Playing "Adventurers" As Actual Adventurers

[Micah Sweet]

"Oregon Trail" definitely needs to be only part of the gameplay loop. Oregon trail makes things interesting by having river crossings, resupply opportunities, and other fixed events along the way. When doing long overland travel I like to break it up with fixed encounters ("lairs") as well as random encounters, weather, and mishaps. It's also important to give changing color to give a sense of space and motion and two or three sentences to give the players a sense of where they are. Terrain can be at least as fantastic as any real-world terrain. I try to imagine the players crossing the scenic equivalent multiple national parks, splitting up descriptions across multiple events - establishing shots, random encounters, lairs, etc. Each with two or three sentences and most with some encounter opportunity or signpost.

I still don't have exposure damage rules I'm fully satisfied with. Long term exposure to cold and heat should be draining or debilitating, but you both want to minimize rolls and also be able to deal with things like the difference between 4 hours of exposure and 12 hours of exposure and 24 hours of exposure (in arctic or volcanic caves, for example). Tables in my experience work best but its really hard to come up with something that scales damage to the level of the character without being unrealistically lethal to low level characters or a trivial time waster to high level characters. Realistically damage ought to scale per HD but then this gets to be extremely complex in a hurry. I used rules of a mid to high level party traversing a steaming jungle where PCs typically lost 10-20 hit points from heat exhaustion over the course of the day (but could recover them by taking a short rest out of the heat), but it always bothered me that the rules weren't truly applicable to 1st level characters or say a rodent.

The rules for journeys in several games (mentioned by me above) do a great job of handling stuff like that as exploration challenges.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, and planing is 90% of job. But it's rather boring as game play loop. Once you start your journey, you might as well play Oregon Trail. You make skill roll, dm makes roll on weather/mishap table. Time passes, you check supplies, rinse, repeat.

This is the whole point. Stories of survival against insurmountable odds are inherently dramatic. Except in TTRPGs, it seems.

It depends how the RPG structures play.

Rolling dice against a "random attrition table" is apt to be relatively uninteresting. But there are other ways to frame the declaration and resolution of actions in an exploration-oriented RPG.

 

[Reynard]

Rolling dice against a "random attrition table" is apt to be relatively uninteresting. But there are other ways to frame the declaration and resolution of actions in an exploration-oriented RPG.

Which is what I am hoping to hear about.

 

[GrimCo]

I'm thinking more what would play loop look like for long campaign (say 15-20 sessions, 3-4 hours each). Sure, planing is fun, preparations, info gathering, supplies, getting funding, whole shebang. But once expedition starts and you boldly go where no man has gone before. Most expeditions were uneventful, tedious and boring. Long stretches of walking or sailing, with nothing interesting or noteworthy happening, mixed with discomfort, occasional injury or disease that put you out of comission from few days to well, forever ( and playing out dysentery or scurvy isn't really fun), ocassional bad weather that forces you to stay put and just wait, while supplies you brought shrink. Long stretches of boredom, occasional bursts of crisis, and the constant fear that you’ll die from something stupid in horrible way like eating something spoiled or drinking contaminated water and shitting yourself to death (cholera, dysentery).

Now, if someone likes that, cool. But most people i know, want games to be fun, they want player agency, they want ability to influence outcomes, to be active participants, not just reactive to what world throws at them. It can work, when it's focused on the interpersonal drama, tension and conflicts.

 

[The Firebird]

Which is what I am hoping to hear about.

For a traditional dungeon crawling system, I feel like the format is basically 'solved' in that there are a set of rules that the majority of systems use with minor adaptation. I mean concepts like:

-Characters have classes and levels
-Characters have hit points and HD determined by their class.
-Random encounters are generated as a way to impose time pressure
-Attacks are made by rolling a d20 vs a target number.

I do not mean to say this is the only way to do these tasks. But the majority of systems that want to accomplish these tasks use a relatively similar variant and that works well for many players. (I hope that is enough caveats).

I think that for expedition play we've never arrived on a similar set of rules. For example, for tracking food and water:

-Do we track them explicitly by weight?
-Do we abstract somewhat to gear slots?
-Do we use a fully abstracted supply system, like supply as hp? (I haven't played Level Up. Does it land here?)

It feels to me that if I want to design a d&d variant, the dungeon crawling rules are really easy to make my own twist on. The expedition rules are much harder because I'm not sure where to begin.

Please object if you think this is wrong. I am just thinking out loud. There are probably errors.

Is there anything like a taxonomy of expedition rules?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

These are some interesting books to read if you want to find out how bad things can go in the mountains.

https://www.amazon.com/Accidents-North-American-Climbing-2025/dp/B0DYSDQBR4

Things can go badly- VERY badly- anywhere in the wilderness. Ask the guy who had to cut his own arm off after he got trapped by a falling rock, people who dissolved in hot springs, people who were in or entered depressions that filled with certain invisible gasses, the dude in Nutty Putty cave, the couple who were eaten by the bears they lived near, or the Donner Party that was 81 strong. 80. 78. 72. 67…

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Rolling dice against a "random attrition table" is apt to be relatively uninteresting. But there are other ways to frame the declaration and resolution of actions in an exploration-oriented RPG.

I’d use a skill system. Each environmental threat prompts rolls against relevant skills. Only critical failures/successes would automatically result in fatalities or no consequences (or even boons)- every other result gives bonuses or negative modifiers as things play out.

If everyone is playing multiple PCs (as I posited before), the question becomes one of whether the PCs results are individual or aggregated for the team. Is there an “assisting” mechanism, or are all the PCs only looking out for themselves. (I’m leaning towards making teamwork matter, but individual modifiers are key as well.)

 

[pemerton]

Which is what I am hoping to hear about.

So one thing is: how is adversity introduced, as a component of the fiction?

I think play tends to be more interesting if adversity is introduced as a response to failed rolls by players: this means that action declarations tend to have clear stakes, and aren't just "roll to avoid attrition".

There's a further question about whether adversity as a response to failure is done done "no myth", or rather is based on prep (eg AW-esque fronts). Different approaches to this will (for instance) inform how actions to obtain information and make plans are resolved.

most people i know, want games to be fun, they want player agency, they want ability to influence outcomes, to be active participants, not just reactive to what world throws at them. It can work, when it's focused on the interpersonal drama, tension and conflicts.

In the fiction, it might be "what the world throws at them". But that doesn't mean that, in the play of the game, it can't be closely connected to player agency (ie players' action declarations for their PCs).

 

[LordBP]

For a traditional dungeon crawling system, I feel like the format is basically 'solved' in that there are a set of rules that the majority of systems use with minor adaptation. I mean concepts like:

-Characters have classes and levels
-Characters have hit points and HD determined by their class.
-Random encounters are generated as a way to impose time pressure
-Attacks are made by rolling a d20 vs a target number.

I do not mean to say this is the only way to do these tasks. But the majority of systems that want to accomplish these tasks use a relatively similar variant and that works well for many players. (I hope that is enough caveats).

I think that for expedition play we've never arrived on a similar set of rules. For example, for tracking food and water:

-Do we track them explicitly by weight?
-Do we abstract somewhat to gear slots?
-Do we use a fully abstracted supply system, like supply as hp? (I haven't played Level Up. Does it land here?)

It feels to me that if I want to design a d&d variant, the dungeon crawling rules are really easy to make my own twist on. The expedition rules are much harder because I'm not sure where to begin.

Please object if you think this is wrong. I am just thinking out loud. There are probably errors.

Is there anything like a taxonomy of expedition rules?

I think you would have to have an idea in real life what each would be and then try to abstract it to a game rule.

For water.
You need around 1 gallon of water per day per person for temperate temps and a moderate level of work.
If it's hot, then you would need more water (2-3 gallons per day per person or more) and perhaps additional salt.
If it's really cold (low humidity levels), then you would need more water (2-3 gallons per day per person or more).
Water weighs around 8 lbs per gallon, so you need anywhere from 8-24 lbs of water per person per day.
For food.
You need around 3,200 calories per day per person for temperate temps and a moderate level of work.
If you are doing very strenuous work or it's very cold, then the calories may be as high as 6,400 per day or more.
If you are doing very little work, then the calories may be as low as 2,000 per day.
A pound of grain has around 1,600 calories, so you are looking at anywhere from 1.25-4 lbs of food per person per day.
Other foods usually have less calories per pound than grain unless they are high in fat, but then spoilage may be an issue.

So, for an expedition of a party of 6 adventurers for a weeks travel across an arctic desert with no known water/food sources, you would need to have around 1,008 lbs of water and 168 lbs of food. You would need some way to cook the food and boil the water, so you would need to carry some fuel source (you might be able to carry just fuel if there is snow/ice and melt it at each stop). The fuel source would need to be something that wouldn't have issues igniting at low temps.

If you have pack animals to carry the above water/food (not to mention other items like camping equipment, cooking equipment, etc), then you have to factor in additional water/food for them which may require additional pack animals to carry that water/food.

 

[The Firebird]

I think you would have to have an idea in real life what each would be and then try to abstract it to a game rule.

For water.
You need around 1 gallon of water per day per person for temperate temps and a moderate level of work.
If it's hot, then you would need more water (2-3 gallons per day per person or more) and perhaps additional salt.
If it's really cold (low humidity levels), then you would need more water (2-3 gallons per day per person or more).
Water weighs around 8 lbs per gallon, so you need anywhere from 8-24 lbs of water per person per day.
For food.
You need around 3,200 calories per day per person for temperate temps and a moderate level of work.
If you are doing very strenuous work or it's very cold, then the calories may be as high as 6,400 per day or more.
If you are doing very little work, then the calories may be as low as 2,000 per day.
A pound of grain has around 1,600 calories, so you are looking at anywhere from 1.25-4 lbs of food per person per day.
Other foods usually have less calories per pound than grain unless they are high in fat, but then spoilage may be an issue.

So, for an expedition of a party of 6 adventurers for a weeks travel across an arctic desert with no known water/food sources, you would need to have around 1,008 lbs of water and 168 lbs of food. You would need some way to cook the food and boil the water, so you would need to carry some fuel source (you might be able to carry just fuel if there is snow/ice and melt it at each stop). The fuel source would need to be something that wouldn't have issues igniting at low temps.

If you have pack animals to carry the above water/food (not to mention other items like camping equipment, cooking equipment, etc), then you have to factor in additional water/food for them which may require additional pack animals to carry that water/food.

I agree that is the starting point. My question is--how do we do that mechanically? Are the players tracking lbs of food/water, and food/water quality, and activity level, and weather effects? The Wilderness Survival Guide tried to do some of this and ended up being too complex for most players.

If you abstract, what do you abstract and how? Source of the Nile has you track rations with the rule '1 person eats 1 ration per turn'. It doesn't track water; it just says you can't stay in a hex without water. (At least when I played. I understand there may be more complex rules in the full game?)

For my system, I said each unit eats 1 unit of food weekly and 1/2 a unit of water daily, with the water subject to multipliers by DM fiat. For me, '1 unit' corresponding to ~10 lb. That is pretty generous with the food but I liked the ease of calculation. Then I use a gear slot system (like Shadowdark), with every expedition member carrying 10 units.