I’ve tossed around the idea that the Challenge Points for a Survival Challenge might be better tracked if the group worked to reduce the pool of points instead of each player chipping away at their own allotment of points.
This makes teamwork between PCs in a survival challenge intrinsic to the system. I don’t mind sending that message with the mechanics but it might not be what the players actually want to do. As they are, a PC could leave the rest of the party behind if they wanted to. It’s actually slightly hard to help another character as things are.
It makes the GM’s job of handling random hazards a little more intuitive which I like. All the PCs are together and so experience the same hazards. I have ways of explaining why characters might experience different hazards but that’s not explained in the text of the rules, mainly because explaining my thought process on that would be cumbersome to the text and I’m already worried that there’s too much in the book.
It makes the system a little more of an approximation than a simulation. I’m okay with that. I’ve striven for simulation in years past and found the results satisfying but the effort required to support the simulation slowed things down. Approximation often has it’s own emergent properties that can be highly enjoyable.
It might require an adjustment in the number of CP in a challenge, but that shouldn’t be a massive problem.
That’s my thoughts on the matter. What do you think?
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