What has been your experience with survival-focused adventures?

[AFGNCAAP]

Hello,

I was wondering what your experiences have been playing adventures that have been survival-based, or focused mainly on surviving a dangerous place/event/condition? I have been contemplating using such an adventure for my upcoming D&D game, but I wanted to get a few other opinions/experiences on the matter.

I'm pretty much taking a broad view/interpretation of the term "survival adventure." It could be said that the Tomb of Horrors was essentially a survival adventure (w/ its level of difficulty). However, I also refer to events like surviving a blizzard in the depths of the tundra (or a sandstorm in the middle of a barren desert), escaping/surviving a natural disaster (ala THe Day After Tomorrow), surviving a shipwreck & making a living on a isolated island (ala Castaway), & similar events. I also include the typical "zombie" movie like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead as survival adventures as well (the point being not to slay them all, but to make it out alive). If you will, any sort of scenario where the key goal is for the characters to endure a situation & make it out alive pretty much falls in that category (for the purposes of this question, that is).

So, what have been your experiences playing (or even running) such adventures?

 

[Dagger75]

I had a group of adventurers stranded in the middle a forest during winter with only 1 scimatar, a dagger and each player had a coat. The cleric didn't have his holy symbol. Was fun having him memorize spells that didn't require his holy symbol. At least 3.0 D&D endure Elements lasted 24 hours so they were all proteced from the cold. It was fun surviving, they had a fun for the 2 or so games we did it.

I woud'nt recommend it for games on end, it could get tedious. Or at least let them find safe places and such every so often.

 

[drnuncheon]

I did a little bit of this when I shipwrecked my PCs on the Isle of Dread. There are a couple of things you need to watch out for.

First, if it's "man against nature" then most of the rolls made are going to be Survival. If nobody has this, it'll be rough. If everyone has this, it'll be easy. In whichever case, you're going to need to go into more detail to make it interesting. Instead of just saying 'you hunt and get food' you may want to actually play out the hunting.

Second, again if it's "man against nature", then it's going to seem like a more adversarial relationship between you and the PCs. There's no character or monster on the other side for them to focus their aggression on, just you, the DM. If your players are particularly sensitive to this, you may want to downplay these aspects of a survival adventure.

On the other hand, these kinds of adventures makeplayers think in new and unexpected ways. When they were trapped on a barren mountainous ridge in freezing weather, dying of exposure, the mage got the brilliant idea of summoning a thoqqua to dig a cave for them to rest in. It got them out of the wind, the walls retained a lot of heat, and it saved their lives. All in all, it was a pretty clever use of the spell.

 

[Tonguez]

Games I've done

In PnP
1. Stranded on a island (occupied by Goblins and their Ogre Masters) need to build shelter, hunt food and avoid the Ogres (yes lots of survival checks) and innovative thinking for low level characters - can be used for long term as the purpose is establishing long term survival strategy

2. PCs are in the middle of a collapsing coral atoll with each dungeon level being a newly created cavern entered when the floor of the one above collapses (tumble checks, falling damage) lots of running to find a way out before they all fall into the sea. Plus they were being chased and had to keep a baby coatl alive - can't be used long term as the whole purpose is about 'quickly getting out'

In a PbP
3. PCs rescuing orphans from a burning orphangae (yeah cheesy but why not?)
4. Clouds of poisonous fumes pouring through the city streets and general panick a he mob rushes for the gates
5. PCs trapped in a sewer after a torch ignited a methane pocket (and blew out a wall of the sewer (to expose an unknown dungeon!)
btw it was that Methane explosion which caused the orphangae fire and smoke clouds

 

[MerakSpielman]

I found a random weather generator and pre-generated a whole year of weather for my campaign world. If they get caught in a snowstorm or avalanche, it's just their tough luck and they'll have to deal with it.

Ditto for traveling in winter. When the temperature is below freezing, even without snow on the ground things can get tough. I was nice enough to start the campaign in the spring, though, so they won't have to worry about it for some time.