if you were dming a survival campaign what unique mechanics whould you add to make the game more unique or realistic when it comes to the physical or mental I'll effects of the isolation, hunger and ever present threat of character death?
Cut out magic effects that produce quantities of food and water. You can still optionally permit goodberry but just give the berries the food value of normal berries. If a druid wildshapes into, say, a cow to be milked, say the sustenance value of the milk disappears when coming out of wildshape.
Both Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden have some notable survival elements in the modules. From purchasing special gear (like rain catchers, insect repellent, cold weather gear, snowshoes) or being careful about your environment (boiling the water you drink, staying dry or risking hypothermia, not eating certain poisonous fruits, etc.). These could give you good ideas.
Extreme weather, food scarcity (both game and vegetation), madness effects (from seeing mirages, inhaling psychotropic fumes, or just plain loneliness) and the harshness of the environment on gear (think of Mark Watney in The Martian - he had to fix broken water reclaimers and destroyed hab-tunnels after storms) can make for gritty and fun survival challenges.
IIRC the Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide from AD&D 2ed do a good job of making mechanics out of survival situations. You’ll have to adapt them to 5e but it might be worth your while. They’re two entire books dedicated to the game style and they’re very thorough, with charts and tables for things like weather, terrain and natural hazards etc. and discussion on how to gamify many aspects of gritty survival.
It’s been a loooong time since I played AD&D 2ed, I admit. These books do stick in my memory because they helped me enjoy an aspect of the game I, frankly, tend to dislike as it seems to mostly devolve into tedious bookkeeping on a character sheet rather than fun adventure. Maybe see about inexpensive copies though, just in case the books hold up as well as the movie Shallow Hal. Heh.
The first thing is to realize just how hard wilderness survival actually is for an untrained person. This is where rangers (and Druids) shine. While some things like starting a fire should be fairly easy ( every midevial peasant etc knew how to use flint and steel to start a fire as well how to tell dry wood from wet wood) similarly basic things like fishing with a line and bait shouldn’t be hard but may be time consuming. Knowing what plants are safe and nutritious in a given terrain is something else and should be more than just a survival roll. If you are running a low magic campaign spells and especially items are likely to be in short supply. Even if the mage has something like alarm or tiny hut have they prepared it? Can they cast it as a ritual? Do they want to if someone else can do the equivalent with skills? Getting lost - and then getting found. Finding food , creating nightly shelter, dealing with storms- even being able to spot storms and recognize what will happen so as to prepare in advance. Will that brewing storm be rain or snow? How do you know? Will it have hail and lightning? Do you use the same sorts of shelter? Think real world- wilderness exploration and survival are not hard nor they require magic IF your character (and DM) know what they are doing. But they are deadly to those that don’t and most PCs are not skilled or knowledgeable. Even great woodsmen could and did get turned around occasionally. Daniel Boone was reportedly asked if he ever got lost - his reply was interesting -“ I was never lost, but there a few times when I wasn’t real sure where I was” I remember one time when we pitched our tents after dark at one end of lake that we thought was the east end only to have the sun rising from across the lake the next morning - Mom always “claimed” the sun rose in the west that morning 😳😁. Your mages should have a written copy of their spellbook that you have a copy of so they can’t add spells in the middle of an adventure, ritual spells should be noted on the list. Same really for all spell casting classes. The lower the level of the party the more essential it is to have at least one ranger. Some good resources outside of DnD are Louis L’mour’s book “Last of the Breed” and the books of William Johnstone’s Preacher series where Preacher is a mountain man (ranger) guiding various groups across the plains, mountains and forest of the west. Typically with time constraints and hordes of villains hunting them.
The tables in Xanthers and the stuff on the wilderness DM’s screen are also good resources if you are planning on running an exploration/travel/survival game I would recommend getting the screen.
Why? They are supposed to make it easier just because it is so hard in reality. Banning them is acting as a killer DM. What you want is to not make it trivial, and even having a ranger along shouldn’t do that if your DMing properly.
Seems like the first step to making survival hard is to actually track stuff. Track rations, track water use. Track encumbrance when players say their character has 100 days worth of rations. And yes, a level 1 Druid gets past all that, but then the Druid gets to show off how cool they are. And they start every day down one spell slot. Throw multiple encounters at the party per day, and they might start thinking rations and regular food makes more sense than using spells.
Then use the rules for overland navigation. Make it possible for them to get lost. Make there be weather besides mild temperatures and clear skies.
A lot of these things are already in the rules, just lots of people ignore them, because tracking rations and getting lost isn’t very fun and heroic.
One of the problems here is that all that tracking takes time and effort to set up and to do and much of it falls on the DM and I don’t know about other DMs but I can be pretty lazy. The wilderness adventure DM screen is great in part because it comes with a lot of the tracking stuff as well as the screen with tables. actually getting lost can be great for the adventure opening up all sorts of small side quests and mini-adventures. But again it calls for more planning and creativity on the DMs part to have all those other little side pieces along with the primary adventure.
Take rations off the equipment table. Players can't buy them and they don't start with any. Preserved food doesn't exist.
Food spoils. I would say, after a day it's save vs poison, after two days it's automatic poison, and after that it doesn't provide sustenance either. Maybe that's not very realistic but the point is to keep players having to engage with the question of "where are we getting our food today?"
I'm not sure it's worth differentiating between food and water. It might be sufficient just to say "supplies" or whatever. One resource that covers both things. I mean, there are some spells and items that can produce one but not the other, so just decide if you care about those I guess.
Seems like the first step to making survival hard is to actually track stuff. Track rations, track water use. Track encumbrance when players say their character has 100 days worth of rations. And yes, a level 1 Druid gets past all that, but then the Druid gets to show off how cool they are. And they start every day down one spell slot. Throw multiple encounters at the party per day, and they might start thinking rations and regular food makes more sense than using spells.
Then use the rules for overland navigation. Make it possible for them to get lost. Make there be weather besides mild temperatures and clear skies.
A lot of these things are already in the rules, just lots of people ignore them, because tracking rations and getting lost isn’t very fun and heroic.
People ignore them because they don't do anything. With easily purchasable rations -- which don't weigh that much, btw, and often players are allowed to buy a Bag of Holding anyway -- it's very trivial to have enough. And all the other rules consequently just boil down to wasting game time rolling dice that don't mean anything. Great, it's raining today. Who cares? I once rolled some dense fog that cut visibility down to a mere 30ft. That's the most impact the weather tables ever had, and it only mattered because I had a fight happen while it was foggy.
You can fix some of this by killing rations and bags of holding. But basically you're gonna need to actually plan out some wilderness challenges. Rain isn't a challenge. Mudslide while you're trying to climb a hill and there's gnolls on top of the hill shooting you... That's a challenge.
make food and water necessary resources, not to the point where it's monotonous, but just enough for them to feel like they need it. perhaps make healing more difficult, or incur some of the wound penalties in the DM's guide (example, you take a certain amount of damage, you lose a limb, or if you fall too far, your leg breaks, etc.). I would say try to make it more realistic, but not so realistic that they get bogged down. just emphasizing weather affects and harsh terrain can help, and really making travel feel a bit more dangerous. I think @Brian_Avery and @ChoirofFire have both made valid points (not that everyone else, hasn't, I just liked their input ;). Games like Breath of the Wild, Prey, and even Skyrim have been good examples for me of how to manage resources and enhance a survival feel.
if you were dming a survival campaign what unique mechanics whould you add to make the game more unique or realistic when it comes to the physical or mental I'll effects of the isolation, hunger and ever present threat of character death?
Cut out magic effects that produce quantities of food and water. You can still optionally permit goodberry but just give the berries the food value of normal berries. If a druid wildshapes into, say, a cow to be milked, say the sustenance value of the milk disappears when coming out of wildshape.
Effects of weather. I came across this http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/weather.shtml You might find it useful
Both Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden have some notable survival elements in the modules. From purchasing special gear (like rain catchers, insect repellent, cold weather gear, snowshoes) or being careful about your environment (boiling the water you drink, staying dry or risking hypothermia, not eating certain poisonous fruits, etc.). These could give you good ideas.
Extreme weather, food scarcity (both game and vegetation), madness effects (from seeing mirages, inhaling psychotropic fumes, or just plain loneliness) and the harshness of the environment on gear (think of Mark Watney in The Martian - he had to fix broken water reclaimers and destroyed hab-tunnels after storms) can make for gritty and fun survival challenges.
IIRC the Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide from AD&D 2ed do a good job of making mechanics out of survival situations. You’ll have to adapt them to 5e but it might be worth your while. They’re two entire books dedicated to the game style and they’re very thorough, with charts and tables for things like weather, terrain and natural hazards etc. and discussion on how to gamify many aspects of gritty survival.
It’s been a loooong time since I played AD&D 2ed, I admit. These books do stick in my memory because they helped me enjoy an aspect of the game I, frankly, tend to dislike as it seems to mostly devolve into tedious bookkeeping on a character sheet rather than fun adventure. Maybe see about inexpensive copies though, just in case the books hold up as well as the movie Shallow Hal. Heh.
The first thing is to realize just how hard wilderness survival actually is for an untrained person. This is where rangers (and Druids) shine. While some things like starting a fire should be fairly easy ( every midevial peasant etc knew how to use flint and steel to start a fire as well how to tell dry wood from wet wood) similarly basic things like fishing with a line and bait shouldn’t be hard but may be time consuming. Knowing what plants are safe and nutritious in a given terrain is something else and should be more than just a survival roll. If you are running a low magic campaign spells and especially items are likely to be in short supply. Even if the mage has something like alarm or tiny hut have they prepared it? Can they cast it as a ritual? Do they want to if someone else can do the equivalent with skills? Getting lost - and then getting found. Finding food , creating nightly shelter, dealing with storms- even being able to spot storms and recognize what will happen so as to prepare in advance. Will that brewing storm be rain or snow? How do you know? Will it have hail and lightning? Do you use the same sorts of shelter? Think real world- wilderness exploration and survival are not hard nor they require magic IF your character (and DM) know what they are doing. But they are deadly to those that don’t and most PCs are not skilled or knowledgeable. Even great woodsmen could and did get turned around occasionally. Daniel Boone was reportedly asked if he ever got lost - his reply was interesting -“ I was never lost, but there a few times when I wasn’t real sure where I was” I remember one time when we pitched our tents after dark at one end of lake that we thought was the east end only to have the sun rising from across the lake the next morning - Mom always “claimed” the sun rose in the west that morning 😳😁. Your mages should have a written copy of their spellbook that you have a copy of so they can’t add spells in the middle of an adventure, ritual spells should be noted on the list. Same really for all spell casting classes. The lower the level of the party the more essential it is to have at least one ranger. Some good resources outside of DnD are Louis L’mour’s book “Last of the Breed” and the books of William Johnstone’s Preacher series where Preacher is a mountain man (ranger) guiding various groups across the plains, mountains and forest of the west. Typically with time constraints and hordes of villains hunting them.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
The tables in Xanthers and the stuff on the wilderness DM’s screen are also good resources if you are planning on running an exploration/travel/survival game I would recommend getting the screen.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Ban Ranger, Druid and any races/backgrounds/classes which make survival trivial.
Why? They are supposed to make it easier just because it is so hard in reality. Banning them is acting as a killer DM. What you want is to not make it trivial, and even having a ranger along shouldn’t do that if your DMing properly.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Seems like the first step to making survival hard is to actually track stuff. Track rations, track water use. Track encumbrance when players say their character has 100 days worth of rations. And yes, a level 1 Druid gets past all that, but then the Druid gets to show off how cool they are. And they start every day down one spell slot. Throw multiple encounters at the party per day, and they might start thinking rations and regular food makes more sense than using spells.
Then use the rules for overland navigation. Make it possible for them to get lost. Make there be weather besides mild temperatures and clear skies.
A lot of these things are already in the rules, just lots of people ignore them, because tracking rations and getting lost isn’t very fun and heroic.
One of the problems here is that all that tracking takes time and effort to set up and to do and much of it falls on the DM and I don’t know about other DMs but I can be pretty lazy. The wilderness adventure DM screen is great in part because it comes with a lot of the tracking stuff as well as the screen with tables.
actually getting lost can be great for the adventure opening up all sorts of small side quests and mini-adventures. But again it calls for more planning and creativity on the DMs part to have all those other little side pieces along with the primary adventure.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Take rations off the equipment table. Players can't buy them and they don't start with any. Preserved food doesn't exist.
Food spoils. I would say, after a day it's save vs poison, after two days it's automatic poison, and after that it doesn't provide sustenance either. Maybe that's not very realistic but the point is to keep players having to engage with the question of "where are we getting our food today?"
I'm not sure it's worth differentiating between food and water. It might be sufficient just to say "supplies" or whatever. One resource that covers both things. I mean, there are some spells and items that can produce one but not the other, so just decide if you care about those I guess.
People ignore them because they don't do anything. With easily purchasable rations -- which don't weigh that much, btw, and often players are allowed to buy a Bag of Holding anyway -- it's very trivial to have enough. And all the other rules consequently just boil down to wasting game time rolling dice that don't mean anything. Great, it's raining today. Who cares? I once rolled some dense fog that cut visibility down to a mere 30ft. That's the most impact the weather tables ever had, and it only mattered because I had a fight happen while it was foggy.
You can fix some of this by killing rations and bags of holding. But basically you're gonna need to actually plan out some wilderness challenges. Rain isn't a challenge. Mudslide while you're trying to climb a hill and there's gnolls on top of the hill shooting you... That's a challenge.
make food and water necessary resources, not to the point where it's monotonous, but just enough for them to feel like they need it. perhaps make healing more difficult, or incur some of the wound penalties in the DM's guide (example, you take a certain amount of damage, you lose a limb, or if you fall too far, your leg breaks, etc.). I would say try to make it more realistic, but not so realistic that they get bogged down. just emphasizing weather affects and harsh terrain can help, and really making travel feel a bit more dangerous. I think @Brian_Avery and @ChoirofFire have both made valid points (not that everyone else, hasn't, I just liked their input ;). Games like Breath of the Wild, Prey, and even Skyrim have been good examples for me of how to manage resources and enhance a survival feel.
Updog
Add material component to spells that create food or water and use them up as part of casting the spell.
EG your ranger needs to find a mistletoe and retrieve it, before your druid can use it to create goodberries.
Have a look at griddy realism under optional rules in the DMG, goes a long way in restraining the use of magic for survival.
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]