Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 7251730" data-attributes="member: 5890">This has been an issue since darksun. Even darksun failed to make surviving in the desert a sub game that was fun OR difficult to beat.Is surviving a lack of food and water going to be a fun game ever? By default you will simply "carry enough" for your intended trip, because it's stupid to do otherwise. The only time it will come up is if the DM forces you into scenarios where you don't/can't carry enough. There isn't a decision here, so there's no game.On the topic of 'getting lost':Not being lost is simply knowing where you are in relation to where you started your trek. To me, the key part of an exploration game isn't whether or not you can find your way to things that you know the precise location of. It's whether you know the precise location of things in the first place.Combined:I know of one game that comes close to making wilderness navigation and survival fun: <a href="https://youtu.be/lMLP0gn4I6k" target="_blank">forbidden desert</a>.But truth be told - all water management does in that game is provide incentive not to split up all across the map. It's still not the most interesting bit of the game. It's not the hardest part of playing the game. It's really just 'another thing we have to worry about'. It's there, but it's not going to be centre stage. I don't think I've lost a game to dehydration since the first or second play. The OTHER time limits on the game are what make things difficult.And the navigation? You literally know the location of all the characters all the time. But it doesn't matter, because the problems with navigation come from:a) not knowing where you are going without some detective workb) having extremely fine-tuned limits on how quickly you must get to the locations that you discoverSo we come to how you might make overland travel and survival fun:1. Even if you never get 'lost', that is largely immaterial if you don't know the location of everything in the first place.2. Navigation should be a matter of accepting risks and penalties for some benefit. That benefit is travel speed, because...3. Time is your enemy. You should be racing other parties to destinations, working to beat the clock on a villain's doomsday timer, pursuing targets or... SOMETHING.Out of that, you can pull some reasons for worrying about rations and water. If you've got sufficient rations and water, you can eat and drink on the move. If you are foraging, you have to move more slowly. Running out of rations and water means you can either move slowly or risk exhaustion.It's still not ideal, because exhaustion is an awful mechanic. Tiny amounts of exhaustion kill your ability to succeed at anything that isn't combat (which is weird - "yes, I can swing my sword just fine, but for the life of me, I can't remember any ancient history, because I am so tired". Again - you've removed decisions from the 'game' of survival. Accepting exhaustion as a penalty might be acceptable for a single level of exhaustion for some specific characters, but getting a second level of exhaustion is unthinkable if time is our resource.I think exhaustion is salvageable though. It's as simple as this: allow a PC to select the penalty for each level of exhaustion he takes from the list of penalties that exhaustion has. Each penalty can be taken only once. If speed is of the essence, characters might take a mix of skill disadvantage, attack and save disadvantage and hit point reduction for their early exhaustion penalties. Or perhaps there are some other resources or trade-offs that can be burnt to maintain speed or class abilities that make up the shortfall, so maybe some party members can take the speed penalty to keep their combat ability and skills up.I think that makes exhaustion a far more useful resource, and makes survival a more entertaining game.</blockquote>

Verification