jordangreywolf: Greywolf Gear (Default)
jordangreywolf ([personal profile] jordangreywolf) wrote 2024-12-03 09:48 pm (UTC)

Of course, this same problem applies to lots of games. In Fallout games with survival mode turned on (I'm thinking either F:NV or FO4 here), you have to get food every few minutes (days go by fast in this game) to avoid starving, and killing a radstag or a brahmin will typically only net you enough meat for ONE meal. On the flip side, you may well be carrying around the combined meat of an entire HERD of brahmin after you've cleared out the entire zone of them, and storing them in a locked (unrefrigerated!) box somewhere without fear of spoilage, so there's a lack of realism all around -- but ultimately it seems to be geared toward "kill, loot, kill, loot, repeat umpteen bazillion times" because that's the gameplay.

I feel like if I were to do a tabletop RPG treatment, I'd have to change the dynamic considerably: combats take much longer to resolve and aren't dependent upon reflex timing and ACTION in quite the same way as a video game, and death is a lot more impactful (you can't just go back to the last "save point" and try again). Thus, for instance, the PCs shouldn't have to keep doing quests to go hunt animals to get food: one brahmin would likely provide a couple hundred pounds of meat at least. (IRL, a slaughtered cow might give you 500 lbs of meat, but I'm going to imagine that brahmin, living in the wasteland, are smaller and not quite as meaty.) The real challenge is going to be coming up with a suitable way to store and prep that meat, especially if you're traveling. Living on a "hunt for your meal each day" model would be more realistic with much smaller prey -- mutant jackalopes or giant cockroaches or giant molerats or the like, I think. It's just that THEN there's the lingering problem of accumulating "rads" in your system from eating irradiated foods. Also, unlike the video game, "Radaway" shouldn't be this disposable item you just take one action to consume and -- POOF -- your rad levels suddenly go down. The in-game model looks like an IV bag, and I would imagine it ought to be administered in similar fashion. The makers of the Fallout TV show would seem to agree, as the use of Radaway there seemed to be of a similar mode.

Ugh. It makes me wish someone already did all the work for me. XD It feels like I'm going to have to make a LOT of decisions about what sorts of things I need to track, and what ought to just be hand-waved for the sake of moving on with "the story." While it would be tempting to hand-wave SO MUCH (ammo counts, food, rads, illness, etc.), for an entry-level "scavenger" game my instinct is to think that at least at the beginning the PCs will be keeping tabs on every bullet, every bottle of purified water, every self-heating Salisbury Steak pack, etc. However, at some point, once they establish some resources (and until they make bad decisions or run into a spate of bad luck that robs them of same again), such as building or acquiring a still for the water, making arrangements with a local settlement for a supply of food, getting access to an armory for plenty of ammo -- then I might be able to go easy on tracking of certain details.

("For the time being, the fridge is well-stocked." And then it might change after the PCs accomplish a bunch of goals and get to a good position, but then story-wise we "fast forward" toward the next crisis that provides impetus for further adventuring -- such as the food stocks running low, gas running out, generator failing, etc.)

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