Playing "Adventurers" As Actual Adventurers

[GrimCo]

I was thinking more in terms of how to make fun game play experience in mid to long term campaign from something that can in lot of cases be pretty monotonous and uneventful. Ironically, for fun games, you want things to go sideways. That's where drama and conflict arises. Most interesting reads about expeditions are ones where everything went wrong and they still somehow managed it or fumbled catastrophically and died (but someone found journals and records).

Most times, planing and preparation part is most proactive and fun part from game play view, but how long can you stretch that part? Maybe 2-3 sessions tops ( i'm thinking about standard 3-4 hour sessions). Also, you need to make that planing and prep work detached from player skill/knowledge and base it on character skill and knowledge so Bob the accountant, who never set foot outside urban area, can participate and enjoy.

Couple of years ago, i watched yt video where one guy from my home country went by foot from capital to seaside. It's about 220km and it took him 5-6 days walking alone trough the country. Video is 23 minutes. Interesting to watch for beautiful scenery along the way, but nothing really happens, he walks, shares his thoughts and that's it. Converting something like that, which is both interesting experience to undertake and to watch, to something that's fun to play out at the table, is hard. And honestly, i don't know how to do it, except maybe trough pure shared narration.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are a lot of good thoughts in this post. I am intrigued by the idea, if I may rephrase, that "RPGs cannot replicate experiences which are primarily about vertigo". (I like the term vertigo because it fits into Caillois' classification).

That seems right to me. There are games that combine vertigo with other aspects, like competition or strategy. Baseball or football, for example. There are ways to make baseball games. They either focus on the chance/strategy aspect (Strat O Matic) or try to give you the feeling of vertigo via a video game or something. I suppose the video games are more popular for football and the strategy more for baseball.

So, a successful game that models mountain climbing has to focus on the aspects other than vertigo...and there are not many. That argument seems right to me.

But, a successful expedition game has more to go on. There is strategy (do I press on through the storm or take shelter?), there is chance (will I discover a large waterfall here?) there can be competition (will we reach the goal before our opponents?). I think you have to emphasize those rather than experience of being a climber.


I both agree and disagree with this. I think you're right about hit points, that there are probably no fundamental improvements forthcoming there (that's what I meant earlier by saying dungeon crawling is 'solved'). But I think there is room for improvement elsewhere. The narrative movement in particular has made great advances with Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. (Most of what I've seen since seems to be iterations on those ideas--is that right or wrong?).

Advantage/disadvantage is also pretty recent. Although maybe that is less of a fundamental shift.

Hmm. I guess I think that there could be a solution to expedition play out there. But it will represent a more significant change to the mechanics than "this is an OSR game with procedures for hexcrawling and retainers".

I would welcome disagreement. My thoughts are only half baked on these questions.

Of course, if the narrative movement isn't of interest to you, RPGs become that much more "solved".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As for fresh water, I would boil/purify anything I drank as you do not want to catch a bug from even a clean looking source (had it happen before and you would not want to experience it even with magical healing ).

Water is sooooo touchy, so crucial.

I know from personal experience that even when traveling in big cities in first world nations, people can have intestinal issues from drinking the tap water. The local critters in the water systems aren’t the ones your body is used to. (Which is why I always opt for bottled water when traveling, including for brushing my teeth.)

Even with the cleanest of natural sources, you may have to deal with differences in local flora & fauna, mineral runoff (like gypsum) and similar issues which may vary over the course of miles of travel. What was potable water 5 miles ago might not be anymore.

Its safety and flavor can also vary over time. There’s a town near me I visit quite frequently, and they get most of their water from a local reservoir. It’s generally safe year round, but there’s a time of year when the reservoir “turns over”- no, I don’t know precisely what they mean by this- and the water tastes like dirt. When I’m dining there at that time, I trade my usual brewed iced tea for bottled diet soft drinks.

 

[SableWyvern]

Someone may have already mentioned this, but I find the Alexandrian's hexcrawl system to be amazing for actually creating a sense of exploration and navigating (literally and figuratively) the unknown. The use of landmarks as the primary navigation tools works brilliantly. Making tracks one of the common random encounters is another small touch that makes everything feel a lot more dynamic and immersive.