomes apparent that there is a traitor in the caravan, who is effectively selling people he doesn't like to the slavers.

If your group is up for it, you can also really play up the less combat-oriented aspects. Hunting, negotiating with villages, dealing with whiners in the group, becoming enamored of one person in the caravan, etc.

Another interesting possibility is to introduce the possibility of treasure. From the beginning, have rumours float through the caravan that you are passing very close to, say, White Plume Mountain. A vast dwarven treasure is said to be there, locked behind nothing more dangerous than a rockfall. If someone could only find the secret back entrance to the hall, they would have riches beyond their wildest dreams. Naturally, this will pique the interest of the players. But, they have a caravan to care for. At least, until three young boys decide that they can find the treasure, and start heading up the mountain. It might be interesting to see adventurers have to be the responsible ones, and say that there are more important things than treasure.

 

[d4]

sounds like a fantasy version of Battlestar Galactica.

 

[Voneth]

Well for old school there is Dark Sun, and for new school there is Midnight AND in non-d20 there is the Savage World's Evernight game where PCs are eventually forced to eat mashed rat and troll livers ... now that is fantasy survival!!

Most of these games seem to have bookkeeping on supplies, very tough opponets, and rules for what happens when starving, tired PCs try to fight. Similar settings also have rules for permanent injuries and how they affect players.

Perhpas another change in philsophy is to allow PC death. I know a lot of GMs feel they have to keep the PC alive, no matter what. But in a survival-type game, you have to let the dice roll where they may. In fact ...

I had an old GM give me this advice, "Always give them tougher opponents that what's in an adventure, always roll your dice out where everyone can see them and let PCs die. Then you'll always get a reputation for being a hard, but fair GM. And they will come to you in droves."

 

[Macbeth]

Make the most use you can out of the rules for weather in the DMG. I recently ran a single adventure that delt with surviving on a frozen tundra. By the time the PCs had made it through a few days of starvation and cold weather a few animals proved to be a reasonable challenge in combat.