Survival Sandbox Gaming

[darien]

So, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and I've been wanting to run an old-school campaign most likely in OD&D (or possibly Holmes Basic) that is done in the style of a survival sandbox game.

It's no secret that most old-school D&D games were done in the sandbox style but the Survival Sandbox genre is a term coined in video games to describe open-world games where exploration and the struggle for daily survival are the main focus of the game, combining tropes from the Wide Open Sandbox genre (Ex: Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls) and the Survival Horror genre (Ex: PS1-era Resident Evil) and having an open-ended narrative.

The most popular example of Survival Sandbox in video gaming is Minecraft, a more family-friendly and cartoonish take on the genre and other prominent examples of Survival Sandbox video games include Day Z and that upcoming Conan game. 

As well-suited as Survival Sandbox is to video gaming, it is even better suited for pen-and-paper role-playing, especially on OSR systems like Original Dungeons & Dragons and similar retro-clones.

I've considered an OD&D Survival Sandbox that would combine the core OD&D rules with Outdoor Survival to create this experience. In addition to including the Outdoor Survival hexmap, I am thinking of including the actual board game survival rules for things like tracking food and water and how that affects one's movement and well-being. Now, I don't actually own Outdoor Survival, so I may need a co-GM to help me out with those rules (or save up some money and spring for an old copy of Outdoor Survival off of Amazon), and I would really like to run a play-by-post game along these lines (and hopefully have it gain some actual interest because The New World apparently didn't).

I could run a straight-up old-school medieval Sword & Sorcery fantasy game with a Survival Sandbox focus, or alternately run a modern zombie apocalypse-themed OD&D game using some homebrew modifications. Either way, the setting of the game would have a vast and uncivilized post-apocalyptic feel to it.

And then there's my Adventurer's Realm homebrew setting that this could be applied to as well.

[tetramorph]

darien, have you seen austinjimm's rules that he built for just this thing?

He integrated the OS rules into the over-arching framework of 0e. Good stuff.

[darien]

Dec 23, 2017 15:02:31 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

darien , have you seen austinjimm 's rules that he built for just this thing?

He integrated the OS rules into the over-arching framework of 0e. Good stuff.

I have not checked them out but I will definitely look into it! Thanks.

[Todd]

Dec 23, 2017 15:02:31 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

darien, have you seen austinjimm's rules that he built for just this thing?

He integrated the OS rules into the over-arching framework of 0e. Good stuff.

Is it posted here in the form somewhere? Otherwise, does anyone have a link handy?

[chicagowiz]

I'd also like to throw out there that a video game called "The Long Dark" does the 1st person survival bit in a really realistic manner - it's probably as close to what "Outdoor Survival" would look like from a CRPG perspective. It's also extremely addictive.

I'd been thinking about that translation to a TT RPG and it would require the right kind of players who were interested in what could potentially be a grind. Survival is grueling. TLD proved to me that it can be "fun" but the presentation would really need to be key, as well as the "events" that make up the day and the opportunities for players to more than just boil water and hunt for food.

[tetramorph]

Dec 24, 2017 5:41:05 GMT -6 Todd said:

Dec 23, 2017 15:02:31 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

darien, have you seen austinjimm's rules that he built for just this thing?

He integrated the OS rules into the over-arching framework of 0e. Good stuff.

Is it posted here in the form somewhere? Otherwise, does anyone have a link handy?

Sorry, I forgot to reply!

I think you will have to PM austinjimm himself.

[barrataria]

Seems like you should be able to mine gritty rules from the Wilderness Survival Guide, and if you really want to harness your inner Cormac McCarthy don't forget good old Twilight 2000.