Survival skill and damage

[AmesJainchill]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

What are some things that take a week to recover from?

Nightmarish description of horrible perils of the wilderness.

Wow. You know your stuff.

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

Do you take a shovel?

There are a zillion ways the wilderness can make your life miserable. Tell the lazy buggers that one of them should take Survival skill.

Nope, entrenching tool. New one.

I mean, come on, this is GURPS. OF COURSE you need an expert--it's the same as the real world!

[safisher]

[QUOTE=Sabaron]Under the description of the Survival skill (B223), it states "To live safely in a wilderness situation, you must make a successful Survival roll once per day. Failure inflicts 2d-4 injury on you and anyone in your care; roll seperately for each victim."

I was talking with someone and they reminded me of these stories:

Aron Ralston
With no water and as little hope of survival, Aspen mountaineer Aron Ralston, 27, used a pocketknife to amputate his own arm and free himself from a boulder weighing 800-1,000 pounds that fell and trapped him for five days in a remote desert canyon in eastern Utah.

William Jeracki
William Jeracki probably understands Aron Ralston's ordeal better than most. On October 6, 1993, Jeracki, a 38-year-old anesthetist from Conifer, Colorado, was fishing alone on a small creek near St. Mary's Glacier, outside Denver, when he accidentally dislodged a large boulder, which landed on his left leg and crushed it.
Jeracki knew a snowstorm was forecast for that evening but had not left word with anyone about where he was going. Now, wearing only light clothes, he didn't believe he'd survive the night. He had to make a choice: amputate his leg or wait for help and risk dying of exposure. After three hours he pulled a pocketknife from his tackle box, tied off his leg with fishing line, and began sawing through his flesh at the knee. He sliced through tendons, nerves, and his patellar ligament until his femur slid out of the knee socket. Once free, he crawled to his truck, then managed to drive the stick shift a half-mile to Alice–St. Mary's, where he was air-evacuated to Denver's University of Colorado Hospital. Searchers recovered his severed leg, but surgeons were unable to reattach it. Today, Jeracki, who uses a prosthetic leg, declines to be interviewed about the incident, but it has had a profound impact on the course of his life—afterwards, he went back to school to become a licensed prosthetist.
After his escape, Jeracki told the Associated Press, "I'll never know if that was the best possible decision. But I'm here. I feel lucky to be alive."

It's debatable whether these are examples of Unluckiness or a failed Survival roll. Either way, it's best to not fool around in the wilderness unless you carry a pocketknife and are willing to use it!

And notice this next guy, who's only a few miles from his car:

Gilbert Gaedcke
"Gaedcke left his hotel at 9:30pm the previous Sunday night, and drove to The Plume, on the east side of the national park, to see the spectacular show of lava entering the ocean. He made it successfully to The Plume, about three to four miles away over rough and trail-less terrain, but got lost on his way back to his rental car. He told the hotel that he would return at 10:00am the next morning, and when he did not return, they reported him missing."
"When rescued, Gaedcke had cuts to his hands, and sores on his feet, even though he said he was wearing brand-new running shoes."

No exploding flowers, but these stories should illustrate the dangers of the wilderness.

[Kyle Aaron]

I should have thought of this one earlier. Wilderness: A Survival Adventure. It's an old PC game, pretty clunky old interface, but very informative.

The game also has a manual which acts as an introduction to aspects of survival. Reading the manual, and playing the game, will give you some very good ideas about the sorts of things which can go wrong in a survival situation...

The game is abandonware. No longer put out. But you may be able to find it. Of course copying and distributing abandoned titles is entirely illegal, despite their being abandoned, and I would not endorse that. A google search for details on it is here. Of course that same google search will turn up many other online resources for it.

If your players have a play around with that, and/or read the manual, they'll get a better idea of the stuff... Again, it's a question of focus in the game. Some people will enjoy all those details, and get a sense of accomplishment at overcoming these sorts of difficulties. Others won't. Just another case where you have to know what you and your fellow players enjoy.

All this talk has made me want to run a survival adventure... a pity I've just started up my GURPS Immortals campaign:)

[TheDS]

It's on Home of the Underdogs, so it's about as legal as it gets. DLing the manual, since you say it's nifty, but the game itself is for DOS, and made in 1984. I don't think there's anything that can run that nowadays, is there? Maybe if someone's got W98 still... But not me. The manual will have to be enough.

[Romalar]

Originally Posted by TheDS

It's on Home of the Underdogs, so it's about as legal as it gets. DLing the manual, since you say it's nifty, but the game itself is for DOS, and made in 1984. I don't think there's anything that can run that nowadays, is there? Maybe if someone's got W98 still... But not me. The manual will have to be enough.

DOSBox solves your problems! It claims to work with a game called "Wilderness" from 1986. I know personally that it works with lots of old classic games, but I've never played this one.

[Pursuivant]

Never underestimate the power of sunburn, even in an otherwise temperate climate. Some years ago, I was working in an open field while wearing a short-sleeved shirt. Like an idiot, I didn't wear sunblock. After 4-6 hours of exposure I had second degree burns on my nose, my neck and the back of my arms, and painful first degree burns on my face and hands. With the dehydration associated with the burns, I easily took 2-3 HP damage. Mercifully, I never away from civilization, so I was able to rest and recover and apply (belated) first aid.

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by TheDS

It's on Home of the Underdogs, so it's about as legal as it gets.

No. If you check Underdog's FAQ, they admit it's illegal. See the relevant partof their FAQ.

Originally Posted by the Underdogs FAQ page

But isn't abandonware illegal?

Unfortunately, yes. Despite the fact that publishers no longer derive revenues from these games since they have stopped selling them (and any revenues from retailers that still sell them were gained a long time ago, at the time of sales), it is illegal to distribute them so long as copyright holders have not released them into the public domain, and 95 years after the games' release have not elapsed.

Underdogs, like many people, confuses copyright with "right to make a profit." They reason that since the companies are no longer making money from it anyway, it's okay to copy it. This is wrong. "Copyright" is quite literally the right to make copies. The copyright holder can make it into a small book, a big book, a computer program, a movie, a song, or just burn the manuscript, as they wish. It's theirs to do with as they wish - including the right not to publish it at all.

As an example, imagine that you had a copy of GURPS Conan, which has not been in print for some years, that you scanned it and put it up online as a freely-downloadable pdf. Imagine that, like Underdogs, you said, "but hey, if the publisher contacts me and tells me to take it down, I will!" Would SJGames say, "okay, take it down, but as for it being there in the first place, hey, no worries!"? I don't think so:)

We may or may not think it's moral to publish and distribute things which have been abandoned by their original publishers; that's a debate for another thread, probably in General Discussion. But it is not legal.

Try the legal ways. Have a look on ebay, it's amazing the old stuff you can get, and cheap, too. Check your local PC game swap meets, where again, the stuff you find... wow.

the game itself is for DOS, and made in 1984. I don't think there's anything that can run that nowadays, is there? Maybe if someone's got W98 still...

I've still got W98, I specifically refused XP when offered it because it'd be an obstacle in this way and others, while adding little functionality I'd actually use. Anyway, this page says you can actually use DOS games in XP with a little jiggery-pokery. Let me know if it works.

It's a good game, and well worth finding legally and paying for, if you're interested in this sort of thing. I do wish they'd make an updated version. With greater processor power these days, they could take account of many more factors, allow you a third-person view so you could see how bruised and battered and shivering your guy was, improve the graphics, etc. But I guess the market is only for Big Gunz and H4wt Chixxors:(

[Amy]

For reference most groups should be able to scare up try a scout handbook (boy or girl, girl guides for some countries).

[sjard]

I've had people offer me up to $5,000 for my 1970s era scout fieldbook.

[Pesterfield]

Copyright is a good idea, but 95 years causes problems. First except some truely classics most music/programs/books will fade from memory long before they can be openly distributed. Second take a look at: http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/login...e.html?id=4561 even if something is remembered chances are no copies will physically survive long enough.