Post by darien on Dec 23, 2017 14:54:24 GMT -6
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.
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.