Survival: a suitable goal unto itself?

[Dargon]

Some of the best games I have played were about surviving.
Had a character on his hells for 1 1/2 year (about 900H game play) mighty fun I tell you, didn’t achieve anything just
Running from one doom to the next. Teleport becomes you friend, then plane shift and in the end wish. (5 players) the death rate was 2 every 5 session.

 

[irdeggman]

Why?

We have fun playing games occasionally where it is expected that if the group kicks ALL kinds of butt, then one or two characters MAY survive.

Survival is a great primary goal for a single game or a few games in sequence.

But is that the primary reason for adventuring?

There needs to be something else there or else it becomes a gladiator pit except that it goes on and on and that is all there is to do or reason to be.

Surviving being the primary focus is fine for small or timed events but not for an entire campaign. Even Dark Sun as a setting had emphasis on "other things" but survival was very difficult.

 

[questbreaker]

i may have to try the cleric idea and just not tell the other party members im a cleric. in our other game i was playing a blaster and i had a cure wand and i ended up having to heal everyone because i was the only one who thought to bring healing, knowing full well that no one in our party was going to want to play as a cleric. bugh.

 

[HellHound]

But is that the primary reason for adventuring?

It has been.

We played an 8 game mini campaign that was just about survival. First it was to survive being slaves dumped on the side of the road, but it kept building up. Every thing that was done to survive brought about greater consequences which in turn made survival harder. It was an awesome game which really changed a few people's perspectives on gaming, because it was a given that most or all of the characters would die during the campaign, and there is no epic ending except that those few characters who survive would be able to retire.

 

[questbreaker]

that actually sounds like a lot of fun, to get away from the whole "lets be as powerful as possible" mindset once in awhile. i mean yeah everyone loves to have an awesome character with awesome magic items who can do what they do best, and to the extreme. but i think it would be fun to step out of that and maybe get a feel for what the NPCs sometimes have to go through in a sense.

maybe if a few more games were run like that, people would be more interested in playing as paladins.

 

[irdeggman]

It has been.

We played an 8 game mini campaign that was just about survival. First it was to survive being slaves dumped on the side of the road, but it kept building up. Every thing that was done to survive brought about greater consequences which in turn made survival harder. It was an awesome game which really changed a few people's perspectives on gaming, because it was a given that most or all of the characters would die during the campaign, and there is no epic ending except that those few characters who survive would be able to retire.

Are you sure it didn't really follow the path of:

Get out of slavery

Avoid being captured and put back into slavery

Find something (which was a consequence of previous actions), etc . . .

I can see a "story line" here even though it appears to be "hidden" by "only surviving". The story could have been to avoid being recaptured and become "free men" which is different IMO than "surviving".

 

[HellHound]

Are you sure it didn't really follow the path of:

Get out of slavery

Avoid being captured and put back into slavery

Find something (which was a consequence of previous actions), etc . . .

I can see a "story line" here even though it appears to be "hidden" by "only surviving". The story could have been to avoid being recaptured and become "free men" which is different IMO than "surviving".

Fine.

We can argue semantics about how my game ran all week.

In the end 7 of the 8 characters died, everyone loved it, and all the players commented on how refreshing it was to play a game that was entirely about survival... every treasure was seen as an opportunity to get a LITTLE ahead of the upcoming imminent capture or death - with the knowledge that a character captured was the same as killed, as they were rendered out of the game permanently.

 

[shilsen]

Fine.

We can argue semantics about how my game ran all week.

In the end 7 of the 8 characters died, everyone loved it, and all the players commented on how refreshing it was to play a game that was entirely about survival... every treasure was seen as an opportunity to get a LITTLE ahead of the upcoming imminent capture or death - with the knowledge that a character captured was the same as killed, as they were rendered out of the game permanently.

Here's something I'm curious about: What did you do when a player's character died or was captured? Did they bring in a new PC, have to sit out the rest of the mini-campaign, or something else altogether?

 

[irdeggman]

Fine.

We can argue semantics about how my game ran all week.

In the end 7 of the 8 characters died, everyone loved it, and all the players commented on how refreshing it was to play a game that was entirely about survival... every treasure was seen as an opportunity to get a LITTLE ahead of the upcoming imminent capture or death - with the knowledge that a character captured was the same as killed, as they were rendered out of the game permanently.

Dark Sun was pretty much just like that too. {I referenced that back in post 22}

Very frequently Muls were "escaped" slaves who had to keep one step ahead of their "owners" and the land itself presented tremendous challenges for survival (heat, lack of water, really really nasty monsters, etc.) so whenever the PCs had to get somewhere these "survival issues" always crept up and were a part of the game - but they in and of themselves were not "the" game.

My point is that there was more to it than merely "surviving" there was a set of mini "missions" that came about because of "events" that were caused by being "on the run".

I mean you can use the same logic to say that all D&D is about surviving since you are trying not to get killed all the time. A multi-level "cage match" wears thin real quickly. Friends of mine when playing Dark Sun (both were running Muls) had an epic (not epic level play but epic in its cinema effect) "match" in the Zuggarart (spelling?) that was all about survive or die - but that was only one "adventure" (more like a really large encounter with mutiple opponents) and not the entire "campaign".

Now if you are making a comparison to a game where it is all about trying to get more "stuff" then I agree - but I absolutely hate those kind of games (far too much WoW-ish for my tastes). I love some kind of "purpose" to my role-playing and adventuring. I don't play my PCs to adventure to get more stuff the adventure for some "reason" and getting more stuff is part of the adventuring (that is background, like survival is in Dark Sun).

In your game what was the end point? I mean was it only to not get captured for 8 sessions? Or was it that there was something at the end of those 8 sessions that made them "free men" or the like?

 

[Nail]

Here's something I'm curious about: What did you do when a player's character died or was captured? Did they bring in a new PC, have to sit out the rest of the mini-campaign, or something else altogether?

I'm curious about that too.

In games that have hard-n-fast boundary conditions like this, I would think adding new PCs might be troublesome. How'd you do it?