Long-term survival rules?

[loverdrive]

So I'm running an organized play. Season One ended with an epic three-table game where PCs barely clutched a bitter victory. The town is in ruins, hundreds are dead, even more are wounded, and winter is approaching.

How would you approach making long-term town-wide survival rules? What systems do it well?

 

[Micah Sweet]

So I'm running an organized play. Season One ended with an epic three-table game where PCs barely clutched a bitter victory. The town is in ruins, hundreds are dead, even more are wounded, and winter is approaching.

How would you approach making long-term town-wide survival rules? What systems do it well?

I would make use of Kevin Crawford's Ashes Without Number settlement rules. The base game including these rules is free on DriveThruRPG, and like the rest of his work it really is excellent, especially for worldbuilding and exploration-based play.

 

[payn]

I like Forbidden Lands use of supply die. It felt both like supplies were limited but also dispensed with the painstaking process of tracking every morsel and gram of supplies. I think the concept could be scaled up to a community level. Im also starting to think of the board game Dead of Winter and how narrative aspects lead right into the supply issues and survival of the game. Plenty to mine from there.

 

[Umbran]

So I'm running an organized play. Season One ended with an epic three-table game where PCs barely clutched a bitter victory. The town is in ruins, hundreds are dead, even more are wounded, and winter is approaching.

How would you approach making long-term town-wide survival rules? What systems do it well?

My first thought would be to adapt The Quiet Year, though that isn't really about survival, per se.

My second thought is nor to pick up a full ruleset, but to set up several skill challenges, focused on the town's needs to get through either the winter, or through to the next harvest. Like - Food, Water, Shelter, Clothing, Health, etc. Failures on a challenge mean a loss of some percentage of the remaining population...

 

[Micah Sweet]

My first thought would be to adapt The Quiet Year, though that isn't really about survival, per se.

My second thought is nor to pick up a full ruleset, but to set up several skill challenges, focused on the town's needs to get through either the winter, or through to the next harvest. Like - Food, Water, Shelter, Clothing, Health, etc. Failures on a challenge mean a loss of some percentage of the remaining population...

The Quiet Year is an excellent tool for worldbuilding before a campaign begins, if collaboration at that stage between the GM and the players is desired by all. I've used it that way twice, including in my current Level Up post-apocalyptic campaign, inspired by its use in the podcast The Adventure Zone.

 

[loverdrive]

I like Forbidden Lands use of supply die. It felt both like supplies were limited but also dispensed with the painstaking process of tracking every morsel and gram of supplies. I think the concept could be scaled up to a community level. Im also starting to think of the board game Dead of Winter and how narrative aspects lead right into the supply issues and survival of the game. Plenty to mine from there.

Ideally I look for something complex and with a lot of moving parts, so I can use it as a separate subsystem.

Like, structurally, I want the game to work like:

• During a session, players go adventuring to secure some big resource (hunt a giant beast—gather rare medicinal herbs—beg spirits of the forest for help)
• Between sessions (online or after the session), players manage town resources and decide which missions to undertake, with some sort of random event table, like "oh no! flu epidemic!" or "scouts found an abandoned coal mine!"
• The two halves feed into each other, but only one is "active" at a time

 

[aco175]

I would also have a subsystem where someone rolls 2d6 or 2d10 to get really bad stuff to mostly average stuff to really good stuff happens. Have mini-quests for the PCs to do things to help the town survive. Have a chart to track the things like getting food or oil or making peace with the locals and such to show where they are on the making through the winter. Let the players come up with ideas.

 

[LordBP]

If the harvest has already occurred and the food stores were destroyed, then the survivors would be leaving the town and going to other towns (usually relatives).

If you are talking hundreds of survivors, the amount of food (2-3 pounds of grain per person per day, 3000-5000 calories) is going to be the main driver of any adventure. Even something the size of a mammoth (10,000 lbs of meat) would probably only last 4-7 days for 500 people.