Character Prepping for an adventure - what do you take? What is your choice of Gear?

[SimonAce]

Icelander you are correct. Thats why I initially stated it was a no win scenario

The previous loadout I gave (with the pack) was minimal, light weight gear for survival. Carrying less than that (say my mini kit) means you have one maybe two days endurance if you can get water or are willing to lug 8- 16 lbs of it.

Parkour as an activity is very strenuous and probably burns at least 500 calories per hour possibly twice that with a load (with rock climbing at 700 per hour to compare)

This means you need a lot of extra food and rest. Worse any mistake and you are dead from being slowed by fatigue and injury.

And you will tire, no one can parkour even with rest for days and days on end in bad circumstances. The Zeds will eat you.

A "trip across the city" scenario is possible though. My 1st loadout should have most of what is needed so long as you keep the Parkour till after the food is eaten

Realistically the best survival scenario is to get a working vehicle and load it with as much kit as possible. A 5 ton truck is ideal, a couple of buddies, a trailer add lots of extra fuel and go. These will run after an EMP too.

If you group is say 6, three trucks are optimum. The trucks hold three in the cab but having a reserve truck is an asset and heck you may find a survivor or two.

If not those three hummers are fine too

if you were stuck without motor transport, a good strategy would be having a bicycle with a cart per person With this rig you can carry a light pack (like my set up) and well over an extra hundred pounds of gear (nearer to 200) in the cart. I advice under loading in case one of the carts break . say a 200 lb cart, 6 people.

You can put 150 in each bike and have enough parts to repair several bikes or even build one in case a survivor needs to join your party

This method less fatiguing and faster than foot travel. A pistol is usable while bicycling too so its marginally defensible as well. You can go all Velo Dog on the Zeds

This is a lot of gear and if for some reason it becomes no longer possible to use the carts, do rig it so it can be carried on foot. The key to survival is to get to the target local as fast as possible.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think that's entirely workable in an RPG, but any mention of survival brings out the big lists of gear and military planning instead.

Real life survival is largely a resource management issue, so it's natural to think of it in strictly those terms in a game about survival. Note that survival as a resource management game is not that same as a combat/military game: one could pass many adventures as a human in the Reign of Steel setting and never fight a robot. It would not be fun for some, but it could be a very challenging and entertaining game for others.

I don't think what you are suggesting is a bad idea -- it's probably more marketable to the video game-to-rpg gamers than it is wargame-to-rpg gamers. That's big points in its favor. However, I think it is neither a bad thing to do it with "big lists of gear and military planning." A supplement that could appeal to both groups would not be hard to pull off, I think. Simply boil down the nit-picky details over clean water, or first aid, to a textbox (Roll versus Survival to find clean water if the GM determines its not easily accessible) and use the detailed information as color text.

[safisher]

Originally Posted by SimonAce

This means you need a lot of extra food and rest. Worse any mistake and you are dead from being slowed by fatigue and injury.

The GM then plots a "rest point" to appear whenever the PCs get hungry, tired, etc. This means that after running through the woods, fighting a few stragglers, and sneaking past a bridge full of deactivated (read "sleeping) rage zombies, that fortified farmhouse with a working radio will be very inviting, and it will force the PCs to go CQB, possibly encounter survivors, reload, rest, and eat. But the enemy is coming, and the rendezvous is waiting, so they can't stay long, and there's not enough supplies to camp out forever anyway. So at first light, the PCs move out, sniffing for another place to rest at night time, or another wrecked humvee with a crate of 7.62 in the back. And so forth. This is a much more challenging scenario than "I speed up and crash through the horde of zombies in my deuce and a half and go speeding off into the desert with a year's supply of MRE's and a vapor canteen. I win."

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Your examples have little to do with the setting I postulated: A modern city. Not in ruins, although it might be largely wiped out by aliens or turned to zombies; there are supplies there, even shelter. Other humans might even be friendly, and help you out. [...]
People survive in modern cities all the time with nothing but a foam cup and a blanket.

These people survive in modern cities, but not in enemy-controlled cities.

In reality, clean sources of water and sources of food within cities usually correlate with people that drink that water and eat that food. If the people in the city are your enemies, you generally can't scrounge the food or water without coming into conflict with them. And if you are outnumbered, massively so, this is a losing proposition if it is the only method of getting nourishment.

If street people were actively hunted, they would not survive with just a foam cup and a blanket.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Do note that I was fairly clear on the fact that I wasn't assuming Hardcore Realism™, but movie-and-video-game realism, whence my examples: Dead bad guys drop ammo, basic hygiene happens magically off-camera, and so on.

This is the source of the disconnect, I think.

I (or the other posters who believed your challenge to be impossible) naturally assume that if a GM does not specifically state that natural laws are suspended, they are in effect. If a prospectus states 'you must survive under conditions X' and then asks for a list of things needed, we don't mentally assume that conditions X actually refers to 'conditions X, but not as they would be in reality, but as they would be if we ignored certain aspects of reality'. For one thing, how are we supposed to know which aspects of reality are ignored if the prospectus does not so state?

If 'enemy-controlled cities' were to refer to actual human cities where you were a recognisable intruder and relays of enemies followed you whenever you were seen, then there are basically no places with a lot of food and water that also come conveniently empty of people. Cities are full of people. This would apply, for example, if you were a Western intelligence operative or soldier in Mogadishu. There's no reasonable way you could scrounge for supplies there because the supplies would be where the people were, and the people would either attack you or notify those who did. You would have to carry with you most of your own supplies and try to keep hidden as you made your way through. Probably you'd try to stay as far away from sources of water as you could, as sources of water is where the enemy congregates.

If we imagine that the population density in the city has somehow become massively reduced, actually making it viable to find food and water without humans near them, well, we introduce a new problem. If massive numbers of people have died, we have diseases. Water and food are not guranteed to be healthy if they are obtained from places strewn with corpses. In fact, cities after a Zombie or Alien apocalypse would probably be more forbidding areas than jungle in terms of survival simply because you'd be exposed to infection pretty much anywhere you went.

All the things that we associate with cities, electrically-driven ameneties, fresh food and running water, are actually only there as long as the machinery of civilisation continues to work. If we propose that most of the people are dead, no one maintains the sewers or the water lines. If there are roving bands of savage survivors numerous enough to make fighting them a losing proposition, there are also enough savage survivors to make it pretty likely that most of the water you find ends up making you weak and sick. Which, in the situation as it is set up, will kill you.

In a survival scenario, hygiene can't happen off-camera because hygiene is a matter of life and death.

I'm afraid I simply don't grasp the idea of a 'survival scenario' that isn't about actual survival, but abstracts the survival aspect away in favour of parkour action.

[Langy]

In general, something similar to SimonAce's (I'm not going to go into detail on the random bits and pieces of kit I'd take). If this were me with my own skills, I'd also take a laptop with a full download of wikipedia and as many books, both fiction and nonfiction, as I can find. Survival manuals galore, plus all sorts of awesomely useful information for use in time travel scenarios. I'd also take a solar panel to recharge it in any scenario where I'd be likely to be away from modern civilization, and possibly a spare of both the laptop and the solar panel.

If I had adventurer-type skills, I'd add in a few toolkits, especially an electronics repair toolkit and probably a machinist's one, too. Yes, this stuff may be heavy, but it's also a hell of a lot more useful in most of those scenarios than the equivalent weight in weaponry.

In 3, 4, and 7 I wouldn't bother bringing the toolkits and only one laptop and would only bring a solar panel in 3.

As far as Kromm's situation goes, I, personally, would never even attempt it. I might suggest to an adventurer-skilled person that he should pack light and go for endurance over shock-and-awe power, but I'm not really sure what would be best in that situation.

EDIT: Oh, right, and ridiculous amounts of medical supplies. I'd probably take them in almost any adventure setting, but especially one where I wouldn't be seeing any modern humans aside from my group for a long time (alien ship/time travel/zombie ones).

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think that's entirely workable. My goal is to have a survival adventure that isn't a paramilitary operation with lengthy TOEs and hummers full of gear, and that isn't predicated on the GM tracking every last round, calorie, and drop of blood. Instead, that stuff is dimmed stage left somewhere, and center stage is awesome chase scenes and tense stealth scenes, spaced out by long-but-hand-waved spells of "you walk," "you hide," and "you search" – enough to maintain verisimilitude (for instance, accounting for where food comes from) without descending into gritty realism.

I guess what I'm saying is, "Why does survival have to be realistic and basically military in character?" Half-Life is, for instance, a survival game. You don't see Freeman eat, take a leak, or carry a heavy pack. He takes ammo and medical supplies from the environment. He can fight but probably shouldn't in every instance. His goal is to sneak through an urban/industrial hell, not commit genocide. I think that's entirely workable in an RPG, but any mention of survival brings out the big lists of gear and military planning instead.

Hey Kromm. You given the level of realism, so I'll give my list--based on character concept...since that's the sort of player I am.

Character Concept: Investigative Photojournalist. Goodlooking photojournalist. Driven to Reveal the Truth! So driven, as a matter of fact, that she sometimes slides into the gray zone of legality in order to get the information she needs.

(Important skills--Photography, Fast-Talk, Writing, Acting, Disguise, Scrounging, Research, Lockpicking, Electronic Ops (Security), Electronic Ops (Surveillance), Stealth, Smuggling, Holdout, Politics, Survival (Urban), Filch, Sleight of Hand. Minor skills--First Aid, Knife, Karate, Judo, Hiking, Area Knowledge (City), Current Events (Headline News, Politics))

(Important Advantages--Acute Vision, Voice, Charisma, Attractive, Gizmo, Very Fit)

So, with that background, here's my equipment list:

Fancy Digital Camera
Extra Batteries
Extra memory sticks
Cool Photographers Vest
Press Pass
Buck Knife
One of those travel belts that you use to hide your Passport (which she'll use as one of the places she'll hide memory sticks with The Truth).
Personal Basics
Wearing a set of clothes
Set of Lockpicks

[Ed the Coastie]

My kit doesn't cover "any-and-all" possible scenarios, of course. It isn't intended to do so. It does, however, provide me with a decent chance of survival in most probable scenarios, and has the tools to allow me to pick up pretty much whatever else I may need along the way.

The one thing that I can't carry along with me is my library. If I had one, I would add a (preferably ruggedized) laptop computer to the kit and load it up with an assortment of reference books.

But as it stands right now, my current kit is sufficient for my perceived adventuring needs.

[SimonAce]

You know this thread has got me tempted to write a GURPS Loadouts book ...

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by SimonAce

You know this thread has got me tempted to write a GURPS Loadouts book ...

If you do - could you use the name Charlton in the flavor text story that usually opens a chapter?

My little thread seems to have sparked some interesting discussion here.


- Ed Charlton

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by SimonAce

Icelander you are correct. Thats why I initially stated it was a no win scenario

You forgot something - I am the likely GM for the scenario. (Or someone a lot like me stylisticly speaking)

In my games its never a "no win scenario".

There's always a possible win - you just got to use your brains and apply some creativity to the situations and possible combats.

- Ed